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The Future Holds...

Laser Light Engines, LLC, Again the First

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Laser Light Engines Announces First Shipment of Its Universal Laser Retrofit System for 2D and 3D Digital Cinema
SALEM, NH– May 22, 2013 –

Jeez, just the heading. “Universal” must mean One Product fits all. That ties into the other press release LLE had on the same day, that they will be teaming with Elbit Systems of Texas to productize a system with the name of DSG265. We’re guessing DSG is for De-Speckled Green, but 265 stumps us. 256 we could have understood if this were an 8 bit system, or 255 perhaps…but DCinema is 12 bit. Hmmm. Marketing.

“Retrofit” is interesting as well. The concept of productizing anything for a market that is essentially completely full – over 90% digital saturation in some markets – there just isn’t going to be a lot of customers looking to trade-in for new projectors. There also isn’t an overwhelming reason to do so since many of the future options of lasers for projectors aren’t developed yet. Plugging into the existing optics works well enough until the mysteries of bi-refringent glass and spinning the photons off the mirrors solves the problems of darkening and softening caused by post-lens 3D filters. So, expensive ultra fast lenses and a lot of optics (that the next generation of engineers will laugh at) will have to remain – retrofit is the way to make the investment in the laser-based light systems work in 2013.

“2D and 3D Cinema” – To those who say that 3D is dead or dying, let’s remember that the studio’s latest arrangements with the Chinese government is to bring the tentpole movies in 3D…not just some, but 100% in 3D. Most of the cinema conversions are 3D capable there, and the 3D-capable percentage in Russia and parts of the EU are higher than in the US as well.

But 3D to work correctly needs more light to the eyes. There are few articles and only a little science on what causes headaches and other problems with 3D, but from those who have seen 3D movies with more light, it is more comfortable. Logic says that more light will make tired eyes strain less with a concommittant reduction in headaches and complaints.

“Announces the First Shipment” – has a nice ring to it after all the speculation and probable NIH competition since LLE made their despeckle announcement a few CinemaCons ago. It seemed obvious to many that the Kodak flash was never going to be productized, and possibly was a stock play writ large. But an actual shipment…and to whom? Enquiring minds, etc.

Having to wait for the lawyers and the marketing team of the customer can be a boring proposition for a company, especially one which wants to avoid the arrows (and worse) that many pioneers have to suffer.

Laser Light Engines, Inc., (LLE), a leader in laser illumination for high brightness digital cinema and performance projection, announced the first shipment of a fully configured RGB-laser powered Universal Laser Retrofit System to a leading global innovator in the cinema space.

“Leading Global Innovator” – Isn’t that a nice way of saying that they are smart enough to buy our product?

“The shipment of this system marks a big step forward for LLE, toward full commercialization of our universal laser upgrade solution for the nearly 100,000 global 2D and 3D digital cinema projectors installed over the past few years,” said laser projection pioneer Bill Beck, founder and EVP at LLE. According to the company, the multi-engine system incorporates LLE’s recently announced, flagship DSG265™ despeckled GREEN color modules, and provides constant brightness, outstanding image quality, brilliant colors and smooth, immersive 3D.

One would think at first that Mr. Beck was hyperbolizing a bit there, implying that 100,000 is the potential market for LLE’s light engine. In fact, in a sense he probably is, but in a sense he is probably understating the potential. There are 4 DCinema projector manufacturers who all sell projectors in far greater volume outside the cinema. They are joined by dozens of other manufacturers who use the same TI chipset (minus the security bits) for other than cinema projectors. Given the way that 3D is developing and getting less expensive on the production and post-production side, creation of 3D material can slip into many more markets, from architecture and product design to executive or music auditoriums to amusement rides.

Productizing is the key, and the market is really huge.

In addition to providing numerous image quality benefits, the LLE solution eliminates frequent replacement of expensive Xenon arc lamps, and can reduce wall plug and HVAC energy consumption. “The LLE multi-engine system is projector, chipset, resolution and frame rate agnostic, and is compatible with most major 3D systems,” Beck said. “And the light from the engine can be delivered via optical fiber cable, enabling flexible new cost- and space-saving deployment models.”

What isn’t being said is almost as loud as what was said in that paragraph. The discussions at recent demonstrations left one with the impression that some companies are not actually able to move the laser position on the frequency curve in a way that benefits both the gamut but also the wall plug efficiency, actually saying that their system wasn’t showing any benefit there, and that the cost of fans at the lasers was a wash with the reduction of savings at the projector vent. One presumes that one is hearing someone saying that the brute force method is all we can do and it works but it doesn’t work well…and come’on, the music moves the screen more than these screen shakers do.

It is just that one can’t help remembering the earthquake in the San Fernando Valley in 1994 when two earthquakes happened in close time and proximity. The joining of the concentric waves caused a much stronger reaction in a nearly straight line from the source points to dozens of miles away, to the extent of chimneys falling and houses being thrown off their foundations all along and to the end of that line, with much less severe damage a block away on either side.

Likewise, the patterns from the shakers was discernible after two weeks, with the light changing colors all along the path where concentric circles joined. Dont’ get the wrong impression; it was a brave and noble act to hold a 2 week demonstration of laser technology. Christie and their parent company Ushio should be lauded. The industry needed it. There is only one way to learn such things and groups should be given honors for taking the expense and the risk.

“Frame rate agnostic” means the future of High Frame Rate is secured and the rest of the PR is stating that compromises no longer have to be made. If history is a guide, the studios allow compromises with specifications until a manufacturer shows that the compromise is no longer required and then sets a date certain for not making prints in that format. MPEG to JPEG, the evolution of security keys and the disappearance of pre-ghostbusted prints all followed that path: one day accepted, one day ‘no mas’.

Resolution agnostic is interesting since it implies 4K, and sure enough – though it isn’t in this press release – if one goes to the LLE website and clicks on the coming event link on

June 11, 2013, 5:00pm
“Laser6P™: A New Laser Illumination System for Premium Dual Projector 3D”
Projection Summit
Orlando, FL

one sees in plain black and white that Mr. Beck of LLE will speak about “LLE was the first to demonstrate laser illuminated, “6 primary”, true 4K 3D with full color and resolution in November of 2012. Both DLP Cinema and LCOS 4K projector platforms have been integrated.”

As exciting as seeing the new RealD screen technologies in action with multiple screens at different angles and light levels, seeing any of the matrix of what that sentence speaks of would be very interesting. The implication is that others have already seen it in private demonstrations,  since the verbiage says ‘already been demonstrated’.

In addition to this major milestone for digital cinema, Beck said LLE will be shipping other new products in the coming months, including both cinema and non-cinema applications such as precision 3D metrology.

“Precision 3D metrology” – We haven’t yet seen anything of the industry’s attempt to create a precision metrology on speckle (or when the distortion goes from bad to unacceptable) and these guys are making products dealing with the measurement of 3D. Wonders never cease.

About Laser Light Engines — Laser Light Engines, Inc. (LLE) is a leader in laser illumination for performance projection, such as 3D cinema; premium large venue and rental/staging. LLE’s laser illumination systems replace traditional, high-pressure gas discharge lamps, producing dramatically brighter and sharper images, with less energy use and lower operating costs. LLE’s universal engine can plug and play with new projection systems or retrofit tens of thousands of installations, worldwide.

Partnerships with key industry players, a portfolio of patented technology and expertise, and a multi-year head start in building laser illumination systems, all combine to make LLE the leader in this large and rapidly emerging market. The venture-funded company was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Salem, New Hampshire, USA. For additional information visit: http://www.laserlightengines.com Laser Light Engines, LLE, DSG265 and Laser6P are trademarks of Laser Light Engines, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Boilerplate. Wish I had some. But actually, there is data in there. The beauty of boilerplate is that it is all lawyer vetted, so yes Alice, someone is thinking beyond retrofit and those lawyers are sure there is lower operating costs and less energy use in our future all from replacing xenon lamps with laser light.

