A new player in DCI compliant projectors?

[Carsten Kurz]

One of our german integrators just sent an email about the GDC Espedeo Supra-5000 DCI compliant cinema projector. Funny, there is a YouTube video about it, but the GDC website lacks information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22LJ4mUwP7Q

Now, wasn't there a limited number of three TI DLP digital cinema licensees - Christie, Barco, NEC? Maybe TI has given up on that?


The original manufacturer seems to be Appotronics/Cineappo of China. There's a DCI compliant equipment listing for it indeed. https://www.dcimovies.com/compliant_equipment/

Technically, not too exciting, being a 5000 lumen laser-phosphor projector (they are marketing it for Micro-Cinemas and private locations), but still, interesting that a new company enters that market. The IMS, of course, is GDCs SR-1000.

https://celluloidjunkie.com/wire/gdc...ne-conference/

Very funny, the Espedeo website runs on flash only... http://www.espedeo.com

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've never heard of this brand before, but since GDC seems to be pushing it, I guess it's legit...

Might become interesting, depending on performance, pricing and availability and what happens in a post-covid world.

[Aaron Tucker]

I got a chance to see the Espedeo projector during a demo. The picture was surprisingly good for a 2-chip DLP, definitely an interesting design choice to go between single chip and 3-chip.

I imagine serviceability is not fun, similar to the NC900/1000/1100L where you have to pull apart nearly the entire unit to replace anything.

If I were GDC I would be putting much more detailed information about this unit online, no one wants to gamble on a product no one knows much about.

[Steve Guttag]

I can tell you that I get blitzed by it semi-regularly so they are definitely promoting it but perhaps more targeted.

[Stefan Scholz]

Quality wise on the level of a S2k, not much better, than a NC 900/ 1000 or Barco 6E.

limited choice of either fixed 0.92x or small Zoom (Afair 1.1 to about 2) lens. But can come with a built in sound processing gear, so you only need to connect active speakers.
Normally these are targeted for the Asian market, to serve office sized cinemas, that before were served with portable film projectors. I heard, there's a lot more of the micro systems, but the GDC Espedeo seems to be the first to be marketed outside China and India.
They promise a 30000 hour maintainance free life of the optical system, a very low noise level, that enables ceiling installations without having to cover the projector. Play while ingest (or better said buffering operation) enables you to play from the transport disc. With a resulting overall cost around 1$ per hour, a reasonable solution.

It is really not that difficult to get an existing projector DCI compliant, when pairing with a small form factor DCI media player in one box. So it might not be required to be a specific TI DC customer. Similar units exist from at least Sony, based on a prosumer projector, also relying on the same GDC media player. But that is only one I have personally seen, there's more, as I said before.

And beside those mini cinemas, those in hotel lobbies, multifunction rooms, there is a growing demand for home cinema solutions able to play DCI compliant movies.
Well, there's the other makers home lines, like Barco's cinema at homeeline, which offers highest possible projection quality, intended for very demanding customers. Like ordering a Rolls Royce, you just swipe your card, and the price is secondary.
But there are other home customers, that can't afford that price level. In my eyes, DCI will be an option for quality conscious home theatre owners, with benefits for all sides. No more discussion about graded for TV screen images, about incompatible and sometimes not supported HDR models, cinema mixes (including cinema Atmos etc) instead of nearfield compressed for small speaker home mixes.
And studios can get a higher license fee, than on BD or UHD, plus that's bound to the users machine, and quite difficult to copy or rip. Therefore way better control for the studios.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Personally, I think DCI should not allow 2-chip or even single-chip designs. Those color-rotation schemes are really incompatible with what I'd consider a quality image, even if laser engines can rotate their colors faster than any existing color-wheel technology, you'll still be stuck with some rainbow-artifacts.

Then again, there is no reason why a powerful 3LCD or 3LCoS alternative (like Epson's reflective LCD or JVCs DILA) couldn't render perfectly fine pictures within the DCI-P3 color-space. Even Sony could, maybe, again, compete with their line-up of SDRX projectors. Many semi-professional home-cinema projectors have been doing DCI-P3 and BT2020 for quite a while now, all they lack is a proper way to integrate with DCI, it's not like their picture is anywhere below DCI specs on those smaller screens. An integrated media-player may indeed be the cheapest way to ensure DCI-compliancy.

