Newly Redesigned Projectors Will Brighten Up Super-Large Screens, Especially for 3D

In a bid to up the quality of digital projection in its theaters, IMAX has agreed to license "certain exclusive rights" to laser-projection technology from Kodak that it says will improve images from both 2D and 3D projection on IMAX screens over 80 feet in size, or in the dome configuration. IMAX will pay royalties to Kodak, but further terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The agreement brings together companies whose brands have historically been synonymous with film formats in a technology deal meant to outpace existing standards for digital projection. IMAX said laser projection will finally allow it to get rid of film (IMAX stock is, essentially, 70mm film run sideways for an even larger imaging area) in favor of a solution that will preserve quality at the largest-screen IMAX venues – 80-to-100-foot screens – including dome theaters. The companies said laser-projection components will also use less power, last longer, and exhibit a wider color gamut compared to current technology. Kodak got FDA approval for the technology earlier this year.

“You could take lasers and add them on to a conventional projector, but you wouldn’t really benefit from all the positive entropies lasers could bring to bear on the screen,” explains Les Moore, COO of Kodak’s digital cinema unit. “Instead, [the engineers] chose to redesign the optical system of a conventional projector to optimize it for lasers. “They ended up with a system that produces very high dynamic range – 10,000:1 compared to a conventional digital projector’s 2000:1 or 2500:1, wider color gamut capability, high power efficiency, low total cost of ownership, and certainly the ability to embed 3D into the projector.”

Engineers from Kodak and IMAX will be putting their heads together over the next 18 months, the companies said, with plans to start putting digital projection equipment into those IMAX locations in late 2013. Moore said IMAX will be commercializing and actually producing the projectors. A key unanswered question is what resolution the IMAX systems will be. Moore says that’s a decision for IMAX to make. “The Kodak technology uses the same, conventional imagers that are in today’s digital projectors,” he says. “Whether they’re 2K or 4K, our technology does not matter. The projector prototype we built internally was on a 2K platform, but it could just as well have been on a 4K platform.”

The company says the system is designed to produce 3D images that are twice as bright as those commonly seen in theaters – an assertion that some observers see as a shot across the bow of RealD, whose dominant 3D-projection system suffers from a significant loss of brightness compared to 2D images. Combined with the cost savings on offer (no projection lamps to regularly replace), Kodak’s technology could be attractive for smaller theaters, as well. However, Moore confirmed that the deal is an IMAX exclusive and no other companies will be using it for digital-cinema exhibition. He stressed, however, that other markets – including home-theater, teleconferencing, simulation, and other large-venue applications – will be fair game.

For more information: Kodak Laser Projection Technology.