The Future Holds...

Laser Light Engines, LLC, Again the First

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Laser Light Engines Announces First Shipment of Its Universal Laser Retrofit System for 2D and 3D Digital Cinema
SALEM, NH– May 22, 2013 –

Jeez, just the heading. “Universal” must mean One Product fits all. That ties into the other press release LLE had on the same day, that they will be teaming with Elbit Systems of Texas to productize a system with the name of DSG265. We’re guessing DSG is for De-Speckled Green, but 265 stumps us. 256 we could have understood if this were an 8 bit system, or 255 perhaps…but DCinema is 12 bit. Hmmm. Marketing.

“Retrofit” is interesting as well. The concept of productizing anything for a market that is essentially completely full – over 90% digital saturation in some markets – there just isn’t going to be a lot of customers looking to trade-in for new projectors. There also isn’t an overwhelming reason to do so since many of the future options of lasers for projectors aren’t developed yet. Plugging into the existing optics works well enough until the mysteries of bi-refringent glass and spinning the photons off the mirrors solves the problems of darkening and softening caused by post-lens 3D filters. So, expensive ultra fast lenses and a lot of optics (that the next generation of engineers will laugh at) will have to remain – retrofit is the way to make the investment in the laser-based light systems work in 2013.

“2D and 3D Cinema” – To those who say that 3D is dead or dying, let’s remember that the studio’s latest arrangements with the Chinese government is to bring the tentpole movies in 3D…not just some, but 100% in 3D. Most of the cinema conversions are 3D capable there, and the 3D-capable percentage in Russia and parts of the EU are higher than in the US as well.

But 3D to work correctly needs more light to the eyes. There are few articles and only a little science on what causes headaches and other problems with 3D, but from those who have seen 3D movies with more light, it is more comfortable. Logic says that more light will make tired eyes strain less with a concommittant reduction in headaches and complaints.

“Announces the First Shipment” – has a nice ring to it after all the speculation and probable NIH competition since LLE made their despeckle announcement a few CinemaCons ago. It seemed obvious to many that the Kodak flash was never going to be productized, and possibly was a stock play writ large. But an actual shipment…and to whom? Enquiring minds, etc.

Having to wait for the lawyers and the marketing team of the customer can be a boring proposition for a company, especially one which wants to avoid the arrows (and worse) that many pioneers have to suffer.

Laser Light Engines, Inc., (LLE), a leader in laser illumination for high brightness digital cinema and performance projection, announced the first shipment of a fully configured RGB-laser powered Universal Laser Retrofit System to a leading global innovator in the cinema space.

“Leading Global Innovator” – Isn’t that a nice way of saying that they are smart enough to buy our product?

“The shipment of this system marks a big step forward for LLE, toward full commercialization of our universal laser upgrade solution for the nearly 100,000 global 2D and 3D digital cinema projectors installed over the past few years,” said laser projection pioneer Bill Beck, founder and EVP at LLE. According to the company, the multi-engine system incorporates LLE’s recently announced, flagship DSG265™ despeckled GREEN color modules, and provides constant brightness, outstanding image quality, brilliant colors and smooth, immersive 3D.

One would think at first that Mr. Beck was hyperbolizing a bit there, implying that 100,000 is the potential market for LLE’s light engine. In fact, in a sense he probably is, but in a sense he is probably understating the potential. There are 4 DCinema projector manufacturers who all sell projectors in far greater volume outside the cinema. They are joined by dozens of other manufacturers who use the same TI chipset (minus the security bits) for other than cinema projectors. Given the way that 3D is developing and getting less expensive on the production and post-production side, creation of 3D material can slip into many more markets, from architecture and product design to executive or music auditoriums to amusement rides.

Productizing is the key, and the market is really huge.

In addition to providing numerous image quality benefits, the LLE solution eliminates frequent replacement of expensive Xenon arc lamps, and can reduce wall plug and HVAC energy consumption. “The LLE multi-engine system is projector, chipset, resolution and frame rate agnostic, and is compatible with most major 3D systems,” Beck said. “And the light from the engine can be delivered via optical fiber cable, enabling flexible new cost- and space-saving deployment models.”

What isn’t being said is almost as loud as what was said in that paragraph. The discussions at recent demonstrations left one with the impression that some companies are not actually able to move the laser position on the frequency curve in a way that benefits both the gamut but also the wall plug efficiency, actually saying that their system wasn’t showing any benefit there, and that the cost of fans at the lasers was a wash with the reduction of savings at the projector vent. One presumes that one is hearing someone saying that the brute force method is all we can do and it works but it doesn’t work well…and come’on, the music moves the screen more than these screen shakers do.

It is just that one can’t help remembering the earthquake in the San Fernando Valley in 1994 when two earthquakes happened in close time and proximity. The joining of the concentric waves caused a much stronger reaction in a nearly straight line from the source points to dozens of miles away, to the extent of chimneys falling and houses being thrown off their foundations all along and to the end of that line, with much less severe damage a block away on either side.

Likewise, the patterns from the shakers was discernible after two weeks, with the light changing colors all along the path where concentric circles joined. Dont’ get the wrong impression; it was a brave and noble act to hold a 2 week demonstration of laser technology. Christie and their parent company Ushio should be lauded. The industry needed it. There is only one way to learn such things and groups should be given honors for taking the expense and the risk.

“Frame rate agnostic” means the future of High Frame Rate is secured and the rest of the PR is stating that compromises no longer have to be made. If history is a guide, the studios allow compromises with specifications until a manufacturer shows that the compromise is no longer required and then sets a date certain for not making prints in that format. MPEG to JPEG, the evolution of security keys and the disappearance of pre-ghostbusted prints all followed that path: one day accepted, one day ‘no mas’.

Resolution agnostic is interesting since it implies 4K, and sure enough – though it isn’t in this press release – if one goes to the LLE website and clicks on the coming event link on

June 11, 2013, 5:00pm
“Laser6P™: A New Laser Illumination System for Premium Dual Projector 3D”
Projection Summit
Orlando, FL

one sees in plain black and white that Mr. Beck of LLE will speak about “LLE was the first to demonstrate laser illuminated, “6 primary”, true 4K 3D with full color and resolution in November of 2012. Both DLP Cinema and LCOS 4K projector platforms have been integrated.”

As exciting as seeing the new RealD screen technologies in action with multiple screens at different angles and light levels, seeing any of the matrix of what that sentence speaks of would be very interesting. The implication is that others have already seen it in private demonstrations,  since the verbiage says ‘already been demonstrated’.

In addition to this major milestone for digital cinema, Beck said LLE will be shipping other new products in the coming months, including both cinema and non-cinema applications such as precision 3D metrology.

“Precision 3D metrology” – We haven’t yet seen anything of the industry’s attempt to create a precision metrology on speckle (or when the distortion goes from bad to unacceptable) and these guys are making products dealing with the measurement of 3D. Wonders never cease.

About Laser Light Engines — Laser Light Engines, Inc. (LLE) is a leader in laser illumination for performance projection, such as 3D cinema; premium large venue and rental/staging. LLE’s laser illumination systems replace traditional, high-pressure gas discharge lamps, producing dramatically brighter and sharper images, with less energy use and lower operating costs. LLE’s universal engine can plug and play with new projection systems or retrofit tens of thousands of installations, worldwide.

Partnerships with key industry players, a portfolio of patented technology and expertise, and a multi-year head start in building laser illumination systems, all combine to make LLE the leader in this large and rapidly emerging market. The venture-funded company was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Salem, New Hampshire, USA. For additional information visit: http://www.laserlightengines.com Laser Light Engines, LLE, DSG265 and Laser6P are trademarks of Laser Light Engines, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Boilerplate. Wish I had some. But actually, there is data in there. The beauty of boilerplate is that it is all lawyer vetted, so yes Alice, someone is thinking beyond retrofit and those lawyers are sure there is lower operating costs and less energy use in our future all from replacing xenon lamps with laser light.

