DLP in Theaters... is the future now?

By Eric Daugherty | + Share

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I finally saw the final(?) installment of Star Wars. Instead of heading to my normal theater, I took the opportunity to see it in DLP (Digital Projection). Back in 1999 I saw Star Wars Episode I in DLP at the same theater, so this provided me the opportunity to see how far things have come in the past few years.

Let me say first that Digital is the future. This should be obvious to nearly everyone already, but there are several major advantages to digital projection.

• Clean Print - With digital, the first viewing is the same as the last. With film, the quality degrades with every viewing. The film can break, get dusty, etc.
  
• Distribution Cost - Creating all the prints for each theater is expensive. With digital projection, there is almost zero incremental cost per theater.
  
• Distribution Breadth - Because of the reduced costs, it will be possible (which is not to say that it WILL happen) for studios provide a much wider distribution for small films. Theaters will be able to show a greater variety of movies on their screens (although the latest blockbuster will still probably be on 20 screens).

But the future is not today. Digital projectors are still an expensive investment for theaters and the studios are understandably a little paranoid about distributing their new films in a format that can in theory be easily pirated. However, as the cost of the projectors comes down, digital projection will begin replacing film at a rapid pace.

So, how good is DLP today? I had one major problem with the quality of the presentation, and it is commonly known as the screen door effect. The screen door effect is exactly as it sounds. The picture appears as if there is a screen door between you and the screen. You can see the individual pixels with a dark space between them.

This effect is most noticeable on text. The opening and closing credits exhibited very noticeable effects. However, during the body of the film (where there was little to no text) I did not notice this effect much. However, there were a handful to times during the film itself that I did notice it.

I saw no obvious compression effects or other digital artifacts common in other digital formats today (DVD, DirecTV, etc.)

So today, which do I prefer? I personally find a dirty print to be very distracting. There is nothing more annoying than seeing a film on opening weekend and finding that the print already has visible scratches, dust, etc. And there is always the occasional case where the film gets stuck and the projector actually burns through the frame (which was pretty disturbing the first time it happened).

I would love to see an increased resolution in the digital projectors used today. However, if I had a choice I would probably choose to see a film in digital projection instead of film. One is not obviously superior, they just have their own separate warts.