NAB 2006

Avid Interplay

Anyone who attended the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention came away with one shared feeling: The industry is doing fine. Whether you consider yourself production only, or range between that and post, you saw new gear from Arri (Kodak, take heart — the Munich, Germany team came up with a totally new Super 16 camera) to Assimilate (this price-competitive DI system is making smart alliances with vendors like high-speed storage maker Facilis.)

Lots of commotion attended the final debut of full-on versions of lower-cost camcorders employing everything from Flash RAM to Blu-ray-style laser, and petite hard drives for storage. Canon, JVC, Grass Valley, Hitachi, Ikegami, Panasonic, and Sony all had significant new products debut. That's not even including all the show floor buzz that next-gen systems from RED and Silicon Imaging garnered. (See D.W. Leitner's coverage here, as well as at his blogs at blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/nab from the show for more on these two controversial offerings.)

Avid surprised many with its strong showing. Its burgeoning list of products — from a software-only Media Composer to Avid Interplay's soup-to-nuts infrastructure — demonstrated that the Tewksbury, Mass.-based company wasn't taking its top-of-the-hill position lightly, but engaging in an aggressive pursuit of the high ground in post and broadcasting. While Apple didn't throw a press conference, its new Intel-powered MacBook Pro and Boot Camp software drew kudos.

Meanwhile, for the first time, a whole new networked world of telcos, wireless, and IPTV companies, and manufacturers of streaming gear and codec cards made it clear that it really might be time to change out “broadcasters” for “bitcasters” in the NAB acronym.

For additional coverage on camcorders, NLEs, monitors, storage, and more, don't forget to visit digitalcontentproducer.com.

Apple MacBook Pro

By D.W. Leitner

I divide the massive NAB show into four areas of critical interest, namely cameras, displays, desktop editing, and post. In the latter category I lump telecines, scanners, and film recorders, as well as color correction, color management, CGI, storage, and sundry finishing systems that have come to be known, aptly or not, as DI.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a lighting cameraman who loves lighting (the SMPTE Journal once published my article on the history of lighting), lenses (I once ran a lens testing facility), and even the sweet science of audio (I once mixed a feature). At NAB, I stood transfixed under Litepanel's LP-1×1 LED instrument and was awed by Arri's Arrimax 18/12 HMI, 50 percent brighter than a 12kW PAR, which resembles a colossal Lowel DP light. At the opposite scale, because it can hide behind a button, Ricsonix's Pin-Mic tickled my fancy, together with its ultra-compact digital wireless “Little Buddy” body pack transmitter that dangles beneath it under clothing.

It's just that some technologies at NAB are driving forces, central to future technical choices we will someday have to make from preproduction onward. Cameras, for one, are tied to recording mediums and production workflows; displays are the actual canvases we'll be filling; desktop editing platforms will continue to facilitate the latest digital transformations of our industry; and post is where all roads must lead.

I'll cover these categories in reverse order, ending with cameras at NAB.

In post, the envelope to push is 4K, and Cintel showed a production version of its low-cost 4K diTTo desktop scanner for 35mm film, featuring a 3K area array CCD camera, RGB LED illumination with diffusing chamber to soften dirt and scratches (techniques pioneered in Sony's defunct Vialta), pin registration, and a new dirt/scratch concealment option (D/SCO) that Cintel says is “magical,” but whose abracadabra may have more to do with secondary infrared imaging. Compact, economical, and fast (oversampled 2K at 4fps) is the true magic here.

Quantel showcased its new Pablo nonlinear 4K color correction system for DI (already pressed into work at an impressive number of facilities), while over at FilmLight, Baselight 8's realtime 4K color grading and power windows were demonstrated with clips of 4K scenes shot with Dalsa's Origin and projected in stunning 4K from a Sony 4K SXRD projector. It doesn't get better than this, kids.

