IMAX demands are ridiculous, but Ars's claim that IMAX is merely used as an example of "something awesome" is dubious when high quality VR happens to provide a substitute for going to an IMAX theater.
This is why IMAX is annoyed: they understand that VR is a huge threat to their business. The reason watching a movie on a very large screen is better than watching it up-close on a small screen is that in the case of the large screen, your eyes can relax by focusing at infinity. With VR, you can effectively simulate an infinitely large screen infinitely far away.
> With VR, you can effectively simulate an infinitely large screen infinitely far away.
In theory.
But the "further" away you project the virtual movie screen, the higher the resolution of the VR headset needs to be to support it. And considering that VR screens are already an inch from your face (and thus require a high-ish resolution to just basically "work") we're talking about better-than-exist resolution screens for that form-factor.
I don't legitimately consider IMAX's business threatened by VR headsets in the next ten or so years, and even then we'll have to see how well people like wearing a VR headset on their face (which might hurt necks, feel uncomfortable, suck for glasses wearers, etc).
VR is better now than at any point in history. But people are pretending like it will definitely succeed. But Google already cancelled Google Glass (and, no, Google Cardboard isn't the same thing). This might be another "3D" flop all over again.
1) No, the resolution is a function of the solid angle taken by the screen. Yes, there needs to be an uptick in PPIs but 8000x10000 is basically a hard cap on what's necessary (corresponding to a field of view of 135x180 with a visual acuity of one arc minute). There are already prototypes doing 2000PPI so it'll be at most a few years.
2) It doesn't have to be clear that VR will succeed for it to represent a threat to IMAX's business.
It's worse than that due to aliasing effects. Remember your rods are not aligned on a strict grid so need more than one pixel per rod. And, the eye contains ~120 million rods, so ignoring motion your already at ~40k x 40k per eye. Assuming you’re not moving they screen around to follow they eye or projecting on the retina 'resolution' would cap out at around 10 billion - 1 trillion pixels per eye.
However, clearly you can get away with far less than that. But, the point where increasing resolution is not noticeable at some level is ridiculously high.
Aliasing effects as you don't get 1:1 pixel per rod alignment. Currently we use 16xAA and Sqrt(16) = 4. So, 11,000 * 4 ~= 40K. Though the density is not constant over the eye so that's probably low balling it a little bit.
I like with #1 how you start with the word "no" but then repeat back to me what I said. So we both agree, you need a higher resolution than we have today to clone IMAX in VR, and we won't get that unless VR takes off (as funding is needed to produce the screens). VR also has the weight X factor, how heavy is this prototype 2000 PPI screen? And much would one cost?
Both we agree on #1, we both said the same thing.
> It doesn't have to be clear that VR will succeed for it to represent a threat to IMAX's business.
I literally don't understand what it is you're trying to say.
If VR fails, it isn't a threat to IMAX business by definition. Something that isn't popular or doesn't exist cannot be a threat to something else.
No, you said it depends on virtual screen distance, mubard said it depends on solid angle. Mubard is correct and more relevant to the idea of "make the virtual screen larger and further away" which has an implied constraint where the solid angle is kept constant.
No one would argue that the coming gen vr devices are at the pixels per degree of IMAX, that's just wrong.
Edit: why are so many comments (particularly top level ones) down voted in this thread?
> No, you said it depends on virtual screen distance, mubard said it depends on solid angle.
No, I said it cannot do virtual screen rendering at lower resolutions. mubard agreed. The virtual screen would look terrible as you pulled back if the resolution wasn't high enough to support it (which I don't believe it is, yet).
"But the "further" away you project the virtual movie screen, the higher the resolution of the VR headset"
That is wrong, plain and simple. How far the movie screen appears in the VR headset has no impact whatsoever on pixelization and is purely a stereoscopic effect.
> How far the movie screen appears in the VR headset has no impact whatsoever on pixelization and is purely a stereoscopic effect
We're talking about rendering pre-existing video at those distances, so it absolutely DOES cause pixelation as fewer pixels are used to render the video content than its native resolution.
A lot of people calling me wrong seem to be under the odd mistaken impression that we're rendering some generic object far away, but the discussion is about display pre-existing video footage at a distance.
If the VR headset is 1080p and the video footage is 1080p, if you put it far away (i.e. it only takes up 50% or 25% of the VR headset's screen real-estate) then it obviously cannot be rendered using all 1080p of the video's original pixels (since many are in use on the VR headset's display for non-video footage) and therefore a loss of detail is unavoidable.
The only solution to this is having a higher PPI than the source video. And as you move the video footage further and further away, the PPI needs to increase to keep the video footage rendered at its native resolution.
We're talking about rendering a more distant bigger screen, so the solid angle and the number of pixel used is constant. The point obviously isn't to give the appearance of a tv-sized image placed 100 meters away, it's to render the appearance of a kilometer-sized screen 100 meters away.
And if you're wondering: "but then what's the difference"? The difference is based on a number of perceptual clues, such as
- at what distance do your eyes have to focus (this one isn't handled by current generation VR displays and will be the trickiest to get)
- vergence: what the angle between your eyes is
- parallax between the screen and other objects in your field of view
> We're talking about rendering a more distant bigger screen, so the solid angle and the number of pixel used is constant. The point obviously isn't to give the appearance of a tv-sized image placed 100 meters away, it's to render the appearance of a kilometer-sized screen 100 meters away.
If you stretch a fixed number of pixels you reduce the detail.
If you shrink a fixed number of pixels and display that at the same or lower resolution, you reduce detail.
I am genuinely puzzled as to what can create such a confusion. So to be very very clear:
If you were watching a 1000 pixels wide, 1 meter wide TV from one meter away, the level of details you perceive would be the same as if you were watching a 1000 pixels wide, 100 meter wide movie screen from 100 meters away.
The physical pixels on the movie screen would be larger, but you would perceive the same level of detail because they would touch the same number of rods on your retina.
If the two screens touch the same number of rods in your retina, how can you tell you're looking at a small screen upclose vs a large screen away? Several clues: parallax, vergence, and focus. VR can simulate two of those.
So if you were looking at the images produced by the VR set up for a large screen far away vs a small screen close by, they would occupy the same number of pixels on the VR display, the same! It would be just as detailed. But in one case, the two eyes would show you the images from two different angles, whereas in the other, the images would be much more similar. This is the only distance we're talking about, the perceptual distance created by the VR.
