Interstellar and the end of the film era

in movies on 2014-11-08 02:16 (#2TYH)

Today, nearly all movie theaters have converted their projectors to fully digital systems. Although movie theater 4K (4096 x 2160) is a little higher resolution than consumer TV 4K (3840 x 2160) - and definitely an improvement over standard HD (1920 x 1080) - nothing can match the resolution and shear awesomeness of 70mm IMAX film projection. Christopher Nolan is one of the last true film holdouts and with his new movie Interstellar, is pushing for the full "film only" versions to be shown across IMAX theaters.

Bottom line: this is one movie you probably want to see in the theater. Otherwise you won't get to see its true glory until 30 years from now when the industry starts selling 32K resolution digital TVs.

Re: IMAX killed it (Score: 2, Interesting)

by carguy@pipedot.org on 2014-11-10 18:08 (#2TZ6)

I'm under the impression (but don't have references) that the big difference is the blanking interval for a film projector. With digital projectors the "lamp" is on all the time and there is smearing as the image is rewritten for every frame. Any "object" that is moving quickly across the frame suffers with current digital schemes. In theory is should be possible to blank the "lamp" while the digital image is redrawn, but the reality is that the light sources are not bright enough to be pulsed on and off every frame--the screen image would be too dim. Film projectors use *very* bright & hot lamps--which can melt through the plastic film if it happens to stall in the feeding mechanism.

Perhaps another Pipedotter can give some more detail about this??