The Future Holds...

[Update] LLE, Sony, NAB and CinemaCon

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Since Bill Beck will be on the EDCF Bus Trip for the various sound system demos and visit to the Academy, we’ll hopefully get enough info to fill a new article on the current state of the technology and politics of laser. For example, the LIPA group’s lawyer [Laser Illuminated Projectors, Laser Illuminated Projector Association] gave an excellent slide presentation and talk on the legal aspects of public use lasers.

[Original Article] The Art of Reading Press Releases Kit includes chicken bones and Roman dice. But what are we to make of the first paragraph of LLE’s fresh press release issued days in front of the SMPTE/NAB Technology Symposium on Cinema on April 14th?

Laser Light Engines, Inc. (LLE), a venture-backed, laser-illumination developer today announced the world’s first public demonstration of fully-despeckled, high brightness 3D, high frame rate (HFR), wide color gamut (WCG) laser projection on a silver 3D screen at the upcoming NAB Technology Symposium on Cinema (TSC), on April 14, 2012 from 4:14pm-5:45pm PDT in Room #S222.

Bill Beck, founder and EVP of Business Development for LLE will be presenting an invited talk on Laser Illumination Systems for 2D and 3D Digital Cinema. “We appreciate the opportunity to educate and update the NAB Digital Cinema community with both a tutorial and a live demonstration of laser 3D on a silver screen in conjunction with SONY,” Beck said. “Since its founding, LLE has been committed to laser-driven light sources that exceed the requirements of digital cinema”. LLE was the first to achieve full laser despeckling on a white screen in 2010, but with the rapid proliferation of 3D, and other advancements to be discussed at this year’s TSC, had to develop additional technology to meet new, more challenging requirements.

Venture-backed: Well, we know that LLE has had a number of interesting investors over the last few years. All laser technologies have been money consumers as obvious and thrilling ideas need a extraordinary effort to get past the vagaries of such precision.

Laser-Illumination developer: There are many, of course. Polaroid Kodak used the engines of a California company rather than LLE’s system for their one-off, pre-prototype projector system. Sony R&D has had releases in the past about their engines, so the fact that this Technology Symposium exhibition is with Sony is interesting…though both companies are careful to point out that this is a technology showing (nothing more, nothing less.) Barco has had some great demonstrations in the recent past, and RED is promising to blow everyone out of the water with their offering. Christie’s mother company Ushio is known to have laser technology, but ‘focused’ more in the IR region.

“world’s first public demonstration of fully-despeckled, high brightness 3D, high frame rate (HFR), wide color gamut (WCG) laser projection on a silver 3D screen”: To parse this, it may appear that the “silver 3D screen” portion that modifies enough to make the “world’s first public demonstration” be valid. But it also may be the “fully-despeckled” phrase. Other companies give their buzz-words that indicate that they have gotten the speckles down to a responsible level, currently an unmeasurable quantity since there is no agreed-upon way to compare one to one. An industry group has been set up to change this, but until then we only know that getting the speckle out of green is the most difficult, and we know that LLE says: Fully-despeckled. One presumes: Zero doesn’t need an industry standard.

But is there a downside to being fully despeckled? Despeckling must, to some degree, be as simple as broadening the Q of the light since it is the narrowness that causes the effect of speckling. But that would have a negative effect as the light approaches the mirrors perhaps. We’ll see if anyone can phrase a question that makes Bill speak to their secret sauce. I suspect 4th and 5th dimension activity.

But what about “wide gamut”? The DCI spec does the opposite of constrict the gamut. It invites manufacturers to get as broad as possible in the XYZ space. But there are limits and distortions with every light. Going “negative” on one or more points to get better effects along the line of purples will have effects in the greens, where the eye is most sensitive. Hopefully Bill Beck will give details here too.

But it is that “silver 3D screen” part that is the rub. Silver implies aluminum and high-gain. Aluminum holds the photon polarity of the RealD and MasterImage systems, so even if the laser light engine were to give them full brightness at the screen with a low gain screen, they would still have to use the silver screen to keep their left-right effect working. Some would say that it is the high-gain problem, giving much of the auditorium less than responsible light levels as the window of ‘gain’ decreases…and they would be right. 23 degrees off the horizontal and/or vertical center and the viewer typically has half the light or less.

But the aluminum also distorts the screen’s image, usually making it impossible to get the 70-90% luminosity level at the sides (as measured from the center), or to get a responsible white point anywhere. This is much of the reason that France’s CNC has banned the silver screen for cinemas showing 2D films and will probably force them out completely as time goes on.

Notwithstanding, this is an interesting release and an interesting step for both technical and political reasons. It will be interesting to see if LLE can parlay this into interesting motion at CinemaCon the following week.

Also interesting is that both parties, Sony and LLE, are being careful in their press releases to say that this joint project is only for this demo. No way to tell how to parse that for absolute truth.

The Future Holds...

[Update] LLE, Sony, NAB and CinemaCon

Leave a comment

Since Bill Beck will be on the EDCF Bus Trip for the various sound system demos and visit to the Academy, we’ll hopefully get enough info to fill a new article on the current state of the technology and politics of laser. For example, the LIPA group’s lawyer [Laser Illuminated Projectors, Laser Illuminated Projector Association] gave an excellent slide presentation and talk on the legal aspects of public use lasers.

[Original Article] The Art of Reading Press Releases Kit includes chicken bones and Roman dice. But what are we to make of the first paragraph of LLE’s fresh press release issued days in front of the SMPTE/NAB Technology Symposium on Cinema on April 14th?

Laser Light Engines, Inc. (LLE), a venture-backed, laser-illumination developer today announced the world’s first public demonstration of fully-despeckled, high brightness 3D, high frame rate (HFR), wide color gamut (WCG) laser projection on a silver 3D screen at the upcoming NAB Technology Symposium on Cinema (TSC), on April 14, 2012 from 4:14pm-5:45pm PDT in Room #S222.

Bill Beck, founder and EVP of Business Development for LLE will be presenting an invited talk on Laser Illumination Systems for 2D and 3D Digital Cinema. “We appreciate the opportunity to educate and update the NAB Digital Cinema community with both a tutorial and a live demonstration of laser 3D on a silver screen in conjunction with SONY,” Beck said. “Since its founding, LLE has been committed to laser-driven light sources that exceed the requirements of digital cinema”. LLE was the first to achieve full laser despeckling on a white screen in 2010, but with the rapid proliferation of 3D, and other advancements to be discussed at this year’s TSC, had to develop additional technology to meet new, more challenging requirements.

Venture-backed: Well, we know that LLE has had a number of interesting investors over the last few years. All laser technologies have been money consumers as obvious and thrilling ideas need a extraordinary effort to get past the vagaries of such precision.

Laser-Illumination developer: There are many, of course. Polaroid Kodak used the engines of a California company rather than LLE’s system for their one-off, pre-prototype projector system. Sony R&D has had releases in the past about their engines, so the fact that this Technology Symposium exhibition is with Sony is interesting…though both companies are careful to point out that this is a technology showing (nothing more, nothing less.) Barco has had some great demonstrations in the recent past, and RED is promising to blow everyone out of the water with their offering. Christie’s mother company Ushio is known to have laser technology, but ‘focused’ more in the IR region.

“world’s first public demonstration of fully-despeckled, high brightness 3D, high frame rate (HFR), wide color gamut (WCG) laser projection on a silver 3D screen”: To parse this, it may appear that the “silver 3D screen” portion that modifies enough to make the “world’s first public demonstration” be valid. But it also may be the “fully-despeckled” phrase. Other companies give their buzz-words that indicate that they have gotten the speckles down to a responsible level, currently an unmeasurable quantity since there is no agreed-upon way to compare one to one. An industry group has been set up to change this, but until then we only know that getting the speckle out of green is the most difficult, and we know that LLE says: Fully-despeckled. One presumes: Zero doesn’t need an industry standard.