In all cases you're looking at the same number of pixels a few centimers away from your eyes, but perceptually it can be made to appear as if watching a large screen at a distance or a small screen upclose.
If you still don't understand, I can't help you beyond that point.
There's no such thing as "further away" with a VR headset. It's always an inch away, and the appearance of depth is just a stereoscopic trick.
> If the VR headset is 1080p and the video footage is 1080p, if you put it far away (i.e. it only takes up 50% or 25% of the VR headset's screen real-estate)
How far away it appears has nothing to do with the viewing angle, unless you also mention the virtual size of the virtual screen. A 10" screen at 1ft away will have a smaller viewing angle than a 1,000,000ft screen 500ft away.
> There's no such thing as "further away" with a VR headset. It's always an inch away, and the appearance of depth is just a stereoscopic trick.
Meaning objects get smaller, meaning that they take up less space on the resolution, meaning that you need higher PPI to render them at the same level of detail.
> How far away it appears has nothing to do with the viewing angle
Nobody is talking about viewing angles. I certainly never brought it up.
> Meaning objects get smaller, meaning that they take up less space on the resolution
Why? It's a virtual screen, why wouldn't you scale it up as well as moving it further? The sky is really far away from me, but it's pretty huge in my field of vision.
> Nobody is talking about viewing angles. I certainly never brought it up.
Which is why we are all saying you're wrong. It's entirely dependent on viewing angle and not distance. Distance and virtual screen size are how you can determine the viewing angle.
It has nothing to do with "pulling back" the screen. If the physical display resolution is not high enough, the virtual screen will look terrible regardless of how "close" it is. Even if you were trying to show the pixels on the virtual screen by rendering it very "close", it would still look terrible, because the physical pixels would have insufficient resolution to render the virtual pixels uniquely and clearly.
He didn't repeat back what you said at all. You said this:
> "But the "further" away you project the virtual movie screen, the higher the resolution of the VR headset needs to be to support it."
He's saying that's not true. He's also right. The resolution the physical VR screens need is completely unrelated to "how far" you project the virtual screen.
As things get smaller a greater PPI is needed to render the same level of detail. You don't mind losing detail, sure, you can keep the resolution the same and keep making it smaller and smaller (distance and size are one in the same in this scenario).
It ultimately boils down to "when detail gets smaller than a single pixel, it is lost." So the smaller the pixel the more detail you can render.
To be honest if you're watching non-HD resolution content, current generation VR headsets at the high end might be able to project it across the room and maintain detail. But HD? S-HD? IMAX? Meh, we aren't there yet.
And I agree with another comment that there is a "cap" on PPI. Once you reach it the human eye becomes the limitation, not the screen(s).
> As things get smaller a greater PPI is needed to render the same level of detail.
It really doesn't work that way. If your VR display is too low-resolution to convincingly render a virtual display 15 feet away, then it's too low-resolution to convincingly render the virtual display 15 inches away. Your physical display has the same resolution regardless of where the virtual screen is, and if it lacks sufficient resolution to render an object convincingly, it just cannot do it regardless of how distantly the object is rendered. To put it another way, your display has the ability to render a certain amount of detail, full stop. Where a virtual object is rendered is irrelevant.
Try this. Sit close to your monitor, close enough that text isn't crisp enough. Now zoom your display (Ctrl+'+' in most browsers), which is equivalent to bringing a virtual display closer. Note that the text still isn't crisp. If you could see the pixelation before, you can still see it. Moving the virtual display closer does nothing, because you aren't adding more resolution to the physical display.
> To put it another way, your display has the ability to render a certain amount of detail, full stop. Where a virtual object is rendered is irrelevant.
But we're talking about a virtual display displaying pre-existing content (e.g. video footage). We aren't talking about the object itself.
If it is one foot from you in virtual space, each pixel of video footage might be mapped 1:1 into each pixel of the VR headset's screen resolution. Therefore the loss of detail is 0%. Every pixel of video detail is transposed onto the display in the VR headset.
If the virtual object is further way (e.g. six feet) it takes up a smaller percentage of the VR headset's display, and therefore fewer physical pixels on the VR headset's display are used to render it. So now instead of 1:1 you might be 1:4, and you're seeing 25% of the video's original detail actually rendered on the VR headset's display.
> Try this. Sit close to your monitor, close enough that text isn't crisp enough. Now zoom your display (Ctrl+'+' in most browsers), which is equivalent to bringing a virtual display closer. Note that the text still isn't crisp. If you could see the pixelation before, you can still see it. Moving the virtual display closer does nothing, because you aren't adding more resolution to the physical display.
Your analogy is backwards and doesn't apply.
But sticking to that same analogy, go get 1080p resolution image. View it on a 1080p display. You're seeing 1:1 (100%) of the detail within the image (all of it). Now zoom out, and again, and again. Detail has been lost. First a little, then a lot, and as you go too far back substantial amounts have been. This is because a 1080p image on a 1080p display can only display 100% of the detail when it is viewed at 100%. As the image is zoomed (or further away in the VR headset's case) it is not possible to continue to consume all of the details as the pixels don't physically exist to display it.
So solve this problem you need a higher resolution than the source material, and it gets higher and higher the more you zoom. If you viewed a 1080p image on a 8640p display, you could zoom out significantly with absolutely no loss of detail, because the pixel density is such that it can still render every dot within the image.
So in order for a VR headset to be able to render stuff far away with no loss of detail the resolution of the headset has to be much higher than the source video. The further away the video gets, the higher the resolution. Again, that is if you want absolutely no loss of detail (in the real world, some loss of detail is acceptable).
In order to play back a 1080p video on a 1080p VR headset, the video either needs to be right in front of the viewer (at 1:1), you'll have to accept loss of detail when moving it further away, or you'll need a higher resolution on the VR headset than the source video (e.g. 4x more pixels on the headset than the source video, when it only takes up 1/4th of the VR headset's display space).
If the virtual display-video is only 1cm squared on each of the VR headset's displays, then that 1cm needs to have the same pixels as 1080p to display 1080p video with no loss of detail. It is just physics. As you move things further away in virtual reality they get rendered by fewer pixels on the real-world VR headset displays, and therefore loss of detail is unavoidable. You can only counteract this with higher PPI than the source video (or just accepting the loss of detail).
