HD EVENT: THE OSCARS® COME TO AMBLER IN HD
The Ambler Theater, a non-profit community theater in Ambler, Pennsylvania, held its second annual Oscars party on Sunday evening, February 27. What made this event different from the previous year was the HD feed of the Academy Awards® from local ABC station WPVI-DT.
The 1200-seat Ambler Theater, a community landmark for over 70 years, had fallen into disrepair until the operators of the Doylestown-PA-based County Theater took it over. After spending lots of $$ to create two smaller theaters (the third section awaits more funding) and outfitting them with 35mm projection equipment and a new sound system, the theater has been doing brisk business with first-run art and independent films.
The two projection booths also contain Sanyo XP-series (1024x768) LCD front projectors and are used to show DVDs and live video. When I heard about this year’s party, it occurred to me that getting an HD signal feed to both projectors wouldn’t be too difficult a task as the theater is line-of-sight to the Roxborough TV antenna farm.
Figure 1. Although you can’t
see it here, WPVI’s digital TV transmitter and
antenna were just a stone’s through from the rooftop antenna location.
The setup included one of my modified Channel Master 4308 UHF yagis atop a temporary tripod support, which I later secured to a nearby ladder with “elastic’ mast clamps (electrical tape).
The signals from this antenna were more than adequate to drive a pair of LG LST3100 ATSC set-top tuners through 100’ of RG-6 cable and a two-way splitter. Both tuners were set to output the 720p/60 signal in its native format to the Sanyo projectors, which in turn letterboxed it to 1024x576 resolution.
Figure 2a. One of the two LG LST3100
ATSC set-top receivers
sits atop the Theater 1 equipment rack.
Figure 2b. This Sanyo XGA LCD projector
lit up Theater 2
with a bright, widescreen image.
A quick tweak of the motorized zoom lenses filled the screen top to bottom and gave a nice widescreen presentation, certainly several steps up in quality from the original plan to use a 4:3 ABC feed from satellite. Both theaters took a conventional stereo analog audio feed, as the late date of this temporary installation precluded any wiring into the theater’s existing Dolby surround audio system.
Over 200 guests attended the party, which had its own ‘red carpet’ complete with TV crew and interviewers as guests arrived. A sumptuous spread of food, drink, and dessert was placed out for all to enjoy, and the theaters were jammed with movie fans. About 50 die-hards sat through until the end of the show just before midnight.
Figure 3. Guests really got into
the HD presentation of the event,
clapping for award winners and laughing along with host Chris Rock.
Figure 4. Ambler Theater member Elizabeth
Hechtman proved to be
a master interviewer, as guests flocked to her podium
to hype their favorite films and make predictions about the award winners.