After work I met up with Matt and we headed to the Boston Common to see Episode 2 in the Digital Theater… First things first… While I did notice the occasional aliasing (jaggies) on some text, that is about the only negative thing I have to say. The picture was so bright and the colors were so fantastic… I was astonished that I didn’t notice any compression artifacting….. Sorry this isn’t coherent, but if you are looking for an endorsement, you’ve got one as far as seeing this film digitally goes… I would like to see a few films that were shot on film on the DLP projector before giving an overall endorsement, but other than that….
Seeing the film again was nice, but about 4 minutes before the ending credits there was a fire alarm and the theater needed to be evacuated… I need to go back tomorrow for my refund, which blows… I guess I will go on my lunch break. The alarm came after all the action, but before the plot was fully tied up… I find it funny because when looking for the address of the theater this afternoon I came across this Citysearch page and one of the reviews at the bottom says “I have seen about 10-15 movies there since it opened and 3 of them have been interrupted by fire alarms.” Doesn’t sound like this theater has its shit together..
I also got my Afterburner kit for the GBA today, and I installed it after I got home. The installation took me about an hour, and I am going to need to get another antireflective film and re-do that part (a little bubble got trapped dead center, so I will need to reapply it). It is amazing how it accentuates dust on the screen, though… I don’t have any canned air here, but I do at work, so I can take care of that tomorrow…. In a stroke of genius I decided to use a Swiffer sheet to collect the dust off of the unit and when I did, it left a nasty translucent residue behind…. DO NOT DO THIS!!! It took about 20 minutes with a lens tissue and windex to get it back to normal.
BUT, now that it is all installed, I can also fully endorse this product… While it isn’t for the feint of heart (the installation gets your hands pretty “dirty”), the end result is worth it 100%. The screen clarity reminds me of the Atari Lynx and the Game Gear. The colors are a BIT washed out, but not as bad as many people have purported…. I think it looks beautiful…
Adam did his before me and gave me plenty of warnings; I doubt my install would have gone so smoothly without him to jump on the grenade for me… He completely screwed up the antireflective film and ended up skipping it in the end, and the colors without it are TERRIBLY washed out and there is horrible reflective banding… Apparently it is worth the effort… Some people who installed the AR film didn’t realize that BOTH sides of the AR film had protective coatings, so some complained that it made it look shitty… If these people applied it properly they wouldn’t complain…
The lynx didn’t have a great screen on it. the viewing angle was EXTREMELY narrow… it was often hard to have the top and bottom of the screen both look right. So for the vertical games like Gauntlet, it was mostly useless… each eye was seeing a different image. painful.
But it was a lot brighter than the GBA without a backlight. ;)
But if you viewed it straight on it looked fine…. I was talking more about brightness than quality of LCD… :P
oh. gotcha. :]
Granted, I’ve only seen Attack of the Clowns once, and it wasn’t digital, but I am certain I saw some nasty artifacting on the back of Anakin’s head at one point. It was a brief scene, where he was facing away from us on the right side of the screen, and his head filled about 1/4-1/3 of the screen. Since he was so close to the screen, the back of his head was really dark, and there was a lot of noise in it.
But, aside from that, I didn’t see any other digital film glitches. I suppose at some point I’ll crawl out to a digital theatre to see the difference. ;-) It is disappointing, though, that people are so universally down on the film version. Film is still much more versatile that digital is, and if the digital version looks “brighter” or more colorful, then that’s a result of the digital->film conversion, not a result of film. It’s certain to change as time and tech move on, of course.
Sorry. I know you appreciate the difference. I’m just venting at idiots again; unfortunately, I’m venting in your journal.
Sorry. I know you appreciate the difference. I’m just venting at idiots again; unfortunately, I’m venting in your journal.
Don’t worry, It’s cool… :)
And as a true movie snob, I totally agree with you… I love film, and I think it is here for a long while, but there are clearly problems with film that may never be solved:
I guess my review of the digital projection system was more of a “This is well on it’s way to being a good thing”. And as far as the brightness goes, I wasn’t really comparing it to seeing AotC on film, but instead just seeing film projection in general… It seemed that this projection was much brighter and more colorful than any film system I have seen… Of course, that could have been a choice in the film’s treatment (Thanks, DeLuxe.. :P). Not that brighter is necessarily better, but the colors seemed a bit more accurate… But it definately depends of the film (i.e. The Matrix, where everything intentionally had a green tint/haze, vs. Vanilla Sky, where the colors were very primary).
it’s really hard not to be critical about digital compression
and compositing and rendering and modeling and textures
and animation, shadows etc etc etc etc
when you know about stuff like that, even though i dont know what much technically – being an artist with digital training, i know enough to ruin things sometimes
its hard to turn off your brain and just enjoy a movie ignorantly sometimes, but with star wars – i bet it was really fun just to explore it visually… i cant wait to see it wednesday night on a digital screen *hugs* :)
oh i came accross your journal because of random matches on our profile, go figure. ^-^
-=wawa=-
Now I really want to go see it somehow, but there isn’t a digital theater around here for almost 300 miles. I’m glad someone was able to take my place though.