Tag Archives: Digital Cinema

Optical Efficiency in Digital Cinema Projectors

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

3Questions – Laser Light Engines

As we understand it, the replacement of the Xenon bulb with lasers makes a better overall match to the etendue limits of the chip. By their nature, lasers have a very small emission area and a very narrow emission angle. Therefore, they can use less power to put more light at the proper etendue angles of the chip, and can therefore allow the chip to put more light through the projector’s lens. They also allow the use of lenses with higher f#, which in the real world means less expensive lenses.

The most notorious problem with lasers thus far is described as “speckle”, due in large part to the extreme narrow band of color that the laser emits. This speckle is known to cause not only color distortions, but unless reduced below obvious levels can also cause fatigue and even nausea and headaches. Lasers also require active temperature stabilization which in many cases requires a lot of power.

Against this background, we introduce and thank Bill Beck for this opportunity to ask 3Questions.

Bill Beck is a founder of Laser Light Engines Inc., based in southern New Hampshire near the famous R&D centers of Boston (MIT, Harvard, BU Photonics). Their website is polite but also light on detail – one suspects that they were in research mode with little to say, then exploded into development mode and have been too busy to say much.

Recent news items have announced a relatively large infusion of capital, both from typical venture capital sources, and also from the IMAX Corporation to develop a laser light source for their digital projectors. Secondly, they have helped found an industry group with Sony, IMAX and others – Laser Illuminated Projection Association (LIPA) – to help regulatory agencies differentiate the established needs of protecting the public who watch laser-light shows (and which require FDA exemptions for each show) from what they are hoping will be a new category called “laser-illuminated projection”. There is also word of another industry association that is trying to pin down how to quantify speckle: how to measure and what it does.

Separately, Sony has announced their research and development of laser engines (links below) and there are rumors of assistance from a French company which might imply that their development is not as advanced as the Sony website seems to indicate. Kodak also showed their first versions of a laser system for digital cinema which they speak of as being two years away from application.

Q1: We understand that the initial Laser Light Engine concept is to supply a module that replaces the Xenon light engine. Would that include replacing the optical block of condenser lenses and the prism?

Bill Beck: We see this as a multi-step process.  In the future, there won’t be a need for a condenser and splitter as our laser makes narrow band RGB which could easily be delivered directly to the chips. But the optical block of the typical projector, which includes these items, is not part of the module that we can easily modify after the fact. We conceive that our first product offerings will be packages, adapted for each brand and model, which will work with existing optical blocks. It will be a one-time replacement of the lamp and reflector housing that that won’t require a great deal of customer difficulty.

Q2) The optical block is an expensive part of a projector, and your lasers must have costs associated compared to a bulb and the reflective surfaces they replace. Where is the savings?

A2) As you know, the human visual system responds to a very narrow band of wavelengths, and in that band, to some frequencies more than others. The typical xenon bulb is quite efficient compared to other choices. For example, they are quite white balanced. But they still generate significant amounts of infrared and ultraviolet light, which is all wasted energy (typically, ~95% of the energy created) and which requires special designs to eliminate both the heat and the O3 (ozone) created.

And, when you think about it, the design of RGB laser systems won’t require all the interband light between the frequencies needed to mix colors – more wasted light. Plus, the basic laws of physics apply, such that the light is incredibly bright at the arc point, but the power decreases inversely proportional at the square of the distance. By the time the light gets bounced around and focused to the very narrow slit cone the chip can accept, an incredible amount of the light is wasted and the energy used to create it is for naught.

So, yes. In comparison, it takes significant power to create the laser light, but we can generate just to amounts that we need, at the frequencies that we need, and supply it to the chip at the angle that it needs. This allows us to bring an exact ratio of power (which isn’t equal amounts of R and G and B by the way) at the specific frequencies we choose (615/546/455 nanometers.)

The nature of high pressure bulbs (25 atmospheres in an IMAX bulb) also requires them to be replaced quite often, often before their time – we’re talking 100’s, not 1000’s of hours of use. At 5 movie showings a day, 2 hours each, a thousand hours can be reached in 3 months. Because the special glass, and coatings on the glass, get bombarded with such high amounts of energy they become brittle – an exploding bulb can cause 10’s of thousands in damage. They are not inexpensive, so exhibitors have to turn them on and off between each show. Still, a single high duty-cycle projector might use 10,000 dollars worth of bulbs per year, or more.

While the first generation units won’t have all the power consumption reduction optimized, we estimate that we will ultimately get 2X the light to the screen for the same power consumption, without considering the reduced requirements for AC pulling heat away (which is not insignificant.)

Finally, and also not insignificant, our tests show that the system can use high f# laser input and achieve 4000:1 sequential contrast with DLP and 3300:1 with LCOS. With the appropriate f# projection lens, the contrast ratio could go even higher.

It is premature for us to speak about projected pricing for our systems. But even apart from direct costs, we feel that offering a constant source of more energy efficient light, which won’t required a projectionist to suit up in full-body protective clothing every 3 months, will bring advantages in every column.

Q3) It is hard to decide on the third question. Lumens per watt of RGB power, input v output to the screen, or how you got the speckle out, or whether you mean all the speckle or just enough that we don’t notice…or should we ask about what you imply about this multi-step evolution, or what this means for less expensive lenses or what the implications are for 3D, both for more light and, for example, we understand that lasers can, by their nature, coherently spin photons in one direction then another, obviating the need for expensive 3D solutions external to the projector. Please take your pick, but please keep it simple. It took me 20 hours of research just to understand etendue.

A3) Yes, the light people do speak in tongues sometimes. The same effect will often have a different name depending on if you are looking from the source point or if you are looking from the receipt point. I’m an optical fibre guy myself, so I’ll start with our concept and try to keep it in one language.

We speak in terms of lumens per beamliine. In the first system that we propose there can be up to 7 beamlines, each with about 30,000 lumens coming out, which combined, that is about 200,000 lumens going toward the chip and getting 60-100,000 lumens out. Depending on the projector efficiency, that is at least 2 times and approaching 3 times the brightness of a big (6Kw) Xenon lamp.

Our research shows that because of the low etendue of the source, we can keep scaling up, which has been a problem for digital cinema. As you alluded, lamp technology could not scale much further. Even with larger chip sizes, there was only minimal brightness gain in the system. With the ability to further cool the chips, we can foresee putting 3 times the light through each optical cable – that’s about 80k lumens per beamline; about 250 optical watts of white balanced of RGB light to the projector. Looking at this another way, that is about 5 times brighter than the brightest Xenon powered digital projector. [Editor’s note: Wow! Bill Beck’s note: Again, that will require not insignificant work to keep the chips cool.]

As far as alternating polarization of the photons pre-chip, that is another benefit of lasers, and the implications are huge…but  it will take some work with the chip engineers. That subject can take up 3Questions on its own.

 


 

Links: 

Sony Insider » The Science Of The Laser Projector

 

Sony Develops Highly Efficient RGB Laser Light Source Module for Large Screen Projectors

 

Sony Insider » Sony Details New RGB Laser Light Source Module For Projectors

Kodak Laser_Projection_Technology; Large Display Report article.pdf

KODAK Advances Lasers’ March on DCinema

Display Daily » Blog Archive » News on the Laser Cinema Front

Report: 2010 Digital Captioning Symposium

2010 Digital Captioning Symposium

Fast forward sixteen years later. This week, I sat in the Washington, D.C. Digital Captioning Symposium presented by Regal Entertainment Group and National Association of Theater Owners. The symposium participants were representatives from deaf and hard of hearing organizations. In this presentation, we learned that movie theaters are quickly adopting digital projectors, which increases opportunities for movie theatre captioning for deaf and hard of hearing patrons. In considering a “personal captioning device” for a theater, there are five decisions that theater owners take into consideration:

  1. Ease of Use: Is the device intuitive for the patron? Is it easy for theater employees to manage set-up post installation?
  2. Maintenance: Can the devices be cleaned with ease? Are different parts easily replaced when they break?
  3. Privacy: Are the captions only seen by the deaf and hard of hearing patron? No distraction to neighbors?
  4. Depth-of-Field: Can captions be viewed without eye-strain? Can user view captions simultaneously with movie, or does the user read the captions up-close first, then view movie?
  5. Cost: Is it affordable for the theater to install and maintain as technology develops?