But is there a downside to being fully despeckled? Despeckling must, to some degree, be as simple as broadening the Q of the light since it is the narrowness that causes the effect of speckling. But that would have a negative effect as the light approaches the mirrors perhaps. We’ll see if anyone can phrase a question that makes Bill speak to their secret sauce. I suspect 4th and 5th dimension activity.

But what about “wide gamut”? The DCI spec does the opposite of constrict the gamut. It invites manufacturers to get as broad as possible in the XYZ space. But there are limits and distortions with every light. Going “negative” on one or more points to get better effects along the line of purples will have effects in the greens, where the eye is most sensitive. Hopefully Bill Beck will give details here too.

But it is that “silver 3D screen” part that is the rub. Silver implies aluminum and high-gain. Aluminum holds the photon polarity of the RealD and MasterImage systems, so even if the laser light engine were to give them full brightness at the screen with a low gain screen, they would still have to use the silver screen to keep their left-right effect working. Some would say that it is the high-gain problem, giving much of the auditorium less than responsible light levels as the window of ‘gain’ decreases…and they would be right. 23 degrees off the horizontal and/or vertical center and the viewer typically has half the light or less.

But the aluminum also distorts the screen’s image, usually making it impossible to get the 70-90% luminosity level at the sides (as measured from the center), or to get a responsible white point anywhere. This is much of the reason that France’s CNC has banned the silver screen for cinemas showing 2D films and will probably force them out completely as time goes on.

Notwithstanding, this is an interesting release and an interesting step for both technical and political reasons. It will be interesting to see if LLE can parlay this into interesting motion at CinemaCon the following week.

Also interesting is that both parties, Sony and LLE, are being careful in their press releases to say that this joint project is only for this demo. No way to tell how to parse that for absolute truth.

Exhibitor News

ShowEast [Update]: HFR, 3D Sound, HI/VI Glasses, Test Tools and Duqu

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In a clever move, Christie took the URL highframerate.com – It now points to a story on their site: Expect a higher standard- higher frame rates. They tell the hyped part of the story, and don’t tell any of the grusome details like, how is the technology going to get there? what standards are going to need to change? How many of these standards are going to be backwards compatable? But it is good to see an effort to educate their audience.

What we can glean is that Christie now has their own internal media block and screen management system for their projectors. We’ll post the PR for you to read yourselves. When people start touting “Future Proof Your Long Term Investment”, it might be read as “We haven’t paid attention to this before, but we have nailed it now!”

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Barco has two facilities with their new Auro 3D Sound system now…one in Moscow and a new one in Antwerp at Kinepolis. Barco announced IMB/SMS integration at CineEurope.

That makes a lot of parties interested in selling IMBs. We seem to remember a ShoWest that <3 letter company> secretly showed a network panel and IMB that would do the same over a high speed network several years ago…and everyone said it was too early to talk about. We also remember Laser Light Engine’s Bill Beck describing the vision of fibre running from an engineering room to some DLP chips and a lens at the port hole back in 2004. Looks like the time is going to be here before we know it.

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[Update] USL has just released some new information about their new IMB, which will be used for several of the demonstrations of HFR at ShowEast – The input is 500 Megabits per second, twice the DCI spec datarate of 250 for a DCP. It will push to the projector the data rate of just over 10 Gigabits per second, displaying 60 fps stereoscopic 2K (2048×1080), 12 bit JPEG 2000 color plates. An interested party describes it as absolutely stunning.

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Sony showed the incredible Closed Caption glasses at CinemaCon – then the project went into silent mode. They were working with the USL system (speaking of 3 letter companies), which is the gold standard in the market for several reasons; the first being what was mentioned before – they did a good job of evolving their product line so that a client could upgrade without throwing away their current product.

USL also invested heavily to get people noticing the the closed caption space in general, and the glasses idea in particular. They showed them at plugfests and conventions for a few years, and really invested the time for the industry and client’s benefit.

Closed Caption in glasses is a big deal. Other solutions work, like the small screens that fit into popcorn holders. But they seperate the kids who can’t from the kids who can’t…and we all know how kids are. So a product that allows people with impairments, but who can read, now have a pair of glasses available that don’t look bizarre. The effect of placing the words out in the distance is great, so that they don’t have to keep changing focus. There are many questions to follow-up on, and we are expecting a call with Sony immenently – it sure looked as if USL was going to be able to incorporate the Sony technology into their sales flow, so it could be the best of both worlds.

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Harkness has an announcement that is under embargo until Monday and USL has a rumored announcement. Both show a certain maturity to the industry, and just in time. Several cinematographers have measured light levels in hundreds of cinemas around the world and found deplorable circumstances. One got the impression that, until recently, putting any impediments like quality in the stream would be too much for the industry to bear. In the next update we will have links to articles that are embargoed for pre-release, but the potential for Quality Control takes a couple steps forward at ShowEast.

===>> So now it can be revealed. Hopefully we will get more news as the product matures toward release, which is promised to be early next year.

Like IMBs above, the topic of test tools deserves a full article. Doremi has a new product in test, USL has a new product in test, Harkness has a new product in test, Digital Test Tools has a new product in test. Perhaps the industry is ready for a good examination of luminance on the screen.

The Harkness product is called a Digital Screen Checker, and looks like this.

Harkness Screen Checker
Just what the doctor ordered, though we don’t know much about it. What is the price? What corrolation does it have with a NIST certified device? The viewfinder window leaves some confusion in our simple minds. And is this a plot to impose Foot Lamberts on the other 96% of the world that uses the ISO standard unit of candelas per meter.

On/Off us interesting on something that looks like a USB device. But maybe it is also battery powered? Does the USB aspect imply some database and/or network capability?

The press release is attached at the bottom of this document.

 

USL is also in the process of introducing its LSS-100 Light and Sound Sensor. This product is based upon our 2006 design which combined proprietary luminance and audio level measuring technologies. Their other products in this field are pretty inclusive so, like the Harkness device we look forward to seeing people actually use these devices to make the audience experience more like the director’s intent.USL LSS100

One thing that won’t be talked about at ShowEast is Stuxnet and its new evolution, Duqu. Why would the dcinema industry need to concern itself with a virus that randomly attempts to get into any network to find out information about machine control? We present the link above without comment.

The Future Holds...

Lasers…somebody knows…Barco? RED???

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The basic exception was Laser Light Engines (LLE), who have a deal with IMAX to put lasers into the big room cinemas. If ever there were a nice niche to start this adventure with, this is it. Specialized, contained to dozens and hundreds instead of 10’s of thousands, able to absorb any exceptional pricing, able to evolve. Delivery was scheduled to begin in Spring 2012.

Then the film maker turned digital imaging specialist Kodak shows a system that they clearly are not productizing. But they are playing in the game. They helped set up the organization which is working (throughout the world?) to take projection booth laser systems out of the field of laser entertainment systems, which require a special technology variance for every set-up. Kodak was able to get one by themselves, but the Laser Illuminated Projection Association – LIPA – includes Sony and IMAX, plus LLE and Kodak in this effort. In the US, the over-riding entity is the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, which is in charge of ensuring laser equipment safety.

This spring, LLE showed up in Hollywood at that chapter’s SMPTE meeting with Sony and Barco giving powerpoint presentations. Sony had made a couple of public remarks previously, but one had to be culling their online tech papers to notice. And until this point Barco had been quiet…except that the week before they did a demo at the RED Studios Hollywood lot. Nice splash.

Then nothing. No remarks from anyone at CineExpo or CineEurope. The idea has gelled that digital laser projection is 2 years away, or more.

