[HN Gopher] IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheime... ___________________________________________________________________ IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer's 70 mm release Author : riffraff Score : 126 points Date : 2023-07-21 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | mkl wrote: | Why does a biopic need "the highest quality imaging format ever | devised"? | riffraff wrote: | Christopher Nolan likes it. | gambiting wrote: | Why does anything need anything. It's a film, a piece of art - | if they want to record it in 80K resolution for the fun of it, | the question should be - why not? | pessimizer wrote: | The higher the numbers, the better the thing. | failuser wrote: | To feel like you are actually witnessing the first nuke test. | atoav wrote: | It doesn't. And humanity doesn't need a biopic. | | There is a saying by German film maker Alexander Kluge: | | He who wants to express something has to in turn impress | something. | | And having the resolution of 70mm film certainly helps with the | impeession part. Whether artistic expression is actually needed | is a different more philosophic question. I'd say yes, but I | studied art, so I am biased. | tehnub wrote: | Immersiveness. Maybe it's intriguing to look at the human face | in extreme detail? | meghan_rain wrote: | submarine article | toast0 wrote: | Yep, Palm PR is almost certainly still out there pushing good | vibes. | tiffanyh wrote: | Seeing that PalmPilot emulator is how I feel using Instagram on | an iPad. | veave wrote: | Why haven't they gone digital? | hatsunearu wrote: | A 135 photographic film frame (distinct from 35mm movie film) | roughly has about 24MP - 48MP digital equivalent resolution. | | That has a photographic area of 864 square millimeters. | | 70mm movie film has 3395 square millimeters. That's like 943MP | - 1886MP digital equivalent, if we use the same standards as | 135 photographic film frame. | | There's no way you can replicate that amount of quality with | digital cinema, at least right now. | | IMAX is similar in size to 6x7 medium format photography, which | only recently has been fully replaced by digital cameras. The | cameras that replace medium format photography (usually used | for stuff like magazine cover photos, high end product | photography, high end portraits and other high quality still | applications) range from the sony a7r4 with a 61MP sensor, | hasselblad cameras with 100mp sensors and phase one with a | 150MP sensor. | | The digital video equivalent is 16K, which exists but it's just | not common at all. | mips_r4300i wrote: | IMAX 70mm is still the absolute benchmark for film quality, and | has been so for decades. A really rough estimate is you'd need | a 15-20k digital projector to approach the resolution of the | film. | | However, IMAX tried to go mass-market around 2008 and that's | why you see so many supposedly-IMAX theaters now. They | typically use 2K DLP projectors. Yeah, basically the same res | as a gaming PC from 2011. | | My theater has the crummy 2k digital, and let em tell you, you | can DEFINITELY see the pixels. I would call it passable but | it's not really great at all. The only benefit of these IMAX | locations is that normal digital cinema can be even worse! | | There are newer 4k laser projectors that some theaters are | retrofitting into their old huge IMAX locations, but these | still aren't going to hold a candle. 4k still isn't even enough | to really come close to 35mm. | | The digital tech just isn't there yet. | grumpyprole wrote: | Consider also that resolution is only one factor. Bandwidth | is another. Digital movies are often full of compression | artefacts, especially when there's a lot going on in the | scene. | CobsterLock wrote: | As far as I know, movie theaters do not compress video. Its | seems like they have a digital surrogate for movie reals | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Package | smitelli wrote: | That's true; with a cap of 250 Mbps for the DCP stream, | and a 4K frame size of 4096 x 2160, that's ~28 bits per | pixel (if the soundtrack is disregarded). There might be | a small amount of subsampling or run length encoding | going on, but it's entirely plausible to distribute and | play an uncompressed film on a professional projector. | | EDIT: Forgot to factor time into the math. Divide that by | 24 frames per second. That got me curious, so I looked | into it and found they're using JPEG 2000 on each frame | with no inter-frame deltas. Essentially like a constant | stream of I-frames. | wmf wrote: | IMAX has been digital for years but digital projectors haven't | caught up to IMAX film resolution so they are keeping the film | projectors around. | themadturk wrote: | A lot of "IMAX" theaters (and movies) are digital...but not | those films created by Christopher Nolan. I love his movies, | but he's an analog snob and believes the only legitimate place | to enjoy