For the original of this article and links to the keen mobile apps, go to:
 Theater Captioning: Back to the Future | Keen Scene


Four Market-Ready Personal Captioning Devices:

With these in mind, we tested four different personal captioning devices for twenty-minutes each as we watched Disney’s “Game Plan,” and I’ll offer a brief summary of how they worked, and a few pros and cons. Note that this is my personal opinion, and not representative of the whole group or the deaf and hard of hearing organization that I represented (Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing).

MoPix: WGBH Boston – Media Access Group Mopix Rear Window System shot

Better known as “Rear-window captioning” Motion Picture Access (MoPix), developed by The Media Access Group, part of WGBH of Boston has been in the market as a first-mover since 1997 and a reliable product.

How it works: An LED-screen is set up in the rear of the theatre and displays three lines of captions in reverse. The user has a transparent reflective plexiglass attached to a “gooseneck” stem that can be positioned in the cup holder. Once a user positions the plexiglass to the optimal angle of the LED screen and screen, captions can be superimposed on the screen.

Pros: The user does not have to worry about any technical difficulties (i.e., battery running out, not having a wireless signal). The depth-of-field is the same as the screen, so there is no eye-strain.

Cons: Getting the right angle and positioning can be challenging. Where you are seated in the theatre makes a difference. The closer you are to the LED screen and to the center, the better.

More Information: http://ncam.wgbh.org/mopix/

Infrared Closed Captioning System: USL, Inc. USL Captioning System Front End

How it works: Attached to a similar “gooseneck” arm as MoPix, a small box with a window displays two-lines of captions that are triggered by the infrared system. The user views the captions inside this “window” (black screen with white text) and then the movie screen.

Pros: The captions are available inside the “window,” so user can easily shift in seat and adjust the gooseneck accordingly.

Cons: Two different depth-of-fields: The user needs to read the captions up close first, then view the screen at the distance. So it creates some eye-strain. I positioned the gooseneck away from me and that helped just a little bit. Second, it is subject to technical difficulty with the wireless transmitter and battery life. (What if the theaterstaff forgets to charge it? or turn on infrared panel?)

More Information: http://www.uslinc.com/products-sound-CCS.html

CaptiView: Doremi Cinema, Inc. Doremi Captiview Frontend

How it works: Attached to a gooseneck, a long, thin OLED panel holds three lines high-contrast captions, outfitted with a privacy screen so that users do not see the captions. (Not unlike the computer film you may put on your phone or laptops.) Captions are received via a wireless transmitter.

Pros: Easy to sit anywhere in the house and adjust positioning of display relative to the movie screen. Letter-boxed captions easy to read.

Cons: Depth of field is not the same as screen, but for some reason, did not bother me as much as USL’s Infrared Captioning System. Maybe it was because I was used to it by that point? Or perhaps the fact that the words were “closer” in the panel, rather than far back in the window.

More Information: http://www.doremicinema.com/PDF/CaptiViewSheet.pdf (PDF)

iGlass: Sony Sony Model of iGlasses for subtitles

This was interesting and different than the rest. It didn’t require a gooseneck device attached to a cup holder. So yes, I can bring in my soda and be able to easily reach for it! This product, developed by Sony, is in Beta, so I found a similar concept of goggles as you can see to the right.

How it works: Infrared panels transmit captions and user has a small receiver that are attached to a pair of seemingly futuristic glasses. Inside the glasses are clear “screens” that display captions straight out in front of you. (And yes, that means you may see captions on the wall if you turn your head to the side of the theater.)

Pros: Depth-of-field is the same as the screen. Can easily be superimposed on the theatre screen. Virtually no eye-strain. Glasses are consistently positioned on the face, so no need to re-adjust gooseneck when user moves around in the seat. Also, it’s not as conspicuous!

Cons: Just got a bit tricky with real-estate around my ears due to bilateral cochlear implants. But not a deal-breaker. Similar to USL, Doremi, there are areas for technical difficulty by the user.

What If…

It’d be interesting if there was an “invisible ink-” style captions actually part of the movie that can only be visible from a special pair of glasses? Or a similar projector from the back that displays captions on top, only visible to a specific type of lens? Any other ideas out there?

Progress, for sure!

It was an interesting day to test out all these devices and watch Disney’s  ”Game Plan” – Of course, with it being Disney, I almost had to reach for some kleenex when we reached the inevitable, predictable happy ending.  It’ll be interesting to see what the theaters roll out in the near future, and I think it’s sooner than we think. It’s definitely an improvement over what I saw at the last Personal Captioning Symposium hosted by Regal in 2006. Keep up the good work!

About the author

Catharine McNally is the founder of Keen Guides, which was formed to create more mainstream and accessible tourism experiences for everyone. McNally spends her efforts on user experience and design, video production and distribution, and staying ahead of the accessibility curve. You can follow Catharine on twitter (@cmcnally)

DCI Talks NIST

There are many FIPS standards, since they are the codification for the use of all non-military computers allowed by the US government, which spans many fields. The security standards referenced by SMPTE and the DCI group are the 140 series which were passed in May of 2001 known as 140-2. There are four levels defined in this series beginning with Level 1, ascending with higher components of physical security to Level 4. Level 2 defines physical tamper evidence and role-based authentication, Level 3 adds tamper resistance, identity authentication and different physical and logical separations between different interfaces as data goes between them, complicated with security going back and forth. Level 4 adds more physical security, and focuses on attacks coming from the environment such as Side Channel and Cache attacks. 

Currently, Digital Cinema uses Level 3 of FIPS-2. But FIPS has begun the final steps of their process to supersede FIPS-2 with FIPS-3, expected to be finalized for implementation in 2011 or 2012. DCI specifications (and SMPTE and ISO (the International Standards Organization which incorporated the DCinema SMPTE standards note for note) require that DCI Compliant equipment move with the current FIPS standard. What came as a surprise though was an “Annex A” that was changed in advance of FIPS-3 which changed 3 salient points of the way that keys are utilized in the process.

There has been a DCI statement recently that allows a “grandfathering” of equipment that has passed compliance under the “old” rules. (Compliance Test Plan Change Policy Statement) But manufacturers are still preparing equipment for compliance that will not make it under the old rules. As of now there are several manufacturers of projectors who have passed through the DCI Compliance process, but there are no servers (though some have FIPS compliance already.)  

Michael Karagosian of MKPE Consulting points out: 

A surprise was introduced in January of this year when NIST changed Annex A of FIPS 140-2, the NIST specification for which DCI currently requires compliance.  The transition period for this revision is taking place right now, in this calendar year.  NIST says that after December 31 of 2010, it will no longer accept test results from products that comply with the older version of FIPS 140-2.  

There are some notable exceptions to this deadline that benefit the digital cinema community.  But one very significant issue remains regarding dual use of the asymmetrical key-pair in the media block, for which the December 31 deadline is still intact.  The primary use of the media block key-pair is to encrypt and decrypt the KDM.  But the DCI spec calls for other uses of this key-pair, as well.  The dilemma presented by FIPS 140-2 is discussed in my report in the September issue of the SMPTE Journal, which is online at http://mkpe.com/report/.

To summarize the problem:  SMPTE 430-5, one of the standards that establishes the DCI-compliant Security Log, requires that the media block certificate (public key) be used to digitally sign the media block security logs.  This behavior is mandated by the DCI specification, in addition to other DCI-specified uses. The older version of FIPS 140-2 allows this multi use of the media block key-pair through its normative reference to FIPS 186-2.  However, the newer FIPS 186-3 forbids the multi-use case.  FIPS 140-2 Annex A was updated in January 2010 to now require conformance with FIPS 186-3.  Further, a NIST discussion paper on their website requires compliance to FIPS 186-3 after December 31, 2010.

Below is the relevant text taken from SMPTE 430-5, FIPS 186-3, and the NIST discussion paper:

* From SMPTE 430-5 Security Log Event Class and Constraints, Section 6.2:
“Each Signature shall be signed with the Digital Cinema Certificate of the Security Device that generates the Log Record or sequence of Log Records.”
(A copy of SMPTE 430-5 can be purchased from the SMPTE web site at http://store.smpte.org/product-p/smpte%200430-5-2008.htm.)  Note that the other uses mandated in the DCI spec of the media block’s Digital Cinema Certificate is to create the KDM and to establish a TLS session between media block and projector.

* From FIPS 186-3, page 11 (http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips180-3/fips180-3_final.pdf):
“However, a key pair used for digital signature generation and verification as specified in this Standard shall not be used for any other purpose.”

* From NIST DISCUSSION PAPER: The Transitioning of Cryptographic Algorithms and Key Sizes (http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/key_mgmt/documents/Transitioning_CryptoAlgos_070209.pdf):
“New implementations designed to conform to FIPS 186-2 may be tested by the labs until December 31, 2010, after which only implementations claiming conformance to FIPS 186-3 will be tested for validation.”

