My gripe with movie theaters has to do with digital projection! Yes, the projectors have no moving parts, but they are ludicrously expensive compared to the old mechanical film projectors. Yes, they do break down. My company services some movie theaters, and the digital projectors have a lot to be desired. How is a little independant single-screen house supposed to foot the bill for a $60,000 projector every 5 years? Their old Simplex 35mm that they paid $1000 for 30 years ago still gets the job done perfectly.
The picture quality off the digital projectors basically looks like you are looking at a big projection TV. There's pixelation, compression artifacts, and worst of all, there's less resolution and contrast range than film...video cannot come close. Why am I going to go pay $10 to watch the same picture and sound quality I can get at home with my own equipment???
I guess part of the reason why digital projection is catching on too is that the digital projectors do not need any preventitive maintence, or skilled operator to load, thread and keep running. Film projectors need cleaning, adjustments, etc in order to produce the best picture. Regal Cinemas around here for some reason refuse to do these basic acts, and it shows up as dust/debris in the picture, scratch film, out of frame pictures, or even worse, a jammed projector halfway through the show! If the theaters would do basic service on their projectors, the nice picture that film can produce could really shine!
It all really boils down also to Hollywood turning out material that people really want to watch. A constant complaint by many people are that movies have too much violence, bad language and other sleeze in them. Another common complaint is that films are almost always politically loaded with a liberal slant. While I know most of you all here are more left-wing, a large portion of America is particularly conservative, and do not find all the political messages, violence, bad language and other trash particularly entertaining. Outside of those common complaints, in my own opinion, the plot lines of most modern movies has become particularly shallow and dumb. I do not like the editing techniques used lately too, where camera angles and shots are changed in rapid succession. No scene gets any more than about 5 seconds at best in any one position before the angle is changed, or the whole scene is changed. Even when a scene is held for any reasonable time, the camera is always panning, zooming, etc...it's everyone that made the movies have ADHD or something! Why can't they let the plot and story hold the viewer's attention, instead of their spastic cinematography (it actually looses my attention because it fatigues me!!!)
Simply put, theaters are loosing money because they have not provided a quality product!!!
n the "Film-Tech" website they argue which is better film or digital-would like to see for myself.the thought of a projector to a manager with no moving parts or film handling is a dream come true for them.I hope theaters can survive-its getting tough out there-but if they and the system doesn't change-they may become dark houses.People will just watch movies at home on their new Hi Def widescreen TV's.