Then this week. The RED user group message board lit up after two pre-viewer comments placed at the head of a thread by RED owner Jim Jannard: Mark L. Pederson of OffHollywood and Stephen Pizzo, Co-Founder of Element Technica and now partner of 3ality Technica, make remarks about having watched a demo of RED’s laser projector. “Vibrant”, “clean”, “never seen projection so …”, etc. Then a few non-answers to poorly phrased guesses (for example, that 4K is a benchmark, and passive 3D did leak out, but both could mean several things) and that was that…25 pages of wasted time thereafter. [Can anyone please vouch for the merits of Misters Pederson and Pizzo as to their ability to discern whether the technology they viewed is comparibly better than what has been seen otherwise?)

Barco, on the hand (and yet similarly) have made an announcement that 9 and 10 January will be their big days. – D3D Cinema to Present Giant Screen 4K 3D Laser Projection Demo at 2nd Annual Moody Digital Cinema Symposium – Well, actually, no. Barco only said, “We’re fully committed to providing the highest quality solutions for giant screen theaters” and some similar non-relevent info about how wonderful their partner is. Basically though, their name is on a press release announcing that they will butterfly laser driven digital cinema light against 15 perf 70mm and 4 other “revolutions”:

  • The FIRST demonstration of Barco’s revolutionary laser light engine on a giant screen
  • The FIRST demonstration of true DLP 4K resolution 3D on a giant screen
  • The FIRST 4K 3D comparison of ‘ultra-reality’ 48 frame/sec & 60 frame/sec content
  • The FIRST giant 3D 500 mbps comparison, nearly double the current cinema bit rate standard

Not withstanding the lack of filtering for marketing bits, and regardless of how some of the terms have been ill-defined in the past (4K 3D, for example), this is still a pretty good line-up.

Prediction: 2012 will be the year that several studios tell their exhibition partners a final date for film distribution (in 2013) and 2012 will have more than one commercial laser system in the field.

Prediction 3 – there may not be more than one DCI compliant system in the field though. RED might find that, if they thought bringing a small camera to market was a difficult trick, supporting projectors is a whole different matter…even if it is only to post-houses and their owners.

Regardless, this is mostly good news. That the RED is using passive doesn’t exactly mean silver screen passive. Perhaps Dolby passive, which would certainly be good news. If it is silver screen passive, that is bad news. Since silver screens don’t comply with SMPTE standards, they may end up on the scrap heap of history. But that is a different story for another article.

Connectivity

10 Rules When Buying a DCinema Projector

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In this instance, some engineers at Barco go through the details of what to consider when deciding on which projector to get. Naturally, they point out what they consider as the advantages of the Barco projectors, but with this knowledge one can ask intelligent questions and interpret intelligent answers from other vendors.

What follows is a white paper that can be read here or downloaded from the attachment link below.

What to look for when buying a digital cinema projector?

10 Golden Rules to remember

When considering a new digital cinema projector, image quality, reliability, uptime and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) would seem to be the most obvious criteria. And with good reason. After all, stunning your audience with a crisp and bright picture at every show, while not having to charge an arm and a leg are of vital importance in cinema. But how can you recognize products that rank high on all these criteria? And what other parameters are relevant for your theater?

Below, we have listed 10 golden rules to help you make a decision when investing in digital cinema projection equipment.

Table of contentsBarco Logo

DCI compliance: a no-brainer? 

Total cost of ownership: look at the complete picture 

Uptime: 100% is NOT the Holy Grail 

Image quality: the magical mix of brightness, contrast and resolution 

Engine cooling and sealing: protecting the heart of your projector 

Choose a projector that best suits your auditorium 

Remote monitoring: you don’t need to be in the theater to know it is running well 

Consumables and peripherals: freedom of choice to best suit your needs 

Serviceability and ease of use 

There’s no business like cinema business – find a strategic partner that understands your needs

 Conclusion 

 1. DCI compliance: a no-brainer?

The Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) is a joint venture of major motion picture studios, formed to establish a standard architecture for digital cinema systems. DCI authored the “Digital Cinema System Specification”, commonly referred to as the “DCI Specification”.

The specification establishes standards for the presentation environment (such as ambient light levels, pixel aspect and shape, image luminance, white point chromaticity) as well as the specifics of content protection, encryption, and forensic marking.

This specification is generally accepted as THE standard for the digital projection of features films. Official cinema content –from the major Hollywood studios– can only be played using equipment that has been certified to comply with the DCI Specification. Only a limited number of projector models have achieved this certification.

It may seem like a no-brainer, but the first thing to consider when buying a digital cinema projector is to verify whether the model you selected is DCI compliant. Using equipment that does not have this compliance certification will cause the protection mechanism to kick-in when you try to play your feature film. No show. An exhaustive and up-to-date list of certified projectors can be found on the official website of the DCI: www.dcimovies.com.

2. Total cost of ownership: look at the complete picture

Setting up a fully equipped digital cinema projection booth is a significant investment for many exhibitors. Faced with the upfront costs, it is easy to overlook the complete picture. This means that not only the investment in equipment should be assessed, but also the costs of operating that equipment over its complete lifetime. Taking this holistic approach can generate savings that are significantly higher than the initial investment cost.

The major contribution to operational cost comes from the high power lamps that drive the projectors. In order to achieve the light levels defined by the DCI Specification (see above), lamp light sources from 2kW to 7kW are used in digital projectors. These Xenon bulbs typically have a warranty lifetime of 2500Hrs to 500Hrs. This means that there are two major contributions to the operational costs of these lamps (and projectors):

  • Replacement cost: this is the purchase cost of new lamps, replacing the lamps in the field that have reached their warranty lifetime (or that have broken down before this time).
  • Running cost: is the cost of electricity, used to power the projector-lamp combination. Since in state-of-the-art projectors, the lamp takes up more than 80% of the power consumption, it is clear that it also constitutes the major source of running costs.

When buying a projector and/or lamp technology that comes with it, it is important to examine the complete cost, resulting from the two contributions mentioned above. Some manufacturers promote very high efficiency lamps, claiming that these produce more light using less power. This only impacts the running cost. However, these lamps also have a significantly lower lifetime and come at a higher cost, negatively impacting the replacement cost. Other manufacturers support using lamps similar to those applied in analog (35mm) projection. These lamps do have a longer lifetime (which has a positive impact on replacement cost), yet they require more power to achieve the same brightness (which has a negative impact on running cost). All in all, these two alternative lamp types have a higher TCO than standard short arc lamps (optimized for digital cinema projection). Remember: it is important to look at the complete picture. By selecting the best lamp technology you can achieve direct savings that will offset more than your initial investment cost.

Still, the complete TCO picture doesn’t stop at lamp costs. Operating a digital cinema projector also includes replacing air filters, learning how to use the interaction software, cooling your projection booth… Even though their contribution to Total Cost of Ownership may seem harder to quantify, their impact can be significant. As regards air filters, for example, two types are commonly used. Most brands use paper filters (so-called HEPA filters) to protect the internals of the projector against dust intrusion. Barco has a patented sealed engine design, which allows the use of metal filters. The link with TCO can be established in the fact that paper filters have to be thrown away and replaced when they are clogged with dirt and dust, while metal filters can be cleaned —even with just water— and re-used. At a cost of more than €100 per paper filter and a bi-annual replacement, the total contribution of filter cost to TCO can quickly add up to several thousands of dollars.

The same is true for the other contributions mentioned above. More detail can be found in our dedicated white paper on TCO or supplied on request.

3. Uptime: 100% is NOT the Holy Grail

For an exhibitor, there’s nothing worse than a missed show. Not only does the cost of refunding ticket hurt your revenue, the price you pay for a blemished image is probably much higher. The only way to prevent black screens is to make sure your projection equipment achieves 100% uptime. You might think that this is the unachievable Holy Grail of exhibition, since all components have a finite lifespan and all lamps are rated for a given lifetime (see above). How realistic achieving this perceived unattainable goal actually is may therefore come as a surprise to you.