If no action is taken by DCI, the result will be that the DCI specification will be in conflict with itself after December 31.  The DCI spec will call for compliance to FIPS 140-2, which will no longer allow the media block key-pair applications that are also required by the DCI specification, including the KDM as it is defined today.

That was written to the InterSociety Digital Cinema Forum on 3 October 2010.

Against that background, DCI issues a document on 11 November 2010:
DCI Informational Bulletin NIST Standards Evolution & FIPS 140-2 to FIPS 140-3 Transition 

Another analysis of FIPS-3: 
Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3 

Update Everything Month~! Software Vulnerability Records

Just glancing through the update literature we see that Windows had started the trend with a record number of patches, then Adobe got into the competition with several programs getting the ‘record number’ treatment. Opera thought that was good publicity and topped the 50 fixes line, then Java gave everyone a good run at the records. All in all, there have been other “Update Everything” months, but nothing like this last two weeks of October 2010.

Set aside the time, and if required, the task force to make certain that every computer in your operation that could ever be connected to any of your digital cinema systems, whether by USB key (moving a security key), or by network, has every piece of software checked for updates. Start with the major ones, especially those listed in this article: Ongoing Security–It’s “Update Everything Month”

3D Wonders

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s desperation plea: Movie biz needs to make movies that look good in 3-D | The Big Picture | Los Angeles Times – Patrick Goldstein
WSJ – Clash of the Titans | Full-bodied takedown
2 articles already commented on Decline and Fall: 3D takes some knocks
Forbes’ Dorothy PomerantzShow Me the Money blog, described Katzenberg’s answer to his critics 

It is easy to agree and disagree with the 3D-bashing. First, this is another case of a technology’s sausage making evolving in public. Usually the steps progress logically. In the case of cinema 3D, Avatar showed what could be done 6 years in advance of what might have happened if natural progression had taken place. This affected all aspects from acquisition and post, and customer perception. Suddenly the bar is set high and movies still in post-production looked 2nd (or 3rd) rate in comparison. Upon these, people are making their judgement.

The part that Cameron didn’t handle was exhibition, though it is said that he tried to arrange for different master prints into auditoriums that could put out more light…which would have been splendid, because there is still a major technical problem of getting enough light to the eyes with 3D, which presents many implications that journalists just skim over (at best). But one point can’t be argued against; there are fewer reasons to forgive the evolution excuse when cinemas are charging extra for the experience, leaving them open to complaints. 

None of the professional critics have room to mention that the cinemas are spending 20 to 30 thousand for the extra 3D portion of the DCinema equipment, plus glasses, plus glasses cleaning equipment, plus the personnel to distribute and clean the glasses. Perhaps that isn’t being explained well by the professional marketeers, but the critic’s research should have figured this out. 

One the other hand, that some cinemas are using silver screens for 3D is just a horror in the making. These screens are made so that some seats get an optimum amount of light. Those outside of this “sweet spot”, which can be the majority of seats, see an inferior picture – a picture with so little light that it causes problems which have not been well researched, and about which people merely generalize.

That the cinemas are then showing 2D movies on these screens should get the SMPTE police on their tails, as well as invoke sanctions if the cinema has a VPF agreement which compels them to follow the DCI specs that call for uniform light across the screen beginning with 48 candela (14 foot Lamberts) in the center. (They are lucky if they get 10 candela now (3.5 ft/L).) As technical articles demonstrate, sitting anywhere off center … or even in the wrong rows depending on the slant of the projector and the screen … makes the already dark 3D image intolerable. People should get a discount instead of being charged more if they are in the wrong areas. See: 23 degrees…half the light. 3D What?

Laser Illuminated Projection Association (LIPA)

The real news of the month has been laser systems. First was an announcement that Laser Light Engines, LLC has received significant financing, including from the IMAX group, for taking their now working products to production. Then Kodak started inviting people to see their system – doubtlessly timed to get people as they went to ShowEast next week. Kodak are not only working to change the source of light, they are changing the entire light block. Their hope is that they can allow standard lenses in the digital cinema projector, knocking off a significant amount of the cost of the dcinema system. And, like with all laser systems, the energy waste a lot less than with the xenon bulbs in standard use.  

And finally, Sony is being shy, but showing that they will have cards to play…which was already obvious 18 and 12 months ago when they went public with their laser announcement(s). (The Science Of The Laser Projector | Sony Insider) There are other rumors of other companies that Sony might be working with – c’est possible. The news though is that they are working publicly to get the standards group that deals with lasers (The US Food and Drug Administration…go figure…) to create a new category named Laser-illuminated Projection. That, instead of the category that laser light shows are under.

Sony, Imax Tout Lasers in Cinema – 3D Cinecast/WSJ
Laser Light Engines gets IMAX funding– Putting Light on the Subject

The article above gives quotes and also points out that increasing light levels will be good for 3D. One can’t have an article about digital cinema without talking about 3D. But it is true, though not the main point.

What that Wall Street Journal article doesn’t mention, and why lasers are mentioned in this 3D article, is not due to the light increase – which will come incrementally and at great pain to the mastering process and exhibition community trying to keep up with even more changes – but rather because lasers won’t need Z-screens or fancy spinning wheels from RealD or MasterImage to make the photons spin in alternating patterns. Giving photons a rotation state is inherent in the capabilities of the laser technology. [Maintaining the rotation state still requires a silver screen, which implies bright spots and dark spots and color shift of the picture depending on where you sit. Perhaps getting more light will allow silver screens with less gain, which might mitigate their most egregious features. But like many things, this requires research – and everyone is busy with the niggling details of keeping up with growth and complying with a change toward international standards after years of transitional standards.]

MasterImage, who also had a press release this month about taking more space at Hollywood’s Raleigh Studios, and RealD are really in a fight for a piece of the home cinema 3D market…as is XpanD. The professional market has been important, and an incredible financial, political and technical operation, but if they win a segment of a growing consumer market, they could afford to lose professional cinema. At this time, the active glasses solution seem to be winning, but the race will be long and the first technology hurdles are just being overcome. Perhaps it will become easier to glue a lens to the front of the screen with enough precision that it won’t subtract from the quality and add too much to the cost, which is what is needed for the passive glasses systems. Then cheap glasses will have a chance. In today’s economy, no one stands a chance…except perhaps for THX, who notably has announced the first THX Certified 3D TV.

YouTube – CEDIA Expo 2010 – What is THX 3D Certification on the LG PX990/PX950 Plasma TVs?
YouTube – LG electronics introduces first 3D TV certified by THX

To MasterImage’s credit, and contrary to the important point in the critics criticisms of 3D in the cinema, MasterImage announced glasses that fit the faces of kids. RealD announced that they were releasing kid sized glasses for Toy Story 3. One wonders how many theaters are making this change? What a scandal that it has taken this long for developers and cinema chains, who up until now have grouped all viewers as if they had the same interpupillary distance, but thankfully that is changing. I still would recommend taking a piece of foam to cushion the bridge of the nose from the plastic, but that’s just me. 

Our picture of a recommendation is in the article:
RealD and Polaroid — Possible Promise PR

Good luck to us all.

Open Source DCP Mastering

There are two threads on the RED User forum:

Digital cinema package – how i, a computer neophyte, made an open source dcp on my ma – REDUSER.net

This one has excellent data on preparing your audio and video materials: Digital Cinema Package – REDUSER.net

Film maker Chris Perry writes the A-Z on his site as well, which he recently updated: crumbs: Making a DCP entirely with open source tools (update)

Clyde has other articles on the site, one that explains Doremi’s CineAssist version 
Doremi’s CineAssist allows for in-house 3D DCP mastering

For a myriad of other DCinema best practices, especially focused on Stereoscopic 3D, see his blog:
http://www.realvision.ae/blog 

There are many restrictions in the open source model at this point. Alternative frame rates (anything other than 24 frames) is not easy…or perhaps not even possible if you don’t have a means of creating a JPEG 2000 version of your output…which is a requirement of the DCP. 

Knut Erik Evensen‘s site promotes his DCP mastering services and he also has an article on the open source capabilities, DCPC, a frontend to open source DCP tools.

Lars Reichel has a front end for DCP creation: Digital Cinema Package Creator

No matter how much reading you do, these techniques are not simple or for those without excellent computer skills. 