> If it is one foot from you in virtual space, each pixel of video footage might be mapped 1:1 into each pixel of the VR headset's screen resolution.
If you can actually map pixels 1:1, you aren't in a virtual space anyway. Accomplishing this 1:1 mapping means locking the view into a single position. If you allow me to look around, then as soon as I turn my head, the angle skews and you're not mapping 1:1 any more.
> So now instead of 1:1 you might be 1:4, and you're seeing 25% of the video's original detail actually rendered on the VR headset's display.
If 1:1 looks good, then 1:4 rendered 4 times as far away looks exactly as good. If you can't see the pixels at 1:1 then you can't see the lost detail at 1:4. If you could see the lost detail at 1:4, it would mean the 1:1 image looks pixelated. Again, your physical display doesn't care about how far away something is rendered. It has a fixed resolution, and if it's too low to be convincing, it's too low to be convincing at any rendered distance.
Go play an N64 game (or find some screenshots). You'll see that everything in the foreground is pretty rough looking. Everything in the background is equally rough looking, because rendered distance doesn't change the display resolution.
> Now zoom out, and again, and again. Detail has been lost. First a little, then a lot, and as you go too far back substantial amounts have been.
This doesn't matter. If it looks good at 1:1, then it will look good at 1:4. If it doesn't look good at 1:4, it didn't look good at 1:1. The lost detail is irrelevant.
> In order to play back a 1080p video on a 1080p VR headset...
I'm pretty sure you just can't do this convincingly, no matter the "zoom" level. If you rendered the video taking the entire display, then it would unpleasantly fill your entire vision and it wouldn't be VR and it would look terrible anyway.
> that 1cm needs to have the same pixels as 1080p to display 1080p video with no loss of detail
You're stuck on the idea that you need 1:1 pixels. You don't. You need a display with sufficient resolution to be convincing to your eyes. Once you have that, you can render your virtual 1080p image at any distance that would work in the real world and not care about how pixels are mapping.
No, it does not create "consumer confusion". Consumer confusion means consumers might be lead to think Product A, with a far to similar a name to Product B, literally is Product B. It's not at all about relative value comparison like "as good as" or "better than". You can put competitor products' names on your package, in your advertising, to make comparisons. Facebook could make ads selling themselves as "Facebook has 200% more users than G+", and Google cannot make a trademark infringement complaint, because it cannot possibly be interpreted by a "reasonable" consumer to say "Facebook is provided by Google".
There is no way to interpret what was said to say "SteamVR is the same thing as IMAX, from the same people, etc."
If someone (such as OP) believes that SteamVR can be a competitive experience with IMAX, then they can believe it can be certified or licensed by IMAX. Thus consumer confusion is possible here.
And there's a difference in saying "Twice the resolution of IMAX!" (for example) and saying "It's like having an IMAX theater in your house." Those aren't the same kinds of statements.
>If someone (such as OP) believes that SteamVR can be a competitive experience with IMAX, then they can believe it can be certified or licensed by IMAX.
This is a different issue -- of course IMAX /could/ license it; it's possible. The issue is whether people believe IMAX /has/ licensed it. This may be your point, but it's not clear to me.
If I say "this car is as good as a BMW", do you think I'm saying that the car is a BMW? If I say "the guitar my uncle made plays as smoothly as a Les Paul", do you think I'm saying I have Les Paul's signature on the headstock?
I think the comparisons and analogies are understood as such; I doubt the average consumer thinks the SteamVR has anything to do with IMAX.
Neither of your examples lead to consumer confusion. No one is confusing a head-mounted VR display with a 35 foot movie screen.
Believing that a VR solution could be certified/licensed by IMAX is not consumer confusion, that's accurate belief. IMAX could certify a VR solution as "The IMAX Experience" if they wanted to. But hell, Harley-Davidson could certify a VR solution as "The Open Road Experience" [1], too. Still no one is going to think a headset is a motorcycle.
[1] I made this up. I'm pretty sure Harley-Davidson does not use this as a motto/slogan/trademark/whatever.
The value of the IMAX trademark is that it's a set of standards for image projection, which is how it's being used in the quote. As if the product, which is concerned with image projection, is up to those standards.
Harley-Davidson, to my knowledge, isn't involved in image projection standards.
Say a lamp which isn't UL certified had a quote "It's like having a UL certified lamp in your house!" Would that seem ok? Or maybe questionable?
> The value of the IMAX trademark is that it's a set of standards for image projection, which is how it's being used in the quote
What article did you read? The quote most certainly did not refer to IMAX as a "set of standards for image projection". Here's the quote again:
> "The jump up in tech between playing a normal video game and playing with Kinect was X. The jump between a regular game and playing a room scale VR experience is X times 100. It’s like saying, 'I have an IMAX theater in my house.' It’s so much better that we can get away with a cumbersome setup."
There's nothing here about standards for image projection. The quote doesn't even compare the visual quality of SteamVR to IMAX. It says the jump in experience from a regular game to "room scale VR" is like the jump of putting an IMAX theater in your house. The quote is specifically about the huge improvement in the experience. You can tell because he literally referred to the "experience".
And none of this matters, because even if he had actually been saying that SteamVR looks like an IMAX screen, that would still not create consumer confusion. Comparing products' quality is a reasonable thing and we do it all the time without creating confusion. Someone reviewing a Samsung LCD could say that it looks as good as their Panasonic plasma, and this is a reasonable and probably useful comparison to make. It wouldn't confuse any reasonable person into believing that Panasonic was manufacturing, certifying, or licensing Samsung displays (or vice versa).
> Say a lamp which isn't UL certified had a quote "It's like having a UL certified lamp in your house!" Would that seem ok? Or maybe questionable?
It seems like a stupid thing to say because the statement doesn't make a lot of sense. Saying "It's like having a UL certified lamp in your house!" is kind of like saying "It's like having a car that won't kill you in a crash!" It reads like sarcasm. No one would make this comparison in a serious way.
But no, I don't think it creates any kind of consumer confusion.
"The jump up in tech between playing a normal video game and playing with Kinect was X. The jump between a regular game and playing a room scale VR experience is X times 100. It’s like saying, 'I have an IMAX theater in my house.' It’s so much better that we can get away with a cumbersome setup."
