Digital Movies Overtake Film

[Pickett Wilson]

And the beat goes on.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/tech....htm?iid=HP_LN

[gb hill]

I never saw Avatar & 3D movies are a fad. So does this mean the price of a movie ticket will increase? Probably so! Digital has glitches just like the old "Oops the film broke" instead you see those tiny square cubes breaking up & the picture freezing up. Then there is still the biggest problem af all...archiving. I'm sure one day they will fix that but for now it's very expensive. I love how you are always on your "film is dead" kick. Well guess what? I can still go into a store & buy it. Enjoy your medium & i'll enjoy mine!

[Pickett Wilson]

Hmmm. Actually, I wasn't thinking film vs digital. There has been a long running discussion about the impact of digital projection on the future sales of film. Thought the article was relevant to that discussion.

[40oz]

Yeah, this has nothing to do with film vs. digital and has more to do with charging more for movie tickets.

However, who is "IHS"? How reliable is their prediction of what will happen in two months' time? Has anyone checked their numbers? This company claims to be "the leading global source of information and analysis" but I've never heard of them. I'm guessing they are ful of crap. They list very few sources for their info, make claims that are highly dependent on economic factors and speciaous at best - Avatar as the reason theaters are switching, as if it wasn't part of a concerted effort by a consortium of production companies that owned digital projection companies? C'mon, that's not analysis, or at least it's analysis that could have been performed by a third grader.

[btgc]

Digital movies are good - boys who had hard times with screeners etc. will only need to convert it to some home-friendly format (more compact etc.).

[martinemallindias]

Many directors still favour the "warm" look of celluloid, which is still preferred by an ace moviemaker like Steven Spielberg.Digital movies are good - boys who had hard times with screeners etc. will only need to convert it to some home-friendly format.

[cosmonaut]

I dont go to the movies. I get those dvd thingys for a dollar at cvs.

[sepiareverb]

Digital projection seems like a huge step down in quality to me. I live in a small town in a rural area where the two theaters (one a non-profit art center, the other part of a 3 theater local chain) have what is most likely lower end equipment, and it shows. Shabby black, muddy highlights, blur. Before the switch movies looked far better.

As an aside, we also have Digital TV broadcast now- the main result being that rather than being able to watch something even if it had a little 'snow' but good sound is that we only get brief snippets of sound and giant pixelated image interspersed with long stretches of the dreaded blue screen. I've often wondered how much the cable companies pushed for digital TV broadcast.