Still free, but possibly not open sourced, one cannot neglect the excellent work from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, centering a suite of products around easyDCP, easyDCP Creator, easyDCP Player and easyDCP Workflow Plug-Ins.

The sister company of the  Aussie integrators Digital Cinema Network is the developerment group digitAll, who have introduced the dcpPlayer for the desktop computer and are soon to release dcpEncoder. (digitAll is also a sister group to Cine Tech Geek, a great place to get practical demonstrations of digital cinema equipment and concepts.)

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

This year marks the transition from the InterOp set of standards to a full SMPTE implementation. This transition is supposed to be completed world-wide by April of 2011. But there is one part of the DCI and SMPTE specs that is being ignored; the need for 48 candelas per meter2 (14 foot Lamberts) of light bouncing off the screen during presentation. This is attainable and probably done regularly for 2D movies, but because of the nature of current 3D technology (some versions which suck up 80% of the light sent from the projector), most facilities are barely getting 3 ftL (10 cd/m2) to the eyes during 3D movies.*

Against this background, Laser Light Engines of Salem New Hampshire USA announces that the IMAX group has made an investment in their company and their technologies. This is auspicious for several reasons.

IMAX once had an unmatchable system for making and presenting movies. Their film stock recorded nearly post card sized frames which could be presented in an immersive style, saturating screens of immense proportions. They took a PR hit for allowing the IMAX name to be used for movies shot in 35mm and upgraded digitally during the mastering and print phase, but still shown in 15/70 (15 perf/70millimeter). They took another hit for surviving by creating a multiplex version of IMAX. Recently they have taken a hit for showing 3D movies digitally, which although done in the best way possible, could never match the dual 15/70 versions.

Using two Christie projectors allowed a full 2K image to be triple flashed to the screen with far more intensity than a single projector could produce. (Although the Sony digital system produces a 4K image, with 4 times the data of 2K, their 3D system divides their 4K chip into 2 x 2K images. Sony also hasn’t progressed their LCOS system into the very largest screens due to contrast issues.) But even with two projectors, the amount of available light to the screen still doesn’t meet SMPTE specifications.

Enter LASER technology from Laser Light Engines (LLE). For several years this company in Salem, New Hampshire, USA, has been approaching and dealing with the detailed challenges which will usher in the next technology leap for digital cinema. This week they have announced an agreement with IMAX which should help each company meet internal goals, as well as the expectations of their audience.

[Press Release attached as pdf for logged in readers.]

If it were as simple as finding 3 LASERs and firing them at the Texas Instruments DLP or Sony LCOS chip, this would have been done long ago. But it is not that simple. At this year’s ShoWest convention, LLE announced that they had met one of the lingering challenges, eliminating the effects of speckle in the green channel, in this case a LASER of 546 nm. (Blue and Red LASERs are at 455 nm and 615 nm.)

It might be difficult for IMAX to portray this to the blogosphere, where they have taken the most hits recently. It is also not prudent to pollute one’s own bathwater by speculating upon a future technology that shows the compromises of existing technology. On the other hand, there is a growing realization that 3D technology may have been generally introduced before it is ready, and speculation is rampant that it is being pushed merely for commercial reasons. That speculation does a dis-service to several hundreds of artists who have done incredible work in the field. Perhaps some clever marketing guru will figure a way to explain that today’s version of 3D is above good enough, well worth paying more for, as there  are extra costs in the production/post-production and exhibition chain…but wow~! the future.

The mantra of this news magazine is that Engineering is the Art of Compromise. Continuous refinements knock away at these compromises, which is why this news is so exciting…there is nothing so refined as LASER technology and no bigger need than to become more green, more efficient, safer, brighter – issues that LASER technology can handle. There will be more on this topic, as well as its companion – optical fibre – in further issues.

[There is a Boston Globe:Boston.com:Business:Technology article named
Casting some light on 3-D of 11 July 2010 that came before the IMAX news. Conjecture on whether exhibitors would change the high heat, short life Xenon bulbs for a slightly more expensive, much longer life, lower heat LASER seems a bit mis-placed, but the article explains many other issues very well.]

* Our series that begins with Scotopic Issues with 3D, and Silver Screens examines these issues.

Security: Connect the Dots–Ongoing

This article will be an ongoing list of interesting articles in the security arena, none earth-shattering (which will have separate articles), but each one a dot that might connect to other data. Please add other news in the comments or write editor at dciematools.com 

15 August–Welcome to the future: cloud-based WPA cracking is here

Cloud computing is the latest effort to put data off site, to let professionals handle the IT details, or to put large amounts of data close to the user, while allowing the users to concentrate on their application. Dolby, for example, uses the well-regarded Salesforce solution (as do many large corporations) to monitor equipment and solutions in the field. Thus it is news…and really really really points to the need for using excellent passwords.

In 2008, I speculated about the future of distributed security cracking. That future has arrived, in the form of a $17 “cloud” based service provided through the efforts of a security researcher known as Moxie Marlinspike. It is effective against pre-shared key deployments of both WPA and WPA2 wireless networks.

The mechanism used involves captured network traffic, which is uploaded to the WPA Cracker service and subjected to an intensive brute force cracking effort. As advertised on the site, what would be a five-day task on a dual-core PC is reduced to a job of about twenty minutes on average. …Because it is a dictionary attack using a predefined 135-million-word list, there is no guarantee that you will crack the WPA key, but such an extensive dictionary attack should be sufficient for any but the most specialized penetration testing purposes.

If you opt to use the service, you will of course leave a money trail via Amazon Payments — which is probably a bad idea if you are attempting to gain unauthorized access to a secured network illegally. For the good guys testing the security of a client’s network, however, this is an incredibly handy tool to have at one’s disposal.

It gets even better. If you try the standard 135-million-word dictionary and do not crack the WPA encryption on your target network, there is an extended dictionary that contains an additional 284 million words. In short, serious brute force wireless network encryption cracking has become a retail commodity.


 

Please report any security news which you think that community could benefit from in the comments.

Released en francais: DCinema Technical Best Practices [Updated]

Now In English, translated from the french by the EDCF – European Digital Cinema Forum; This excellent guide from the Federation National Cinemas Francais (FNCF) and the Commission Superieure Technique de l’Image et du Son (CST): TECHNICAL GUIDE FOR THE PROJECTION BOOTH IN DIGITAL CINEMA – Click the attachment link below.

End Update   — — 

La luminance de toutes les images, dans tous les formats de projection, doit être calibrée à 48 cd/m2. Le projecteur doit permettre la création de cette luminance.

The Federation of Cinemas and the Commission of Best Practices (La fédération des cinémas et la commission supérieure technique) has released a comprehensive document called The Technical Guide for the Digital Cinema Projection Booth (le Guide technique de la cabine cinéma numérique). The quote above, as an example, says that:

“The luminance of all images, in all the formats of projection, must be calibrated at 48 candelas per square meter. The projector must permit the creation of that luminance.”

And which professional digital cinema projector doesn’t create that level of light? One that is projecting a 3D movie would fit into that category. Please ask your local cinema manager if they are showing the latest movie at the required 14 foot-Lamberts (the 48 candela/m2 equivalent that the US and England uses) like they are supposed to.

If you are signed in, you can download the PDF version of le Guide technique de la cabine cinéma numérique here.

State of European DCinema Conference

The presentations were recorded, and are now available with their documents. With the plethora of conferences, and the financial and environmental aspects of attending them, having this information available on the Observatory’s site is laudable in itself. Being well organized and filled with excellent data makes it even more compelling.

The presenters and their topics were:

  • Box office trends 2009: 3D a driving force
    — Martin Kanzler, European Audiovisual Observatory 
  • Digital roll-out: Status quo as of year-end 2009
    —Elisabetta Brunella, MEDIA Salles
  • Public funding for digital roll-out: who, what and where
    —Susan Newman-Baudais, European Audiovisual Observatory>
  • Public funding – Legal issues
    —Francisco Cabrera-Blázquez, European Audiovisual Observatory 

[DailyMotion videos can now be watched from the DailyMotion app for the iPhone/iPad/Touch.]

Digital Cinema Tango! The Observatory Panel in Cannes part 2

Digital Cinema Tango! The Observatory Panel in Cannes part 3

[To easily get the links on your iPhone, use the mail link above to send this article to yourself. We don’t get or keep a copy of your email addresses.]

Watch the videos and download the materials from the European Audiovisual Observatory site:

Digital Cinema Tango Workshop [Link]

Update: Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

Film Critic Roger Ebert wrote an impressive article about 3D technology in movies. It appears in Newsweek, an American magazine that is considered sometimes serious. 

