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TRANSCRIPT
Not many technologies survive for more than a
Century, but one that has – analogue
projection – is finally facing its demise.
Digital technology is set to take over virtually every
form of image projection of which you can think.
Within a decade, analogue projectors could be
museum pieces.
Leading the way are three key markets: cinema;
home projectors; and large hdtvs. But entirely new
markets are also set to open up.
Today, cinema is arguably the most exciting area
for digital projection. Not only does it replace the
35mm projector, it also enables a movie to be
distributed via hard drives, dvds or satellite. Digital
projection provides superb quality that never
deteriorates and hugely attractive economics. Let’s
compare production costs: 4000 prints of a movie can
cost around $5million. Yet, at the specified data rate
of 250Mbit/s, the same movie typically fits on a
300Gbyte hard drive costing around $70. With several
hundred movies distributed every year, industry
savings could reach $1billion or more.
But the switch to digital in the cinema has not
happened quickly. The overwhelmingly dominant
technology used in digital projectors – Texas
Instruments’ Digital Light Processor (DLP) – has been
available for more than 10 years. Yet it was only in
2002 that the six leading Hollywood studios set up
the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI, www.
dcimovies.com) to specify industry standards for
digital cinema, published eventually in June 2005.
DCI requires pictures to be encoded using the
JPEG2000 standard and use of the CIE XYZ colour
space at 12bit per component into a Material
Exchange Format (MXF) compliant file at a maximum
data rate of 250Mbit/s. Audio, meanwhile, is handled
using the .wav format at 24bit and sampling at 48 or
96kHz. Three levels of playback are supported: 2K
(2048 x 1080 pixels) at 24frame/s, by far the most
common; 4K (4096 x 2160) at 24frame/s; and 2K at
48frame/s. Projectors that fail to meet these
standards cannot show the Hollywood studios’
content.
The establishment of industry standards means
Binarybreaks through
14 w w w . n e w e l e c t r o n i c s . c o . u k 9 S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 8
After a long
gestation period,
digital projection is
set to break into
the mass market.
By David Boothroyd.
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digital projection in cinemas is set to take off. Indeed,
David Hancock, head of cinema for Screen Digest,
believes it started to happen as soon as the DCI
recommendations appeared.
“Our figure for takeoff of digital cinema shows it
started in June 2005, when there were less than 1000
digital screens. By the end of 2007, there were 6456, a
rise of 155% over 2006. This represents 6.5% of the
world’s modern screens, with nearly 1000 in Europe.”
For the electronics industry, it is unusual for a
technology to establish such overwhelming dominance
as that achieved by TI’s DLP in digital cinema
projection. Three manufacturers make DLP cinema
projectors – Christie Digital, Barco and NEC – between
them, controlling 99% of the market.
Rapidly moving mirrorsInvented in 1987 by Dr Larry Hornbeck, the DLP
technique creates images by rapidly moving
microscopic mirrors laid out in a matrix on a
semiconductor chip – the Digital Micromirror Device
(DMD). The number of mirrors corresponds to the
resolution of the projected image.
The first DLP projectors were aimed at business
applications and shipped in early 1996. A milestone
for DLP in cinema was George Lucas’ production of the
first all digital version of Star Wars Episode 1. Even in
its early days, DLP was a remarkable technological
achievement but, ever since, there have been
continuous improvements, according to John Reder,
TI’s EMEA Business Development Manager for Front
Projection.
First is brightness. The first projectors provided
250 to 300 lumens, today the average is 2500, but
several thousand is achievable. For resolution, the
standard was svga at 800 x 600 pixels. Today, a typical
top standard offers 1920 x 1200. In terms of contrast,
the cutting edge was a ratio of a few hundred to one,
today it is several thousand to one.
“Another important development is that inside the
chip we have shrunk the pixels several times, which
means we can put more mirrors in the same die size,”
says Reder. “That increases resolution and also cuts the
cost and size, not only of the chip but also of the optics
that go round it.”
Interestingly, this has not depended on state of the
art semiconductor advances. “The mirrors themselves
are quite large compared with today’s semiconductor
elements and this is helpful because it enables us to
produce wafers for DLP chips on depreciated
fabrication lines,” Reder says. “But we have achieved a
much better understanding of exactly how the mirrors
move and this has enabled us to shrink them.”
A similar story applies to contrast – detailed
analysis of the mirrors’ performance has shown what
contributes most to scatter, enabling TI to eliminate
most of these effects.
Despite its dominance, DLP is not the only
potential technology for cinema projection. Sony, for
example, has recently developed a 4k liquid crystal
based projector featuring SXRD (Silicon X-tal
Reflective Display) technology, with exceptionally
high pixel density.
“A combination of radically new design for silicon
driving circuit technology and new silicon wafer
process and liquid crystal device technology enables
2m pixels with a pitch of 9µm to be arranged just
0.35µm apart,” Sony says. “Compared with high
temperature polysilicon liquid crystal devices, this
represents a 2.4 fold increase in pixel density and a
tenfold improvement in interpixel spacing.”