While interest in 4K production seemed resurgent at NAB — cost-prohibitive as ever, but clearly the darling at NAB's weekend Digital Cinema Summit — back on Earth, the leading edge of practical digital cinema production remains uncompressed 1920×1080 HD in full-bandwidth 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB. A comprehensive set of workflow solutions for 4:4:4 RGB field production was literally encapsulated at Creative Bridge's Mobile Digital Lab and Theater (MDLT), a 36ft. mobile trailer parked across Paradise Road (symbolism?) from the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Co-presented with Plus8 Digital, the MDLT trailer showcased the integration of data-centric technologies for previz, capture, and viewing of dailies in 4:4:4 HD. Highlighted were S.two's DFR (digital field recorder) with removable D.MAG disk magazines (MDLT equally supports Sony's CineAlta SR format), Gamma & Density's 3cP for on-set color correction (MDLT equally supports Kodak's superb Look Management System version 2.0 and Iridas's SpeedGrade), and — to knit it all together — Assimilate's Scratch data management software to oversee realtime assembly, editing, playback, conforming, effects, color correction, and mastering. One-stop shopping, anyone?

Each year at NAB, I watch the line between low-cost desktop editing and post blur further. At the desktop end, Apple with Final Cut Studio and Adobe with Adobe Production Studio (Premiere Pro 2.0 is Final Cut Pro for Windows) have dynamically linked timeline editing with motion graphics (Motion and After Effects, respectively) and soundtrack design. An informal demo of Maya on an Apple iMac with Intel Core Duo processors rendering in near-realtime composites with live-action plates from Narnia made a big impression. Avid, for its part, lowered its barrier to entry with the debut of a software-only Media Composer for less than $5,000 (Mac and PC, with dongle) — unthinkable a few years ago.

There were two breakthroughs in low-cost realtime HD editing that caught my eye, both from Matrox. Matrox introduced an economy version of Axio, its Windows-based realtime HD/SD editing platform for Adobe Premiere 2.0. The $4,500 board-and-breakout box kit (workstation not included) gets you multiple layers of realtime editing and effects in uncompressed HD and SD, HDV, DVCPRO HD, DV, DVCPRO 50, and Sony's IMX I-frame MPEG-2.

If, instead, you're cutting HDV in Final Cut Pro and dreading the interminable output render, Matrox's compact MXO DVI adapter box is your ticket to realtime output. MXO accepts the DVI signal ordinarily sent directly to an Apple Cinema display and converts it on the fly to HD-SDI with either embedded audio, analog HD with unbalanced audio, or standard definition. The DVI signal is also displayed as usual on your Apple Cinema display — worth every penny of its $995 retail price.

At NAB, the most impressive pixel-for-pixel 1920×1080 LCD displays — those closest to reference grade monitors — were the 24in. Cinemáge by Cine-tal with a built-in OmniTek waveform monitor and vectorscope, the frontNiche HD Pro 23in. with fast-motion interpolation from the BBC's R&D department (there's also an economy DVI-only model), and eCinema's 23in. DCM23. For less than $5,000, Panasonic debuted a 26in. LCD monitor, the BT-LH2600W. Like frontNiche, it boasts high-speed response for no blurring, and like Cine-tal, a built-in waveform monitor and split-screen function for scene comparison and color matching. With a slim profile and light weight, each of these terrific products is equally suited to edit bay, field, or post. I only wish they could become prevalent overnight.

Previously, I mentioned the Digital Cinema Summit, the two-day weekend conference that precedes the NAB floor show. Panels addressed advances in projection and display technology, D-Cinema cameras, color management tools, and progress in implementing DCI theatrical spec's and roll out of digital projection into actual theaters. DP Daryn Okada, ASC, showed comparisons he'd shot for Disney using Grass Valley's Viper FilmStream, Sony's F950, Arri's D-20, Panavision's Genesis, Dalsa's Origin, and a Panaflex with Eastman 5218 color negative. Projected on a Sony 4K SXRD, the results were hard to characterize by a simple thumbs up or down. All, in fact, looked spectacular. To my eyes, perhaps, Dalsa looked a hair more spectacular.

Arri''s latest Super 16 camera, the 416, improves upon the SR design with a quieter, lighter, and more ergonomic application. Adapted from the Arriflex 235, the 416 features an optical viewfinder, RGB Arriglow, and video assist.

But what set this Summit apart from previous editions was the surprising emphasis on 3D. James Cameron in his day-two keynote, “Near and Far Horizons in Digital 3D,” argued that digital cinema technology makes 3D capture and display “ridiculously easy.” He and others — including Vince Pace, whose custom handheld 3D rig for Cameron features two Sony F950s with motorized convergence — were persuasive, but so too were 3D clips screened for the audience, particularly from the extraordinary Polar Express. And get used to the term “dimensionalization,” a new process from Real D that converts conventional 2D films to convincing 3D — newly dimensionalized 3D clips from the original 1997 Star Wars must be seen to be believed — which will convert 20 minutes of this summer's Superman Returns to IMAX 3D.

