Star Wars- DLP and Verticle speaker placement

[lne937s]

I just watched Star Wars in DLP at the AMC on 42nd street in Manhattan (huge screen) and have some observations. Overall, I think the DLP theater reminds me of a super high-res version of the home projectors.

The black level is not up to par. In the opening sequence with the scrolling text, deep space looks grey. Yes the picture is brighter, but the black suffers.

Also, the colors seem un-natural, the makeup on the actors becomes obvious.

I think a new, clean copy of actual film is still better. However, the dlp was pretty impressive for what it is and will, with a few improvements, probably be better in a few years.

And, regardless of what other people say, you can hear verticle placement of speakers. In this case, the speakers were at the top of a large, solid screen(rather than the perforated screens with the speakers behind them, like in many theaters) and directed at the audience. The misplaced sound was very distracting and destroyed imaging. If I closed my eyes, I heard dialog coming from one point high up and effects from two, rather than realistic imaging.

I looked behind the screen after the movie, and sure enough, the speakers were exaxtly where I thought they were.

The center channel was also overused, carrying dialog that was coming from the far edge of the screen.

This reminds me of my problems of 100" screen on a 10'X10' wall- the center up high sounds out of place, especially with the L/R speakers so close to the screen and my viewing position of about 9' away.

Even the gods of THX and pro-audio can get it wrong some times.

Larry

[HornEd]

Your right on the money, lne937s, expert reviewers have panned the digital presentation across the country... much to the dismay of Lucas Films and their technical standards THX arm. Quite a few reviewers also panned the film version for being a cut below most theatrical standards.

Makes you stop and think as to what gives Lucas Films the "moral" authority to tell commercial theaters how to run their business... and how consumers should set up their home theaters... and charge everyone for the service.

I guess it's time we took a hard look at a lot of the audio concepts with the big names and marginal performance before the HT industry "Blose" up! -HornED

PS: It would be nice for Lucas Films to find a better standard on which to film the next episode.