his analog tech films is in a theater. I'm not saying | he's entirely wrong, 70mm IMAX is probably the best film | experience out there. But it's an ideal many moviegoers can't | enjoy. | | To be fair, he recently said that 70mm IMAX format is also | ideal as master for any downstream format, because all the | information you're ever going to have for that movie is in the | negative. And with the length (and therefore the size) of the | movie, he acknowledges he may at last have reached the limits | of analog film technology. | waihtis wrote: | You can find all kinds of interesting emulator implementations | out there. I've personally seen a large manufacturing shop run | some of their core business processes inside DOSBox. | jhallenworld wrote: | Check out the "automatic fabric punching system" running on | cassette tape: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWJZFQHklBg | | No need for emulation when the original equipment is still | working. | PaulWaldman wrote: | Indeed. | | I worked with a large factory running all their lines and | processes off an emulated, embedded controller. It was running | on a desktop PC using NT 3.51 interfacing directly with real- | world I/O. | nuclearazure wrote: | So cool. Imagine having a portable computer you could program and | take with you in your pocket. | | The iPhone future we have is disappointing compared to how I | thought things would turn out. | eddieroger wrote: | I don't follow - there are apps on my iPhone right now that I | wrote and put there. What am I missing? | | This functionality could probably be done with an iPhone or | iPad and MFi today, if not a small form factor computer of some | sort, or a Pi or Arduino. | codetrotter wrote: | The disappointing thing about my iPhone is that I cannot | locally author and compile apps for iOS on iOS itself. | admax88qqq wrote: | I don't think you could do that on PalmPilots either. | You're taking a cool story about use and history of the | PalmPilot and turning it into Yet Another iPhone Complaint | Thread. | criddell wrote: | You could! | | https://orbworks.com/pcpalm/ | bombcar wrote: | The HP 100/200 LX certainly could. It had a serial port | built in and could PCMCIA a parallel port. With DOS 5.0 | and software you could build a controller for all sorts | of things on two AA batteries, and people did. | serf wrote: | yeah, you absolutely could -- and in a variety of | different languages. | zimpenfish wrote: | > I don't think you could do that on PalmPilots either. | | I wrote a couple of apps using Quartus Forth[1] entirely | on the Palm IIIx. Admittedly fairly simple ones but done | entirely locally. | | [1] http://www.quartus.net/products/forth/ | codetrotter wrote: | Not trying to start an iPhone complaint thread. iPhone | has been my preferred phone for many years, and continues | to be so. | | I am still disappointed at having such a powerful piece | of hardware in my pocket and not being able to write and | run a native application for the device, on the device. | | Many years ago, when smartphones first became a thing, I | had certain expectations about what would be possible and | yet here we are over a decade later and it's still not | possible to do that thing, simply because Apple doesn't | want us to be able to do it. | | I think we should continue to talk about this until the | day comes where it becomes possible. | admax88qqq wrote: | I too am disappointed at having a computer in my pocket I | don't truly own. | | But I'm also disappointed at how HN seems to only have | like 5 topics people want to discuss and the comments on | every submission find their way back to those topics no | matter how tenuous. | doublerabbit wrote: | Sometimes I wish teddy bears would just invade, silence | all humans and fix the world already. | | By any means necessary. | doubled112 wrote: | You were watching Care Bears as if it were a documentary? | [deleted] | serf wrote: | >But I'm also disappointed at how HN seems to only have | like 5 topics people want to discuss and the comments on | every submission find their way back to those topics no | matter how tenuous. | | doesn't that just point to the impact and magnitude of | the perceived problem? | | "Yeah, I know the kitchen is on fire, but let's talk | about how the pancakes _taste_. " | | 'group-attention' migrates back to the collective | concern; seems unsurprising, espescially in the face of | being reminded of a product that had these concerns | handled well compared to our future selves. | ciabattabread wrote: | I'm glad Apple implemented dark mode so I don't have to | keep on hearing about that complaint in every Apple | discussion. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Why is this important to you? Have you done any embedded | programming? | codetrotter wrote: | Yes I have done embedded programming. But that's not what | I am talking about. I am talking about building and | compiling regular iOS apps on iOS itself. | dbcurtis wrote: | True enough. I have Pythonista installed on my iPhone, but | to be honest I don't play with it a lot. | gunapologist99 wrote: | You bought it. You could have bought literally almost any | other device. | cramjabsyn wrote: | The google garden isn't much better | fsflover wrote: | > portable computer you could program and take with you in your | pocket | | This is exactly what Librem 5 is. It runs desktop an FSF- | endorsed OS (Debian-based). My daily driver btw. | zymhan wrote: | Just jailbreak it any be done. | | Yes, it's potentially less secure. You can't have your cake and | eat it too. | ThePowerOfFuet wrote: | I'm enjoying eating my own cake on my non-rooted GrapheneOS | mobile. | layer8 wrote: | Banking apps will refuse to work on a jailbroken device. | ultrarunner wrote: | You can often tweak those apps to stub the jailbreak | detection (if you're jailbroken) | necubi wrote: | Back in the day if you wanted to develop for PalmOS you had to | pay Metroworks (IIRC) $~300 for their CodeWarrior C++ compiler, | so the fact that XCode is free is a pretty big improvement. | inconceivable wrote: | you can do this already. look up rpi based cyberdecks. | Saris wrote: | You pretty much can with android devices since you can pull up | a shell and install packages, and you have access to a | filesystem. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | [Dupe] | ChrisArchitect wrote: | Bunch of posts and discussion last few days: | | _1 day ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36800223 | | _2 days ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36789643 | | _3 days ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36781724 | archo wrote: | -- Related -- | | _IMAX movies still need a Palm Pilot to work_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36800223 - 2023-07-20 | (9-comments) | | Original Article : https://www.theverge.com/23801118/imax- | movie-palm-pilot-oppe... | | _IMAX Still Runs on PalmPilot Operating System_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36789643 - 2023-07-19 | (6-comments) | | Original Article : | https://www.vice.com/en/article/88x5gb/imax-still-runs-on- | pa... | | _IMAX projector motors are controlled using an emulated | PalmOS app_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36781724 - | 2023-07-19 (3-comments) | | Original Article : | https://twitter.com/LudyLotad/status/1681341878476718097 | atleastoptimal wrote: | If only the inventor of the PalmPilot could reckon with the | destructive force he brought upon the world. | bredren wrote: | > Motherboard contacted IMAX about the antiquity | | Is "anachronism" a better fit here? | dale_glass wrote: | Nice. | | Digital IMAX is disappointing. Hardly "MAX" anything. It's just | 2.9K, which doesn't even measure up to my at this point mundane | 4K monitors. | | I hope they come up with a better digital one. 4K is great for | home use but in a cinema it's not quite there. | tehnub wrote: | Well, I think "IMAX with Laser" is 4K. | | https://www.imax.com/news/imax-laser-here | xdennis wrote: | But this is about the film version, though. | | Digital IMAX is pointless, but it is still technically "MAX" as | the max is for physical size, not resolution. | | The original reason IMAX uses 70mm film (8.3x the area of 35mm) | is because projecting onto a larger screen required a more | powerful lamp, which would produce more heat and burn 35mm | film, so they had to place it farther away from the lamp, | meaning the film had to be larger. | failTide wrote: | That 16K Sphere in vegas could be worth checking out | Yhippa wrote: | You sent me down the rabbit hole. It turns out there are only | 19 theatres that are serving up the film version: https://www.w | ashingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2023/07/.... This image | near the bottom of the article shows the comparisons of the | formats: https://gfx-data.news- | engineering.aws.wapo.pub/ai2html/Cropp.... | | Now I have huge FOMO and don't have a city close to me to see | it. I haven't seen a movie in theatres in years and it would | have been nice to treat myself to this one. | mips_r4300i wrote: | Same here, the FOMO led me to finding a film theater, luckily | I found a 70mm non-IMAX showing in driving distance. | | Honestly looking forward to not seeing pixelated digital | screendoor for this one. | | Most IMAX locations are just gonna be 2048x1080. Even sitting | way in the back it looks low-res. | sva_ wrote: | If anyone currently in Hamburg, Germany plans to watch this | movie, the movie theater "Savoy" (seems to be independent - | no chain) offers the Oppenheimer movie in original English | language (no dubs/subs) in the original 70mm version. | | I think I'm gonna attend next week. | | Edit: I'm seeing the list above which claims there are no | German cinemas who have the original 70mm film. However | this[0] German cinema in Hamburg clearly claims to have | original 70mm version ("OV"). Not sure if I either | misunderstand something, the list is incorrect, or if the | cinema is lying? | | [0] https://savoy.premiumkino.de/vorstellung/oppenheimer/2023 | 072... | tehnub wrote: | IMO the ranking goes like this: | | 1. IMAX 70mm | | 2. 