Even more spectacular (let's raise the ante) was NHK's demonstration over in North Hall of ultra high-definition TV. Would you believe a 7680×4320 — that's 4320 scan lines — at 60p, with 16 times the pixel count of conventional HD? How about 22.2-channel sound? Sitting maybe three-screen heights from a large theater-sized screen, I witnessed a wide shot of a Knicks game made from the nosebleed section of Madison Square Garden. I could see the players' faces clearly, and as reported in my NAB blog, every time the crowd at the Garden cheered, I thought applause was coming from the packed NHK screening room. However, nobody around me was clapping. It was spooky.

The experimental NHK camera (by Olympus) was a beast, with 16 HD-SDI links into a bank of drives and an optical block with four Micron CMOS sensors that happen to be 16mm × 9mm (how convenient). Hardly larger than a conventional 2/3in. chip and nowhere the 35mm size of sensors in Origin, D-20, or Genesis, you might call it a 3/4in. chip.

Why four sensors? One devoted to the red channel, one to blue, and two to green — diagonally offset, I'm guessing — to obtain 50 percent greater spatial resolution. Such “pixel shifting” is common in broadcast cameras, especially HDV camcorders. Why CMOS? Micron marketing manager Caleb Williams told me that CMOS is the only technology that can achieve such results at full 60p. Although clipped highlight detail made it appear that the paltry 10-bit A/D left something to be desired.

What about cameras for the rest of us at NAB? Starting with film cameras, Arri produced a genuine surprise with its new Super 16 camera, the 416. Improving upon its 30-year-old SR design, the 416 is quieter, 25 percent lighter, and more ergonomic. (Throated magazines, film path, and integral video tap will be familiar to any Aaton owner.) Build quality is superb, and the viewfinder, adapted from an Arri 235, sets a new standard for brightness and sharpness in a 16mm camera.

Aaton meanwhile updated its Super 16 flagship to XTRprod2, adding twin batteries, progressive-scan video tap, and built-in rod support. Aaton also previewed a prototype of Penelope, a compact switchable 2-, 3-, and 4-perf “quiet, quiet, quiet” sync-sound 35mm camera, a complete redesign that also incorporates twin batteries.

On the HDV front, JVC, buoyed by the world sales of 12,000 HD100s, announced new HD200 and HD250 models, both with a full 60p frame rate. (Maximum for HD100 is 720p/30.) In anticipation of JVC's upcoming PL-mount adapter for use with film lenses, the HD200 ($8,000) adds a function to flip the upside-down image created by this adapter. The HD250 further adds HD-SDI out (like Canon's XL-H1) with embedded audio (unlike XL-H1), timecode synching, and genlock ($9,000, identical to XL-H1).

With the debut of the XDCAM HD PDW-F330 and PDW-F350, Sony created two new categories in HD camcorders: 1/2in. 3-CCD and optical disc (blue-violet laser). The PDW-F330 ($16,800) and PDW-F350 ($25,800) record 1080i and 1080p/24 at 18Mbps (variable), 25Mbps (constant, like HDV), and 35Mbps (variable), using long-GOP MPEG-2. Both record SD in DVCAM, either 480/60i or 576/50i. The F350 adds variable frame rates from 4fps-60fps. How can you not be impressed by a CineAlta with 1080p/24 and time-lapse for under $17,000, even if they're meant for ENG?

Panasonic announced two upcoming breakthroughs to its line of 2/3in. 3-CCD HD camcorders:

1. The first full-size P2 camcorder, the AJ-HPC2000. With progressive scan CCDs and no moving parts — five slots hold swappable P2 cards for what Panasonic says is 40 minutes of continuous HD — the HPC2000 ($25,000) will capture common HD and SD frame rates at 14 bits in DVCPRO and DVCPRO HD, as well as in an intraframe version of AVC (advanced video codec), aka H.264. This will double the duration of the HPC2000's P2 cards.

2. The tape-based AJ-HDX900, which Panasonic says will be an upconversion to HD of the popular SDX900. The AJ-HDX900 adds 1080i/60, 1080p/24, and 720p frame rates along with superb 14-bit A/D and DSP. I say it's a Varicam stripped of variable frame rates. A Varicam costs $66,000, while the HDX900 arrives in July at $26,500 (viewfinder extra). What would motivate such a nosedive?

