CatBus said:
danny_boy said:
Peer reviewed International studies conducted in theaters across the globe concluded that the average release print has roughly 500-800 lines per picture height.
I understand the difference between negatives and release prints, but 1) you're still only talking resolution (a single aspect of "quality"), and 2) averages hide the fact that there's some variation between release prints, and even within a single print. And what about colorspace? What about audio?
I certainly wouldn't say Star Wars theatrically was 4K equivalent, nor did I intend to imply that. Certainly some of the scenes with multiple optical effects are sub-DVD quality in the resolution department, but luckily that does not apply to the entire film, though it does bring down the average, perhaps even down to the levels you quote. Audio is still Blu-ray quality (lossless, let's ignore the channel variations) throughout, and colorspace is better. I'd say resolution exceeded 2k at the peaks, but neither of us has any data to back that up or refute it, so feel free to consider that claim dropped. FWIW, my >2k claim is simply from the observation that when the local theatres switched from film to digital 2k, everything looked worse resolution-wise, and it didn't start looking good again to me until they upgraded again to 4k. Certainly this was with a non-random sampling of films, possibly not average ones like yours, and like yours they were also not Star Wars, so it doesn't really apply.
Thanks for the clarification and I agree with your points.
Although we have to remember film has other problems too---the accumulation of dirt,tears,dye blobs and the sometimes unstable/jitter/jumps as it passes through the projector---all of this affects the perception of sharpness as experienced by the viewer.
All of the above would have been prevalent to audiences who hit the theaters to watch Star Wars in 1977-1991.
There is also a problem with tonal reproduction as you go through the generations.
Film did have a slight advantage in dynamic range over the first generation of digital cameras/projectors but even this has been matched or exceeded by the latest iteration of digital cameras provided by the likes of Arri,Sony and RED(be they 2k or 4k).
Understanding this photochemical degradation is at the heart of why Lucas has done what he did with regards to the digital alterations.