Who wants to get a 4K projection system?

Drew599 said:
But if filmmakers realize that people that go to see the movies they make won't care either way if its 2K or 4K.
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Sorry, but I hate this argument. It basically boils down to "the punter's too dumb to be able to tell the difference". In my experience this isn't true - they may lack the vocabulary to describe what's wrong, but they're aware of it on some level all the same.

If there's no point projecting 4k, there's no point shooting 4k. So this camera's a waste of time 'cause everyone will be happy in a 2k world.

Personally, I'm waiting for the 4k Red Projector that Jim's secretly been working on in his shed and that will play back from a drive with 4k Redcode footage on :)
 
I'm just saying man that you can't tell that big of a difference. There is a difference but its so small its not worth all the trouble its going to be. There's enough problems with 2K DC. I wouldn't even want to think about the problems that 4K would have. Its cool if they can get it to work right but the pay off just isn't worth that much.
 
Drew599 said:
Luki, the environment that I saw the 2K vs. 4K was at the Steven J Ross theater at Warner Bros. In my opinion it doesn't get much better than that. The stuff they were looking at was "Corpse Bride", which was captured on a 16.7 MP camera and "Batman Begins". I see plenty of 2K stuff every day at work and it looks amazing. But what looks even better is 4:4:4 2K. I just think as far as a projector goes it should be left at 2K. There's no reason to go to 4K. I guess you can make the same argument about 35mm vs. 70mm. If you really need to see all that detail then by all means shoot in 4K and project it in 4K.
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Yes - that's a good theatre. And were you looking at the 2K vs. 4K on the same screen at the same size? If so... at 1:1.85, one has 2048x1080 pixels, and one has 4096x2160. So either the 2K was uprezzed to match the 4K, or the 4K was downrezzed to match the 2K. Which was it?

To see 4K in its true glory, the pixels need to be the same size, so that the 4K image really is 4 times as big as the 2K image. If they're not, I agree - it's hard to tell.

And yes - 2K looks incredible when done well. No doubt.

But 4K, when viewed properly looks better with 4K origination. It's not subtle... it just does. :)

YMMV.

Drew599 said:
But if filmmakers realize that people that go to see the movies they make won't care either way if its 2K or 4K. Then why spend the extra money. I think a 4K is a great idea but not 4K projection.
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Did you think the same thing about 2K when it first came out? What about HD a few years ago? :)

Lucas
 
Chris Kenny said:
I'm not an expert on this stuff, but... what's the specific issue with 4K textures? A 4096 x 2160 36-bit RGB video stream runs about a gigabyte per second at 24 fps. The Plex's interface with the host computer is 16x PCIe, which has four times that much bandwidth. And the fill rates of modern high-end GPUs are already over 10 gigapxiels per second, so that doesn't seem like a major problem either.
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By the way - not ignoring this... just waiting for some of my buddies who are smarter than me on this stuff to get back to me and check my facts. This sounds reasonable, so I want to make sure before I reply. :)

Lucas
 
Thanks, luki. I really am interested in the capabilities of the system. Seems to me it could be a huge breakthrough in this market if there were off-the-shelf hardware with the right capabilities, and any developer could do whatever they wanted with it. Even if the NVIDIA system isn't quite there for some reason, someone will probably be there in a couple of years.

Interesting times....
 
Drew599 said:
I'm just saying man that you can't tell that big of a difference.
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I can and it is massive! It's far bigger than the difference between HD and 2K. I'm not arguing that 2k looks good, but to say that there's not a lot of perceptible difference between 2k and 4k so there's no point wasting money on Joe Public is to badly short-change them IMVHO.

Now whether there's a big difference between a really good 2k projector and that Sony 4k one is another matter altogether.
 
The Sony 4K is the only one I've seen and I thought it sucked. If there are better 4K projectors out there I'm hoping I'll get to see them soon. I understand everyones' point about the whole 4K vs 2K. But I deal with people everyday at work that know quite a bit about DC and they think it would be the biggest waste of time and money to develope a 4K system for theaters. The truth is that if theaters start puttting in 2K projectors that's what's going to stay in there. They will not upgrade those projectors unless its as easy as flipping a switch and even then they still might not do it.

In a typical theater I'm sure you could only see the difference if you were sitting in the first couple rows. I know that the whole thing is to see how big people can make the picture and stuff like that. But it just seems like they should just say stop at some point. Plus I would love to see the glass the projector have to have in order to display the 4K images correctly.

Who knows what will happen. Theaters might go with 4K or something higher when people just want to stay home and watch the same movie on their HD TV or who knows, maybe a 2K TV one day...I'm sure someone will dig up something on this one day.

I just see this whole 4K thing as a big pain in the ass. Love the idea but the storage and dealing with the footage is going to be a big problem. I know people have players for 4K and stuff like that. But with all that info going through the pipe things go wrong and they don't look very nice when they do.
 
Drew599 said:
The Sony 4K is the only one I've seen and I thought it sucked.
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You wouldn't be the first to say that.

As far as 2k vs 4k goes, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree (but here's a thought for ya - if I shoot 4k, post in 4k then laser to 35mm in 4k, my release prints will be higher quality than your 2k projector).

I know that Texas are having real trouble right now with uptake of 2k projectors purely because Cinemas are waiting on 4k projectors. It seemed that 2k was all ready to roll when Sony announced their SXRD and suddenly everything's on hold 'cause no-one wants to invest in 2k when 4k is on the horizon. And Sony won't have a monopoly on 4k for long I'm sure.

BTW, you don't happen to work for Texas do you???
 
I can tell any doubters from personal experience that there is certainly a visible difference between 2K and 4K, both in digital projection and with 2K vs 4K film scans.

Screening room and eyesight will of course cause milage to vary.

However, I've also seen nice 35mm PL mount lenses record 4K (which have less MTF the 2/3" Zeiss Digiprimes) create a sharper and more detailed image when rendered to hd/2K, than with a complete native hd/2K system.

4K is phenominal, and worth it.

I.
 
Stephen W, no I don't work for TI. I work at Disney right now as a projctionist and that's the reason why I get to see a lot of 2K DC.
 
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