The Infinity is Grass Valley's (GV) answer to the 21st century tapeless HD camcorder. Less than $25,000, the 14-bit Infinity makes an intriguing case for inexpensive off-the-shelf IT storage, with two slots for consumer-grade compact Flash memory and an internal bay for Iomega's removable REV 35MB hard disk cartridge ($60). GV and Iomega have co-developed a professional version, REV PRO ($70), with improved caching for dual-stream recording and playback. If CF and REV are not to your liking, Infinity provides SDI, HD-SDI, FireWire, three USB 2.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. There are also multiple codecs to choose from: DV (for DVCAM and DVCPRO), long-GOP and I-frame MPEG-2, and intraframe JPEG2000 with MXF. May the best tapeless camcorder win!

Lastly, NAB saw several more hats tossed in the ring of independently manufactured digital cinematography cameras. What they share in common is a single-CMOS sensor with Bayer color filter, PL-mount lenses, capture to non-video RAW files (no encoding), claims to the legacy of film, projected prices circa $20,000, and unavailability despite hype. They include promised products from Kinetta (skipped NAB this year), Red (vapor so far), Silicon Imaging (it actually worked), and Colorspace (who are these guys?).

Meanwhile, F950s and Vipers with SRW-1 and S.two recorders are shooting features, Arri D-20s are in the field too, Dalsa readies its next-generation design, Vision Research (military telemetry) joins the fold with their 1000fps CMOS Phantom HD camera, and Sony sneak-peeks its upcoming RGB 4:4:4 2/3in. camera that resembles a Panaflex, only with 4:4:4 1080p speeds from 1fps-30fps, up to 60fps in 4:2:2. Faint D-Cinema rumblings are also emanating from Panasonic.

Is a window opening or closing?

Editor Cynthia Wisehart—shown here in discussion with (left to right) Jim Cook, VP creative, Clearchannel; Tim O''Hare, senior flash developer, Scripps Networks; and Jim Guerard, vice president of web and video, Adobe Systems—moderated a Super Session on Tuesday, April 25, called “Earthquake Insurance—Are You Ready for the Tectonic Shift in New Media?” Photo by Mark Forman

By Jan Ozer

When cruising the NAB halls in Las Vegas, you're in the belly of the beast of the editing world, and it's hard to stop by a booth without running into a newsworthy announcement or demonstration.

As always, Avid saved its news for the show and made significant announcements throughout its product line. At the high end, Avid announced Interplay, a server-based workflow engine with asset management, workflow automation, and security. Although Avid claims that it's making the system as open as possible — including the ability to plug users of Apple's Final Cut Pro into its new storage network — we'll have to see which facilities want to implement Avid's infrastructure to handle the soup to nuts of post. The product costs $18,000 for a five-seat system, and is scheduled to be available in Q3 2006.

Technically, the software sits atop the Avid Unity network, checking assets in and out and providing revision tracking and conflict management. Optional tools provide logging and annotation functions that enable facilities to ingest and organize large amounts of incoming assets. The system tracks up to 100 file types, including still images, Excel spreadsheets, and multiple video formats, and it can automatically transcode video for different uses, from low-resolution proxies for desktop viewing to best available for editing.

Avid expanded its price point offerings, and debuted software-only versions of Media Composer software ($4,995); running in both Mac and Windows platforms, it is capable of HD editing. Both programs leverage multi-core CPUs and GPUs to provide full-screen DVI output of SD and HD, and they are compatible with the new Mojo SDI Digital Nonlinear Accelerator ($2,495), which, as the name suggests, adds an SDI interface to Avid's popular capture/preview device with FireWire connectivity for DV, HDV, and DVCPRO HD projects.

At the low end, Avid also announced Avid Xpress Pro 5.5, which delivers feature parity to both Mac and Windows-based systems, including HDV support.