You can't see how that quote implies it's up to IMAX standards? Why even use the IMAX name if not to invoke the idea that it's up to their standards?
It's the experience jump. (These are literal words from the quote.) He could have said the improvement is like driving a McLaren P1 to work. It wouldn't mean it's literally supposed to be the same as driving a McLaren.
You're completely missing the point anyway. You keep debating your ridiculous interpretation of the quote and it doesn't matter because even if your interpretation of the quote were correct, there would be no confusion created. Here, I'll say the thing you're pretending the quote says:
"SteamVR looks exactly like an IMAX screen"
No one will read that and think IMAX is selling, licensing, creating, or certifying SteamVR, because there's nothing in there that says that. Nor will anyone thing that SteamVR and IMAX are the same thing, because if they were the same thing, you wouldn't be comparing them.
> If someone (such as OP) believes that SteamVR can be a competitive experience with IMAX, then they can believe it can be certified or licensed by IMAX. Thus consumer confusion is possible here.
The test isn't whether someone can believe it, in the sense that it isn't physically impossible that at least one person could believe it. Thankfully. It's, according to the article, whether there's a likelyhood of confusion. I.e. whether an average, reasonably prudent consumer would be likely to be confused.
> If someone (such as OP) believes that SteamVR can be a competitive experience with IMAX, then they can believe it can be certified or licensed by IMAX. Thus consumer confusion is possible here.
I think more relevant is that if it is a competing experience, then the comparison -- especially in the context of promoting SteamVR by someone with a vested interest (including someone intending to sell software for the SteamVR platform) -- raises issues of trademark dilution and/or misappropriation even in the absence of the specific kind of consumer confusion that would be necessary for trademark infringement.
"Like" is not the same as "is". For a consumer to be confused, it would be no fault of the speaker, because the speaker expressed themselves correctly. Your argument is that users could misinterpret what is said, willfully ignore the meaning of words. By that standard, I could say "my product has nothing to do with IMAX" and someone could choose to ignore it and say "he said IMAX! It must be IMAX." No court is going to apply such a standard, because it is ludicrous.
You're missing the point, which is that you can't just make up an opinion about whether something causes consumer confusion. It's a legal term that gets interpreted in a particular way.
I try not to downvote people for mere opinions that differ from mine, but I will downvote people whose posts are just uninformed or simply wrong.
(I didn't downvote here, because I'm not super familiar with how the courts interpret consumer confusion, but I suspect that the parent is just wrong about the term, and it's not just a matter of opinion).
Has it? The quoted article had an interview with a developer where the developer mentioned IMAX. Not the article, but a guy with quotes around it. How does that lead to any consumer confusion at all?
At least HN doesn't seem to be perpetuating the Reddit hypocrisy about voting for quality and not popularity, but the problem remains, voting popular opinions up and unpopular ones down only serves to turn the place into an echo chamber. Though mostly it's annoying to have to select the text to be able to read it as it gets lighter and lighter.
Good idea. But what I should do is write a script that in addition to that puts and indicator so I know which posts the HN readership has decided my feeble little mind needs to be spared from lest I too start having unpopular opinions.
Which is too late by now anyway, since I have tons of them.
I've obviously given up caring about downvotes here or I wouldn't have said anything at all on this story.
I don't understand why the mods think discouraging people from expressing unpopular opinions is desirable. It puzzles me to the extent that I wonder if I misunderstand the purpose of having comments at all. But it's how it is.
The problem isn't that your opinion is unpopular. The problem is that you're misrepresenting your opinion in terms of a legal concept. The term "confusion" has specific meaning in trademark law, which you seem to resist acknowledging. Even if you have a point, you're going to frustrate others by being thick-headed.
See dragonwriter's comment for a good concise clarification.
Honestly, we're all just talking past each other. I knew it would be hopeless to get the idea across in this environment of jump all over the stupid thing of the day, but I wanted to try anyway.
As far as the legal concept goes, it should be clear that I'm just interpreting what IMAX's general counsel seems to believe. Whether you agree with her or not, I wouldn't say she's uninformed on the topic.
It's ironic that in an article documenting attempted censorship, I have to squint to read this legitimate comment because people think that disagreeing with someone gives them the right to censor them.
I take personal issue with the fading of downvoted comments.
1) The mechanic silences an opinion by making it harder to read/requiring highlighting to read
2) Swaying public opinion of a comment without even reading it. "Oh, it's already almost faded out entirely. It's probably a terrible post that I should just downvote without actually reading." (E: I understand HN requires you to "spend" a karma to downvote something. This doesn't prevent people from using their karma in this manner when they have 1,000's)
3) Allows self-validation of "others agree with me, because this comment has been downvoted and I disagree with this comment", which is fallacious reasoning. Popular/majority opinion can be wrong and patting yourself on the back for having other people agree with you can be detrimental. Self-validation without critically thinking about your opponents arguments is an injustice to them.
I have a rule in Stylish to set "font" to #333 so that all comments appear the same for me. Unless someone mentions "why is this downvoted", I'm completely unaware of any comments being downvoted. I find this leads to a better experience on HN.
Note: For #3 I use "you/yourself" in a "third party not necessarily you 'you'" way.
One interesting recent change is that you won't see your own downvoted comments as greyed out. You used to, but I think someone said it was offputting (which it kinda is) and dang & company changed it.
Except it relies on a false fact, that this has anything to do with the legal concept of "consumer confusion". It's not just an opinion, it's actively promoting falsehoods.
I can only imagine the precious 5 seconds of thought given to the decision to respond to Ars by the IMAX Chief Admin Officer:
"Hmm, we know we have nothing to stand on here, but if we politely ask Ars to remove references to IMAX and they do, matter ends there. If Ars doesn't comply, we just lost 5 minutes of drafting this pointless letter. Nothing really to lose."
Hits send.
The irony? IMAX is now paying the real cost of that poor decision. Bad publicity and worse - the revelation that they are insecure about and feel threatened by emergent technologies. Talk about pissing on your own product.
I was wondering, if a legal trick can be used to limit these C&D letters that have no merit. Effectively, the lawyer on the other side of the letter is making a legal claim, that the law says what you are doing is wrong. If that claim is clearly baseless, then shouldn't the their lawyer be held on malpractice charges? After all, they are licensed and certified experts, and have a duty to not mislead the public.