In state-of-the-art digital projectors, maximum uptime is achieved in two ways:

  • Prevention: keeping the patient healthy is always the best course of action. In projection, keeping the optical chip (the heart of your projector) cool is an important first step. Barco runs its chips at an operating temperature 2°C below that of competitors. As a result, this critical component has a 30% longer lifetime. Another important contribution to maximum uptime is projector cleanliness. The exhibitor can impact this by keeping the projection booth as dust-free as possible; but the manufacturer’s filter design remains the most critical aspect. For more information on Barco’s patented sealed engine and the difference between paper and metal air filters, please see above.

Finally, prevention can come from projector intelligence as well. State-of-the-art devices are network-enabled and can send remote messages to a central management system. Some of these messages contain preventive maintenance alerts, informing the exhibitor that a service intervention should be performed before an intrusive alarm occurs. Barco projectors monitor more than 500 internal parameters and e.g. send notifications when lamp runtime is reaching the warranty lifetime.

  • Fast and easy correction: if something does go wrong, resolving the issue as quickly and smoothly as possible is crucial, preferably without the patrons in the auditorium noticing anything. A way to facilitate such an intervention is to have a projector built on a modular architecture. In such a design, the projector’s building blocks are easily accessible from the side and can be replaced quickly without the need for special tools or training. Truly modular projectors make switching components in-between shows possible (or in such a short timeframe that ticket refunding is not necessary if the show is interrupted). Barco has even extended this modularity to the lamps by being the only manufacturer to offer an easily replaceable lamp housing: not only does this format protect the projector’s interior in case of lamp explosion, it also allows the local technician close to the projector to replace the lamp in the shortest possible time.

4. Image quality: the magical mix of brightness, contrast and resolution

Once you have your DCI compliant projector, which is economical to run at 100% uptime… you want to be sure you get the best possible image on your screen. Unfortunately, no single metric can quantify image quality. However, three major factors contribute to everyone’s perception of image quality:

  • Brightness: this is quantified as the luminance (in cd/m² or fL) on the screen, which is related to the brightness (in lumens) of the projector. The DCI Specification sets a minimum luminance (both for 2D and 3D). Given the impact of the lamp/projector-combination on TCO (see above), it is important to find a setup that best matches your screen size. In this respect, Barco’s DP2K family of six projector models offers you more than 20 lamp/projector combinations to optimally fit the needs of your auditorium. Opting for on-screen brightness far beyond the DCI Specification is not necessary: the dimmed environment of cinema theaters and the wide color gamut of DCI compliant projectors do not require higher brightness. You would only blind your audience with the additional luminance.

Don’t forget, the lamp is only the initial source of the light and brightness. How efficiently you can transport this light from your lamp to your screen defines the actual setup. The state-of-the-art design, development and manufacturing of the projectors impact this setup greatly. A highly efficient projector (quantified in lm/W) needs a smaller lamp to achieve the same on-screen brightness; again helping you keep your TCO under control.

  • Contrast ratio: is defined as the ratio between the brightest possible output (white) and the darkest possible output (black). As opposed to brightness, more is better when it comes to contrast ratio. The human eye can adapt to a very high range of light levels; the better you can fill up this range, the more natural the image will look. Best-in-class projectors go beyond the DCI Specification, e.g. by applying intelligent coatings on the optics that prevent the occurrence of scattered light in the projector.
  • Resolution: this is the total pixel count on the screen. It is defined by both the resolution of the content that is put in and the resolution that the projector can handle. The minimum of these two values defines the on-screen resolution. It is typically quantified by the amount of columns in the image (e.g. “2K” for 2048 columns or “4K” for 4096 columns). Note that a 4K image actually has four times the amount of pixels compared to a 2K image. In the race for increased resolution, the acuity of the human visual system is a defining factor. Below a certain feature size (in cinema, this is the pixel size), a human eye cannot perceive additional detail anymore. This is important when comparing 2K to 4K: the highest resolution only makes sense on your premium screens. Beware when switching from 2D to 3D: some technologies do not maintain the minimum 2K resolution when projecting in 3D mode.

So, when trying to assess the image quality of the projector you’re considering, it is important to look at these three parameters. A bright projector model allows you to serve a bigger screen at a lower cost; a wide choice of models helps you optimize matching the projector to your screen. As for resolution: use 4K wisely for you premium screens.

5. Engine cooling and sealing: protecting the heart of your projector

Like in your car, the engine driving the projector constitutes the heart of the entire device. It contains the most precious components, the high resolution chips that actually form the image. In Barco, Christie and NEC devices this chip is based on DLP technology from TI. Sony uses proprietary LCoS technology. Being such a crucial component, it is important to protect it against any damages.

One form of damage can come from small —dust— particles entering the engine and interfering with the microscopic components of the chip. All projectors use air filters to minimize dust; Barco has a patented sealed light engine which takes this protection to yet another level.

Another form of damage, over a longer period of time, occurs as a result of the impact of heat on the chip’s materials. LCoS devices contain liquid crystal material, which is an organic substance. This means that a yellowing effect occurs as the chip is subjected to the light and thermal load of digital projection. This has an impact on the efficiency and color accuracy. DLP chips inherently have a longer lifespan, but still need cooling when used in the high-power environment of a DC projector. To show how important this cooling is, Barco has succeeded in running its chip at a temperature 2°C lower than that of its competitors, thus achieving a 30% improvement in the chip’s lifetime!

So, when choosing your projector, remember that you will be using it over many years. An intelligent design that combines dust prevention and state-of-the-art cooling will give you worry-free operation over the life of your equipment.

6. Choose a projector that best suits your auditorium

We mentioned above why it is important to optimize your TCO by selecting a projector/lamp combination that best fits your screen. Also from the perspective of investment cost, it makes more sense to have a wide choice of models so that projector and screen can be matched optimally. Let’s say a certain brand only sells one model; then you would have to put that same model in all your auditoria, irrespective of their size. Since this single model would typically be built to cover many brightness ranges, its output is bound to be excessive on your smallest screens. You would have to run it using a small lamp, not taking full advantage of the investment you made. There are six models in Barco’s family of DP2K projectors; this makes it possible for you to optimize your investment, adapting it to the variation and complexity in screen sizes that are common place in every theater. This high granularity makes sure that every projection booth contains the projector that best fits its specifications.

7. Remote monitoring: you don’t need to be in the theater to know it is running well

As mentioned above, a state-of-the-art digital cinema projector is an intelligent device that monitors its internal parameters and health status. Furthermore, it can share this data with the outside world. Barco projectors monitor more than 500 internal parameters and make these accessible through a protocol that runs over standard network connections. In its most basic format, this enables centralized control and monitoring of projectors across the theater.

But monitoring functions do not stop there: there are tools to distribute the projector parameters across global networks (i.e. the Internet) and set up centralized access and control over multiple theaters. This enables hooking up your equipment to a remote helpdesk for example. Another option is to run business intelligence and reporting tools on the collected data and perform preventive maintenance, budget estimates, etc.

With these connectivity and remote monitoring features, long gone are the days of analog projection: now you no longer have to be in your theater to know it is running well. When buying a DC projector today, keep in mind that the connectivity is an enabler for many services that are valuable to your theater.

8. Consumables and peripherals: freedom of choice to best suit your needs

A projector is not a stand-alone device. It uses its internal and peripheral components to generate the high quality on-screen image you expect. Typical internal components are the high power lamps and the 3D system. Typical peripheral components are the digital cinema server or alternative content scaler which provides the inputs.

It is important to know that no single brand supplies all of these components. Some brands focus on lamps (e.g. Osram, Ushio, Philips), while others focus on 3D technology (e.g. RealD, Dolby, MasterImage, Xpand). The choices and combinations in the setup of projector components and peripherals are almost infinite. When selecting you projector, the central node in this setup, it is important to select a brand that allows you to choose your preferred vendor and system, based on your own taste and best available deals.

