Calling Epson...

[Jeff Coatney]

The potential is very exciting here. What I want to see is a robust system (suitable for light commercial installations) for a sub $10K price-point that delivers resolutions of 4K on down and 5.1 or better audio. Then we can see a very real "roadshow" business model develop for indie exhibition that bypasses traditional prints and advertising costs. This is what excites me about the Red Epic & Scarlet and that fantastic force-multiplier of Red Ray landing on the planet at the same time as affordable 4K projection. The opportunities for brick and mortar exhibition centers, mom & pop cinemas, temporary venues that serve a niche cinema audience is mind-boggling. Every town or village could have its own art house cinema or festival space. Then the economics can change for the filmmaker in a fundamental way, giving us regional documentaries, shorts, indie features that garner a share of the very local box office revenue. Imagine going to a Boston sports bar/ cinema for a film festival of 35mm 4K fan films about the Red Sox. The possibilities of expanding the communal cinema-going experience is huge. No longer is the filmmaker tethered to the studio wide-release behemoth as the only viable audience venue. Go Epson!

[Lee Fingersh]

You nailed it right there. The studios would never provide content for a format that wasn't teeming with DRM.

That's only because they're collectively about as dumb as a sack of yard trimmings.

I didn't buy my first DVD until I bought AnyDVD. Now I have something like 200. SlySoft (AnyDVD) has cracked everything out there for DVD, HDDVD, and BluRay, so you'd think the studios would have learned their lesson by now, but nooooooo.....they're unlearnable.

[Stuart English]

The potential is very exciting here. What I want to see is a robust system (suitable for light commercial installations) for a sub $10K price-point that delivers resolutions of 4K on down and 5.1 or better audio. Then we can see a very real "roadshow" business model develop for indie exhibition that bypasses traditional prints and advertising costs. This is what excites me about the Red Epic & Scarlet and that fantastic force-multiplier of Red Ray landing on the planet at the same time as affordable 4K projection. The opportunities for brick and mortar exhibition centers, mom & pop cinemas, temporary venues that serve a niche cinema audience is mind-boggling. Every town or village could have its own art house cinema or festival space. Then the economics can change for the filmmaker in a fundamental way, giving us regional documentaries, shorts, indie features that garner a share of the very local box office revenue. Imagine going to a Boston sports bar/ cinema for a film festival of 35mm 4K fan films about the Red Sox. The possibilities of expanding the communal cinema-going experience is huge. No longer is the filmmaker tethered to the studio wide-release behemoth as the only viable audience venue. Go Epson!

I absolutely agree with the concept that low cost 4K projectors + RED RAY will open up new business opportunities in presentation.

The trick is to get the respective manufacturer's to price aggressively in anticipation of potential sales volume and not to "play safe".

Physical evidence such as RED ONE, EPIC and RED RAY helps a great deal, but ultimately spreading the applications beyond cinema will probably have the biggest impact on price points. That's why I was particularly interested in Epson's comments about use cases.

Eventually it will happen, we saw a similar progression in advertising on plasmas. Concept, limited trials and then general adoption.

[Hrvoje Simic]

The human eye is what it is. You have to ask yourself: how much detail can you see on a screen properly sized for the average living room?

Few factors to keep in mind:

- "Properly sized" is extremely relative term, which depends on resolution, room size, screen purpose...etc. With 4K and 8K definition of "properly sized" screen will change.

- Resolution limits size to viewing distance ratio.

- Contrast limits perception of resolution. This is a very common misconception which leads to generalization of eye resolution perception. Technologies like OLED will greatly improve screen resolution perception.

- "Resolution perception stops at the point where you don't see any pixels" theory is wrong.
Resolution increase is perceived as picture being more clear and more real, but this is not so obvious as SD to HD switch on an average screen/FOV because it happens on more subconscious level, plus because of limitations of current display technology mentioned above.

[Peter Majtan]

I absolutely agree with the concept that low cost 4K projectors + RED RAY will open up new business opportunities in presentation.

What would be great is to have a module for the Epic that passes on the full 4K-DCI to such a projector for live image...

Now You're talking...

Peter

[Hrvoje Simic]

The trick is to get the respective manufacturer's to price aggressively in anticipation of potential sales volume and not to "play safe".