Also mum before the show, Apple's flashiest announcement was its 17in. MacBook Pro notebook, which features a 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1GB of SDRAM, a 120GB serial ATA hard drive, and 8X SuperDrive in an elegant 1in.-thick aluminum enclosure that weighs just 6.8lbs. As with most Apple hardware, the beauty wasn't just skin deep; with ATI PCI Express-based graphics with 256MB GDDR3 memory, a DVI-out port, and both FireWire 400 and 800 ports, the unit is ready for serious on-location editing and authoring. Paired with Apple's dual Mac/Windows Boot Camp software, it marks a significant introduction for editors and graphics artists alike. Initial test reviews rate the machine highly, in some cases, beating comparable Windows machines, even when running in Windows mode.

Less showy, but probably more important, was the announcement of Final Cut Studio version 5.1, a universal version that runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes. Significantly, version 5.1 also includes 24P support for the Sony XDCAM HD and JVC's GY-HD100 cameras, as well as 24F support for the Canon XL-H1 HDV camcorder, filling a critical feature gap in previous versions. Apple also announced that more than 500,000 editors were using Final Cut Pro, most of which, it seemed, thronged into the company's huge — and always packed — training theaters.

Located in a trailer across from the convention center, Assimilate and partners Creative Bridge, S.two, and Plus 8 demonstrated a portable, all-digital film production workflow based on Assimilate's Scratch digital intermediate solution. The system ingested and calibrated uncompressed 1920×1080 video from Viper and other high-resolution digital cameras with realtime editing, color grading, audio, visual effects, and final mastering in Scratch. Great stuff from a company determined to rule the lower price points of the DI post market.

Under the theme “Creating the Whole Picture,” Autodesk showed its complete line of content creation programs, with several updates including Toxik 2007, the collaborative compositing software; Discreet Inferno running on Linux; and 10-bit RGB versions of Discreet Flint and Smoke. Per a statement at the show, Autodesk also committed to the continued development of 3ds Max and the recently acquired Maya, with assurances that both products will continue with its pre-acquisition development roadmaps. Whether that holds for five years down the road or not, at least each product's users can now breathe freely.

Da Vinci Systems unveiled Splice, which provides a nonlinear workflow for Da Vinci's 2K and 2K Plus color enhancement systems. The new product incorporates technologies from the company's Resolve DI mastering suite to provide realtime sizing and rotation. Colorists can also conform, transform, grade, arrange, and deliver images in any order, all in realtime.

Quantel announced that both its Pablo and iQ digital intermediate systems will deliver realtime true-4K resolution playback with realtime pan and scan. Both systems reportedly read continuous 1.15GBs of data per second and are powered by Quantel's TimeMagic realtime display technology. Quantel also announced the eQ FX, an “all-in” configuration for HD and multi-resolution postproduction at a “highly competitive price,” which they did not quantify with a dollar figure.

Harris Corp. demonstrated Leitch's VelocityX software-only, non-linear editor, which shares the same interface as the hardware-based VelocityQ and VelocityHD. The company reported that project files will be compatible between all three systems, so editors can start projects on the software system, which is scheduled for release sometime in 2006, and migrate the projects to either or both of the hardware platforms. Harris also showed VelocityHD version 9.1, with HDV support.

Thomson/Grass Valley/Canopus announced Edius Pro version 4.0, which features multicam support, nested sequence editing, and keyframe support for color correction. The program also features realtime, mixed format SD/HD editing on the same timeline, and supports HD, HDV, and uncompressed SD video. Also new is Edius Broadcast, which includes Edius Pro and support for Panasonic DVCPRO P2, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, Panasonic Varicam, and Sony XDCAM.

On the storage front, 1 Beyond exhibited the new IntelliRAID FC-XPR, an enterprise-level storage system with 16 SATA2 drives with RAID 6 protection and dual four Gigabit Fibre channel connections. With a dual-PCIe bus, new processor, and parallel processing RAID 6 accelerator, the FC-XPR reportedly achieves more than 600MBps operating standalone, or more than 1GBps aggregate in a SAN configuration.

In addition, EditShare announced EditShare version 4.0, which includes support for uncompressed HD over 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and a new architecture that can scale to more than 200TB. The new system supports Mac and Windows computers, as well as legacy Avid systems including Symphony, Meridian-based Media Composers, and DS Nitris.

Maximum Throughput showed its new Sledgehammer Dual Stream digital disk recorder, which can read and write dual streams of uncompressed HD, for example, allowing it to supply source footage for grading while simultaneously acting as a destination VTR. The company also showed MAXcluster, a clustered storage solution for multiple Sledgehammer systems.