In it, he leads with his top negative criteria, tells us that he is committing heresy by saying these things, then repeats these criteria with an additional sentence or two. These are some of the arguments that counter his logic.

1. IT’S THE WASTE OF A DIMENSION.
Perspective is one of more than a dozen clues that we use to discern whether an object is closer or farther from the viewing position. One imagines that when Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and de Vinci brought back and experimented with perspective, a lost technique since the fall of the Roman Empire, that the same arguments were made.

But this point is not valid any more than saying that it was a costly mistake bringing color into the film world, or pictures to stories that were previously done well over radio waves. The real point is that when a director is able to get an audience immersed in the story, the technology doesn’t matter. 

This is not the forum for describing exactly how there is no such thing as color, that it is all a trick done in the mind. But the same roles apply here. The mind can put the texture of a dress into a radio story, or the color of Bergman’s eyes into the last scene of Casablanca, and the depth required to allow an actor to roll down a hill, when logic says that a screen is flat, and gravity should make them fall, like down a cliff.

His point about Lawrence of Arabia is an interesting choice. Early in the transition to digital, that exact example was used to point out the difference between film and digital; that from a film our eyes would see a blurred object and skip through some logic to determine that it is a man on a horse descending from a dune. In digital, depending on the resolution, this would start as a square pixel (picture element), then keep adding pixels until there were enough information to allow it to take some form in the mind. This included an argument that said that the film Titanic could not be digitized for wide-screen digital presentation without smearing all the digital elements in the background, elements which were done with a technology that was just over the limit for what it was needed for (film release), but would be under the limit for the resolutions and technologies of digital release 5 years later.

2. IT ADDS NOTHING TO THE EXPERIENCE.
Again, he is right, but again, wrong. But I am prejudiced, as I have seen the final scene of Casablanca that was painstakingly converted to 3D. After that, I was converted from being anti-3D… knowing that if it was always done this well, if it always looked this natural, then this was the way it should be done.

He is asking the wrong question. Not what would it gain, but what is the more natural way to immerse an audience? The answer is that we see with 2 eyes, that we see with convergence of two pictures delivered to the brain that are slightly different, and the mind is relied upon to work out the differences.

Yes, the mind can discern depth by interpreting shades of colors and from shadows that move across objects, and by interpreting which pieces are blocking which other pieces in the frame. We can tell by the subtle differences in the fringing that occurs at the edges of objects (again, going back to the subtle clues that mark di Vinci’s work.)

All in all though, adding a second picture that is slightly different which gives us the natural clue that convergence brings…by its nature and by our nature…adds something to the experience.

3. IT CAN BE A DISTRACTION.
Now he is starting to have a reasonable argument. He should have led with this.

The current evolution of 3D is a technology searching for ways to do the right thing in an economical way. Since animated movies are no longer painted cell by cell, frame by frame, but rather created in computers using 3D technology anyway, this was the most natural starting place for movies to present 3D. Simultaneously, CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) was on a parallel track, getting quite sophisticated. It was the next logical step. A few tools were headed there.

But the challenges of getting the subtlety required, a subtlety not required by animation, meant that Cameron was developing technology on-the-fly, going through at least 3 generations of camera equipment, and pushing every other production and post-production envelop along the way. An evolution without Cameron’s work would have taken another 5 or 10 years.

It would be great to develop a master class that would discuss all the different technologies available to create 3D movies, centered on the many methods that Cameron used in Avatar. But this isn’t the place. Suffice to say that it takes time and money to do it well. And the recent Alice In Wonderland is a great launch to a short explanation of what Ebert’s real point 3 should be.

In making movies, the long standing complaint was that audio was always given the short shrift, forced to do months of work in a week or two, and at the last second, with the director and the executives from the lot all breathing flame down the backs of the mixers and crew.

According to one 3D house, this time it was their work that got the squeeze, and the product was less for the experience. It was known that Alice would have to go to a shop that takes each frame, makes a series of discrete elements from it, and expands upon the 3D clues already there by giving the slightly different view required to place all the objects in space. It is a people intensive, time intensive process. If you have less time, you need more people, but those people need training and experience, and a place to sit with computers and support personnel.

The story goes that Alice was tossed to the crew later than was promised, too late to do the 3D work that they promised, and too late to get the people and equipment to do it right. So, part of the work had to be farmed out to another facility who was given the task of ‘do the best you can’ for a large part of the movie, while the first group did the detailed work on the elements that were determined to be most critical.  

It is obvious while watching the movie. Some parts are very well done, and other parts are like Ebert says; people and objects moving between segmented planes of other objects. Interestingly, the effect is somewhat like Burton’s 3D Christmas Story from a few years before…some might guess that he didn’t object to the intra-scene effects.

There is a 2nd argument that Ebert wraps into this, partly correct and partly not. Using different focus on different planes is indeed a clever directorial tool. It is no less with digital as with film, though digital cameras are more touchy in this regard. So, to begin, this isn’t entirely a 3D issue. 3D equipment is no less capable of shifting this focus. In fact, in some ways it is more capable, allowing the director to shift the convergence and focal and ‘in focus/out of focus’ point in post-production. So, whether that deprives a director of a tool to guide our focus is debatable at best and hyperbole at worst.

4. IT CAN CREATE NAUSEA AND HEADACHES.
Again, I shouldn’t tell a professional like Mr. Ebert how to write, but a paragraph is meant to contain one focus. In this arguments paragraph he starts with 3D TV, and the Consumer Electronics Show. Then it switches to an odd, generalized and possibly incompletely or erroneously stated argument by a scientist, then washes the blood across the screen with a Consumer Report statement about eyestrain that blasts against 3D movies.

The conversation should stay on 3D movies. 3D TV is a different animal, moving on a different evolutionary path. That they may share media in the future shouldn’t make it allowable to get their medium technology confused. Suffice to say that 3D TV is somewhat harder and somewhat easier to do technically, and that there are a lot of considerations that need to be worked out.

What both do share is a lack of million person studies to tell the if and what and why of headaches and eyestrain. Any number that any person uses in this regard, for big screen movies or television, is pulled out of their hat…and if they aren’t wearing a hat…

There are a lot of numbers thrown around in the popular press, and one sometimes suspects data creep. Some data points out that there are some people who just don’t see the 3D effect at all. There are guesses that this is about 8%, and possibly 12-15%. Since one of the technologies works using a sophisticated color filter, this number could raise or lower with the number of people who have color problems in general.

Who gets headaches though, and why? Well, first, not enough people got headaches to make them leave Avatar in droves. And second, if there were studies that Dr. Micheal Rosenberg could have pointed to, I’m certain that Mr. Ebert would have used the enabling technology of hyperlinking to point us to them. For the most part, they don’t exist. There are a few done a colleges (with college age eyeballs) which point to areas that require further study. But there are none which have taken the general population and figured this out.

One area that is known to be a weak point is that the distance between our eyes is different, but this ‘inter-ocular’ distance is chosen for us at the movies. Children obviously have a different space between their eyes than adults do, but everyone gets the same glasses.

At the recent industry event, ShoWest in mid-March, several companies showed glasses which were more comfortable, and better suited for different faces. But 1=1. You can’t change one part of the 3D equation without effecting other parts. What happens if you change the glasses for a child? Frankly, that study hasn’t been done. Does it hurt them, like the story of Carl Reiner’s Opti-Grab invention in The Jerk? Probably not, since the gaming industry has a lot of kids of a lot of ages already wearing 3D glasses. It will change the perceived depth (as compared to someone else with different eye spacing), but it doesn’t seem to induce cross-eyed or wall-eyed individuals who can’t find the popcorn box.

But as we will see with Ebert’s other arguments and our discussion, 3D is part of a system that has evolved to the point of ‘kinda works’, introduced as digital projection was being adapted…and that technology has only recently left the sphere of ‘just kinda works’ itself.

5. HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT 3-D SEEMS A LITTLE DIM?
Phew. There’s a whole bunch of ‘inside baseball’ in this paragraph, much of it that doesn’t belong to this discussion. But since it was thrown in, it shows the confusion that a neophyte like Mr. Ebert has to go through – How can any of us mere mortals get along? (Actually, I can’t believe that he doesn’t know what a foot-lambert (ftL) is. In his decades as a professional in front of a screen reflecting light, he must have run across the common term that the professional standard is measured in.)

Notwithstanding, he and Lenny Lipton are partially right, and he has partially explained the reason. He hasn’t mentioned that new technologies were developed after Mr. Lipton left one of the major equipment developers, which has doubled the light to the screen, or that recently released projectors are able to give more light for the same electrical consuption. Nor does he mention that even though a little dim, the technique works.

