Digital Cinema At the 2007 NAB: Steady Progress

In light of my longstanding coverage of digital cinema and, specifically, 3D projection technology, I thought you might be interested in the notes I took on some of the comments made by panelists at Saturday morning's 'Breakfast Toast in 3D: Raise Your Glasses' Digital Cinema Summit session. I recommend that before continuing with this writeup, you first review my two-part coverage from last year's NAB, which among other things explains in some detail the differences between the then-two primary contending 3D projection technologies.

Here's a quick summary: Real 3D's approach (used when I saw Chicken Little) employs polarizer-based 'passive' glasses in conjunction with polarization-distinguished alternating right-and-left eye presentations of a given frame on-screen (and requires a special 'silver' screen), whereas In-Three's approach, using NuVision equipment (akin, but not identical, to the one used when I subsequently saw The Polar Express) employs 'active' LCD shutter glasses, alternately blocking the right and left eye and synchronized by means of an infrared beam sourced at the projector and bouncing off the screen (either conventional matte, or 'silver') to cover the audience.

Tom Scott, panel moderator, from Onstream Media/EDnet:
The number of digital projection screens worldwide grew from 360 to 2600 between last year's NAB and this year's show. Tom reiterated, as did other panelists, both my past observations and those of last year's Digital Cinema Summit: that 3D is the fundamental 'spur' or driver of the silver halide-to-digital cinema transition. Chicken Little, presented in 3-D in November 2005, was shown on 86 screens. Conversely, the October 2006 3D re-release of The Nightmare before Christmas (which I wasn't able to catch, because I was in Nepal at the time) played to 168 screens and took in almost $9 million. Because The Nightmare before Christmas wasn't CG-created (director Tim Burton instead employed exotic stop-action techniques with richly detailed physical models), the movie was hand-converted to 3D frame-by-frame by 150 animators in Hong Kong. Meet the Robinsons opened in 3D several weeks ago to 700 available stereo screens. U2 will release a 3D live concert film this fall.

Lenny Lipton, CTO of Real D
Real D 3D-based films tend to do 3x the revenues of their 2D variants, even though right now they require small (sub 50') screens. Beowulf will also be released in 3D in November.

Martin Sadoff, from 3D Digital Intermediates/Digital Jungle
Jeffrey Katzenberg has publicly stated that all Dreamworks films will be natively produced in 3D (i.e no after-the-fact 2D-to-3D conversions) by 2009.

Boyd MacNaughton, President of NuVision Technologies
The AG100 3D Cinema 'semi-stylish' glasses are now in production. Make them too stylish and they'll get stolen! They weigh only 2.1 ounces and were used with Meet the Robinsons in Germany. Cheap 'disposable' cardboard or plastic glasses, in his opinion, detract from the otherwise high-quality experience [editor note: but make great promotional souvenirs]. Their battery life is sufficient for 400-500 two-hour movies. The active glasses approach works equally well everywhere in the theater [editor note: as my earlier eyes-on writeup notes, the competitive polarizer approach's effectiveness at preventing 'spillthrough' of one eye's image into the other eye depends both on where in the audience a viewer is relative to the screen location, and how stable (and balanced left-to-right and up-to-down) the viewer holds his or her head]. Glasses manufacturing has not yet moved offshore (which, when it happens, will significantly reduce costs). The small AE210 IR emitter is intended to mount in the projector window, either above or below the projection lens. Each IR emitter handles up to 250-seat theaters; multiple per-venue emitters are no problem. Passive glasses systems admittedly don't require washing, but even at 50 cents per pair, inevitably, eventually, they'll be washed and reused [editor note: and therefore plastic- versus cardboard-based] in most cases [editor note: if not used as limited-run promo pieces, souvenirs covered by incremental ticket cost, etc]. It's possible to wash 350-400 glasses in 2 hours using a conventional dishwasher.

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