Cinema Has The Least Quality

A lot of people are seeing technically higher quality – they’re seeing HDR, they’re seeing 4K – higher quality on a purely technical level on the device that’s in their pocket than what they’re seeing at their local cinema. – Ben Allan, ACS

The following excerpt is from S6 E5 of The T Stop Inn with guest Michael Cioni and host Ben Allan, ACS on 21 March 2025. We highly recommend listening to the entire show.

Michael Cioni: Yeah, you know, when I mentioned that REDducation, I used to have a slide. This is probably eight to ten years ago. I used to have a slide and it showed from left to right the quality exhibition scale. And it showed the Web on the left, in the middle was television, and on the right was projection – theatrical projection. Because at that time, a 2K DCP or a film print was the highest quality. Television broadcast was still barely HD.

There was still a lot not quite there, some countries. And then the Web was the Web. And what I told people eight years ago was slots one and three, which are the Internet and theatrical – they’re gonna transpose places. And television will remain in the center. And that’s exactly what happened. Theater today is now the lowest quality.

I’ll give you, it’s [cinema] big, but in terms of measurements, it has the lowest contrast ratio, the lowest resolution, the lowest brightness. Yeah, it has the lowest fidelity result. And the Internet has the highest fidelity result. And television is somewhere in the middle. Netflix has the highest quality.

Ben Allan: So this is an inherently difficult, uncomfortable thing, I think, for most people, certainly cinematographers and directors and colorists and editors who are deeply kind of invested in the idea of cinema being the ultimate. And yet the technical reality doesn’t back that up anymore. And it’s kind of, I feel awkward even saying those words.