I personally don’t care whether it’s film or digital. In fact, the projectionists at my crappy local theatre let the reels run out so often that I’d prefer digital just so I’d never have to take that risk again.

Fang Zei said:

When I saw the final Harry Potter movie in 35mm, the screen randomly went dark for several seconds while the sound kept going. This happened a couple times during the movie and they were within only a couple minutes of each other, roughly halfway through. I don’t want to mention specifics on the off-chance I’d be spoiling it for someone, but the first flub happened right in the middle of a pretty significant moment and I seem recall saying out loud “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

When it happened again only a minute or so later the lighting in the scene was, uhhh, much brighter, so the screen going dark again for a few seconds was even more noticeable.

I don’t know what the hell caused it, maybe the shutter in the projector got stuck or something. There was a trio of folks complaining to the management afterwards as we were leaving the theater, and I was tempted to do the same, but I could see the person on duty wasn’t giving in and so I figured it wasn’t worth the trouble.

When I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes at a Thursday midnight screening with my cousin a week or so later, it was at the same theater and we had a choice between digital and film. I chose digital, thinking that would prevent any screwups like what happened with harry potter.

We go inside and I notice the real-d filter is still over the projector. I ask a theater employee to remove it and she does. Eventually the trailers start, and then the movie.

About halfway through, the same exact thing that happened during Harry Potter happens again … only the picture doesn’t come back this time.

We all start making our way out of the auditorium with very little light to guide us, booing the whole time. As we’re finally getting to the hallway, the theater staff emphatically tells us it’s okay and that someone’s coming to fix it. We all take our seats again and someone comes in with a remote (yup, tv in the cinema indeed, Tarantino) and asks us to let her know when we’ve gotten to the right scene as she fast-forwards through the movie.

Goes without saying they were waiting outside to give us all free passes once the movie ended.

tl;dr, digital cinema can be just as bad if not worse than film projection.

Six years later it’s almost worse in certain ways. I’ve complained about them not removing the 3D filter on at least two trips to the movies in the last year. With Rogue One I mentioned it to them afterward and they said “it turns on and off automatically,” completely ignoring my point that it shouldn’t be on there at all. With Wonder Woman I tried letting someone know during the trailers, but the theater was so understaffed that the guy in charge understandably told me there was nothing he could do about it.

Fixing incompetent management would solve both of these problems; it’s not a question of film versus digital.

When I saw War for the Planet of the Apes, the audio entirely cut out exactly six times during the film. I don’t know what caused it; reel changes came to mind, but the projection was so obviously digital.

When I saw Doctor Strange there was a green/pink outline around everything, as if it was supposed to be in anaglyph 3D or something (it was a 2D showing). None of my friends noticed, but I did, and it was bad. Of course, idk how projection stuff works, but something was definitely wrong.

suspiciouscoffee said:

When I saw Doctor Strange there was a green/pink outline around everything, as if it was supposed to be in anaglyph 3D or something (it was a 2D showing). None of my friends noticed, but I did, and it was bad. Of course, idk how projection stuff works, but something was definitely wrong.

This has happened consistently in one particular auditorium of our local theater. It looks like a fringing effect similar to a mismatch of RGB film layers, with green on one side of edges and pink on the other. Perhaps there’s some misalignment of the LCD causing this fringing, but in any case, it’s irritating to me but apparently not to most other people.

milakow said:

Hellow

Hi! Welcome to the forums!

I live in an optimistic universe of my own design.

Fang Zei said:

Don’t think I’ve ever seen this fringing problem.

Regal has something weird going on in their theaters where the right and left sides of the screen will be tinged slightly different. It’s not super distracting but I did find it noticeable during brightly lit scenes. Must have something to do with the way their theaters are set up because I’ve noticed this at two entirely separate locations.

I’ve seen this too at Regal, and I remember at one showing it was very distracting. It was Florence Foster Jenkins, and at first I thought it was intentional because they framed the titular character predominantly on one side of the screen so her face was often tinted, but it quickly became apparent that one side of the screen was green and one side was pink.

What if in the future the SW fan community does succeed in convincing Disney to release the OUT in 4K but then 10-15 years later when 8k(4320p) is released Disney, for whatever reason, chooses not to budge on releasing it like they are now. What then?

Tantive3+1 said:

What if in the future the SW fan community does succeed in convincing Disney to release the OUT in 4K but then 10-15 years later when 8k(4320p) is released Disney, for whatever reason, chooses not to budge on releasing it like they are now. What then?

Since you’ll have to be 5 inches from a screen the size of Rhode Island to see the pixels for 8k, I don’t think it’ll be much of a consumer thing.

doubleofive said:

Since you’ll have to be 5 inches from a screen the size of Rhode Island to see the pixels for 8k, I don’t think it’ll be much of a consumer thing.

Could you please repeat that in a larger font? I’m only 6 inches away from my new Rhode Island-sized 8k display.

Fang Zei said:

When I saw the final Harry Potter movie in 35mm, the screen randomly went dark for several seconds while the sound kept going. This happened a couple times during the movie and they were within only a couple minutes of each other, roughly halfway through. I don’t want to mention specifics on the off-chance I’d be spoiling it for someone, but the first flub happened right in the middle of a pretty significant moment and I seem recall saying out loud “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

When it happened again only a minute or so later the lighting in the scene was, uhhh, much brighter, so the screen going dark again for a few seconds was even more noticeable.

I don’t know what the hell caused it, maybe the shutter in the projector got stuck or something. There was a trio of folks complaining to the management afterwards as we were leaving the theater, and I was tempted to do the same, but I could see the person on duty wasn’t giving in and so I figured it wasn’t worth the trouble.

When I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes at a Thursday midnight screening with my cousin a week or so later, it was at the same theater and we had a choice between digital and film. I chose digital, thinking that would prevent any screwups like what happened with harry potter.

We go inside and I notice the real-d filter is still over the projector. I ask a theater employee to remove it and she does. Eventually the trailers start, and then the movie.

About halfway through, the same exact thing that happened during Harry Potter happens again … only the picture doesn’t come back this time.

We all start making our way out of the auditorium with very little light to guide us, booing the whole time. As we’re finally getting to the hallway, the theater staff emphatically tells us it’s okay and that someone’s coming to fix it. We all take our seats again and someone comes in with a remote (yup, tv in the cinema indeed, Tarantino) and asks us to let her know when we’ve gotten to the right scene as she fast-forwards through the movie.

Goes without saying they were waiting outside to give us all free passes once the movie ended.

tl;dr, digital cinema can be just as bad if not worse than film projection.

Six years later it’s almost worse in certain ways. I’ve complained about them not removing the 3D filter on at least two trips to the movies in the last year. With Rogue One I mentioned it to them afterward and they said “it turns on and off automatically,” completely ignoring my point that it shouldn’t be on there at all. With Wonder Woman I tried letting someone know during the trailers, but the theater was so understaffed that the guy in charge understandably told me there was nothing he could do about it.

The best solution is just to not go to the movies. Everything comes out on home media three months later anyway.