theatrical question

[assydingo]

people have said the goal of Blu is to approximate the theater experience

what confuses me about this is I find it hard to believe the matrix looked that good in theaters. honestly I only saw it on vhs but still... and with animation like tinker bell we have the 3d effect, movies in general have very high detail and clarity, etc.

maybe the theater experience has been more amazing then I remember?

[stockstar1138]

it depends what theater who view it in. but there are def. examples where blu exceeds the theater and many experts have agreed.

[Meeklo]

I would think that Blu is better than theater due to the fact that there are still so many movies being shown in film instead of digital. Blu is definitely a step up from just film.

[assydingo]

so would you say most older movies, if done right, will look better then they did in theater?

[Bobby Henderson]

Geez. More of this blanket statement crap about theaters?


Commercial movie theaters have varying levels of presentation quality from one venue to the next. You can even see projection quality vary from one auditorium to another within the same multiplex.

I've visited quite a few commercial movie theaters whose presentation quality blows away most any home theater setup -especially in terms of projection quality. I've been to others where the projection was just laughably bad. Unfortunately there is far more of the bad quality theaters than the really good ones.

Let's also not forget about the growing number of theaters with digital projection. A properly setup and maintained 2K D-cinema system will trounce any home Blu-ray setup. The JPEG2000 material playing is of superior quality (far less data compression) to Blu-ray.

[CptGreedle]

There is other math that can show Blu-ray is better than theaters.
Simply put, the average size HDTV is around 52". Within that 52", there is essentially a 2k film with all its details being shown. This means that a film in a theater made on 2K film will have the same detail information as a Blu-ray. However the theater is not 52" big, but is usually around 30x70 FEET. So all that same data is stretched out over a MUCH bigger "canvas". Granted, you are sitting farther away, but often it is too far, or too close, and also at a bad angle either to the left/right or too far down. The angle can have a huge effect on the "quality" of your movie going experience. If you go to an IMAX theater, which is usually 72.6ft x 52.8ft, most of the seats are located in a poor location for film viewing. With a TV, it is much easier to reposition yourself, or even center yourself to the screen.
Even a 4k film has to be spread over that same 30x70 foot screen, meaning that it might be much more detailed than a 2k film, but it is still less information per inch than a Blu-ray.

Now all said and done, a perfect theater set-up will still be able to outdo a perfect home set up, but only marginally. Simply cause the screen fills more of your viewing area than your HDTV. But achieving this perfect set-up is near impossible.
For one thing, imperfections in a theater are harder to fix and easier to see. Screens can get dirty, lenses can get dirty or scratched, film (if not digital) can burn, sound quality can change throughout a showing, people can annoy other people by talking/texting/etc., the prices for food (and tickets) are high, etc. It is much easier to get a near perfect home theater set up, although expensive. The advantage is, once you have that set up, it will always be there for you through all your movies, games, tv shows, etc.

And just try renting a theater to play games. I did.. PAIN IN THE @$$! I did it though, and it was awesome. But I could only have it hooked up for about 4 hours, and had to pay $200 for it (the other theaters were asking for around $900 or more).

So in short... Blu-ray is easier to make look better than theaters.

[assydingo]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

Geez. More of this blanket statement crap about theaters?


Commercial movie theaters have varying levels of presentation quality from one venue to the next. You can even see projection quality vary from one auditorium to another within the same multiplex.

I've visited quite a few commercial movie theaters whose presentation quality blows away most any home theater setup -especially in terms of projection quality. I've been to others where the projection was just laughably bad. Unfortunately there is far more of the bad quality theaters than the really good ones.

Let's also not forget about the growing number of theaters with digital projection. A properly setup and maintained 2K D-cinema system will trounce any home Blu-ray setup. The JPEG2000 material playing is of superior quality (far less data compression) to Blu-ray.

I didn't even realize the quality had such a wide range. I live in a small town and have probably only been to crappy theaters.

[Michael.Schinke]

Simply put, the theatrical presentation will always outshine any home video presentation because most films are designed for their theatrical showings. The audio, the types of lenses used, the way the colors are arranged in a scene, the type of camers, the effects; all of these are chosen to compliment the expectation that the movie will be seen in a cinema. As great as Star Wars is at home, the experiance will never match what you get watching it in a properly maintained cinema with the sound cranking way beyond what you can get at home and your entire field of view engulfed to the point where the world outside the movie disappeers.

[drobswim13]

Originally Posted by Meeklo

I would think that Blu is better than theater due to the fact that there are still so many movies being shown in film instead of digital. Blu is definitely a step up from just film.

35mm and 70mm film has a much higher quality than blu ray does. However, most movie theaters cannot handle 70 mm film so they use 35 mm prints. Like others have stated, theater screens are huge compared to home theater screens, so it takes a very high quality image to fill up a theatrical screen and make it look clean and presentable than it does a 52" screen.