Mammoth digital array blasts out Star Trek Australian premiere
- 08 April, 2009 13:21
- Comments 5
The latest $218.5 million Star Trek film beamed down to one of the most advanced cinemas of its kind last night to blast Sydney-based Trekkies from their seats.
Some of the world’s most advanced audio and visual equipment was delivered to the Sydney Opera House for the premiere of the 11th instalment of the sci-fi series, which chronicles the early days of the USS Enterprise.
About 1500 Sydney viewers watched the premiere over the industry’s brightest and clearest Barco projectors, splashed over a German-designed 2048x1080 CinemaScope screen. They were also treated to more than 3 tonnes of forward-facing audio equipment from D&B Audiotechnik, which swept audio across the complex where 16 double 18" sub woofers alone were used for the FX. All of this tied together with Dolby processing and a massive audio network setup featuring an Australian designed protocol "Dante".
The 125kg projectors, a Barco DP 3000 and 2000 sourced from Germany, were housed in a custom-built, sound-proof and air-conditioned booth and connected to an array of over 80 sound speakers over Ethernet using the Dolby Dante protocol, as well as Dolby Lake processors and 30 amplifiers.
Controls were digital, which improved fault resolutions and monitoring, right down to the wireless tablet PC which replaced the mixing desk.
The installation and design crew, which hailed from the US and Sydney, had the cinema set-up and fault tested within three days, and a comfortable couple of hours before the opening. Designers were given a week’s lead time to design the setup.
Jeremy Christian who was the Sydney Opera House system technician for the build, said the set-up was a first for the Opera House and one of the latest global instances of digital technology superseding analogue. Many of the Opera Houses traditional theatre based technologies are now moving to network solutions and the kind of collaboration between IT and Production design that was necessary to deliver this project are a key component in their ever expanding universe.
With Star Trek obsessed bloggers and Twitterers scrawling fervid outpouring all over the Internet, the premiere could usher in a new era for our iconic cultural hub which has always desired cinema as part of it's programming offer.
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Comments
BAReFOOt
1
Why the low resolution?
2048×1080 is ridiculously low for a Cinema. Cinema Projectors usually have at least 4k (4000×4000) resolutions, and that is still much lower than classic analog film.
I would not even go to a Cinema, with such a joke of a resolution. The Display I’m using <em>right now<em> can already do that resolution, and I payed 100 bucks for it (Old EIZO F930 21" CRT.)
BAReFOOt
2
Your parser is buggy!
2048x1080 is ridiculously low for a Cinema. Cinema Projectors usually have at least 4k (4000x4000) resolutions, and that is still much lower than classic analog film.
I would not even go to a Cinema, with such a joke of a resolution. The Display I'm using <em>right now</em> can already do that resolution, and I payed 100 bucks for it (Old EIZO F930 21" CRT.)
<strong>P.S.: I had to re-post this comment, because your parser can't do UTF-8 characters and ate the whole comment, wich is pretty lame.</strong>
Anonymous2
3
Would have been great...
<cite><em>Cinema Projectors usually have at least 4k (4000x4000)</em></cite>
I don't work in the cinema industry, but frankly, I doubt this is true.
According to wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema , 2048x1080 is one of the DCI's standards, the others being 2K (2048 horiz resolution) and 4096x2160.
To assert that 2048x1080 is "ridiculously low" and is a "joke of a resolution" is nonsense. When I watch movies on my full HD 116cm TV at home, it looks fantastic. Being in a cinema with a similar (in fact, greater) res but covering a larger field of view would probably be similar to just sitting closer to my TV to achieve the same field of view affect. I imagine the Opera House event would have been a fantastic experience.
Anonymous
4
That is low res for cinema. But note that it actually says the screen is 2048x1080 - which makes no sense at all, since a projection screen has no specific resolution. I think until proven otherwise you'd have to assume this is wrong.
Anonymous
5
do your research
Clearly none of you work in the production industry.
The Barco DP 3000 is pretty much the best projector on the market, do your research before you type and you will realise your completely wrong.
resolution on projectors is measured differently to your standard computer monitors.
I was at the star trek premiere and it was pretty much the best cinema experience i have ever witnessed. if you read the reviews they will echo this.
do your research before you open your mouth.