Digital Film vs. Normal

Then there is the movie done on simple crappy film.

The difference? ......film may be more shaky or grainy or even crappy yet digital is perfect.

Originally posted by The Silver Bullet


Wow. You know so much.
Digital may have sharper sound and picture, but film has a quality that cannot be reprocued -- a richness. While sure digital may work well for certain types of movies, film is not dead, nor is it dying and nor is it simple or crappy.

Digital may have sharper sound and picture, but film has a quality that cannot be reprocued -- a richness. While sure digital may work well for certain types of movies, film is not dead, nor is it dying and nor is it simple or crappy.

But Digital Protection I'm all for. There have been too many occasions when the reel has been spliced wrong, or has burned up or one of the film cans doesn't show up at all and I don't get to see the movie. Also it'll mean getting movies quicker if you're on the wrong side of the Atlantic as I am. I'd have seen Spiderman already instead of sitting at home in the dark twiddling my thumbs in anticipation as I am doing right now.

Originally posted by CrazyLegsMC
Theres no question whether digital is better then normal film or not. Digital is by far a much nicer way to watch a movie. Not to say that the conventional film roll is bad either.

But you cant say that digital isnt better then normal film because it is.

The picture is crisper and cleaner and will look as new and great as it did the first time, when its being played for the 1000th time.
Only reason I can think of, for why ppl would disagree with this is because they dont have a DPL projection theater in their town and dont want to admit to its higher quality.

I myself dont have a DPL in my town, but I have been to one when I was in Seattle and the quality is much better.

Originally posted by Yoda
Could someone enlighten me as to the alleged cons of digital films?

The TI systems in the demo theaters bear no relationship to the real world. They're custom installations that do not address the problem of how a real film would get to a real theater. The source of their signal is an array of 20 prerecorded 18-gigabyte hard drives, trucked to each theater. This array costs an additional $75,000, apart from the cost of trucking and installation.

Even so, a movie is so memory-intensive that these arrays must compress the digital signal by a ratio of 4-1. At a recent seminar at the Directors' Guild in Los Angeles, digital projection spokesmen said that in the real world, satellite downlinked movies would require 40-1 data compression. This level of compression in movie delivery has never been demonstrated publicly, by TI or anyone else.

The picture on the screen would not be as good as the HDTV television sets now on sale in consumer electronics outlets! TI's MDD chip has specs of 1280 by 1024, while HDTV clocks at 1920 by 1080. For the first time in history, consumers could see a better picture at home than in a movie theater. A higher-quality digital picture would involve even more cost, compression and transmission challenges, as well as lose deep, dark colors and information.

One advantage of a film print is that the director and cinematographer can "time" the print to be sure the colors and visual elements are right. In a digital theater, the projectionist would be free to adjust the color, tint and contrast according to his whims. Since many projectionists do not even know how to properly frame a picture or set the correct lamp brightness, this is a frightening prospect.

How much would the digital projection specialist be paid? The technicians operating the TI demo installations are paid more than the managers of most theaters. Hollywood is happy to save money, but are exhibitors happy to spend it?

What about piracy? Movies will be downloaded just once, then stored in each theater. Thieves could try two approaches. They could grab the signal from the satellite and try to break the encryption (as DVD encryption has just been broken). But there is a more obvious security gap: At some point before it reaches the projector, the encrypted signal has to be decoded. Pirates could bribe a projectionist to let them intercept the decoded signal. Result: a perfect digital copy of the new movie. When the next "Star Wars" movie opens in 4,000 theaters, how many armed guard will 20th Century Fox have to assign to the projection booths?

Film is harder to pirate than digital video because a physical film print must be stolen and copied.

Originally posted by Steve
I'm not opposed to digital movies, but I am opposed to filming all movies digitally, and projecting all movies, even those shot on film, through a digital projector. Quite simply, digital, at least right now, cannot look as good as film.

Originally posted by jrs1013

No films are projected digitally because film and digital movies are 2 different things. True, digital movies can not look as good as film because it is better.

Originally posted by Yoda
I must ask: is this a technical fact, or is this nothing more than cinematic purism? Is this a "vinyl still sounds better than CDs" or "there's just nothing like the original" kinda thing?

Originally posted by Steve


It is possible to compress film into digital format; it's kind of what they do for DVDs. Unfortunately, since the screen sizes are different, and film projection is basically nothing but (physically) running a strip of celluloid through a box with a hole in it, and digital projectors contain computer chips, crazy options, etc, it gets much more complicated than just watching a DVD on a big screen.