Some projector manufacturers are only compatible with one type of 3D system, thus forcing you into a limited screen selection and pricing structure. Other manufacturers push one brand of lamps, reducing your ability to compare and negotiate between different suppliers.

Keep in mind that for many of these additional components there is no right or wrong choice to be made and much depends on the personal preference of the exhibitor. A projector manufacturer who understands this provides objective and open advice without pushing you into a model that’s not the best match for you.

9. Serviceability and ease of use

For every type of high-end electronics, you have to perform a minimal amount of regular maintenance tasks in order to enjoy your valuable equipment as long as possible. The same is true for DC projectors where these tasks involve cleaning filters, replacing cooling liquid, updating software… If you are operating multiple theaters and projectors, your technicians will appreciate not having to learn many different service manuals in order to perform these regular interventions.

When it comes to hardware related actions, be sure to check the following when analyzing the serviceability of your projector:

  • Modularity: How easy is it to access and swap the different —internal— parts of the projector? Do you need special training and tools?
  • Communality of spare parts: How big is the list of parts you need to familiarize yourself with and keep in stock? How fast and easily can you swap parts from one model to another?

When it comes to interacting with the projector through its software (either for maintenance or regular use), be sure to check:

  • Ease of learning: Does the software have a simple clear GUI? Is the GUI consistent over different models and generations?
  • Ease of use: Can you easily define and program presets? Does the software support different languages? Does the software support multi-projector setups, through remote control (see above), projector cloning, etc.?
  • Ease of diagnostics: Does the software support you in quickly finding and solving any issues? Does it support preventive tools for early alerts?

10. There’s no business like cinema business – find a strategic partner that understands your needs

Don’t forget: when you are choosing a cinema projector, you are also choosing a partner for a long-term collaboration. Often, what you are selecting is also a service partner that establishes a close collaboration with you and your projector supplier. Cinema is a global business that does not stop working at the weekend and after 5 pm. Not every supplier understands these specific needs. The job is not finished once the equipment is delivered and installed in your projection booth. You are entitled to the latest software updates; your personnel should receive hands-on training; a professional helpdesk should be on-call to solve your requests.

When comparing projector brands, be sure to also compare these after-sales support issues. A service team should be experienced in the business, locally present to service the equipment while having access to the most up-to-date tools. Whether this team is employed by your equipment supplier or by a dedicated service partner does not matter: the most important thing is that you receive the best possible service!

Be sure to select a partner that has sufficient focus (not too large) and bandwidth (not too small) to support your business.

11. Conclusion

We hope this White Paper will help you select the digital cinema projector that best suits your needs and preferences. Even though digitization of your theater may be very disruptive, there is no reason for it to be intrusive. The perfect image quality at every show and flexible programming of feature films and alternative content will open up new opportunities for revenue streams. However, this does not mean you should be overwhelmed with complex technology. In fact, best-in-class digital projectors were built to make your life easier. So, how can you identify a best-in-class projector? We hope this White Paper will guide you in doing just that.

Dr. Ir. Tom Bert
Product Marketing Manager
Barco

[email protected]

 

Wim Buyens
Vice President Digital Cinema
Barco

[email protected]

Copyright © 2011

BARCO n.v., Kortrijk, Belgium

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from Barco.

Connectivity

Optical Efficiency in Digital Cinema Projectors

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What isn’t compared is the energy and materials that go into making a remarkably simple film projector against a remarkably complex digital projector, plus the energy and materials that are needed to create the media server and the local central storage, plus the data farms that create and store the movies in the distribution chain, plus the network operation centers that oversee their constant quality and security. Like projectors, data centers use an astounding amount of energy to keep the air cool and what it takes to constantly keep the disks moving and processors humming.

With just a little thought, one can make a long list of data centers in the digital cinema chain: at the animation studios, at each post-production house, at each specialist render farm, at the sites which create the master Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM), and those facilities that create each separately keyed Digital Cinema Package (DCP).

The efficiency of a digital cinema projector was the topic of a side-discussion at a recent technical meeting, involving a number of engineers who have been intimately involved in the digital cinema evolution. There was only conjectured and estimations based upon hearsay. It was surprising. It came up again on an online chat, where engineers who are not centimeters deep/kilometers wide (as is your author), also didn’t have an answer. It was also part of the discussion in our article:
3Questions – Laser Light Engines

So it is a pleasant and interesting relief to be able to present this document from Barco on the subject. Created by Barco Product Marketing Manager Tom Bert, it lends detail into some of the nuance of optical efficiency inside a digital cinema projector.

Optical efficiency in Digital Cinema projectors

How to get as much light as possible from your lamp onto your screen?

1 Introduction

In this article, we want to discuss everything that has an impact on how much light falls onto the screen… except for the lamp. We will have a close look at all the components that influence parameters such as image quality, total cost of ownership and serviceability.

It is our goal to clarify the impact of product design, craftsmanship and manufacturing on projector performance. We want to provide you an inside view on what’s under the hood of the projector and how it really impacts performance.

We hope that, after reading this article, you better understand how a digital cinema projector works and what contributes to the stunning performance of these state-of-the-art devices.

2. The life of Ray

Digital Cinema projection is all about getting the light from your lamp onto your screen. In this paragraph, we will discuss the different impacting parameters on a ray of light leaving the lamp. We will try to do this in a sequential approach, following the build-up of the light path of your digital cinema projector.

The image below gives an overview of the components involved:

Components of a Digital Cinema Projector2.1 Reflector

The reflector is an elliptical or parabolic structure that is placed around the lamp, in order to capture as much light as possible from the lamp and send it into the optical path of the projector. An important parameter is the surface roughness of the reflector: high end devices use perfectly smooth reflector materials, while others use processing techniques that introduce small imperfections. This can have an impact of as much as 15% on the reflector efficiency.

Important to remember is that a badly designed and manufactured reflector can destroy all of the light concentration that comes from using short arc lamps. A well designed reflector also corresponds with the heat generation and dissipation capacity of the projector.

2.2 Filters

After being captured and sent into the optical path by the reflector, the light is filtered. First it goes through a UV-filter and later on through an IR-filter. These filters get rid of that part of the light that can damage the interior of the projector and have in this way a huge impact on the projector lifetime. Filtering out too much of the spectrum of your light, means you will have to compensate later on, leading to a lower overall optical efficiency. However, it is important to know that these filters work far from the sweet spot of the visible light in the spectrum. This means that their influence on image quality is low. Their impact on lifetime is much more important.

2.3 Optical engine

After being filtered from the dangerous components in the spectrum, the light enters the actual optical engine of the projector. This engine contains passive (light rod, lenses and prism) and active (chip) components. At the interfaces of these components coating materials are applied to improve performance.

2.3.1 Passive optical components

The optical engine contains relay lenses and a light rod to transport and spread out the light. The materials that these components are made off, have an impact on the performance. Badly designed engines use materials that absorb too much of the short wavelength (blue) light. This causes them to turn yellow (cfr. you get a sunburn when you forget to put on your sunblock) or even melt! It is clear that this has a major impact on image quality.

It also defines the energetic capacity of your projector, this is the amount of light you can send through. When not designed to transmit the high load that bright projectors bring, the material can break. The brightest digital cinema projectors, like Barco’s DP2K-32B, were specifically designed to carry the load that comes with projecting more than 32,000 lumens.

2.3.2 Active optical components

In digital cinema, two technologies are used for the active chip: DLP™ (from Texas Instruments, which has ~90% market share) and LCoS (from Sony, which has ~10% market share). A digital cinema projector contains three of these chips, one for each color channel (red, green and blue). This is by far the most important component of your digital cinema projector, also from an optical efficiency viewpoint. Its compact size and accurate angular performance makes it the central component that defines the design of all other optics.