On the other hand, this argument shouldn’t be slighted since it is the most valid argument. It is the reason that the majority of 3D screenings are done in mid-sized auditoriums. A larger auditorium would need two projectors beaming to fill the screen. If the technologists involved with the technology had their way, this would be the first area to change. The other desire to change the frame rate, which is made later in the article, would also be on the list, but not unanimous and certainly further down.

It also reminds one of the Yogi Berra quote; In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. The standard for light level to the theatrical screen is recommended by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers at 16 ftL, but there are caveats. First, it is set with no film in the projector. So actually, the standard is about 14 ft-L with clear film. Digital Cinema projectors project white, they don’t use ‘no film’ or clear film.

In a seminal book titled Understanding Digital Cinema by the late Charles S. Swartz, he points out that further study is required to determine if “whether increasing the Digital Cinema setting to 14 ftL improves the visual match to projected film.” They were using 12 ftL at the time.

In fact, the DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative, a study group funded by the 6 major studios) made their recommendation at a nominal 14ftL, ± 3.0 ftL, at the center. (Like other standards, it allows for a uniformity reading of 70% of center at the corners and sides.) The point being, don’t scare me with the difference of big numbers when the reality is less.

In fact, the DCI Stereoscopic Addendum recommendation doesn’t give a luminance value, no doubt presuming it would change. What this recommendation does allow is where our experts Lipton and Ebert fall down, since it does show that there is a significant allowance for color degradation from the 2D standard. That may have been too much for Mr. Ebert to explain in a pop magazine, but it should have been worth the try instead of acting the Luddite.

Going back to the luminance level of 3D–Complain at your cinema. 3D can and should be displayed brighter. If there are no complaints, the standard will remain stuck at this least of possible worlds level.

Instead of changing the brightness as the technology advances (which it has), cinemas will move the movies into a larger room and keep the the same low brightness. This will give more people an social opportunity to sit with a larger crowd (I’m certain that is what the cinema owners are interested in), but it will not be all that 3D can and should be. (Presuming, of course, that you will agree with the author’s opinion that bringing the light level above a higher threshold does change the experience greatly. Again…no studies.)

Thus, Mr. Ebert blows his one good argument and his one great Howard Beale opportunity.

6. THERE’S MONEY TO BE MADE IN SELLING NEW DIGITAL PROJECTORS.

[1] These projectors are not selling themselves. [2] There was initial opposition from exhibitors to the huge cost of new equipment and infighting about whether studios would help share these expenses. [3] Some studios, concerned with tarnishing the 3-D myth, have told exhibitors that if they don’t show a movie in 3-D, they can’t have it in 2-D. [4] Although there’s room in most projection booths for both kinds of projectors, theaters are encouraged to remove analog projectors as soon as they can. [5] Why so much haste to get rid of them? [6] Are exhibitors being encouraged to burn their bridges by insecure digital manufacturers?

Teaching the movie-going audience about the nuance that they should be aware of when watching a movie is Mr. Evert’s one purpose, and he is listened to because he usually does it so well.

In this case, he fails, as there is not one completely true statement in that paragraph. The numbers in Ebert’s arguments above are the authors, to help analyze the statement.

[1] For some early adopters, digital projectors did indeed sell themselves…by the thousands. Digital Cinema brought crowds of people to those theaters who had the intelligence and capacity of teaching their audience, sometimes on a 5:1 ratio of their normal city-wide competition numbers.

[2] “There was initial opposition from exhibitors to the huge cost of new equipment…” Partially true, but so grossly understating the case and making it past tense when it is ongoing at many levels including exhibitors, but also at government levels, that it is a false statement.

In a nutshell, the quick argument is that digital equipment costs 3X what film equipment costs and needs replacing a lot quicker. Studios get the savings, since the cost of prints and distribution is in the billions per year. To offset this, the studios have offered some cinemas a method of reimbursing the cost of some digital equipment, a method known as the Virtual Print Fee (VPF). A VPF is not paid for 3D equipment. A VPF is not paid to cinema facilities who do not get 1st run prints, since the studios don’t normally have a cost associated with them playing a movie…therefore no cost to reimburse. They don’t pay a VPF for equipment that is playing entertainment not of their making. That is, if a facility were only to play live-opera, or sports, or movies from 3rd world communities (made much easier with digital distribution techniques), then a VPF isn’t warranted. In fact, there is no grand “Studios” in this regard. Each studio negotiates contracts individually. So, not only doesn’t Warners not want to pay for movies made by Pathé, they don’t want to pay for movies made by Fox.

[3] It is hard to parse this sentence since it presumes facts and slurs not in evidence. It should also be noted that any negotiation between studio and exhibitor would make the water wars of Chinatown seem like childs play. Anything can be said, everything is on the table. The presumption is that an auditorium must guarantee to play several weeks of Jaws Sequel 14 in order to get the next release of Harry Potter. The statement that there is a 3D myth is presumably built on the idea that there is little ongoing evidence that 3D pulls in more people who will spend more money. Since these deals are made months in advance anyway, and since the increase from single to double digit releases of 3D only happened this year, this is a red herring argument at best.

[4] Let’s face it. If you have to build a new cinema, or if you have to replace old equipment, are you really going to fight against the digital trend? Reality: The largest film projector manufacturer has left the field. Maybe they are involved in the conspiracy since they are also the largest manufacturer of digital projectors, but let’s face reality. Film is a dying technology.

Film, a very sophisticated piece of plastic, uses chemicals that are getting more expensive. (Shall we write about the alleged run on silver by JPMorgan, who is also funding thousands of digital cinema installations? Conspiracy again!) It is difficult and expensive to handle, and even in the best of hand it degrades with each showing. 10 years ago, perhaps even 5 years ago, one would put the film projector in the center port window and relegate the digital to the side. That just isn’t today’s reality.

[5] That environmental nightmare of chemicals and shipping tons of film around the world in secure airplanes and trucks instead of hard disks and eventually satellite and fibre is only part of the haste to get rid of film equipment. The ability of story tellers to make a movie or documentary for less, and distribute to thousands of places for less than it cost to make 5 prints is only one opportunity, plus the ability for communities to see live broadcasts of well done opera and sports that digital equipment gives them.

The cost of film has gotten too expensive as digital cameras have gotten better at taking their place. One can mourn its loss, since there is a hundred years of tricks and gimmicks and a hundred years of our eye/brain/mind learning to convert its images to a reality. But the transition will bring more benefits than it takes away.

[6] “…burn their bridges by insecure digital manufacturers.” One would have presumed that Mr. Ebert is established enough that he doesn’t have to get paid by the word. But I can think of no other reason for this strawman of an argument. IS he implying that there is collusion between the manufacturers and the studios so grand that the colossus of the exhibitors must not only comply but also stay silent? Bigger players have come onto the field and left it than the players who remain. Boeing and Qualcomm appeared and disappeared, leaving a lot of upstarts to take their place. Technicolor remains as a “print” maker and distributor (among other talents), but their film areas are left in havoc. Texas Instruments has spent millions getting the technology up to the evolved standard, but they weren’t known for their clout in the industry. (Conspiracy players – check to see how many TI printers were on the studio lots and if they have a chip set to fail if the studios didn’t back DCinema.)

But, really, Ebert’s arguments are about the digital transition, not about 3D. That studios decided to make more of their movie slate into 3D, before they found that movie patrons would pay more for the 3D privilege, is argument enough, but that gets to the next argument.]

7. THEATERS SLAP ON A SURCHARGE OF $5 TO $7.50 FOR 3-D.
Ah, now the rub. Money for nothing, Kicks for free.

It is hard to speak about Titans without saying that they experimented with a technology, a different technology from Alice, yet from a post production house that derived elements for Avatar…experimented and seemingly failed.

But that doesn’t prove that the studios only did it for the extra $5.

The surcharges for digital and then 3D started slowly. First it was 1 euro or dollar to compensate for the extra stewards and stewardesses who were needed to hand out and retrieve the 3D glasses. Then when cinemas started with the technology that required sterilizing glasses between use, they felt justified adding a little more, especially since no one seemed to complain.

What Mr. Ebert doesn’t say is that the add-on equipment for the 3D capability costs another 20-30 thousand dollars…in some cases more. In addition to the equipment from Dolby, MasterImage, RealD or XpanD, two of those systems require replacing the screen with what is called a ‘silver screen’ to hold the circular polarization that the systems use. Those two systems use cheaper ‘throw-away’ glasses, but the first and last of those systems use expensive, but reusable, glasses that cost 10s of euros (or dollars.)

