Digital Projection

[Silly McGooses]

I don't believe I've seen a thread on this before. Anyway, I'm going to see Iron Man tonight, and I don't really know anything about the technology of movies, and I'm wondering if the digital showings really make much of a difference from the traditional film showings. Are they preferable? I think film usually looks great, and I know digital is the catch-all buzz-word for futuristic, but doesn't film sort of have, in effect, an infinite amount of "pixels" while digital by definition would be sort of limited? Does digital projection ever suffer from that blockiness that comes up sometimes on HD or digital programming? Anybody who knows more about this than I do, any info would be appreciated.

[Swordfish_II]

I've only seen one DLP movie (1408), but I thought the picture was real good. None of the little scratches or jitter you can get with film.

So unless there's a price difference, I'd say go for it.

[Doggeh]

I work at a theater where we have two DLP projectors. I don't work as a projectionist so I don't know a whole lot about them.

I can say that I personally cannot tell the difference between DLP and regular projectors. Its not film though, more like a DVD, so as far as I know it wont get scratched or damaged as easily as film does.

I don't know if this applies to all digital projectors but both of ours work for 3-D films as well.

And the only time it costs more to see a digital film is if it is in 3-D

[Lord Dalek]

Our crappy ass theater (three rooms are still mono!) recently switched to all digital and one of their projectors is clearly broken or misaligned or something. Every few minutes the screen gets all scrambled and you see RGB pixels. Its really distracting.

[Temple Fugate]

I spoke briefly about my one-time experience with digital projectors in the Iron Man talkback. I saw Transformers on a DP and frankly, the image was amazing. Crisp, clean. No jitters or dust or scratches.

There was only one thing I didn't like: In sunrise/set shots, you could easily see the little color blocks. The projector was unable to create a smooth gradient between the yellow and orange colors in the sky. It was very noticeable in the few shots there were. Other than that, I totally forgot I was watching the movie on a digital projector.

I still prefer film because i just like the "feel" of it, but more and more these days it seems the projectionists aren't able to work the machine properly. Some movies are slightly out-of-focus the entire time (TMNT and Live Free or Die Hard) and some start jittering for minutes on end. (Iron Man) I chalk that up to human error more than hardware malfunction, though. If they properly maintained the equipment that sort of thing wouldn't happen as often.

[Silly McGooses]

Thanks for the responses! I'm gonna have to miss that digital showing tonight, but it sounds like I should be fine with good ol' film.