Exavio exhibited its ExaMax 9000 I/O accelerator, supporting uncompressed HD workflow for Power Macs, running via Xsan, and a multi-stream PC-based 2K DI workflow running off an accelerated storage area network (SAN). The ExaMax 9000 provides a dynamic cache, and is scalable up to 1TB and optimized with proprietary storage algorithms, which improves the performance of existing SANs.

Photos by Mark Forman
In the Digital Cinema Summit panel, James Cameron discussed advances in 3D production and conversion.

By S.D. Katz

The Digital Cinema Summit was certainly entertaining. Each day the packed room of engineers, cinematographers, exhibitors, producers, and press donned glasses and watched 3D movies. The ringmaster in all this was director James Cameron, joined by John Fithian, the president of National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), lending support to the notion that shaky box office performance and competing HD in the home is best combated with 3D movies.

There was little doubting Cameron's claim that today's 3D technology was far superior to the '50s-style anaglyph technology (the cardboard glasses with one red lens and one green lens). 3D technology is largely made possible by virtue of the fact that the new stereoscopic projection systems necessary for 3D projection can be rolled out as part of the overall upgrade to digital projection.

Cameron has been shooting 3D for several years and he emphasized that new camera systems make acquisition far easier then in the past. Of course, this is a director who is used to working with extensive visual effects as well as shooting underwater, so other directors may be less open-minded about extra gear.

One important advance in 3D production is the ability to control the interocular distance (space between a pair of human eyes) when filming. This also helps reduce the eyestrain associated with 3D movies. Excerpts from the 3D version of Polar Express and The Terminator 3D movie were screened as examples of the improved experience, but also as examples of movies that did very well at the box office.

Two 3D systems were demonstrated; one active and one passive. Real D uses passive glasses that cost less than $1, but require the installation of a special surfaced silver screen. Passive glasses are cheap enough to be disposable, but the cost of the screen is not trivial. The alternative is active glasses that cost approximately $25 a pair, but must be collected at the end of each performance and disinfected for reuse. Again, this is an extra expense for theater owners, but active glasses can be used with all the normal screens currently installed.

NuVision manufactures the active glasses supplied to the audience at the Summit; they are about the size and weight of normal, rather clunky, “pointdexter” glasses. NuVision glasses have a shutter in each lens that operates at 96Hz. This technique of opening and closing the lens separates the images supplied to each eye temporally. The advantage to this system is that the tinting of the lenses is very slight, far less than the nearly 30 percent light reduction typical of the older polarized stereoscopic system. Sitting towards the back of the theater, the 3D effect was pronounced, and the usual headache-inducing vision problems were largely absent. The test, however, will be to sit through an entire movie with either system and not be cross-eyed at the end.

You have to wonder, though, what audience Cameron is hoping to attract. So far, recent 3D movies have appealed to a younger demographic, adolescent mostly, and exhibition is already skewed toward a young male crowd. Cameron, however, touted the 3D experience as suitable for dramatic films and cited Titantic as a dramatic film, “if you leave out the boat sinking.”

This remark was unintentionally funny, but Cameron continued on and suggested a 3D version of The Godfather. This reference to converting older films to 3D was part of another technology demonstration in which the opening seven minutes of Star Wars was shown in 3D. It was an impressive conversion and showed true dimensionality rather than the flat, multi-planed effect that those old handheld ViewMaster viewers presented. Neil Feldman, senior VP and owner of In-Three, the company responsible for Star Wars conversion, went on far too long about the process without ever explaining how it was done. That may be because it was all hand rotoscoped and not patentable. In-Three has been working with NuVision to develop a 3D viewing system, and is hoping to convert many classic blockbusters to 3D.

This may all catch on, but we will have to wait until digital cinema actually begins a serious roll out, as there are still less than 1,000 digital systems in the United States. While the movie studios are finally making progress in solving the rights management issues, a truly comprehensive roll out does not seem imminent.

While the exhibitors listened to Cameron carefully, it was clear that the movie theater of the future is not aimed at pure movie lovers. On screen advertising, 3D glasses, gaming, and sporting events are all parts of the new business model to wring every last cent out of theater real estate when what is really needed are better movies. Turning the cineplex into an amusement park of mixed experiences seems like a life preserver thrown to businessman treading water. Or as James Cameron might have said, “The exhibition market is like Titanic — without the drowning.”