70mm (non-IMAX, 2.2/1 aspect ratio) | | 3. Dual Laser IMAX (4K, can show the full 1.43/1 picture | instead of just 1.9/1) | | 4. Single laser IMAX (4K, shows 1.9/1) | | 5. Dolby Cinema (4K, aspect ratio) | | 6. 35mm film | | 7. Non-laser IMAX | | 8. Regular theater | | (1) is the most special, (2) is still quite special as only | every few years do these theaters typically bring out 70mm | projectors, (3) is also pretty special because rarely do | movies return to IMAX where you can see the full uncropped | image. (4) and (5) will still have great picture and sound | quality compared to almost any home setup (OLED has contrast | advantage always). (6) is pretty special, as [0] says: The | 35mm prints have been made photochemically, preserving all | the rich analog color of the original 65mm photography. (7) | will have a big screen and good sound. (8) regular theaters | are still good too. The value of the movie-going experience | is not insignificant, which you get at any theater. | | [0]: https://www.oppenheimermovie.com/tickets/formats/ | KerrAvon wrote: | > The value of the movie-going experience is not | insignificant, which you get at any theater. | | Not arguing, just curious: what do you perceive the value | to be in going to a (8) plain 'ol regular theater? As | opposed to something like a 65" OLED in your living room. | KMnO4 wrote: | The word used should be "simulates", not "emulates". | | The software is designed to mimic the look and feel of the old | projectionist software (which ran on PP). It does not in any way | emulate PalmOS or the PP hardware. | gzalo wrote: | Are you sure? If they took all the trouble to write software to | simulate how palm form inputs are rendered, why wouldn't they | just create a new UI? | usrusr wrote: | To skip operator retraining? At least that's how I read team | "it's only look and feel, not an emulator". My objection to | that would be that a hypothetical outcome of a modern UI with | identical menu layout not being good enough would be one of | those things that you only ever learn the hard way. But who | knows, perhaps it _was_ a new UI that was vetoed out by | someone in a very powerful position and then they had to skin | it up. But the far more likely explanation is that they had | software, were running out of hardware devices to put in | projection time until someone tried their hand on running one | of the numerous palm emulators in existence on an RPi or | similar. | KMnO4 wrote: | From the article, the design " _mimics the look and feel of a | PalmPilot to keep it simple and familiar for IMAX film | projectionists_ " | iwanttocomment wrote: | Yeah, and the article also quotes IMAX as stating "IMAX | Engineering designed and manufactured an _emulator_ ". | | You can certainly have a true emulator that also "mimics | the look and feel" of the thing it's emulating. | | If you have any actual evidence that the IMAX tool is not | truly an emulator other than conjecture, we'd all be very | interested. | rkagerer wrote: | There are PalmOS emulators out there, wouldn't make sense | for them to roll their own instead of licensing one of | those. I had one on my last Android phone that was a | treat for using my beloved old Palm apps. | | I suspect the HN crowd's interpretation is correct that | they merely replicated the look and feel. Which makes | sense - Palm is still the best GUI I've ever been | fortunate enough to use. | CharlesW wrote: | > _It does not in any way emulate PalmOS or the PP hardware._ | | Citation? Here's IMAX Engineering confirming that it's | emulating a Palm Pilot. | | _"The original Quick Turn Reel Units operated on Palm Pilots. | In advance of the release of_ Oppenheimer _, IMAX Engineering | designed and manufactured an emulator that mimics the look and | feel of a Palm Pilot to keep it simple and familiar for IMAX | film projectionists," an IMAX spokesperson told Motherboard._ | | https://www.vice.com/en/article/88x5gb/imax-still-runs-on-pa... | ScoobleDoodle wrote: | That's not a quote from IMAX engineering. That's a quote from | an IMAX spokesperson of what engineering said. And in the | game of telephone something is lost along the way. I would | guess they meant: IMAX Engineering designed and manufactured | a system that emulates the look and feel of a Palm Pilot to | keep it simple and familiar for IMAX film projectionists. But | mixed it up in a way that means something different to us | techies. | CharlesW wrote: | If we assume simplicity/safety trumps other considerations | for a solution rolled out just before the year's biggest | release, "emulator" is probably correct and "emulates look | and feel" is a spokesperson mischaracterization. | grumpyprole