"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

I am skeptical about the 4K announcement from TI.

The wording in their press release used the term "enhanced DLP," and the word "enhanced" is what gets my B.S. meter pegging into the red zone. So far I have been able to find no confirmation these new "4K" chips really feature native 4096 X 2160 resolution.

It would be great if those new DLP chips did boast 4K native resolution because it would be a tremendous accomplishment in chip engineering. That's 8.8 million spinning mirrors on a little computer chip. It would also translate into much more affordable 1080p-based projectors for home theater and computer-based use. The 2K chips would be much smaller and many more could be fit onto a sheet of silicon during chip manufacturing. Unfortunately reality clouds that optimistic thinking.

Texas Instruments sold DLP chip parts to TV manufacturers like Mitsubishi that were advertised as 1080p but really were not. Instead of 1920 X 1080 native resolution, the chips were only 960 X 1080 and used a "wobbulation" method to fake a 1080p image. I can't help but wonder if this new "4K" chip is another regurgitation of the wobbulation process, this time using a 2K chip to fake a 4K image.

If TI's new 4K DLP chip is really a wobbulated 2K chip in disguise then they will have trouble dealing with Sony's "SXRD" native 4K LCOS system -which is cheaper and easier to produce than DLP chips.

Let's also not forget this 4K chip won't even be available for at least another year. So the announcement could certainly qualify as "vaporware" to keep more theater chains from signing up with Sony for digital cinema installations. Sony now has circuit-wide deals to install 4K projectors on all theater screens operated by AMC and Regal Cinemas. That's a pretty big deal.

Cinemark Theaters took part in TI's 4K press release saying they would install new projectors made by Barco that feature the new 4K DLP chip set in all of Cinemark's theaters. Again, those projectors won't be available until mid to late 2010. In one respect it makes sense for Cinemark to go hand in hand with TI. Both companies are based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Cinemark's Legacy theater in Plano, TX has had TI operated DLP projectors for close to a decade. Still, there was some strong rumor and speculation Cinemark would jump to Sony if TI didn't make any kind of big move to 4K soon.

Still, as I said earlier, I'm skeptical TI's 4K chip is really 4K. I mean we're dealing with fake IMAX for crying out loud. Oh wait, I'm sorry. I meant to say "IMAX Digital." As long as the "digital" word is in there it's perfect regardless of the native resolution, bit rate, compression process, etc., etc., etc.

TI claims they are capable of making 4k chips right now.
But,
Have been holding back on bringing the technology to theater operators because “it remains to be seen if now is the right time to bring 4K to market” -as per a statement from a TI spokesperson from last May. It seems that their(TI’s) theatrical resolution philosophy drastically changed shortly after the Regal-Sony announcement.

I’m glad they now appreciate the fact that Super35 film as well as RAW capture from a RedOne camera or digital acquisition from a Dalsa Origin have an effective resolution closer to 4k than 2k.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by PaulGo

I also like these two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KNrxwl59I0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly-Hb_n584c

lol,
I received this in a PM this morning………….
“Penton, Amir LIVES!”…….. http://www.ultrahighendforum.com/vie...php?f=140&t=71

^ I see he has modified his Signature since the days of AVS.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

True, but those wobbulation chips could still resolve single pixel on/off patterns at full 1080p, so what is the difference?

The drawbacks of wobulation include decreased brightness and an image not as sharp as native 1080p. In one respect wobulation is just another method of showing a moving image in an interlaced fashion.

Another problem is professional digital projectors use 3-chip DLP arrays (or 3-chip LCOS systems in Sony's case). I'm wondering what kinds of convergence problems could arise with 3 wobulated DLP chips trying to work in sync with each other.

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

Competition is always a good thing and having more than one 4K solution out there is a good thing for the industry, especially for display devices. Plus if the Sony 4K presentation I saw of Up is any indication, I hope Sony isn't the only 4K solution out there. I wasn't impressed at all. Didn't come close to the 2K DLP solution at my local D-Cinema.

Up isn't a 4K resolution movie. Every digital 3D process has problems with brightness levels. RealD has a new generation of Z-screens that significantly improves image brightness, but not every RealD equipped theater has it.

