Disney/Pixar's latest film is being shown in 3D using state-of-the-art Sony projectors in some theaters.
(Credit: Disney/Pixar)I went to an opening-day screening of the new Disney/Pixar film "Up," on Friday. I had a great time and not just because of the movie. There was an interesting technology story, too.
The Camera 7 theater in the Silicon Valley city of Campbell recently installed four new digital cinema projectors. They're the best on the market today: Sony's SRXR220, which lists for about $200,000 with the usual required accessories.
Sony also has a slightly less expensive model, the SRXR210, for smaller screens. What puts these projectors ahead of the competition is their native resolution: 4,096 pixels x 2,160 pixels, a standard known as "4K." That's over four times as many pixels as HDTV, which displays 1,920 pixels x 1,080 pixels.
I wrote about 4K technology back in August 2007 ("After HDTV, what's next?") and predicted that "you'll be seeing it in theaters within the next few years." I'm pleased to say that 4K is ahead of that schedule.
I wrote that post after attending a screening of some of the earliest 4K content at the ACM Siggraph conference in Los Angeles, including "Crossing the Line," a short film by "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson. The Siggraph demonstration also used a Sony projector, the much smaller SRXT105.
I was amazed by the picture quality in that screening, and I'm even more impressed by what I saw from the newer SRXR220. As I wrote in 2007, these projectors create smooth, sharp images using LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) technology, which I think is inherently superior to TI's DLP (Digital Light Processing) micro-mirror chips, which are used in other digital-cinema projectors.
On Friday, we got to see more than just a movie, too. Sony has provided the Camera 7 with a bunch of PlayStation 3 game consoles and configured the projectors to display multiple games up on the big screen so that up to 64 people can play at the same time.
Before the movie, we got to see just one game, Sony's "Gran Turismo 5: Prologue," filling the whole screen. Coincidentally, that's my favorite game on the PS3 (though I must admit to limited experience with that platform since I don't own one), so I was happy with the choice.
Although the PS3's native output is limited to HD resolution, the image quality was very impressive. The movie itself was even better. I don't know what the movie's native resolution was, but it looked great, with bright, saturated colors and good detail in both highlights and shadows.
The movie was presented using RealD's 3D technology, re-branded as Disney Digital 3-D in the advertising for "Up," though the glasses we received were marked RealD as usual. Now that I've seen movies in state-of-the-art theaters using both RealD and Dolby 3D Digital Cinema, I think they're both fairly similar in overall quality.
While I'm on the subject, I'd like to make another comparison: between Sony's 4K technology and the new small-screen "IMAX Digital" theaters that are popping up around the country, generally as one or more screens out of several in a multiplex.
I've seen a couple of movies ("Watchmen" and "Star Trek") in IMAX Digital theaters now, and the quality didn't measure up to my expectations. According to the Wikipedia article on IMAX Digital, these theaters use a pair of HD-resolution (also called 2K) projectors--but I don't think this approach will produce better than HD-equivalent resolution. Two superimposed images can be brighter than one, but the resolution can't be twice as good as a single projector.
In my experience, IMAX Digital theaters fall short of the quality of these Sony 4K projectors...and, of course, they're vastly inferior to real IMAX theaters. Every time I've attended a showing in an IMAX Digital theater, I've heard other customers expressing their disappointment. I don't know why IMAX is diluting its brand this way.
Similarly, I don't know why Sony hasn't established a new brand for these 4K projectors. I know I'm going to be tracking the arrival of this technology in other Silicon Valley theaters, but Sony isn't helping.
Anyway, the new Sony 4K technology is out there. If you can find it, I bet you'll like it.
I have to hand it to fellow analyst Rob Enderle. Way back in August of 2005, he called the high-def format war in a piece titled "Blu-ray Wins or Nothing Does."
Logo of the Blu-ray Disc Association, winner of the high-def disc format war
(Credit: The Blu-ray Disc Association)Then again, he also said in that article that "the more likely outcome is that the market will bypass both products and move to something else," so perhaps he wasn't perfectly prescient.
And come to think of it, a year later (in December 2006) he changed his mind entirely in columns titled "Optical HD Battle May Be Over: HD DVD Wins," "HD DVD Wins," and "Sony Kills Blu-ray."
And in August and even November of 2007, Enderle still believed HD DVD would win.
Well, if Rob Enderle couldn't predict the result, who could? Even just before the Consumer Electronics Show this year, when Warner Bros. Entertainment announced it would stop supporting HD DVD and join the Blu-ray camp, I was still hedging my bets: "Blu-ray wins, HD DVD loses. Probably.")
But when Wal-Mart--the Brünnhilde of modern retailing--took the stage last week to throw its weight behind Blu-ray, everyone knew it was over. And this week, Toshiba--leader of the DVD Forum, which developed HD DVD--officially conceded defeat. The company aims to end production on HD DVD hardware for home theaters as well as PCs by the end of March.
So we can all relax. Right?
Well, for a while, sure. But remember, DVD and Blu-ray were separated by only five or six years, so presumably we're due for yet another format three or four years from now. And a new format means the potential for a new format war.
The basic parameters are easy to predict. As I described last August in "After HD, what's next?" the heir apparent to HDTV is what's called "4K"-- that is, a display resolution with about 4,096 horizontal pixels and 2,160 scan lines. Sony already makes projectors that support this resolution. Red Digital Cinema makes 4K cameras. Director Peter Jackson has made a short film in 4K, and the "Final Cut" of Blade Runner was remastered in 4K.
So 4K is coming, and it isn't far away.
But why should there be a format war?
Well, there's always a format war. There was even a DVD format war, although we're all fortunate that it was resolved well before discs or players hit the market.
Sony will want to lead the transition to 4K, but the DVD Forum will still be around in five years. That's a recipe for a format war right there.
Will it happen? I sure hope not. Our best hope for a lasting peace is that Sony, Toshiba, and the rest of the DVD Forum members settle their differences and start working on the next generation immediately. If you have any influence within these companies, now's the time to start cooperating on technology development. The future won't wait.
One of the last things I did at Siggraph this year was to spend about 20 minutes enraptured by the best video I've ever seen. It's called "4K" (after the number of pixels on each horizontal line), and you'll be seeing it in theaters within the next few years.
The Siggraph Computer Animation Festival included one session of video driven by a Sony SXRD SRX-R105 projector displaying 4,096 by 2,160 pixels at 24 frames per second with progressive scan (or 2160p24 for short).
That's four times the number of pixels you'll see on a home HDTV set-- or in ... Read more
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