Monday, July 03, 2006
A Marriage Record
I hear muffled explosions in the distance so 4th of July displays must be going on somewhere. Its Monday night July 3rd, so I can only assume there will be another display again tomorrow night. I'm not sure what to think of a July 3rd display; most likely Savoy is firing off a small fireworks show now so as not to compete with Urbana's and Champaign's much larger displays on Tuesday night.
I had been unaware I could or should officially record Nian and my marriage or exactly how to go about it, but at Nian's urging I went and got our Chinese Marriage Certificate recorded at the County Recorder's Office. It seemed to be a pretty slow office and I probably was the highlight of their day as they all made a pleasant fuss about having never recorded a Chinese Marriage before. On my way out I noticed a large 2'x3' Xerox of a "Release of Deed." It didn't seem to be instructive of anything nor one of a set of examples, so I asked what was special about it. They informed me it was a copy of their first E-Deed transaction to which I opined "that's kind of ironic, a huge paper copy of your first paperless transaction," at which point the three women behind the counter burst into peals of laughter. One asked me if I was a philosopher or writer or something. I said, "no I'm a programmer," but has I write this I wonder if I could take a little credit as a writer -- as for philosopher, well... everybody is a philosopher to a degree.
OK, what follows now is the Sunday post that I decided not to post, but what the hell, too many keystrokes to waste. Skip it if you don't care about HDTV technical issues.
I saw the new "Superman Returns" at a matinee today. On the whole I enjoyed the film, but was struck by the apparent discontinuity of quality in the cinematography. On the whole I'd say the quality was less than most films I've watched at home on my NEC 3150 in HDTV. The softness of the image at times was quite distracting.
No surprise then to find that the film was done at no better than HDTV resolution during filming. Filming was done with a new HD camera system called Genesis. Genesis may have superior lens characteristics compared to other direct to HD cameras, but 2 Mega-Pixels is still 2 Mega-Pixels. You can't blow that up to a 40-foot screen without it softening. I like to sit up close the screen and this only exaggerates the softening. 40 feet is 480 inches, so the smallest detail possible would be close to a quarter-inch across. DVD looks soft on my 3051 for the same reason, only 720 pixels across an 8 foot wide screen -- which gives about a 1/10 inch pixel, but of course I'm sitting much closer to the screen. At HDTV resolution my pixels shrink down to about .05 inches. I'd rather expect "Superman Returns" to look glorious on HDTV then. Our local Cineplex is still film. Since the SR transfer is 2 Mega-Pixels max to film (with some small loss of resolution due to transfer) running on outdated old equipment that probably can't maintain optimal focus and has substantial jitter -- what you end up with is something that is probably only slightly above conventional DVD resolution. Odd then that I should see reviews praising the look of the new film. I can only assume these reviewers watched screenings on Digital Screens that not only output the film at the full 2 Mega-Pixels shot, but probably line doubled and image processed the source as well to give a slightly higher than 2 Mega-Pixel faux resolution.
"Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" were both also shot digitally at HDTV resolution. In fact "Attack of the Clones" was shot at just slightly below full HDTV resolution (HDTV cameras where just not powerful enough yet at the time for full 1080P 24fps). I don't remember a "softness" problem viewing those screenings, but I believe those were digital screenings. Going from one realm to the other exaggerates the shortcomings of both.
Genesis Camera shooting will probably be adopted quickly for TV production where it is an ideal fit, but if Hollywood releases a string of films that look better on peoples' HDTVs than in the theater, then people will quickly quit going to the Cinemas. As I sat in the theater during the credits I thought to myself how the movie going experience has remained unchanged for basically 75+ years. It most likely doesn't have another 75 years in it. It will be lucky to have another 20 years as HDTV gains wide acceptance. Just as drive-ins seem quaint and anachronistic, so will going to a sit down theater. In 10 years a full HDTV front projection system capable of illuminating a 10 foot screen in a darkened room will probably be under $200, perhaps as little as $100 dollars (in 2006 dollars). There are 720P (the lower of the 2 HDTV resolutions) front projection systems that will do a 10 foot screen (easily) -for around $500 dollars -- 5 years ago they would have been over $5,000.