As a matter of principal it is a good thing to have more than one 4K solution. But the question remains as to whether Texas Instruments' new DLP thing is really 4K or not. Anything less than 4096 X 2160 native resolution will be seen as a scam. The other problem is the high cost of producing DLP chips. Sony can produce the 4K LCOS imagers in its d-cinema system for less money than it costs to make a 2K DLP chip. Sony is selling its 4K projectors for a considerably lower price.

Both Sony and TI are not profiting well at all from their d-cinema systems. Since rear projection based HDTV sets all but disappeared from the market TI's DLP business has largely dried up as well. The biggest market for DLP chip sales now is in computer projectors. That's a niche market. More office board rooms are installing big flat panel displays. Intel saw this happening and killed its plans for making LCOS imaging chips. Sony may actually lose a lot of money in its d-cinema business. However the company may profit in the bigger picture from the marketing tie in with its HDTV and home theater products. TI doesn't have that alternative with DLP.

[Penton-Man]

hah,
And yet another PM to me linking yet another outside forum.....
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/3574001-post32.html

^
Jeff, I really wish you and Bill would get your act together because being accused of "as reliable as flipping a coin" is no laughing matter.

[Kris Deering]

Both Sony and TI are not profiting well at all from their d-cinema systems. Since rear projection based HDTV sets all but disappeared from the market TI's DLP business has largely dried up as well. The biggest market for DLP chip sales now is in computer projectors. That's a niche market. More office board rooms are installing big flat panel displays. Intel saw this happening and killed its plans for making LCOS imaging chips. Sony may actually lose a lot of money in its d-cinema business. However the company may profit in the bigger picture from the marketing tie in with its HDTV and home theater products. TI doesn't have that alternative with DLP.

How so? There are plenty of DLP based projector manufacturers out there using DLP right now. More so than any using SXRD last time I checked. Sony isn't using SXRD for anything but their front projection market right now, and that is limited only to the HT market. DLP is used in home theater projectors, business projectors AND rear projection applications. A FAR broader market than Sony's tech.

I too hope that TI is indeed using a true 4K chip, I am with you there. The issues that I saw with Sony's 4K weren't brightness, it was sharpness and convergence. Both were quite poor at the theater I went to, and it was a new install, which is even more disappointing. While I do occasionally see convergence issues with 2K D-Cinema presentations, it is rare, and the image tends to be quite sharp every time. The biggest complaint I have is contrast levels, which aren't even close to what we can achieve at home, and the ambient light in the theater doesn't help.

Sony needs anything it can get to keep their SXRD technology afloat. They've been pitching it to everyone in the industry trying to get more adoption. Right now it looks like LG might start using it but that is about it. They ceased production of their rear projection applications and have been nearly liquidating their front projection units with lower prices coming in all the time (including their 1st generation 4K projector). I hope this D-Cinema move helps them out because I actually like the technology and want to see Sony continue to develop it, especially for the HT market.

[Monkey]

IMO I couldn't think of a better moderator for the HT/video side of things.

LOL.. He did such a good job of it at AVS (ok, maybe not directly moderating)

[PaulGo]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

lol,
I received this in a PM this morning………….
“Penton, Amir LIVES!”…….. http://www.ultrahighendforum.com/vie...php?f=140&t=71

^ I see he has modified his Signature since the days of AVS.

It's a good thing I read the link before I had my fathers day supper... . Amir missed his true calling he should be writing press releases for North Korea or Iran.

Happy fathers day to all!

[mark antony]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

lol,
I received this in a PM this morning………….
“Penton, Amir LIVES!”…….. http://www.ultrahighendforum.com/vie...php?f=140&t=71

^ I see he has modified his Signature since the days of AVS.

I loved the retired digital media insider sig, retired my arse!

M

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Hey Penton, I know you've been jonesing for a cheesesteak, and in the process of finding out from a friend where he gets his tastykakes in LA, I found this

http://www.eatphillysbest.com/locations/

Apparently they fly in real Amoroso rolls as well as their meats from Philly, and they advertise Franks's soda (the Black cherry is superb) and real philly birch beer

So go get your fix, my ex-pat friend whose tastebuds I trust has declared it to be good, not as good as getting it local, but an acceptible source of philly related food

I tried one of “Philly’s Best” today.