This strategy works as long as the other party doesn't call your bluff. Which is a very large number of instances compared to the number of instances where the other party decides to tell you to sue or get lost.
It's kind of amusing if you call a legal bluff, the other party now has two bad choices: either they will have to go away quietly and the issue will remain or they have to actually sue and will most likely lose (that's never guaranteed).
The real downside is not that these lawyers make dubious or baseless legal claims (it's up to you to respond or take them serious or not), the problem is that most people will not feel qualified to make that call and so will either comply or run up some legal expenses.
So for small entities (private individuals for instance) folding is usually the only option. In this case Ars was a pretty dumb target of such a C&D, they're part of the media and will of course use it to maximum effect.
That's where it would be nice to be able to counter sue for legal expenses, under the theory that the C&D lawyer is abusing his position as an officer of the court in writing a baseless C&D letter (thereby causing the target to have to hire a lawyer to review the issue). So even if this wouldn't happen that often, it would be something they would have to consider prior to writing a letter with baseless claims.
Of course, being lawyers, they would probably put in some fine print that states that no legal threat is implied, or something like that.
I completely agree - but i think there is another dynamic at work here:
Companies can loose their trademark if the term becomes generic, and one way to defend against that in court is to show a history of defending the mark (I'm not lawyer but that's my simplistic explanation) this is a great article explaining the phenomena around derby pie
If IMAX's attorneys actually think nominative use in an article risks them losing the trademark, they need to fire their attorney. In no way is Ars using the IMAX mark to refer to a generic large screen (its an attributed quote, not an editorial comment) and there's no risk of confusion.
>Companies can loose their trademark if the term becomes generic
This is ridiculous on its face. Its not like some competitor made an IMAXy Projector. This was a quote in a press article. This is a speech issue that has nothing to do with dilution, which is obvious if you bothered to read the article where Mary Ruby assaults ars staff with a weird rant about how VR cant compete with IMAX.
Frankly, the fact that trademark abusing corporations have people repeating their bullshit is scary.
Not necessarily, before this article I did not know that the range of screen sizes considered IMAX™, was so large. That's a pretty damning detail Ars slipped in there and will definitely make me think twice when going to the movies.
It's a huge problem that people that people haven't understood this. For me, it's akin to Apple back in the early days, and to some extent right now, enforcing low bit rate standards on iTunes. They're hinging on enough people not being educated or interested enough to protest. Just because it is possible to get away with this kind of, it really frustrates me because it lowers the standard for the creation and display of art. You may not notice an immediate difference, but you definitely would if they're side by side.
As for the new IMAX screens, not only is it the size of the screen, but the quality of the projector and speaker setup not to mention the actual proportion of the screen as well.
There are only a handful of "true original" IMAX screens. I'm not hating on their brand, I know they've needed to dilute to actually not go bankrupt, but it's important to note that there is a legitimate difference between "large format" (that's the term that's replacing IMAX for legalities sake and so IMAX competitors can be introduced and undercut IMAX licensing fees) and IMAX.
To be totally honest, they're in a lot of trouble as a company and they desperately need to find a way to save their product before competitors like Regals "RPX Experience" ruin them.
Hehe. I swear I had plans for Mad Max on IMAX this weekend way before hearing about this story. Good publicity? So, I will resist buying the super-sized popcorn as my attempt to protest.
I went to an IMAX™®℠℗(U.S. Patent 3,494,524) theatre once.
Having to recline and look up at the screen was annoying, and the size was gratuitous with most of it wasted to peripheral vision. That's definitely not something I'd want in my living room.
> and the size was gratuitous with most of it wasted to peripheral vision
From what I understand, movies shot specifically for IMAX are meant to be framed something like a stage play, with your eyes wandering around the screen rather than staying fixed near the center.
Of course, that presumes the movie was made for it (or had a cut framed specifically for it), rather than just being "normal theatrical cut but bigger".
A proper large format 15/70 IMAX theater is definitely worth it given you arrive early to get the better seats - especially for 3D films where the 3D glasses tend to make the screen look smaller.
Sadly, the IMAX CEO says screen size does not matter [1] and thus the majority of them are being replaced by smaller digital screens in multiplexes. lfexaminer.com has a great list of IMAX theaters and their formats [2].
Regarding the 3D experience, Real3D's circular polarization is significantly better than IMAX's more traditional polarization filters. The large screen format serves well for immersion, but the employed 3D tech detracts from the overall experience so much that I'd rather watch the smaller format screens.
In my city, we have a cinema that has a 18m by 8m screen and uses 4K projectors with reald 3D. It’s still an amazing quality, and faaar cheaper than IMAX. (About 3 times cheaper). And they clean the room after every showing, so the floor, although carpet, is always clean, you get reserved seats, and the popcorn is fresh.
IMAX, especially as current IMAX Digital theaters have similar screen sizes and also only 2.8K (two 2K projectors on the same screen), just isn’t really worth it anymore.
Likewise. It was more like if I wanted to watch the whole movie, I had to pan my head constantly through an arc.
It's a horrible experience. You can buy a horribly cheap TV, a 5.1 sound system and plop it in your living room and get a better experience. Getting the sound right takes a long time, but my end conclusion was that suspending bunch of cardboard everywhere seemed to negate the poor acoustics of the room.
I personally used those cheap canvas tarps you get to put down while painting. You can paint them, they're huge for the money, and they prevent weird echos in my cavern of a living room.
> Having to recline and look up at the screen was annoying, and the size was gratuitous with most of it wasted to peripheral vision.
The first feature is a function of sitting to close to the screen, and isn't specific to IMAX format. The second is by design -- a major point of large-format cinema screens like IMAX is to provide a more immersive experience by making it so that, in shots where there is a strong central focus, even the non-focal parts of your vision field are occupied by the movie screen rather than (usually, just black) background from the theater, and, second, enabling shots that are composed so as to invite audience members to not just focus near center, but to look around the screen (this second feature isn't taken advantage of in films not designed for large-format screens, but major films now generally are made in a large-format aware manner.)
So? I imagine many sites have been on the receiving end of this yet dont have the political capital that Ars has? How the hell is this level of bullying accepted? Trademarks aren't keys to censoring others. Its absurd that this even happened. Did they change their policy? Fire Mary Ruby? Do anything? Of course not. Empty apologies are useless.
