Will Sony's 4K Help Save Hollywood?

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/displaypres/revfeat/Sonys_4K_Saves_Hollywood112205/

Nov 22, 2005 6:34 PM, Dan Ochiva

As a profitable business, selling movie tickets looks increasingly gloomy for the Hollywood studios and theater chains. According to NATO (National Association of Theater Owners), theater attendance has fallen since 2002 from 1.63 billion to 1.53 billion in 2004.

Even though it will still be a few years before the full effect of HDTV hits the mainstream, the surprisingly quick uptake of fancy home theater systems has spooked theater owners. As they continue to raise their ticket and popcorn prices, even while parking and gas also cost more, NATO members know that more and more potential movie theater attendees will opt for the DVD version.

That thought adds even more worries. The trades and mainstream newspapers alike point out that the studios may soon away with the traditional “only in theaters” window, when DVDs are released months after the feature debuted. With the speed and reach of the Internet among the technologies helping to foster rapidly growing piracy, many in Hollywood makes the argument that the studios should make as much money as possible upfront by releasing both movie and DVD together. How else will they beat those $5 DVD versions, which often hit the street as their $100 million film debuts?

As desperation grows, one antidote on hand is an old-fashioned one: 3D. Just as Hollywood and theater chains promoted 3D in the 1950’s as one method to battle their then new nemesis television, today’s directors and studios are again dusting off that recipe to take on the Internet, DVDs, cable, and all the other of today’s burgeoning media.

Today, of course, anyone creating 3D movies benefits from decades of R&D in optical and vision theory, which makes it much easier to shoot, edit, and project 3D. Disney’s recently released “Chicken Little”, for example, enabled the company to finish the animation as if it were a standard 2D movie, and then turn the finished project over to Dolby’s new division, Dolby Digital Cinema. DDC took it from there, employing a newly designed digital process that used the talents of both Industrial Light & Magic and REAL D to render and provide the viewing technology.

In a news report, James Cameron, who is currently working on a live-action 3D feature, said that “Chicken Little” will help get audiences “really excited” about 3D again, and lead to a “3D renaissance” since the viewer feels a heightened sense of being personally present in the space of the movie.

Digital 3D offers creatives, says Cameron, the opportunity to create work that equals the effect of the epic, industry changing introductions of color and sound.

Other technologies that debuted in the 1950s, such as Cinerama and VistaVision, relied on super wide screens and improved resolution to lure patrons into theaters.

That finds a parallel in Sony’s innovative SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display) 4K projector. The initial models SRX-R110 and SRX-R105 recently started shipping, after more than a year of field tests and note-taking as the company took the device to gatherings of cinematographers, studios, production companies and others at trade shows and throughout the Hollywood community.

“It’s a unique technology,” says John Kaloukian, general manager of Sony Display Systems. “It’s the highest pixel resolution of anything available on the market. At 4096 x 2160 pixel, we can deliver over 8 million pixels to the screen.”

While the SXRD offers four times the resolution of current DLP HD technology, very little material has been released at a 4K res. So what’s the advantage?

“While there’s not a lot of 4K material out there yet, our strategy includes selling a projector to the theaters that’s future proof.” Theater owners should appreciate that, as long as the initial price is in the range of the DLP-based systems. Meanwhile, the Sony projector shows 2K just as well, and can up res 2K material on the fly to 4K if desired.

Technicolor is including Sony’s 4K SXRD projection systems in its upcoming digital cinema beta test in early 2006. While Technicolor representatives were not available at press time, it’s expected that the company will be testing both the Sony technology and DLP-based systems, most specifically those from Christie Digital, the market leader in DLP systems in the U.S.

How do you get the image to the projector? At ShowEast this past October, Sony Electronics and QuVIS presented the QuVIS’ Cinema Server, a 4K capable device designed to work with Sony’s SXRD 4K.

Tiny, Topeka, Kansas-based QuVIS has been a pioneer, developing its unique wavelet-based server and recorder/player technology since 1999. The company claims that its QuVIS digital cinema servers were the first to play both 4K and 2K content, as well as the first to play and master 3D content. The QuVIS Cinema Player now also includes MXF and AES encryption and key management.

QuVIS won a Millimeter Pick Hit at NAB 2004 for its QuVIS Digital Mastering Codec (QDMC). The company pioneered the application of wavelet technology in postproduction, playout, and digital cinema mastering and playout.

Meanwhile another server solution comes from Doremi, long time supplier of SD and HD servers and playout gear. The Burbank company created Doremi Cinema LLC to enter the digital cinema theater market. Doremi Cinema claims its DCP-2000 digital cinema server is the first commercially available server that can play DCI-JPEG2000 movies at up to 250Mbs. Christie Digital Systems has ordered 200 of the 800GB servers for the Christie/AIX rollout.

The big mover in the market, though, is Thomson, Technicolor’s parent. On November 10th Thomson debuted quite a deal: most of the major Hollywood studios have signed on with Thomson to push installs of digital cinema systems in North America.

The French company is already a big player in the European digital cinema market, and now plan to control over 75-percent of the American box office by installing some 15,000 digitally equipped screens in the United States and Canada over the next 10 years, according to Julian Waldron, Thomson’s Chief Financial Officer.

The announcement revealed that DreamWorks, Sony Pictures, Universal, and Warner Bros. have already agreed to use digital projection systems from Technicolor on 5,000 screens in the United States and Canada as early as the first quarter of 2006. The Christie CP2000 Digital DLP Cinema projector, used to present Disney's “Chicken Little”, is said to be the choice for most of the installs.

Christie is also going into the business of providing complete digital theater systems, financing some 2500 to 4000 screens in the U.S. and Canada with partner AccessIT. That company is a revived version of the struggling Boeing Digital Systems effort, which hoped to use its access to high-speed satellite links to deliver movies.

Christie/AIX, a subsidiary of AccessIT, will act as financier, an intermediary between content owners – such as the major studios and independent distributors. Also in the deal: exhibitors who will receive turnkey, DCI-compliant Digital Cinema systems including 2K DLP-Cinema projectors and related hardware provided by Christie.

So, what changed? After all these years of back and forth between the studios and theater owners, arguing as to who would pay for the pricey installation of all those new projectors, servers, and management systems, why are the flood gates opening now?

The studios’ agreed to pay for nothing; well actually they agreed to pay for ‘virtual prints’. At $1000 a pop, the studios will pretend they’re still using film to distribute each film, with $1000 going to the theater chains for every print they would normally have paid for.

Without the rollout of digital cinema, of course, the studios would still be budgeting and paying for film prints far into the future. Now, with a mechanism to create a steady flow of cash to the theaters, the studios know they take the cost of prints off their budgets at some point, while theater owners will have access to loans and other money, enabling them to pay for a rapid changeover.

And Sony’s next gen 4K projector? Directors and DPs are among those calling for better images, and that means higher res, blacker blacks,…anything, it seems that’s far enough beyond HD res. While final pricing on the Sony SXRD wasn’t available at press time, if it’s competitive with DLP-based systems, we’ll soon see if the desires of the creatives hold much sway in the market.