If RED and Epson teamed up and worked on Cinema Line of 4K projectors, RED could help in establishing picture quality criteria, as well as help with R&D. With RED involvement, Epson would also gain a significant customer base to justify aggressive pricing. With the first step - pricing for professional usage and creation of substantial and firm professional customer base, second step - consumer pricing and spreading to consumer space - would become much more feasible. At that point availability of 4K technology directly affects RED sales.

There is always an option of RED using Epson components (with some custom elements, like lamps and lens for example) which would undoubtedly have some effect on Epson 4K projector technology pricing.

In any case, I think Epson would have much more justification to step up if RED was involved, + RED users and RED material producing houses would have more justification to invest in Epson projectors, unless RED already has other plans.

[Bob Gruen]

That's only because they're collectively about as dumb as a sack of yard trimmings.

I didn't buy my first DVD until I bought AnyDVD. Now I have something like 200. SlySoft (AnyDVD) has cracked everything out there for DVD, HDDVD, and BluRay, so you'd think the studios would have learned their lesson by now, but nooooooo.....they're unlearnable.

You are absolutely right, I can't see why anyone would want to prevent their product(s) from being stolen. They are truly stupid (while you are absolutely brilliant).

[Iannis Holwech]

You are absolutely right, I can't see why anyone would want to prevent their product(s) from being stolen.

That would have been a valid argument IF they had done it in an effective and competent way.

They are truly stupid (while you are absolutely brilliant).

You're right; they are really stupid in the way they try to prevent the content from being stolen.

Example;
The companies behind HDDVD realized that they could not prevent the discs from been ripped, so they gave the producers the choice of paying and having DRM if they wanted it, but to save the money for themselves and the customers if they thought it was unnecessary (quite a large saving for small production runs eating most of possible profit). They also dropped region coding.

Blu-ray on the other hand has the possibility of two DRM schemes, one which is mandatory on all BDs ( BD+ - courtesy of FOX, is the one not mandatory)
This is one of the cost reasons why we see so few independent releases on BD.
Both DRM's was cracked days after the first BDs where released - and now more and more BDs comes with Digital Copy include in the disc anyway, so then whats the point of the expensive DRM scheme?

BD also has regional coding. Very few companies use it. You can buy a "re chipping" of your player, but more and more players comes with the function of making it Region Free with a code on your remote, including players from Phillips one of the founding companies of BD.

It is not OK to steal content or any way violate copyright and licensing agreements under which movies are released including showing movies bought under an consumer agreement to large paying or non paying audiences.
But until somebody comes up with a robust, functional and intelligent protection scheme that is not an annoyance and an extra cost for honest customers, the intelligent thing is to drop the whole protection scheme if it protects nothing.

[Disco Legend Zeke]

Almost every movie in the last few years has been FINISHED in 4K, and we are beginning to see 4K projection everywhere.

Some industry views here. There is already DRM on every 4K movie release, so even if someone hijacks the UPS truck and gets the hard drives, and breaks into a theatre to get the media player and decoder, they will not be able to playback the movie without TODAY's key for that movie.

That's only because they're collectively about as dumb as a sack of yard trimmings.

I didn't buy my first DVD until I bought AnyDVD. Now I have something like 200. SlySoft (AnyDVD) has cracked everything out there for DVD, HDDVD, and BluRay, so you'd think the studios would have learned their lesson by now, but nooooooo.....they're unlearnable.

I happened to be standing next to a SONY sxrd projector while a honcho from Disney was asking questions like "if someone cuts the conduit between the media player and the projector, will they be able to get at the image?"

Theft of content is a very big deal to the studios, and I think RED users need to respect that. If you are in this forum, you are, or plan to be, the owner of program material that you worked very hard on and invested a lot of $$$ into.

How would you feel if YOUR movie started showing up on every street corner for $4 a copy? </rant></offtopic>

[c-well]

We are very happy to see Epson's announcement of a 4K projector that will be shown this month in Japan. Now someone has to tell them to use the RED Reel for their demos! Epson does a great job with projectors and we think this will be great for the industry. 4K all the way, baby!

Someone let us know if they got the message... :-)

Jim

Is there a Red Reel available in 4k??