IMAX has bigger problems. They're diluting their brand by building "IMAX-lite" theaters with smaller screens.[1] Reviews are negative: "Underwhelming, overpriced: IMAX screens get smaller, prices stay the same"[2] Early IMAX digital projection was only "2K" (1080p, or regular HDTV), and now they have 4K projectors. This is still lower than their old 70mm film system, and not much better than what you can buy at Costco.
I see what you did there. However, I think they do see the big picture. VR is a huge threat to their marketshare; if relatively small screens and a couple nice lenses can give an experience people find comparable, it's going to be a lot harder to sell their gear at their current price points. The fact that VR's getting to the point where some people are finding it comparable to the "IMAX Experience" is showing that in a generation or two, it will be there for the majority of people.
No, no... IMAX are developing a competing VR system and only want to drive people to adopt VR too early, so they can swoop in and grab the already cultivated market with their product, of course.
It's worth noting IMAX does in fact have a trademark in the relevant fields -
": Consumer electronic products, namely, headphones, earphones, cables, camcorders, DVD players and stereos; home theater systems comprised of a projector system, a surround sound system, a screen, media servers and control devices; and gaming equipment, namely, video game machines for use with televisions and computers; video game controllers; computer software for playing video games and for accessing and browsing global computer and communications networks; video game programs downloadable from global computer networks and global communications networks; and user manuals for all of the aforementioned software and devices sold as a unit therewith; devices used to facilitate interactive game play over computer networks; television and video converters; speakers, loudspeakers systems"
I understand that IMAX's demands look silly but if we accept that "trademark erosion"[1] is a real phenomenon, the question is: What forms of human communication are exempt from that?
In other words, no matter how silly and innocent the passing reference to IMAX is, is it possible that IMAX lawyers must pursue those genericized uses even though those lawyers (and the client IMAX itself) knows it generates negative publicity?
A natural human tendency is to speak with similes & metaphors. "Yosemite Valley is like a jacked up IMAX for nature lovers" or "my budding friend the film student with his overuse of lens flares thinks he's the second coming of J.J. Abrahams".
The tension between trademark enforcements and natural human tendencies to color conversations with innocuous references to pop culture creates silly-looking "cease & desist" letters.
Even presuming we accept "trademark erosion" as a thing, it's still irrelevant here: the author wasn't using a trademark to describe a generic good (i.e., they didn't mean "a 'large-format' movie theatre with surround sound"), they were literally referring to the product (or, rather, one of the confusingly different products) traded under the "IMAX" mark (i.e., they meant, literally, AN IMAX THEATRE).
> I think the quotee (not the article author, mind you) was, albeit indirectly, comparing the VR product to IMAX.
Yes, everyone agrees that they were refering to IMAX. It is also legal for them to do so (and for Ars to publish this opinion) without seeking permission from IMAX first. Some people on HN are surprisingly disagreeing with this (or at least condoning IMAX's response)
Both parties are guilty here. Ars should put at the bottom of its article "IMAX is a trademark of <whatever the entity that owns it>" which acknowledges the IMAX trademark. And IMAX's lawyers should be less obtuse in their writing when there's such a simple solution.
Also, the law shouldn't be that trivial uses of the mark like this work to erode it, but the law is not precise on the issue so mark holders tend to have to be verzealous in showing their defense of the mark.
This letter is just a lett-er not worth the non-paper it's not-written on.
The whole purpose of the letter is to be able to show diligence in court if the mark is threatened... not to attempt to get Ars to do anything different.
Are should know that too... but I guess they feel this is good link bait. (personally I think it adds tarnish to Ars's reputation, by making them look like rubes.)
>Both parties are guilty here. Ars should put at the bottom of its article "IMAX is a trademark of <whatever the entity that owns it>" which acknowledges the IMAX trademark.
No, this is absolute bunk. There is no reason for this. At least in the US this is protected by Nominative Use, which guarantees that "a person may use the trademark of another as a reference to describe the other product, or to compare it to their own."
Further: "Nominative use does not require that ownership of the trademark be acknowledged, for example by use of a sentence such as "UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group"."
Do AMD, Intel, Nvidia, HP, Lenovo, Ford, Honda, and so on send a cease and desist letter to every publication that mentions them in passing during a review of a similar product? Product comparisons are inevitable. If I review, say, a Sony Smartwatch, you bet your ass I'm going to compare it to a Pebble and an Apple Watch, otherwise there's no real frame of reference.
Do AMD, Intel, Nvidia, HP, Lenovo, Ford, Honda, and so on send a cease and desist letter to every publication ...
I suppose they don't and I'm not disagreeing with you on that.
The IMAX situation may be different in that their trademark is very catchy sounding (2 syllables "eye"-"macks") and is getting pulled (by innocent human tendencies) into a lot of conversations unrelated to IMAX(tm) theaters. When people use words like "AMD" and "Honda", it doesn't seem to erode their trademark. But for some reason with "IMAX", and "google", and "kleenex", it does. In other words, most people haven't genericized "Honda" to the point of saying "I'm going to Honda my but to the grocery store."
Are the cultural references to "IMAX" trending towards trademark desctruction such as "kleenex" and "escalator"[1] or are the usages actually trademark preserving such as "AMD" and "Honda"?
I think that's a bit of a stretch. When I hear "Honda", I think of cars. When I hear "Ford", I also think of cars. When I hear "IMAX", I think of theaters. When I hear "SteamVR", I think of computer games and virtual reality. If anything, IMAX has even less footing than the other companies I mentioned.
Now, that's just me, but I can imagine it being similar for most people.
But who is calling just any theater "IMAX"? If I say to my wife, "hey let's go to the IMAX", she's going to ask me why we would pay that much when we can just go to the theater instead. If there's any dilution of the IMAX brand going on, it's by IMAX themselves by constantly lowering their standards.
Something else you have to consider is intent. It doesn't seem that Ars intended to dilute IMAX's brand by publishing a quote, and it doesn't seem to be the intent of the person quoted either. It was simply a frame of reference.
> IMAX doesn't want people calling any large format theater IMAX
Here's the thing: Nobody did that in the Ars article. A piece of VR tech was casually compared to the IMAX experience by someone being interviewed by Ars.
