IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer’s 70 mm release
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apkOZrgueLQ
"PALM PILOT MUST BE ON ALL THE TIME"
The iPhone future we have is disappointing compared to how I thought things would turn out.
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.
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.
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.
By any means necessary.
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.
I wrote a couple of apps using Quartus Forth[1] entirely on the Palm IIIx. Admittedly fairly simple ones but done entirely locally.
Yes, it's potentially less secure. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
XCode is not free, just like macOS is not free; you just pay for them when you (over)pay for your mac hardware.
This is exactly what Librem 5 is. It runs desktop an FSF-endorsed OS (Debian-based). My daily driver btw.
I find a few things are missing for such an OS to be a daily driver, but there's definitely hope, and there's definitely a place where anyone interested can contribute.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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
We definitely used Mobile in industrial use cases but WinCE was much, much easier to certify and much cheaper to keep around on old SKUs and LTS contracts.
[1] https://history-computer.com/palm-pilot-guide/ [2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/pocket-pc-sales-1-million-and-...
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.
I had a Z22 toward the end of the Palm era; back when LifeDrive was on their higher end and webOS seemed to be where the future might end up.
I loved that thing. I read tons of books on it.
It was clear that the longevity of the installations would far outstrip the longevity of the Palm pilot
If I was in the room I'd even argue for DOS. As a target it had stopped moving, was ubiquitous, not going anywhere and is in enough important places that it would even survive the demise of Microsoft if they were to collapse in the future
For all we know the palm is also sending serial commands?
"Yes, there's plenty of Windows CE and DOS palmtops. You can make a palmpilot application if you want but that should be a port, just like to BeOS.
The pure serial binary option is fine but this is infrastructure. Like the bridges that run on 5 1/4" disks, this will outlive both us and Palm if we do it right. Hell, if this is still running when our grandchildren are old and grey, this will be one of our greatest achievements as a team.
When I walk down the street and I see a masonry stamp on the sidewalk from a contracting company that installed it 100 years ago, I appreciate the fine work they did that I'm still using a century later.
Let's hope people will feel the same way about what we decide to do in this room today.
We need to at least provide documentation on the protocol.
It has to be made so competent people in the future can easily make this system accessible to the computers of the future as well. That will Not best be handled by a binary blob on a palmpilot"
I’ve put a dos application running in an emulator on an android device for a project to roll out new hardware because that took a few hours to configure rather than a year of development.
Mind you, it’s not clear how much of the control is done by the palm pilot. For all I know, it’s not much more than a screen connected to a PLC. But my gut feeling is it’s actually doing at least some of the control to be worth emulating and keeping the original software.
[1]You see this a ton now, with people reinventing the wheel using arduino, raspberry pi and spark fun parts to automate something in the small business they are employed at. Because they know these things as hobbyists, but they and anyone around were never exposed to PLCs. Soon after they leave, a newer employee will rebuild from scratch, maybe using ESP32. Overall the lifetime cost is probably much higher. Meanwhile a PLC from 1990 is fairly easy to maintain, repair or replace (including porting the software).
Arduino cost = $10 for hardware, and a few hours of amateur coding, and an expectation of a 25 year lifespan as long as no changes are needed.
PLC cost is $15k for the hardware, and $10k to hire an expert to code it, who probably forces you into a $10k/year maintenance contract.
I was thinking more of a scenario where a young engineer at least knows what a PLC is and buys $1k of stuff from automation direct. And starting from a PLC/googling about PLCs will lead you down a path of PLC cabinets, high quality power supplies, labeled wires and industrial limit switches. Vs another engineer that only knows the world of arduino and messes of wires in boxes.
In the first case, when he or she leaves and the thing breaks down, the next person can either call or pro or have a chance to connect to the PLC, do some troubleshooting with the ladder logic and figure out which sensor needs to be replaced. In the second case there’s probably no documentation and the source code is long gone so the only thing to do is scrap it and start over, probably incurring a large cost because now it’s an emergency to get the thing working again, and/or it causes lost production. I failed to mention earlier I wasn’t just talking about the cost of parts.
I’m not saying the imax solution may be so bad in the “arduino direction”, but thinking about it for me thinking about some professional experiences I’ve seen in both directions.
However, ESP32's do not (they seem to require a power cycle every few months - and in my view, that is a failure). R Pi's certainly do not (they require human attention for software updates, which IMO is also a failure - and even if you don't update them, there is almost certainly some tiny memory leak and it'll need a reboot in a year or two anyway).
And what makes you think an amateur can cobble something together in a few hours while a professional cannot?
Of course, the same autocorrect tech could be applied to Graffiti on a modern device[1] But fundamentally, making a stroke gesture to enter a character will always be slower than tapping a keyboard.
[1] and it is:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.access_com...
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWJZFQHklBg
No need for emulation when the original equipment is still working.
The PalmPilot had nice tiny form factor, probably its primary asset. A second benefit is that it had no fan. It was pretty typical for fan / heat / dust problems to bring down long-term software installations, along with the lifespan of CRT displays. Something like an IBM PC clone, if un-maintained, was good for at most a few years.
The PalmPilot hardware port was conventional RS232, so it was easy to mate it with outboard hardware. On later PP's, when they went to USB, I was able to interface them through the IR data port.
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.
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.
Yes, I meant "Nice" as in "it's nice that they went through the extra effort to release it in the rare, high quality medium available, and not a format that's worse than what I can watch at home".
> 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
70mm is also much higher resolution. Modern digital can compete with 35mm, but to my knowledge there's nothing out there that competes with 70mm yet.
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.
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.
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/2023072...
This video does a great job on visualizing the difference https://youtu.be/x-7hHNoU8do
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 probably 2.39/1, not sure)
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.
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.
I think IMAX Xenon as well as general confusion about which systems are in use at which theatres and which movies are filmed in which format has led to a ton of frustration with the brand, even though when everything is just right they can produce some really incredible experiences.
Then even for Oppenheimer there is a lot of technical troubles going on for the film theatres... The top of /r/imax has stories of people who flew cross country to see it in the best format they could and then had the projector bonk out 20 minutes in.
I think that, post-COVID, a lot of people have realized that a good home video theatre is very affordable, lots of movies are going to streaming either direct or very quickly, and that modern 4K HDR OLED TVs can be absolutely gorgeous. I don't have a lot of motivation to go to a standard theatre screening these days, but IMAX is an experience you can't get at home though so I hope it stays around.
> Meanwhile, 70 mm IMAX film releases like Oppenheimer don't come often, and when they do, only 30 theaters in the world can support them, CNBC reported, and not necessarily all of them will (Tenet's 70 mm release, for example, was limited to 11 theaters due to pandemic restrictions, CNBC said). That makes any need for upgrades and overhauls less urgent.
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.
EDIT: Forgot to factor frame rate 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.
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.
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.
He is like that in interviews, but it's worth noting that a lot of care is put into making great digital versions of his movies too. I'm not familiar with how involved he is in that process, but I would hazard a guess he's pretty involved.
The Oppenheimer site mentions this:
The Digital Cinema presentation of OPPENHEIMER has been created from 8k scans of the photochemically color-graded film elements, scaled to 4K, fine-tuned in the digital realm to maximize the color and contrast attributes of digital projectors, and dust-busted to achieve the cleanest and most stable image presentation possible. The film was finished in 4k for the highest digital resolution currently available.
I find the audio mix to be horrible in his other films. Like, worst I've ever heard from a movie with a budget like he has.
I go back enjoy my x265 vids
1 day ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36800223
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
Is “anachronism” a better fit here?
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-christopher-nolan-oppenh...
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.