Are they making more money than they invested? Do the studios take half the money that the exhibitor charges? Unless Mr. Ebert is changing his arguments to a rant on capitalism or the manner that studio/exhibitor deals are made, this argument is using too wide a brush to make a point.

[I hope that you have gone to page two of the NewsWeek article by now.  Arguments 8 and 9 are multi-paragraph, though otherwise not unlike the other comments.

8. I CANNOT IMAGINE A SERIOUS DRAMA, SUCH AS UP IN THE AIR OR THE HURT LOCKER, IN 3-D.
What a critic can’t imagine is not the point. It is what a storyteller who uses a technology can imagine that is important.

There is also another concern. There are some odds that this 3D trend is not a gimmick and that it will continue to evolve to the point that it becomes the norm. If that is the case, no storyteller will want his/her product to be “dated”. No story teller is going to make anything in 4:3 TV size for the same reasons.  

“He is a master of cinematography and editing. Other directors are forced to use 3-D by marketing executives. The elephant in that room is the desire to add a surcharge.” “A scam to justify the surcharge.”

These arguments aren’t borne out by fact. Not only are surcharges are more recent than the decision to increase the number of 3D movies, but no one can tell directors of the caliber of Tim Burton or Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg or Werner Herzog what to do. Creative people like to experiment, some more than others. Do all experiments succeed? Do all movies make back their costs? When they don’t, was it because the studios forced things on the directors? Well, sometimes. But that is not the point that Mr. Ebert is making.

9. WHENEVER HOLLYWOOD HAS FELT THREATENED, IT HAS TURNED TO TECHNOLOGY: SOUND, COLOR, WIDESCREEN, CINERAMA, 3-D, STEREOPHONIC SOUND, AND NOW 3-D AGAIN.
That is big and deep and partly true, and partly revisionist history. It often should be seen the other way. Technologists get ideas, studios take them up, they make money, people think, “Gee, I’ll go to movies again.” But the reality is that these technology advances come without some group of studio heads coming down from Olympus to the rat-infested confines of technologists, with a declaration that their family dog will be shot if they don’t save Hollywood with a 9ml technology fix.

Further, studies have shown that nothing, none of the technologies Ebert mentioned above have done anything to affect the long-term curve of “Butts in Seats”, and further, he is missing the only technology shift that has affected that curve: stadium seating.

This is not to say that his point is wrong about cinema being under siege to Blu-ray and HD cable and home cinema projectors (not to mention flat-screens), and the closing window between wide-screen and DVD releases, and a horrible economy. Studios and exhibitors needed a killer-app, and 3D is a welcome just in time.

But it should be noted that the trend lines for income and butts-in-seat have been up for a couple years running (though I would love to have seen what the numbers would have been if Avatar had been an average blockbuster.)

Ebert closes with two paragraphs that bring him back to reality. The first deals with a technology shift to more frames per second. He thinks that he should be done with a film-based system named MaxiVision48. He points out that Douglas Trumbull had developed and promoted a higher frame rate system (Showscan), and fails to mention that Cameron has mentioned in interviews that a higher frame rate would be the proper direction for digital.

He also doesn’t note that the latest standards and capabilities for digital presentation allow for lower and higher frame rates, and many in between.

“These systems are so good that the screen functions like a window into three dimensions. If moviegoers could see it, they would simply forget about 3-D.”

Maybe Roger is capable of having his Howard Beale moment. Combined with the next paragraph, an ode to the good times past, and a screed against that “younger Hollywood is losing the instinctive feeling for story and quality that generations of executives possessed. It’s all about the marketing.”

Move to Europe Roger. Watch French (and Spanish and Hungarian and Italian) movies. Quit being so insular, damning the world after only inspecting the games and comic book sections of the store.

If digital cinema continues to follow the classic trends of new technology as it has, it won’t reach 50% saturation for another 18 months, at best. The last 50% are not necessarily fall over like dominoes. They would be a great market for EbertFilms. I would invest, though that wouldn’t finance more than a few connectors. But he has more than a few years to prove that well made films with a great story, done on a film based system, can take over the market. I’d love to see it.

But it is not going to happen.


This Series now includes:
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part 0
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part I
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part II
Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 | Part One

Two years ago, the evolution and rush to all things digital in the cinema world reached a classic chasm point, especially for digital cinema presentation to the theater screen. (See bottom question/answer.) It seemed that the technology was worked out, it seemed that the politics were worked out, it seemed that the financing models were worked out…and yet, the number of installations and new sales sat flat…or worse.

Huge companies like Texas Instruments (TI) and Sony had spent millions getting the technology ready for a secure and marketable implementation. Their OEM partners where ready to throw the handle to ‘Plaid’ to fill the needs of 125,000 screens in a world that needs to go from film-based to digital server based systems. The changeover requires a 60-80 thousand euro projector and 20,000 euro server to replace a 30,000€ film chain, a mature technology that typically lasted multiple decades with minor maintenance. But to the rescue, the studios offered plans that would pay back the initial investment by a mechanism known as a Virtual Print Fee (VPF). These were developed to compensate certain cinemas, over time, for playing inexpensive digital copies (distributed via hard disk and eventually satellite and fiber) instead of expensive film prints (distributed by trucks and airplanes.)

So, with all the ducks so apparently in a row, why weren’t the 7,000 ‘innovators’ and early adopters of 2007 joined by 10’s of thousands more screens by early 2010, when the number was merely double that (even after the initial 3D explosion)?

The reality was that the technical, political and financial realities weren’t really ready. Notwithstanding the world financial collapse that hindered access to the billions needed for the transition, there were nuances that made financing not so simple. In addition, the standards were still in transition, both on paper and in the labs and factories.

Financially, the major Hollywood studios are prepared to finance the transition up to the amount that they save in print costs and distribution. The nuance is that they only send out prints to the first-run cinemas, leaving the 2nd and 3rd level cinemas with no funding. (The background nuance is that once the digital transition is complete, the studios save billions per year forever, but are only helping to fund the initial roll-out. The exhibitors save a few low cost employees, and benefit from better quality and the ability to present features other than movies.)

World-wide, the Hollywood studios that developed the VPF mechanisms also didn’t find it fair that they should have to finance cinemas which made income from movies other than Hollywood movies. Nor did they want to overpay for equipment if a cinema made money from operas, concerts, sports or other alternative content that digital projection allows. This caused many national groups, in particular those in the UK, France, Italy and Germany to search for ways to fund the smallest to mid-sized facilities so that they would have digital equipment when enough critical mass was reached for film prints to become ancient history.

The UK funded several hundred screens with lottery money in one partially successful experiment, but it exposed a few holes in the plans. Simply stated, a movie’s life starts in one screen for a week or two, then moves to a smaller screen while the next movie in line attempts to take the larger audience in the larger room. But if there is only one set of digital gear, and that in the larger room, then the cinema still needs a film print to complete the movie’s run. One of the points of a Hollywood VPF is an agreement to get 50% of screens digital in one year and 100% in three years (with at least one capable of 3D.)

When the slow wheels of national finance plans got past the proposal stage, the largest cinemas in France and Germany complained that the ‘tax’ they paid per ticket was funding their competitors. Both plans were recently (in the last few months) thrown out as unfair by the country’s legal systems. (Norway figured it out on their own and are on their way to digitizing the entire country’s cinemas.

Meanwhile, the standards committees within the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE) completed the last of the standards documents in 2009, submitting them to the ISO in the process. What should have been to no one’s surprise, some of the equipment, in particular the installed projectors that utilize the Texas Instruments chipset (the vast majority), didn’t meet those standards. In fact, the first projectors (dubbed ‘Series II’) to meet those standards were released in March 2010, at the industry’s ShoWest convention. Unlike the WiFi industry’s ability to ship equipment for over a year before the standards validated their presumed compliance, there are several pieces of older digital projection gear that will need expensive updating, with some equipment updatable and technically passing compliance requirements, but not able to include some important ‘modern’ features.

In addition to finally getting compliant projectors, those who waited for the new Series II equipment will also be getting equipment that is able to run with lower power consuming bulbs, and of course, give more light to the all important 3D image.