I'm not saying any theater but I have noticed that some visitors to Epcot refer to the Canada and China 360-degree movies as "IMAX". The actual designation is "CircleVision 360". But people don't remember that 7-syllable trademark. The first word that comes to the tip of their tongue is "IMAX" because that word has become a placeholder for "any immersive large screen experience".
>Something else you have to consider is intent.
Yes, but society's casual use of "Escalator" to "escalator" and "Kleenex" to "kleenex" didn't have any kind of mastermind conspiracy to dilute the trademark. It just happened. I'm guessing most trademarks erode without malicious intent.
Could Otis Escalator and Kleenex lawyers have done anything to stop the trademark erosion?
Kleenex could have rebranded as Snot Rag. "Hand me a Snot Rag?, I need to clean my glasses."
The difference is that Kleenex facial tissues and Otis Escalators (moving staircases?) are unique terms that have no other well known counterparts or alternative generic terms. It is unlikely that IMAX is going to replace the generic term movie theater, and even less likely that the general public is going to distinguish between movie theater and large screen format movie theater -- it's just a bigger screen for what is otherwise the same.
Do people make a distinction between THX and Dolby Digital sound systems in theaters and say let's go see something at the THX or Dolby Digital? That doesn't happen because those technologies only contribute to the experience, they don't define it as something unique.
I still think IMAX is barking up the wrong tree. If anything they should have sent the letter to the person who made the comparison, not Ars who simply quoted the person. Though that would be wrong as well, it would be slightly less wrong than attacking a news site for reporting the news.
> IMAX doesn't want people calling any large format theater IMAX.
Of course they don't. But that doesn't give them legal ground to send out C&Ds when people do. They're allowed to protect their trademark in specific, legally defined situations. This isn't one of them, no matter how much IMAX wishes it were so.
> > IMAX doesn't want people calling any large format theater IMAX.
Also, there is no evidence that this is what happened here! The developer quoted by Ars might/might not have literally been referring to IMAX(tm). Only he knows for sure. This is not what the lawyer was whining about either - they were claiming that Ars should have sought permission from IMAX before using the trademarked term in the article. Which is bullshit.
I don't understand how people can condone that - it's only a stones-throw away from a scenario where Google/Apple sues you for using their trademark without permission in your negative comment about one of their products.
When most people think of fascial tissue, they're probably recalling some medical terminology. People thinking of facial tissue may or may not think of Kleenex.
According to that wikipedia article, Otis lost the 'escalator' trademark because of the way they themselves had generically used the term, not just because of the way others used it. Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark#Avoiding_gen... gives several suggestions on avoiding genercization that don't involve legal threats.
Real-life examples include "give me a kleenex" when you just want any random facial tissue, "give me a coke" when you're just asking for any soft drink (this use is common in some places, while in other places it means only the actual Coca-Cola product), or "I xeroxed this document" when you have no idea of the actual brand of the copier.
Just using the trademark as a comparison doesn't do it, as far as I understand it.
This is actually still an example of trademark erosion, even if referring to an actual IMAX theater. This is using the brand to refer to the abstract thing. It's not an IMAX. It's an IMAX theater.
For a relevant example, look at Google's guidance to journalists. They say not to write "I googled X", but "I searched for X using Google". Using "google" as the verb, even when literally referring to Google, erodes the brand, because it conflates the brand with the thing.
I'm not sure what you're referring to as "the post". If you're referring to the article, my comment wasn't addressing that at all. My comment was a response only to mikeash's comment. He gave an incomplete description of trademark erosion and I thought it was worth clarifying. Using "IMAX" to refer to a non-IMAX screen would be trademark erosion. Using "IMAX" by itself to refer to an IMAX screen is still trademark erosion. Just as "googling" is an erosion of the Google trademark, even when referring to Google's searching service.
You see the impact of this sort of brand erosion with the iPad. The iPad dominates the tablet space, so the constant references to iPads have started to genericize the term to the point that other tablets are often called iPads (which erodes the brand to a greater extent). Contrarily, BMW for example gets away with this because BMWs do not dominate the market, so there is little danger of "BMW" becoming synonymous with the car. IMAX dominates its market so the brand is quite in danger of becoming a synonym for a giant screen. The smaller erosions are therefore a bigger concern.
No, the tension is between greedy corporate interests and the natural human tendency to create shared culture out of our shared experiences.
This is so, so far outside of the rights of trademark that it is just plain abusive. This sort of behavior comes about not from attempting to protect ones brand from unfair usage, but from thinking one's moneyed influence allows them to do whatever they want.
No, that's BS. The complaint letter was about an actual comparison to IMAX. This was obviously not an infringing use, and the letter is the sort of gross overreach that erodes respect for trademark law as a whole.
Just because you can philosophically conceive of a stretch by which an egregious abuse might possibly not be one, doesn't mean you're helping at all.
Well the reality is, many people are bad at their job. But then there's the select slice of those who are also embracing their own hubris in the process and thoroughly expect they won't be called out on it.
the film industry standards are just weird.. Why are there a zillion privately owned standards? IMAX, THX, DTS (HD, X etc), Dolby (Cinema, Digital Cinema, Atmos etc)
yet another backwards Canadian company; IMAX shouldn't let their lawyers write up any letters or emails or anything and should stick to what they do best.
IMAX - Isn't that the name of the inflatable robot/healthcare worker/superhero in that one movie? I love that guy. His curved screen is so large, has great high definition and amazing audio quality. I can't wait to watch a movie on him again!
I'm guessing that this was just the sort of typical letter that every company with an established brand sends to media whenever they use their trademark in a more generalized context.
It's as if Ars had said "we googled up their website" while showing a picture of them using Bing, or if they had said "We enjoyed some Coke after the demo" and had a picture of them holding a can of Pepsi.
I'm not saying that this letter isn't ridiculous, but just realize what the job of the internal lawyer is at IMAX: Her job is to defend all mainstream attempts to use their brand name out of context, she doesn't seriously expect arstechnica to comply- It's just that people in the past have lost rights to trademarks they failed to defend, so she is pretty much obligated to write these silly letters.
>It's as if Ars had said "we googled up their website" while showing a picture of them using Bing, or if they had said "We enjoyed some Coke after the demo" and had a picture of them holding a can of Pepsi.