But Sony’s market share is currently tiny, with only
a handful of cinemas worldwide equipped with 4k
projectors. And it faces a major obstacle: once a
standard like 2k is established, it will be years before
changes are contemplated. Could the 2k standard be
found wanting and supplanted by 4k? Hancock says no.
“Certainly not in the short to medium term. Once
you create a business model around the costs of a 2k
projector, people will not change for years – deals
now being done are for 7 to 10 years. As with 35mm
film, once a standard is set, it stays. Also, the 2k
standard provides excellent image quality on today’s
screens, so moving to 4k would make little difference.
Massive screens, say 25 to 30m, might benefit from
4k but even on these 2k is very good.”
The largest cinema screen of all is IMAX, and this
has started the switch to digital using a specially
developed dual projection DLP projector,
combined with advances from IMAX that
double the light output compared with
conventional digital projection,
increasing dynamic range
and contrast. IMAX has
just announced a deal
with Regal in the US to
install 31 IMAX digital
systems in 20 major
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C O V E R S T O R Y
Digital projection
The 115g Optoma Pico
Pocket Projector can project
an image up to 100 times
larger than the screen of the
source device and over
distances of up to 2.6m
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centres. The first of these are expected to open in
time for the November 21 release of Harry Potter and
the Half Blood Prince: the IMAX Experience.
“IMAX has been rejuvenated by the whole digital
revolution,” Hancock says. “It enables them to do
more with their screens, showing events like opera
and sport, for example, and also 3d.”
And there lies another cinematic revolution which
digital projection is making possible.
“3d has been waiting for digital,” Hancock says.
“Analogue 3d was awful, but digital is excellent and is
here to stay.”
3d content is growing fast. Screen Digest is
tracking 51 3d projects, 33 of which have a release
date over the next couple of years, and major
directors like James Cameron and Jeffrey Katzenberg
are advocates, whilst Dreamworks has committed its
entire output to 3d. Other studios now accept 3d is
here to stay – something few did before – and Screen
Digest forecasts that 15 to 20% of all screens will
eventually be 3d. Currently, it is estimated that there
are 1300 3d screens worldwide.
There are three basic formats for 3d: Dolby 3D;
Real D; and active glasses. But, as Hancock says, the
industry wants to reach the point where any 3d film
can be shown on any 3d screen. To achieve this, DCI is
currently working on a 3d update to its standards.
“One attraction for Hollywood is that 3d screens
are rapidly outselling 2d screens in the same
multiplex venues, and at higher ticket prices,” says
Reder. “Without question, it is the technology that is
making 3d attractive, compared with the past.”
TI’s 3d DLP technology is now moving into hdtvs
and front projectors. This move, being pioneered by
Norwegian company Projection Design, is targeting
higher end business to business applications.
Two different methods are used to achieve 3d
using DLP. For front projectors and tvs, the system
works at 120Hz, giving 60 images each for left and
right. Then shutter glasses are used that are
synchronised to the image. Because DLP switches in
the order of microseconds, it is possible to switch
from left to right extremely quickly. This provides
very high separation, which eliminates the blurring
that was always a problem for past analogue 3d.
The cinema uses an additional system made by
Real D, sold with the DLP projector – based on a push-
pull electro optical modulator called the ZScreen
invented by Lenny Lipton – along with polarised
glasses. The projector alternately projects the right-
left frame and circularly polarises these frames,
clockwise for right, anticlockwise for left, using a
liquid crystal screen placed in front of the projector
lens. The polarised glasses make sure each eye sees
only ‘its own’ picture. And, with a frame rate of 72
frame/s per eye, the image looks continuous.
What of the future for DLP?LED based lamp free projectors, one major route
forward, are already gaining market share in two
areas – large hdtvs and pocket projectors. The latter
are extremely compact units that are already
providing around 150lumen and which can run a full
dvd film off a battery.
“For LEDs to take more of the front projector
market, they need to offer increased the brightness
and lower cost,” says Reder, “and they are definitely
heading in that direction. At Infocom in Las Vegas
this June, we demonstrated an led DLP projector
intended for home theatre that offers 500lumen.”
Another fascinating development for digital
projection is the pico projector, for which TI has
developed a DLP Pico chipset. Using this, Optoma has
developed its Pico Pocket Projector. Smaller than
most smartphones, it fits in the palm of a hand and is
the ideal companion to portable media devices such
as iPods, pdas, smart phones and digital cameras.
When connected to such devices, the 115g
Optoma Pico Pocket Projector can project an image up
to 100 times larger than the screen of the source
device and over distances of up to 2.6m.
The product will be available in limited
distribution in Europe and Asia in late 2008, with a
worldwide launch in 2009.
Ultimately, expect to see mobile phones and
portable video players that have projectors built in:
the market potential is clearly enormous. ■
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C O V E R S T O R Y
Digital projection
“3d has been waiting for digital. Analogue
3d was awful, but digital is excellent and
is here to stay” David Hancock, Screen Digest
w w w . n e w e l e c t r o n i c s . c o . u k 9 S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 8
Pico projectors are being
positioned as the ideal
companion to portable
media devices such as
pdas, smart phones,
digital cameras and
iPods.
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