The invasion of 3D movies has been a boon to cinemas. The studios have all embraced it by announcing an ever increasing 3D release schedule, first with animated releases, but now (famously with the Avatar release) with CGI enhanced live action. The exhibitors not only are able to attract larger audiences with this nascent technology, but they are able to charge more per ticket in the process. This helped give the industry its first 10 billion dollar year in 2009, and keep actual ticket sales on an upward trend. In the alternative content area, live opera is still the most prevalent and successful, but live pop concerts have been successful, and more are slated. Sporting events have been experimented with, some in 3D, and will probably become more successful in the near future.

Coincidently, a few major installation groups have gotten financing in the last few months – It appears that the three largest US chains have the financing to cover 10 or 12 or 14,000 of their 17,000 screens. The disparity between PR and reality is not a trifle, but public information is hard to come by. The announcement that they were working with JPMorgan for money in 2007 mentioned numbers that were twice (Celluloid Junkie-More Rumblings About DCIP’s Financing) what they announced recently. And, the recent announcements don’t mention how they will finance 3D equipment, which costs up to $30,000 per screen…and is not covered by VPF agreements.

Notwithstanding those hidden nuances, it finally is movement across the chasm from innovators to more conservative early adopters. In addition, several integrators in Europe, India, China, Japan and Korea have recently announced hundred and multi-hundred piece installation deals in their areas. See: DCinemaToday for up to the minute market news for the exhibition side of digital cinema.

With the release of the Series II equipment, other features that were built into the standards are driving manufacturers to build matching equipment. Most welcome is equipment for the deaf/hard of hearing and visually impaired communities (HI/VI). There was a special exhibition at ShoWest of these company’s works-in-progress; devices that use special glasses that create closed captions which float the text over the screen (so that one doesn’t have to constantly look up and down to see both), and another system that will use WiFi to put captions on one’s iPhone (among other devices), as well as new ways to put dialog-enhanced audio into earphones.

The best news for the HI/VI field is that the SMPTE and ISO standards are are in place, have been recently ‘plug-fest’ tested for interoperability, and contrary to the previous film-centric systems, the new standards are based upon open, not proprietary (read: patented, licensable, expensive, frustrating) technology. (For a brief discussion on HI/VI captioning and the `enthusiasm’ of differing viewpoints, see: Smashing Down The Door – Digital Cinema and Captions For the Deaf and Hard of Hearing)

The arguments still persist around the excellent qualities of film, much like the arguments in the audio world about the qualities of tape recording and vinyl. While some of the arguments are interesting and some of those even true (the ability/inability to wash a screen with the indescribable transitions of Lawrence of Arabia‘s desert sunset comes to mind), the arguments against film are too many. Film is an ecological nightmare, the prints are expensive to ship around, re-gather and store, and whatever qualities that they exhibit at first runs are grossly diminished after a week of getting banged around within the film projection process. And unlike the audio business, where specialty houses can still afford to make tape for those who want to record on it, as fewer companies use film for shooting and exhibition, the cost of material and processing will become too expensive for the budgets of even the Spielberg’s of the art.

Fortunately, the evolution of quality in digital production and post-production equipment has substantially gone beyond the requirements of ‘film’ makers. As with all recent digital technology, quality points are also being hit at the low end, so that artists can make motion pictures which can fill the big screen for less money and take advantage of the substantial distribution benefits of the digital infrastructure. At the high end, artists can do more, perhaps more quickly and certainly with more flexibility and features. For the consumer, this means that quality is possible from a wider range of storytellers and the possibility to see material from other regions around the world becomes more easily accomplished.  

Part II of this series goes into more detail on specifications, some current realities of 3D technology, what “substantially gone beyond the requirements” really means, and a brief excursion on how it relates to the home market.

References:
DCinemaToday
MKPE’s Digital Cinema Technology FAQ

This Series now includes:
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part 0
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part I
The State of Digital Cinema – April 2010 – Part II
Ebert FUDs 3D and Digital Cinema

Question 0: What is the exact definition of DCinema

[The question is being answered by David Reisner of D-Cinema Consulting. David is a board member of several organizations such as the ASC and ISDCF, co-author of several books on many fields of the cinema process and specializes in design and implementation of digital cinema infrastructure projects.]


For nearly 100 years, motion pictures have been delivered to theaters on 35mm film and have been shown with film projectors.

Digital Cinema, officially called D-Cinema in the technical community, delivers movies to theaters as digital files – most often on harddisk, sometimes via satellite, probably in future also by network/internet.  The movies are then shown using digital cinema servers (special purpose computer systems) and theater-grade digital projectors.  D-Cinema also includes/requires a number of digital and physical security mechanisms, to keep content (movies) safe.  The key documents are the DCI “Specification” (actually a requirements document) and a number of SMPTE standards.

D-Cinema requires support for 2048 x 1080 or 4096 x 2160 images and 14 foot-lambert brightness (similar to film standard brightness, although theaters sometimes use lower light levels for cost).  Movies are distributed in 12-bit X’Y’Z’ color – much more color detail than HDTV’s Rec. 709.  X’Y’Z’ can represent all the colors that a human can see, but the real limitation is the projector (and, to be fair, the camera and post-production process).  All D-Cinema projectors show at least a minimum color gamut which is a significantly wider range of color than Rec. 709 – similar to the range supported by film.

For some markets or purposes (e.g. pre-show, advertising, maybe small markets), some people use things informally called electronic cinema, e-cinema.  There is no formal standard for e-cinema although there is some informal agreement in certain areas.  E-cinema will have lower resolution, narrower color, less brightness, and little or no security.

Major studio content will only be distributed to D-Cinema systems that meet the SMPTE and DCI specifications and requirements, and have passed the DCI Compliance Test.

David Reisner
D-Cinema Consulting
image quality, color, workflow, hybrid imaging
[email protected]
www.d-cinema.us

Laser Light Engines | Doug Darrow | CEO

Originally published as: Laser Light Engines Hires Industry Veteran Doug Darrow as CEO | Business Wire
October 26, 2009 08:00 AM Eastern Time  

Continues:

“Doug’s experience developing the Digital Cinema market is unparalleled,” said Jiong Ma, principal, Braemar Energy Ventures, and director of Laser Light Engines. “His leadership will be invaluable to the continued progress of Laser Light Engines.”

Mr. Darrow succeeds Bill Beck, Laser Light Engines’ co-founder, who will remain active in the company as executive vice president, business development. “We started Laser Light Engines two years ago to bring the benefits of high brightness, energy efficient solid-state laser illumination to Digital Cinema and other large scale projection applications. Having demonstrated our technology, it is now time to drive commercialization and widespread adoption,” said Mr. Beck. “We are all very pleased to have one of the most experienced players in the industry to lead the next phase of the company’s growth.”

Laser Light Engines combines advanced laser technology with high volume manufacturing processes to provide high brightness, energy efficient, long lifetime, color-controllable light sources for demanding illumination applications worldwide. The company is developing solid-state light sources for 2D and 3D Digital Cinema and other large venue projectors. Laser Light Engines will produce light sources that have three to five times the brightness, 100 times the life and half the power consumption of arc lamps, the incumbent technology. The company will manufacture a light source module that can be incorporated into a standard Digital Cinema or advertising projection system.

“I am very excited to be joining the Laser Light Engines team and look forward to bringing high brightness laser engines into the market,” said Mr. Darrow. “These innovative solutions have many advantages that promise to revolutionize large screen applications.”

Prior to joining Laser Light Engines, Mr. Darrow spent twenty-three years with Texas Instruments. His most recent role was in the DLP Cinema® Products Division where he led all marketing for the division, as well as its effort to develop break-though solutions for Digital Cinema. He played a key role in changing the entertainment industry, driving digital movie distribution and transitioning the theatrical industry away from its 100-year old film format. A leading expert on the future of movie distribution and 3D, Mr. Darrow has been a featured panel member at CES 2009, a keynote speaker at 2008’s ShoWest and a recipient of that event’s “Digital Cinema Pioneer Award.”

Laser Light Engines’ investors include Braemar Energy Ventures and Harris & Harris Group.

About Laser Light Engines

Laser Light Engines designs, develops and manufactures OEM laser-driven light engines that enable broad new product categories. The company’s advanced solid state lighting combines advanced laser technology with high volume manufacturing processes to provide high brightness, long lifetime, energy efficient, and color controllable light engines for demanding illumination applications worldwide.

Laser Light Engines was recently named to the 2009 AlwaysOn OnHollywood Top 100 Private Companies list, which honors the best up and coming companies in digital media and entertainment.

Contacts

Laser Light Engines
Bill Beck, 617-290-3861
[email protected]
or
CJP Communications
Gina Sorice, 212-279-3115 ext. 243
[email protected]