Windows Media 9 in Digital Theaters 639
SpamJunkie writes "Feel like watching new releases in 7.1 surround sound with full digital video? It's coming, not with MPEG 4 but with Windows Media 9. Microsoft announced it is bringing Windows Media 9 to 177 screens in Landmark Theaters."
Odd... (Score:3, Insightful)
No I wont make the usual 'is that BSOD supposed to be in the middle of that film' type gag, but I do find this quite a weird move. MPEG has always been, in my opinion at least, one of the more superior video formats. VideoCD uses MPEG, and doesn't DVD?
Cheers or jeers (Score:2, Insightful)
Movie goers don't care... (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's give a collective... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:who's gonna pay to watch a BSOD ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Given a static, known platform, I'll bet they can make it reliable. One of the biggest challenges for operating sytem reliability is that in the typical PC or server, the OS vendor has to try and make allowances for combinations of hardware and software that they have never even thought of. In this scenario, as long as the boxes are dedicated for the purpose of displaying digital video I'm sure they can figure out how to overcome any bugs that come up.
Having said that, it would be nice to see Red Hat or one of the other Linux distributions try to compete in this space. Certainly Linux does well in these sort of dedicated applications (e.g. Tivo).
Re:WM9 Is a good codec (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't think of a single codec thats resolution limited. DIVX, X-Vid, MPEG-2.. all are capable of any resolution you want to throw at them.
Digital movies have been around for a while, they are sent to the theaters on like 12 DVD's and played back on TI DLP projectors. You've probably unwittingly sat in one and couldn't tell the difference. :)
New business model for Theaters - not just movies (Score:4, Insightful)
With digital projection, why not rent out a movie theater for a super bowl party? maybe we'll start seeing Monday night independent film festivals in suburban theaters? In theory, digital projection could open up all kinds of new possibilities for the theater industry.
Re:One more thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, with film, it'd be pretty cost prohibitive and difficult to smuggle out thousands of feet of film to get a screen quality transfer done to export to the middle east to run on hundreds of screens over there.
On the other hand, if it's in MPEG4, you just bring in a firewire hard drive, copy the movie over, and not only can you send it off to wherever to run on actual movie screens with no money going to the distributors and movie makers, but you have a perfect quality thing to do black market mass duplicated DVD's with the same quality as the ones the studios will eventually release in six months within days of the movie coming to the theatre - not to mention real nice DIVX versions on Kazzaa.
Yeah, they'd never go for it. Without DRM, you will never get digital movies on any large scale. Won't happen.
Unconditional Microsoft Hate? (Score:-1, Insightful)
Again, all the people come out of the woodwork, complaining how it's going to crash all the time, how it's going to be shit quality, how it's a monopoly (which, it isn't), etc. etc.
You want to know why there isn't an open source/linux/whatever you promote solution? Probably because it doesn't even compare in stability, support, reliability, or features. I watch movies under Windows, because it is easy. I don't have to fuck about for hours installing this and that, having the right hardware...
The movie goer does not care how the movie is projected, how it gets to the cinema, or whatever. The prices of tickets are unlikely to change much when it all goes digital, popcorn and drinks will still cost a fortune, only they won't have to courier huge reels of film about, or employ trained projectionists.
And at the end of the day, it has to be sold to the theatres. Any money, Microsoft went out and started trying to sell their product. Other people don't. That's why they are the ones in this position.
Re:Other potential hazards... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WM9 Is a good codec (Score:1, Insightful)
Argh. (Score:4, Insightful)
One more way for Microsoft to lock up artist works in their own file formats. How long before studios decide to release Windows only DVD's rather than bother reencoding the movies?
Why was this needed? Couldn't studios have just mastered the movies to DVD and either mailed them to theatures or allowed the theature to download the movie if they had the bandwidth? Damn it costs about $2 to burn and mail a DVD. They couldn't afford that? Then the theature could use a fairly standard DVD player hooked to their projector and audio system. If the movie won't fit on DVD then split it over several discs and allow the theature to rip the DVD to a harddrive and playback.
It's embedded in Microsoft's corporate culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, this is a company that is driven by conquests. They conquered the desktop. What now? You have to expand in order to keep your stock moving upward. It's never enough to stay big; you need to be bigger.
So as with Sidewalk, MSN, XBox, et. al., Microsoft is attacking Google and moving into the moviehouse business because to their way of thinking there is no other option.
For those of you who scoff at these latest attempts, remember that these guys have tremendously deep pockets. They can afford to pour money down a profitless hole for years, knowing that eventually they'll figure out how to market the product. Notice I said "market the product."