The family picked one up for me (completely unexpected on my part ) as part of a Father’s Day treat based upon your (via your buddy’s) recommendation.

It was delicious.
Thanks for the heads-up.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by PaulGo

It's a good thing I read the link before I had my fathers day supper... . Amir missed his true calling he should be writing press releases for North Korea or Iran.

Happy fathers day to all!

Truly.
I stopped reading what he posted after I left AVS along with paidgeek and anyone please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong because I don’t like to post incorrect information but, wasn’t he at one time defending the use of lossy audio codec over lossless?

That seems somewhat of a contradiction to later being assigned to a moderator position on an “ultra high end” audio home theater forum.

[Penton-Man]

Since there’s a golf tournament currently going on, I just want to bring peoples’ attention to this recently released Blu-ray title which is flying under the radar on this forum……….

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movie...ow=userreviews

Great story……..and you don't have to be a golfer or even know much of anything about golf to appreciate it as one of the subplots is the relationship of a father with his son.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

lol,
I received this in a PM this morning………….
“Penton, Amir LIVES!”…….. http://www.ultrahighendforum.com/vie...php?f=140&t=71

^ I see he has modified his Signature since the days of AVS.

lol, wonder how long it will be before it is the SD and DD is good enough forum

[bt12483]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

lol,
I received this in a PM this morning………….
“Penton, Amir LIVES!”…….. http://www.ultrahighendforum.com/vie...php?f=140&t=71

^ I see he has modified his Signature since the days of AVS.

Still spreading FUD though:

Have you wondered why high-end companies are so slow to adopt BD? Well here is the answer.

Traditionally, these companies took a reference design for DVD from the mainline silicon companies, and then performed their value add in certain components (power supply, analog stages, better drive, etc.). The reference design provided the full DVD functionality and hence, they could focus on their value-add outside of that context. Given their small volumes and hence, small R&D budgets, the model worked.

The situation with BD is wildly different. Yes, there is a reference design from the chip company. But this time around, it has two major deficiencies:

1. It does not come with BD-J (Java) engine. This is provided by a third-party which frankly, may not have the expertise to provide performant and quality implementations.

2.Compatibility issues. BD-J is an entire execution enviornment. Think of it as a computer inside your player. When was the last time you had a computer that didn't need updates and bug fixes? Well, the same is true here.

Worse yet, some studios consider the PS3 gold standard and don't really care if it takes an hour to start the movie on some stand-alone palyer. Or whether it crashes something there. If it works on PS3, they can ship the title and let the chips fall where they may with respect to other players.

No high-end company with small volumes and inability to fix bugs per #1, can stand behind the product the way they did with DVD. Higher volume companies such as Sony have the expertise and the know-how to get past these issues for the most part. But they are very differently situated than high-end companies.

I am afraid the situation is not going to get better anytime soon. BD-J was built on a very large foundation with a ton of functionality that is hard to verify. Studios are still playing around with new functionality and with every move, are liable to break an implementation out there.

For all of these reasons, it is remarkable that Oppo has managed to do what they have in building a player that is superior in functionality than just about anything out there. I expect them to be the exception rather than the rule although if I were a smart high-end company, I would go and license their design, put in a few improved components and charge 10X more for it .

http://www.ultrahighendforum.com/vie...hp?f=140&t=287

And he seems to be taking sole credit for Managed Copy:

After 4+ years, we finally have one of the foundation provisions in BD AACS copy protection available. Namely, ability to make copies of BD discs.

When I originally cooked up this concept, there were few who thought that it was a needed feature. I was told that disks were too expensive for anyone to try and store BD content on them. How fast does the world change!

Of course, with likes of Slysoft, I suspect managed copy is looked at as too little, too late. But it will be the ticket for legitimate companies to offer BD ripping such as Kaleidescape, etc.

So what say you? Any interest in managed copy? Or unmanaged copy (i.e. Slysoft) for that matter?

I personally can't want to finish building my 20+ TB server to put my movies on it.

http://www.ultrahighendforum.com/vie...hp?f=140&t=248

I guess he thought of Managed Copy all on his own, huh?...probably sitting on the toilet.


