Are CRTs superior to digital displays?

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Maybe the future of cinema is digital acquisition and storage and analog displays:

A black-and-white cathode ray TV driven by an unmodulated analog signal is theoretically capable of resolution that would require a microscope to perceive.

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[Phil Connolly]

Sure a black and white CRT can be scanned at any resolution. But the more scan lines the longer it would take to scan potentially risking more flicker. The smaller you focus the beam the less light output you'd get.

I used to work at a company that had a 1990's CRT film recorder - we used to use in 4K resolution, but I think it could have been pushed it higher if you wanted to record 15p70mm IMAX.

The other issue this only works for black and white... once you add colour you need a shadow mask and discrete pixels. The CRT film recorders would do 3 exposures using 3 RGB filters. Also the exposure times were very slow, minutes per frame because the light levels were so poor.


I guess you could build an ultra high rez CRT screen, using a black and white CRT - and maybe put a kinemacolour type spinning disk on the front - like single chip DLP's. But the image is going to be very dark and flickery.

I think I'll stick with my flat panels thanks

 

[Phil Holland]

I used to work at a company that had a 1990's CRT film recorder - we used to use in 4K resolution, but I think it could have been pushed it higher if you wanted to record 15p70mm IMAX.

The other issue this only works for black and white... once you add colour you need a shadow mask and discrete pixels. The CRT film recorders would do 3 exposures using 3 RGB filters. Also the exposure times were very slow, minutes per frame because the light levels were so poor.

It is a rare day that I bump into a fellow Solitaire user or knower. Laser recording is superior, but yes, the CRT based recorders were and even are still used to film out larger format material. In my old studio's case we used it for 65mm 5-perf and 70mm 15-perf mainly for IMAX and ride films. However, we did have camera heads to print out publicity stills in 4x6" and 5x7" negatives. The last big one I made was over 20K resolution and took a very, very long time for a single frame. Motion film outs at 12-16K would take around 1.5-3min a frame.

To contrast that our laser recorders, but the Lux and Arrilaser were significantly faster, which was important due to the volume of work. But resolving-wise, the laser recorders are indeed higher resolving. We tinkered briefly with a very large format laser recorder setup, but at that point digital was far enough along that the purpose of such a thing wasn't exactly the focus.

I find modern display technology superior. This is actually a banner year for several technologies with only a few quibbles.

 

[Phil Connolly]

Hi Phil

Yep we had a Solitaire - it was used for multi-projector automated 35mm slide shows - for museums etc.... They did some amazing stuff with multiple overlapping projectors doing cross fades, dissolves and multichannel audio (typically running off cassette 4 or 8 tracks with timecode).

I don't think the company ever did a motion picture job using it - but the 35 mm camera head we had, could do both 8 perf for slides and 4 perf for motion work.

I joined the company a few years after the 35mm AV slides heyday (in 2000) We did crank up the Solitarie a few times to make replacement slides for existing AV presentations - calibrating the thing was enough of a challenge at that point.

 

[Phil Holland]

Very interesting. Even stranger we share that connection and the same name.

Our studio eventually sold the two we had to a gentleman who had a "farm". When I visited, 16 Solitaires setup to do bulk recording jobs, which helped combat against the speed issues. I think that grew to over 24 recorders at some point. I didn't envy the work needed to make them all play nice.