The best product doesn't always win. Microsoft's continued dominance is proof of that. Laugh at them all you want, but they're dangerous in almost any arena.
Re:who's gonna pay to watch a BSOD ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows has been running for years in many display kiosks around town and info-screens at the airport. You know it's Windows, because NT will pop up every now and then with a bluish happy little screen. But these things are left on all of the time, all day. If all a machine had to do was boot, display a WM9 file, and reboot, XP should be fine.
Honestly, I'd expect fewer people will be dissappointed with the projection than with the content when the next digitally-projected Star Wars comes out.
Re:Ha Ha, jackhole... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft today: "Hey kid! Over here. Try this stuff. The first hit is free!"
Slashdot posting 5 years from now: "I run a small studio. I'm not happy about the new Microsoft media licensing either, especially the royalty-per-view terms. But we've invested so much in Microsoft software, equipment and training that we just can't afford to switch. We've decided to suck up and pay. Plus, with the exclusive deal Microsoft has with all the theater chains, we just can't use any other format. It's industry standard. I wish there was another viable solution, but this is the only game in town."
Re:Other potential hazards... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good for indie films (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm looking forward to see how this works at Austin's Dobie Theater. At South by Southwest 2002 and 2003, lots of the festival films were screened using digital projection, and I thought it worked pretty well, with the biggest problem being the limited resolution of the DV source.
Re:Unconditional Microsoft Hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it is. I'm going to be putting together a computer for my sister soon. I'll give you two guesses to tell me what operating systems she can choose from, and I'll give you one guess as to which operating system is the only one she really can choose. Here's a hint: she doesn't have the money for a Mac. I'd also give you a guess about her word processor, but it isn't worth it.
I don't have to fuck about for hours installing this and that, having the right hardware...
I say the same things about Solaris and Mac OS X relative to Windows.
The movie goer does not care how the movie is projected, how it gets to the cinema, or whatever.
I'd bet there will be a two-minute preview hammering into the minds of the audience how great WM9-based movies are. I'd also not be suprised if there are borderline-subliminal messages in that preview to gain even better penetration.
Well, at least it's not QuickTime... (Score:1, Insightful)
I suppose they would have to install some sort of pointing device.
Re:Other potential hazards... (Score:4, Insightful)
movies "crashing" (Score:3, Insightful)
shit happens in analog, too.
Re:Ha Ha, jackhole... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gads, but I wish I had a mod point handy. This is precisely the problem, and I can't understand why it keeps being dismissed as ``Microsoft bashing.'' (Usually by people who have a Score:3 post who, at some point lament ``I'm sure I'll be modded to Hell for saying this, but...'')
The progression is obvious and has been seen a number of times already: Microsoft behaves in a seemingly generous manner (in this case, setting up low-cost digital projection systems so smaller film producers have a shot at distribution; previously, it was giving away a web browser), gets a whole lot of people using one of their proprietary formats, manages to lock out other formats thereby, and then starts jacking up licensing fees once they're the only game in town.
``And you fall for it every single time.''
--Angelus
Re:One more thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
Moreover you could get access to the source by cracking the DRM, and the DRM would have to rely on something not easily duplicated (i.e., TCPA or a dongle containing a key) which, given the state of most DRM implementations - and the speed at which the data would have to be decrypted on top of being decoded, taking a lot of bus bandwidth at such high data rates - would be weak.
Exception (Score:2, Insightful)
From the field: hard part is projector, not codec (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone is focusing on the codec being the quality limitation, but that's not true. In fact, the projector is the biggest deal. There are plenty of modern codecs that can give you visually lossless quality if you throw enough bits at them. The issue with codecs is getting compression efficiency up so that transmission and storage is cheaper, and keeping decode complexity down so you don't need to have expensive hardware in the projector. The WM9 system is pretty much a high end (but not the highest end) Dell workstation, strapped to a cart with XLR audio out, a control pad, and a big data projector on the top. All off the shelf parts, which makes implementation cheap, and upgrading the computer very cheap. But those are nice things to have, but not strictly required for digital projection.
But we could do the same thing with MPEG-4, or other formats. WM9 has a more mature DRM solution and some other advantages, but it is absolutely possible to use another format.
The big limit is in having a projector that is bright enough to fill the room, with a dark black, and high resolution. Moore's law gives us improvements in compression faster than we get improvements in projection, so the big photon cannon will be the true limit on quality for a while.
Re:If you're at NAB, come see it for yourself (Score:1, Insightful)
Besides, this Landmark system sounds like it's geared towards showing all those no-budget "indie" flicks shot on standard def video formats like miniDV. So, HD capable projectors probably aren't even necessary.
Re:I would imagine that you're wrong (Score:1, Insightful)