Many people in the New York area spent the last day of the Fourth of July weekend traveling, barbecuing, and partying at the beach with relatives or friends. Not me, I decided to spend the day in New Jersey sampling the future of motion pictures, the Electronic (E)-Cinema. Considering that the outside temperature hit over the one hundred-degree mark, it wasn’t as crazy as it seems. I crossed over two bridges into Secacus and Paramus, New Jersey; the home of the East Coast’s limited run of the future of Motion Picture presentations. One theatre was using the Hughes-JVC Image Light Amplifier Technology (ILA), the other, a Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing (DLP).

My first stop was the Loew’s Cineplex Odeon on Rt. 4 in Paramus. The sign at the box office read "Star Wars - The Phantom Menace in Digital". I proceeded into the theatre to witness the first movie presented to the public digitally. Being a holiday, the theatre was about 50 percent of capacity. I went to my traditional spot about one-third the distance from the screen to the back of the theater. I was told once a long time ago that this is the sweet spot of a properly designed motion picture theater (I have been viewing under that assumption for over 25 years). Right before the presentation started, the video projectionist from Hughes-JVC gave the audience a little pep talk on what we were about to see. He explained that the movie was stored on a 360 gigabyte hard drive and that Lucasfilms serviced the production and conversion to digital, carefully monitoring all aspects of the transfer. He went on to say that THX® had modified the theatre’s sound system and that the sound encoding was Dolby Digital Surround EX. The presentation started with preview trailers of a couple of movies in digital. I don’t remember the titles because I was concentrating only on the image quality. I was thinking of what I saw on the screen with my memories of what film should look like and looking for telltale clues that what I was seeing was digital video. This wasn’t easy to do. When the second trailer came on I turned around just to make sure it was still HD Video and not film, it was. Then the movie began. The first thing to hit me was that the print was perfect. No dust, no scratches, or as we say in New York, no schmutz. Once these digital theatres take over, I won’t have to run out to the first or second showing of a movie to see a clean print. They will all be as perfect, as the master and transfer.

The color, sharpness and look of the movie were excellent. The blacks while not opaque, were damn good. The colors were rich and I Could clearly see grain structure from the master print. Digital Artifacts were minimal. Considering that a lot of the film contained computer-generated images (CGI) it was difficult to know if the artifacts were in the master as well. What I did not notice were panning glitches, edge anomalies or the jaggies that I often see in video presentations. The only point in the presentation that gave me a clue I was watching an interlaced video presentation was the vertical credit roll. I would like to emphasize that the effect was very slight and I saw no scan lines or other common interlace artifacts that we are all used to with 480 line interlaced NTSC video. Convergence appeared close to perfection and the star field and space battle scenes looked magnificent. Overall it was very impressive. Was it perfect? Not quite, the visual that was not as good as film were the "peak whites". Scenes with blue sky showing were a little washed out and seemed to be somewhat overly bright, I must say, the film’s outdoor scenes are overly contrasted (sorry George.). Allow me to elaborate. When you look at a stairstep test pattern on a projector, the transitions of black to white should appear as even gradient steps. In fact, that is exactly what a perfect stairstep looks like on an oscilloscope, even steps in terms of rise and time.

If a projector's output is not linear on the top end, the difference in intensity will not be great enough going from a light gray strip to a white strip on the stairstep test pattern. In the extreme, if the white level (contrast) control is turned up way too high on a projector the last two steps will be white and have no gradation at all. This effect probably could have been corrected with further adjustment to the ILA Projector. It may have been set that way to offer a brighter image with a slight penalty from a perfect stairstep. On the other hand, the contrast ratio of the presentation shined, with a quoted ratio of 1300 to one (the ILA Projector has a greater ratio than the 1000 to one that is typically quoted for film projection). I can confirm that the video off the ILA appeared to have a greater dynamic range than the same movie projected from the 35mm film projector. The digital picture was much brighter than the showing on film in Theatre 10.

At the end of the movie I spoke to Richard Totten the E-projectionist from Hughes-JVC. He graciously showed me the complete set-up and explained that the movie is stored on 19 hard drives, uncompressed and displayed as a 1920 x 1080 interlaced image. He went on to explain that the projector is their model ILA-12k, the same one that they were displayed at INFOCOMM. He told me the projector utilizes 3 infra red tubes for red, blue, and green. These tubes are attached to three Image Light Amplifiers that convert the infra red images to red, blue and green reflective images on the faces of the ILAs. It is an analog device and the resolution is listed in their brochure at 2000 x1280. Since it is analog, it does not have a fixed pixel structure and the digital data stream has to be converted to an analog RGB + sync signal that is inputted to the projector, just like a HDTV set-top box connects to a HDTV.

