HDTV Movies Better Than The Theater?

Lately I've seen movies on TNTHD and HBOHD and they look fantastic. Better looking than some of the DVD titles that I own! One such movie that was on TNTHD was "Saving Private Ryan." I played the DVD while the broadcast was on and the TNTHD broadcast was much more detailed. Now I was wondering if movie theaters have this much detail. I mean you can't watch a flick on HD and go to the theater to compare the same flick! There would be no need to go back to a theater, just wait for the HD broadcast or HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs. Will movie theaters upgrade their projectors?

No, if I'm not mistaken, even 1080i/p only has about a quarter of the resolution of the film they use to record most TV shows. And a standard 35mm projected film is closer to 10-16 times the resolution. To say nothing of a 35mm wide film or a 70mm IMAX film.

(somebody correct me if I'm wrong)

I read about different film resolutions from a site offering digital mastering of film, and they gave numbers of the max amount of quality it was worth pulling out of a piece of film. Cool stuff.

i think dprogo is correct. as far as i understand, film is the best out there, except its so darn expensive to use, that is why it is more common to find digital video being used in movies rather than film.

sonicularulus and Dprogo are both correct. HD only looks good because you're watching it on such a small screen in your house. Take the same exact HD movie you're watching and display it on a 50 foot theater screen and you won't be able to see anything. The detail with be absolutely terrible. HD, as good as it may seem, doesn't even come close to having the resolution of actual 35mm film. Maybe *SUPER* HD (in about 10 years) will look as good as real film, but right now, HD doesn't even begin to come close.

sonicularulus and Dprogo are both correct. HD only looks good because you're watching it on such a small screen in your house. Take the same exact HD movie you're watching and display it on a 50 foot theater screen and you won't be able to see anything. The detail with be absolutely terrible. HD, as good as it may seem, doesn't even come close to having the resolution of actual 35mm film. Maybe *SUPER* HD (in about 10 years) will look as good as real film, but right now, HD doesn't even begin to come close.

1. But unfortunately what are you watching in cinema house on film is actualy a copy made from digital cassete (probably D5) where are data in 2k resolution i.e. similar to 1080p data!!! :( So when you get pure film negative form set, it goes to postproduction process and they made a final digital copy on cassete in 2k resolution from which they made a film copy for your cinema which is for sure only 2k.

2. When it is a digital copy, its sent by satelite to your cinema and it is saved on hardisk system in size around 50GB per movie (not so far from your saved 10-20GB .ts copy :D) and only in 2k size. Most of installed digi cinema projectors today (Barco etc.) are capable of only 1080p to send to the screen, so even if 35mm film is capable of min. 4k data you only get 2k data = HDTV resolution in your cinema ;)

So think again... what you loose on your HDTV set si probaly few details, size of the screen and some color depth. Sad but probably true

Actually, I don't think that what hawaj said is true. I've read many articles that say more and more films are being transferred to D5 in 4k resolution (the resolution that film has) and then transferred back to film. There are only a FEW films out there where only a 2k version was transferred to D5 (the LOTR trilogy immediately comes to mind) so what you are seing in the theater is actual film resolution, not regular (inferrior) HD resolution.

I dont know exactly when they started copy in 4k space (thanx for every higher resolution), I dont know any statistic from now and from years before, but I think till now majority of films we saw in cinema came from 2k data :( (it really little disappointed me)

I only made a little research coz of quality of digi projection of SW III.

I think that SW Ep. 2 & 3 were both shot on 2k HD cameras, which is why it looks terrible in theaters. I still don't understand why Lucas couldn't have shot these movies on FILM. :confused:

I think that SW Ep. 2 & 3 were both shot on 2k HD cameras, which is why it looks terrible in theaters. I still don't understand why Lucas couldn't have shot these movies on FILM. :confused:

Dont know too :D
Probably he wants for some reason completly digital workflow.
I was checking SW II in 1080p .ts file and I was little disapointed with quality :confused:

I was checking SW II in 1080p .ts file and I was little disapointed with quality

So was I. I saw the HD version of Ep. II and was extremely, extremely disappointed with the quality. It looks nowhere near as good as the other HD movies I've seen that were first shot on film.

True