I wonder if he will try to convince the folks at the ultra high end forum that lossless audio on blurays is superfluous and that DD+ is transparent on their $50k sound systems! I would think they would be more difficult to convince than the lemmings at AVS.

What an a$$.

[Penton-Man]

That reminds me (this recent talk of Amir), since it’s looking like I’ll be away for a few days during the first week of July, in case I forget, here’s a head’s up to those people that still venture into public theaters these days, as this feature film starts playing nationwide on July 1st, I believe………

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...es#post1811122

Now, I encourage all the reviewers out there all over internet land who have even the slightest chance of reviewing this movie when it eventually debuts on Blu-ray, to actually attend a theatrical screening so you have some basis for your future video quality assertions on your upcoming Blu-ray reviews several months from now in regards to this flick.

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Now, I encourage all the reviewers out there all over internet land who have even the slightest chance of reviewing this movie when it eventually debuts on Blu-ray, to actually attend a theatrical screening so you have some basis for your future video quality assertions on your upcoming Blu-ray reviews several months from now in regards to this flick.

I can smell it/them coming already.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

How so? There are plenty of DLP based projector manufacturers out there using DLP right now.

Sure, there's more than a handful of companies selling portable computing projectors as well as video projectors. There's even a few high end 3-chip DLP options.

But the total sales volume on those products is pretty low.

Bulky rear projection HDTV monitor sales was the core market for DLP. No longer. It's a rare thing to find a RPTV on sale in any electronics store. Most everything is flat panel LCD with the only exception being flat panel plasma. DLP has no foothold in the flat panel market.

Any chip fabrication plant must produce and sell chips by the many thousands or even millions to be profitable. There is nowhere near enough commercial movie theater screens in existence to provide enough of a revenue stream for DLP to be profitable. The same holds true for Sony's LCOS. However, as I said earlier, Sony can throw away money cornering the d-cinema market in order to provide a bigger marketing boost to its home theater products. It's just a brand promotion ploy. Use a commercial movie theater screen as another type of billboard to display the Sony brand name. That really has to be the play Sony is making because it's really the only logical reason why they would even be bothering with 4K d-cinema projectors in the first place. In the long run Sony probably could use 4K d-cinema as a source to launch the successor of Blu-ray in another 7-10 years. They'll just bring out some 4K flat panel TV sets that don't have a thing to do with LCOS or "SXRD" but they'll still have the Sony brand name on them -just like the stuff in the movie theater.

[Jeff Kleist]

So happy you enjoyed it Penton, did they bring you any other goodies, or did your loved, but inexperienced ones not know what other treasures lay within?

[Constitution 101]

Perhaps Penton could give an insider's view regarding the future(streaming/digital downloads, etc.) in regards to the length of blu-ray's existence as a format. It would seem the bandwidth we now have isn't near enough to replace all the Blockbuster video's and/or blu-ray as a medium.

[Bobby Henderson]

That topic has been discussed repeatedly, with certain participants ending up merely agreeing to disagree. My feeling is Blu-ray won't have any credible competition from Internet downloads for at least a few more years. On top of that many people still like buying packaged media.

The United States' Internet infrastructure on the whole is just way too slow to allow things like real time streaming of HD movies and other videos with quality levels similar to Blu-ray. While there may be lucky little spots where customers can get fiber optic-based service potentially delivering tens of millions of bits per second those same customers are stuck with communicating with the rest of the Internet which is running far slower. I don't see 20Mb/s - 30Mb/s connection speeds becoming common at all for several more years.

Once the Internet can deliver those speeds to most of the nation then some big changes in business and entertainment will take place.

[doctorD]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Since there’s a golf tournament currently going on, I just want to bring peoples’ attention to this recently released Blu-ray title which is flying under the radar on this forum……….

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movie...ow=userreviews

Great story……..and you don't have to be a golfer or even know much of anything about golf to appreciate it as one of the subplots is the relationship of a father with his son.

I've been looking for this since it's release last week but I haven't been able to find it in any local stores. I'm hoping Fry's has it. Thanks for the reminder.