My next stop, back to the film playing in theater ten. Except for the absence of a white level peak on brightly-lit objects, I saw no superiority of film over ILA. The print was loaded with dust and dirt. It was not as bright and did not appear quite as detailed as the video presentation. Unfortunately this was not a true A-B comparison, because the screen was not the same size in the two theatres. Next stop, Secaucus, New Jersey.

The Secaucus theatre presented the Texas Instruments DLP using a TI prototype 3 chip DLP projector with an pixel image array of 1280 x 1024. Unlike the Hughes-JVC, which is a digital to analog presentation, this feature was presented purely in its digital form. The data stream is sent directly to the DLP via a serial digital connection from a scan converter. The DLP has chips with over a million microscopic hinged mirrors each that form an image. The differences between the projected pictures of the two competing projectors were quite great. On the positive side the "over level" whites were not present. The contrast of the image closely tracked the film version. Once again, the presentation was pristine with no foreign material present interfering with the enjoyment of viewing the movie. The overall image did not appear as sharp or, simply put as, filmlike as the Hughes-JVC presentation. I could see telltale video artifacts or anomalies from time to time. The first and most noticeable were digital artifacts viewed as trails on horizontal pans. It appeared to me to be typical of scaler artifacts. Because these chips are a 1280 x 1024 array, the signal has to be scaled down to this matrix. Different model scalers produce different quality results handling a down conversion. Another scene where its "digitalness" exhibited itself was on the Chancellor character’s costume. His outfit was black with blue diamond shaped patterns. Whenever the actor would move around, the diamond patterns would get fuzzy and when the motion stopped the diamond patterns would sharpen up. Vertical edges also appeared to have a slight false outline quite similar in look to a TV set's sharpness control turned up too high. Color was excellent and clean with no video noise, but black level did not appear as black as the Hughes-JVC presentation. Pixel structure was invisible until I moved forward to the fifth row of the theater, a seating distance that is ridiculously close to the screen.

The most interesting differences between the two presentations were aspect ratio, brightness and sound quality. According to the press kit, the movie was presented in 2.39 to one in both the film and the digital Hughes-JVC Presentation. The TI theatre was displaying in an aspect ratio of about 2:1 according to the TI video projectionist (videojectionist?). This was due to the screen being the improper aspect for a proper presentation. The additional side information was masked off. The Hughes-JVC press release stated 10-foot Lamberts brightness while TI indicated 13-ft Lamberts. The Hughes-JVC was clearly brighter and from my seat in the theater (one third from the screen) it did not appear even close to the 13ft Lamberts level. Having measured and set up many front projectors I know what 13-ft Lamberts looks like. I proceeded to the projection booth. In the Paramus theatre the projector was mounted around my head level in the back of the theatre, in Secaucus it was at the second floor level of the theater building. I looked out of the projection booth window and from up there the picture appeared brighter. My hypothesis is that the screen material being used in both theatres was retro reflective. This means that light is reflected back to the source. By placing the projector at second floor height, light being thrown by the projector was reflected back to its source above the seating area.

The more disturbing elements were vertical lines that were present on the screen image in both theatres. I was informed both theatres were rescreened before the digital run. The man from Hughes-JVC was kind enough between screening to display a pure full white field on the screen for me, and clearly it appeared that the framing structure of the screen’s supports were making their impressions on the screen’s surface. The same effect occurred at the other theatre. This was most unfortunate and a real unnecessary distraction to such a fine presentation.

Both theatres had the Dolby Digital Surround EX equipment in the projection booth and it sounded fabulous in Paramus. There were literally wires hanging off the wall of the theatre. I was told that THX people had rewired and reworked the entire system for the theater. The theatre had good dynamic range; its separation and bass were as good as the best I have ever heard in a commercial movie house. Unfortunately the sound in Secaucus was the typical poor sound quality of a multiplex. I don’t know if anything was done to improve the sound. Neither theatre was THX Certified according to a Lucas Films spokesperson.

I want to commend all the parties involved in this project. The presentation clearly demonstrated that the era of the E-Cinema is beckoning. In the time it will take to put all the aspects of a complete change in the distribution and presentation of motion pictures, all the remaining technical glitches will be overcome. Whether DLP or ILA ultimately wins the battle, the impact is both clear and greater than just the effect it will have on movie theatres. By incorporating the same video technology being used for HDTV today, movie theaters tomorrow, and eventually DVD, the implications are immense. Once we possess a universal digital medium, the entire way we will receive and view new motion pictures can and will change forever. Widescreen connoisseurs and film (E-Cinema) buffs we will have a digital art form that will maintain its aspect ratio, color, condition and look no matter how and where it is viewed. The director and artist will have a finished product that will translate to any venue, movie theatre, home theatre, or personal monitor in the same way that it was intended to be seen. It will be there, forever for everyone to see anytime, always perfect and (hopefully) always properly displayed. In the end the studios, manufacturers and movie lovers will be the winners.