wrote: | You are stated this as a fact, can you provide a reference? | xeromal wrote: | Yeah, when a child emulates their parents, they are running | their brain. | sillywalk wrote: | I wonder why they chose Palm, but then why not, and what else | would they use? Ipaq? | | It's not clear, but I assume it sends commands to the actual film | hardware, and its not doing some real-time control. | | "The software shows a handful of controls for the projectionist | to queue up the film and control the platters that feed film at | six feet per second. " [0] | | [0] https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/imax-using-20-year-old- | pa... | photoGrant wrote: | I'm making it up, but want to say it had a serial port. Also, | fun fact - they emulated instead of redesigned literally for | aesthetic reasons. | snotrockets wrote: | PalmPilots used a serial port to connect to a computer, | modem, or the infra-red module. | formerly_proven wrote: | There was also a folding keyboard that used the serial port | in the dock connector. | sbarre wrote: | I think it's a bit unfair to say "for aesthetic reasons". | | The article says it's because projectionists are familiar | with the Palm Pilot UI (because to them it's just another | tool), and rather than get them to re-learn a different UI, | they used emulation to provide the same familiar UI on newer | hardware. | | We (technology/digital experts) take for granted our level of | comfort in sussing out how a new UI works. | photoGrant wrote: | I don't say it lightly. It's trivial to remove the process | entirely. The whole point of this style of projection is | that it's as much theatre as the theatre itself. It's kept, | including the aesthetic of the Pilot device itself, purely | for nostalgic decoration and little more! | sbarre wrote: | Ok well the text of the literal article we're commenting | on seems to contradict you, but all good. | [deleted] | abruzzi wrote: | thats exactly why. It was a simple serial connection that | could connect directly with other simple embedded systems. My | local Lowes home store had a palm pilot that controlled their | security system, and it was still in use just pre-COVID for | exactly the same reason. | toast0 wrote: | They definitely did. My brother was happy to get my ibm | branded palm pilot (WorkPad) because it would interface with | serial obd-ii dongles. And the ice rink where my kiddo plays | hockey has a scoreboard that was sold with a palm pilot to | control it (someone in the beer league built replacement | software for a PC when palm pilots became hard to source) | rythie wrote: | Palm was the market leader, it would have been the obvious | choice. Palm had been around since 1996 and by 1998 had sold 30 | million devices [1]. PocketPC didn't come out until 2000, in | 2001 they had only sold 1.25 million devices, equating to less | than 10% market share [2]. From what I remember Palm Pilots | were the go to choice for PDAs, they were simple and worked. | Other devices had come and gone. It would have been odd if they | chosen something else. I doubt anyone was thinking it would be | used for 20 years, though I don't think people would have | thought it would go away at the time. | | [1] https://history-computer.com/palm-pilot-guide/ [2] | https://www.zdnet.com/article/pocket-pc-sales-1-million-and-... | zgluck wrote: | Did you you ever attempt programming anything under PalmOs | back then? It was quite fragile because of the extremely low | amount of memory on board, which forced the use of | relocatable memory handles, a bit like classic mac OS. | | https://www.fuw.edu.pl/~michalj/palmos/Memory.html | | PalmOS and it's extreme focus on low end hardware was a super | weird choice at the time. The one reason for using PalmOS was | extreme battery life, which obviously was not a factor here. | | There existed plenty better alternatives at the time. | ericcumbee wrote: | That device specifically was cheap and readily available. If | it failed you could have gone to any OfficeMax or Circuit | City and picked up a replacement. | cududa wrote: | Totally guessing here. | | iPAQ ran Windows Mobile (a derivative of windows CE). I believe | custom drivers were not well supported. | | As well, back around 2009 I looked into Windows CE for a hobby | project I thought about commercializing, and the licensing | costs were INSANE. IIRC, there was a revenue component too. | | While I don't recall all specifics, I believe using Windows | Mobile in an industrial use case it violated the EULA and you'd | need to use a proper Windows CE env. | | Total total guess here, but I wonder if they were tied to | Windows CE, still paying licensing costs, given how few "true" | imax screens there are, if the base licensing costs they'd have | locked into 20 years ago, would've made "true" imax screens | unprofitable/ have retired them at the onset of the pandemic ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-21 23:00 UTC)