For DLP™ technology, the overall optical efficiency of the chip is defined by a combination of:

  • The chip size: it is easier to “aim” light on a bigger chip than on a smaller chip. This is one of the reasons why projectors using the 1.2” DLP Cinema® chip have a 10% higher efficiency compared to those with the 0.98” DLP Cinema® chip. For that same reason, 4k projectors with a 1.38” DLP cinema® chip will have a higher optical efficiency than those using the 1.2” DLP Cinema® chip.
  • The fill factor: the fraction of the surface that is active and reflects the light.
  • The surface reflectivity: the amount of light that bounces back from each individual mirror. This is defined by the maturity of the manufacturing process and is close to the maximum achievable value for DLP™.
  • Diffraction: when hitting structures with a small features size, such as DLP™-mirrors, a small portion of the light is always diffracted (sent off in non-perpendicular angles). As technology miniaturizes, it will become more important to manage this aspect.

With LCoS projection technology, other parameters come into play, like the inefficiencies related to using polarized light. All this leads to DLP™-based digital cinema projection yielding higher efficiencies than LCoS-based projection.

To maximize the chips’ lifetime and maintain a high image quality over time, it is crucial to keep them away from dust. Sealed engines, as patented by Barco, keep the chip surface clean and help avoid scattered light and spots on the screen.

2.3.3 Coating

Two types of surface coating are typically used on the optical materials:

  • Anti-reflection (AR) coatings: these minimize the light being bounced off the optical materials and maximize the light being injected in and transmitted through the engine. A well designed engine uses these AR-coatings wisely and can achieve a transmittance of more than 99% through the passive optical components. The avoidance of reflection also reduces the amount of the scattered light in the engine, which has a positive impact on contrast ratio.

Be aware: any small dust particles on the interface surfaces undo the benefits of using AR-coatings. They also lead to dark spots or zones on screen. That is one of the reasons why the sealed engine design, as patented by Barco, is so important.

  • Color separation coatings: these are used in the heart of the light engine (the prism) to separate the incoming light into the separate red, green and blue channels that are sent to the 3 different chips. As the name indicates, the coatings have to provide a clear separation between the different parts of the spectrum. Just like you need a sharp knife to have a clean cut, you need a sharp filter to have a good spectral separation. This so-called cut-off of the filter has improved significantly of the last years by improved manufacturing techniques. High-end devices use filters with a sharp cut-off, leading to better color separation. This has impact on optical efficiency and image quality.

2.4 Color calibration

The DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) standard emphasizes (amongst other things) the white point and color gamut of the image on the screen. These parameters do not 100% match the output of an uncalibrated projector (one where you build in the components, not tune or tweak them and power it up). Achieving the color points set by the DCI specification, means you have to slightly compromise on light output. This has an impact on optical efficiency of 5-10%.

2.5 Projection lens

The final component the light ray goes through before leaving the projector is the projection lens. In order to achieve the high level of focus that we know in digital cinema (and from the distances typical in theatre environments), this has to be a piece of optical top design. While we call it the projection lens, it is actually built up of multiple small lenses, each contributing to the overall performance. Like the other passive optical components described above, lens design also depends largely on choice of materials and careful coating of interfaces. State-of-the-art lenses yield an overall efficiency of about 85%.

2.6 Beyond the projector

Most people neglect the impact of parameters that influence the light after it has left the projector. This can go from dirty porthole windows to dirty screens (with low or high gain). Now that you understand what design and work goes into getting the most out of your projector, you should appreciate what a waste it is to loose your light on dirty material.

3 Putting it into numbers

In order to objectively quantify this, we typically use the unit lumen per watt (lm/W): the light output (in lumens) divided by the electrical power input (in watt). This unit helps taking a holistic approach, making it possible to compare across technologies and across brands.

A typical digital cinema lamp (only the lamp!) achieves 40-50lm/W. A typical digital cinema projector (everything described above + lamp) achieves 4-5 lm/W. This means that all the contributions we discussed before yield on average an optical efficiency of 10%!

4 Conclusion

Many factors influence the optical performance of your projector. Even more, we hope you understand that designing a projector is an art as well as a science. It takes know-how and experience in optics, electronics, mechanics and, cooling techniques to design a top class projector.

When selecting your projector, be sure to inquire on how the supplier took into account these aspects. Choosing a brand that cares for all of them will make your projector a high-quality, high-performance and safe choice for the future!

Dr. Ir. Tom Bert
Product Marketing ManagerBarco logo

Based on the inputs from: Rik Defever, Peter Janssens, Nico Coulier

Barco Digital Cinema

Noordlaan 5
8500 Kortrijk
Belgium

The Future Holds...

4K; And Then There Were Two

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What does this mean for exhibitors and the audience? More light, and more dark. It seems that each generation of the DLP chip constantly refines the edges of, and space between the mirrors, which refines the amount of “off” – the non-reflecting space – and makes the reflecting segments comparatively more “on”…thus a boost in the dynamic range, or “contrast” spec, which the larger size also adds to. The PR doesn’t list how the 2500:1 contrast ratio is measured, but it is a 25% increase from what Barco prints as their C Series spec of 2000:1, while Christie now specifies >2100:1 full field on/off. Presuming that everyone is using the same measuring technique, with more light, larger screens can be lit. [Side note: Barco’s spec says that it takes 32,000 BTUs per hour to get that kind of light from a 6.5kW zenon bulb, which has an average life of 900 hours. No one is saying that this advance will imply less electricity or longer life for the bulbs.]

4K is a nice number, but no one ever walks out of the theater saying that there were too few pixels. There are those who point out that the constraining factor in quadrupling the pixels from 2K to 4K is actually the lens, which can’t resolve that much resolution anyway. 

Because of the increased area, more light will reflect off the same number of micro-mirrors. Therefore, 3D should get the largest noticeable boost – 5% was the number that one OEM used. In a universe that is starting from 10 candela/meter2, 5% more light would be a greater benefit for a 3D audience than the same higher gain would bring for the 2D audience in a larger auditorium.

So, what does this chip do with a 4K 3D image? It doesn’t. We know that there was surprise when Sony announced that they were creating 3D by breaking up their LCOS imager into two 2K sections, one for each eye’s image. But there doesn’t seem to be any loss for orders after exhibitors saw the results.

TI is also keeping a 3D image at 2K, but they make the point that with this release “we will use the entire imager to display 3D in order to pass the maximum amount of light which is needed for 3D display. In other words the 2K image will be scaled up to 4K. We say, All the Imager, All the Time.”  

It makes sense to go for the increase in light, however small it is. The other part of the equation is the amount of bandwidth that can be pushed into the TI cards, but that is more math than is comfortable in this commentary on a simple press release.

References:

23 degrees…half the light. 3D What?

Laser Light Engines gets IMAX funding– Putting Light on the Subject

Optical Efficiency in Digital Cinema Projectors

3Questions – Laser Light Engines

Connectivity

DCI Compliance – Then There Were Three [Updated]

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The good news is that after 10 years of TI doing the yeoman work of making the digital cinema industry happen, they finally have gotten two of their OEMs past the goal.

They also announced that there are now 300,000 3D capable projectors in the field. But that was a different group making noise for a different industry.

Congrats to TI. Next up, a server company…bets anyone?

[Update: Christie PR was able to help parse the noise…]:

Yes, there is a difference in our announcement.  Barco’s announcement says only that they’ve passed the “procedural” portion of the CTP.  Christie is announcing they’ve passed everything, which includes the  procedural AND design aspects, so we’re much closer to receiving complete DCI compliance certification.
Here’s Barco’s announcement:
Kortrijk, Belgium, 17 March 2010 — Barco, a global leader in digital cinema announced today that its ‘Series 2’ digital cinema projector has successfully passed the procedural test for DCI compliance administered by CineCert, the leading 3rd party authorizing test facility.
Hope this helps.

 So there. We now know better what to watch for.