No, it's not that at all. Ars was making a comparison to actual IMAX, not using it as a generic.
That’s possible. It’s also possible that this is a deliberate media campaign to try and draw attention away from pervasive rumors that IMAX screen cause #buttcancer
She is compelled to defend their trademark in order that they can profit off it. Due to her poor judgement, their brand has suffered a miniscule but very real hit.
I'd say that's attempting to do hey job, overreaching, and causing more harm than if she had done nothing.
I find it peculiar that they would call this "censorship", especially when the original article's author, Sam Machkovech, has been one of the article writers who has been beating the drum the loudest in favor of censorship in recent months. I guess it's somehow different when it happens to internet bloggers rather than internet comment authors.
I assumed it was either that or, given his username, all of the trolls whining about Reddit declining to give them a completely unrestricted forum for abuse:
On the one hand, a factual recitation of a third-party direct quote in a bona-fide journalistic piece almost certainly isn't a trademark violation.
On the other hand, much of the tech press is coordinated, spoonfed promotional material for the industry, where such a thing, even in a quoted endorsement, is arguably trading on the mark in a way which, absent a license, is a violation, and there are strong legal incentives for trademark holders to assume the worst of an unauthorized use without concrete evidence to the contrary.
Ars may have been in the right initially, but I think that the current article calling IMAX's response an absurd attemp at censorship is, at best, hyperbolic and wilfully blind to the realities around trademarks.
It sounds like what you're saying is, because press releases exist, comparing one company's product to another's by name in a news feature is potentially infringing. Do you actually think that position has a wooden leg to stand on? I don't see how you could possibly read a comparison like this — even if made outside of quotes — as anything but descriptive of IMAX's actual product. I don't think a normal consumer would likely be confused.
> It sounds like what you're saying is, because press releases exist, comparing one company's product to another's by name in a news feature is potentially infringing.
No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a big difference between press releases existing and presented-as-journalistic pieces being essentially paid promotional material for vendors.
> Do you actually think that position has a wooden leg to stand on?
No, which is why I didn't make it.
> I don't see how you could possibly read a comparison like this — even if made outside of quotes — as anything but descriptive of IMAX's actual product.
I don't see how you could read it as descriptive of IMAX's actual product, since there is no actual description of IMAX's product being made. Its clearly a nominative reference; its clearly a statement saying another product is good because its like IMAX's product.
> I don't think a normal consumer would likely be confused.
Perhaps not, but legal actions for violations of trademark rights don't always require that (infringement does, but dilution, which seems the most applicable trademark concern here, does not.)
I dunno. I kind of agree with IMAX here. IMAX doesn't mean "really big movie screen", it means "particular brand of really big movie screen with particular quality controls over image projection".
And I do think that's a potential valid source of confusion with consumers, who could potentially think SteamVR lives up to the same image projection standards.
It's not as clear cut to me as Ars is making it out to be.
1. It wasn’t a description of IMAX, it was a description of something else by comparing it with IMAX. It was not describing IMAX.
2. It was someone else who was describing something and likened this other thing to IMAX. Ars was quoting this person, not writing it themselves.
Don’t drag out the “confusion with consumers” thing – absolutely no-one would think that this thing actually was an IMAX™ – it was a comparison. Would I be sued by Coca-Cola if I said that “Pepsi is kind of like Coca-Cola”? Would I cause “confusion with consumers”? No. Trademark law does not mean that trademark owners can control every use of the word, despite what they (and apparently you) would wish for.
Consumers could also think it was certified by the Mayo Clinic and made of unicorns. This is approximately as likely.
Making the leap from what was written in the article to "IMAX certified" is a hilariously wide leap. It's about two orders of magnitude too wide to justify the threat letter from IMAX.
Ars published a quote by someone they interviewed, about a similar technology to IMAX but not directly competing. If IMAX is in the right here, it means an end to any and all journalistic reporting of new technology. You simply can't report on tech without referencing similar tech as a comparison point for the reader. Innovation doesn't happen in a bubble.
For example, if IMAX's point of view is correct here, the entire article linked below[1] wouldn't be legal to write as it compares AMD's new GPUs to Nvidia's GPUs. Simply put, it's a staple of product journalism to compare with other similar technology, and this has always been the case. IMAX is clearly and wholly in the wrong.
And even if it still did mean "gigantic screen with impeccable quality controls" like in the days of old, it still wouldn't matter!
And that's because a trademark is exclusive rights over using the name for a commercial purpose. So the IMAX folks could make a product called IMAX-VR if they made a VR headset. But the Oculus folks, if they got some 8k phone screen, couldn't call it Oculus-IMAX without a licensing agreement, because IMAX owns the name IMAX with respect to product names.
But owning it with respect to product names doesn't mean you can prevent people from using it at all. How else would Coke (tm) be able to tell you in a commercial how much better they are than Pepsi (tm) as a result of some ridiculously staged "public tastings" where regular people prefer Coke (tm) to Pepsi (tm) three to one?
Anyone can refer to someone else's trademarked product name full stop. The only thing a trademark does is prevent other people from naming their products the same as, or confusingly similar to, the one which was trademarked first. And if someone thinks their new product name is different enough to be confusing the trademark holder still has to take them to court to prove it.
Yup, IMAX's "MPX" is little more than a largeish movie screen, with typical sizes around 18m by 8.5m (58' by 28'). MPX maxes out under the size of a "classical IMAX" display, and as far as I can see it exists just about solely so multiplexes can tack on additional IMAX surchages on your ticket.
Yes this is frustrating. They just closed one of the only large IMAX screens in lower NY at the Palisades Mall in West Nyack, NY which is where most people from northern jersey and lower NY went. The IMAX is moving to the multiplex in the same mall - thus it will be the smaller screen variety.
We're left with Lincoln square in NYC and possibly New Rochelle, NY as the only remaining large format IMAX in the area.
I've read it as another attempt by Ars to stir-up controversy to prop up their dwindling brand name. Ars is nothing more than a fragment of what it used to be.
This is why IMAX is annoyed: they understand that VR is a huge threat to their business. The reason watching a movie on a very large screen is better than watching it up-close on a small screen is that in the case of the large screen, your eyes can relax by focusing at infinity. With VR, you can effectively simulate an infinitely large screen infinitely far away.