IBC 2010 – Hall. 11 Stand E72. Media Execs shopping for their new 3D enabled Home Theater, should drop by stand E72 in Hall 11, and have a look at what is billed as the ‘World’s First Demo of DLP in 4K’. Christie Digital will be hosting a pre-launch demo of its new CP4230 DCi compliant DLP projector featuring the enhanced 4K DLP Cinema chip from Texas Instruments.
Intended for use in large scale commercial theaters, these big boys among HD projectors, featuring four times the resolution of HD, also cater to industry execs who demand the best of the best in brightness, colour accuracy and uniformity, when it comes to their HD, DCi and 3D presentations, and don’t want to be stuck to a puny 100 inch screen.
The big Xenon lamps available for these projectors also mitigate the 84% of light being lost in showing 3D. At the same time DCi compliant projectors are sometimes modified to enhance their on-off contrast, by blocking a large portion of the machines’ original light-output.
The 4K resolution, or four times HD, is also the first step towards the 8K resolution, or 16 times HD, of NHK’s Super Hi-vision. NHK will again be showing its latest developments in ultra HDTV at this year’s show.
In an separate announcement, Texas Instruments said it had started shipping its first DLP Cinema Enhanced 4K chips to its licensees, Barco, Christie Digital and NEC. With the expectation that projectors using the new 4K resolution chips are to be installed in the first quarter of 2011. A time-line backed up by Christie which is ‘scheduled to launch the Christie 4K Solaria Series this fall with shipments beginning in early 2011’.
Barco, instead has selected ShowEast in Orlando next month for the first public showing of its DP4K projectors, having demonstrated it privately to representatives of its largest client the Cinemark cinema chain, last week. Again, shipments are expected to begin in early 2011, as production will ramp up in line with the availability of 4K DMD chips from Texas Instruments.
Pricing for Christie 4K digital cinema projectors is anticipated to be 35% above its 2K projector pricing.