As an industry, we also need to look forward to what the post-pandemic market brings us. I believe there will be an increased demand for DCI-compliant "micro-installs", both in the public and private sector.

[Steve Guttag]

Personally, I'm not a fan of the laser-phosphor projector either. It is a wink and nudge into DCI color compliance. I'm not convinced that RGB laser projectors are really DCI compliant either. Ever look at the grey patterns and see that they are not grey...I see them as redish while other have reported seeing them as greenish. Below is a Barco test pattern but on an NEC projector. Look on the lower-half. Sure, the big white part in the middle looks white but the greys sure don't look grey. There is a red overcast. I see visible color shading...and this is a "DCI" compliant projector. In NEC's defense, I see this sort of color shading on ALL laser projectors.

Screen Shot 2021-05-02 at 8.47.30 AM.png


Screen Shot 2021-05-02 at 8.44.25 AM.png


This is what a xenon based projector looks like (Barco in this picture but it would be true of NEC or Christie, as well):

Screen Shot 2021-05-02 at 8.51.56 AM.png


Furthermore, all of the S2K projectors, not using laser are not DCI compliant on their contrast ratios. DCI says 2000:1, minimum. S2Ks projectors can't hit that. They seem to be in the 1650 - 1850:1 range...and that is sequential contrast (all on/all off). ANSI (aka "intra-frame", "checkerboard" alternating white/black patches) contrast would be more dismal.

"8.3.3.3 Screen Characteristics
The screen is required to be non-specular and equally reflective over the entire visible spectrum. The screen is required to have variable black masking, adjustable to tightly frame the projected image. This is required to minimally include 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 image formats. Masking for other formats is optional. "

Was the masking requirement EVER enforced? I think not.

The realities are, DCI was about 1-section and 1-section only. Security. They were mostly concerned about people stealing their content while it is exclusively in cinemas (and ensuring that cinemas HAD to pay the studios). And now that is sort of bogus as they are releasing some content day-and-date to the home.

Does anyone really think that the perspective consumer of GDC's new projector is going to care how many chips are being used? I'm sure I could find a place in the DCI spec that would preclude a field-sequential means of reproducing the image, if for no other reason than it causes color issues and most of the image specifications relate to uniformity of the image. But, again, there are no DCI-Police and just like with the S2K projectors, in general, it was a slide towards lower-quality. But hey, they're cheaper! Is anyone losing their ability to show movies because they are not DCI compliant on their light levels (either center or uniformity)? Nope. Why not add a little bit of rainbow to the image? Note, I have not verified that GDC's projector is a 2-chip, nor had heard of such a thing before this thread. I have not observed it in operation but I have observed MANY single-chip DLPs and have seen...too many times, the rainbow effect of spinning color wheels...even the "really fast ones."

[Marcel Birgelen]

All the "DCI police" ever cared about was content security. If they really cared about enforcing DCI standards, then none of the current laser projectors would've ever made it to the market, as currently none of them is DCI compliant.

The "shading" or "banding" artifacts you see are probably the result of some laser interference patterns. To me it looks like there are two colors that go in and out of phase, because to me it seems that the red hue also has some repeating pattern.

We're shooting monochromatic bundles of photons at nano-scale devices, like DLP and LCoS chips. From what we've learned from physics class is that interference patterns in all kinds of forms are just due to be expected. The fun thing here is that this particular interference pattern might be present in your camera, because of the way the light interacts with the CMOS sensor of your camera, but it MAY not be visible to the naked eye.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

A friend on the West coast who is a Colorist for a living hates the laser stuff. He said they have screening rooms equipped with all the different types of light sources, but that Zenon still looks the best of the lot.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Spectral_vs_Intensity.png
This image is a simplification, but for all common light-sources, Xenon is probably the one closest to the spectrum of the sun. Obviously, you're going to loose some of the spectrum due to optics, like the prism who splits the spectrum in three, but the end result will still be pretty close to that of the spectrum natural daylight.

While LEDs are getting better at simulating daylight, they're still not there. Compare this to a 3P or even 6P projector, where you have just three or six little spikes, even narrower than those of the RED led in the graph. While phosphor lasers alleviate some of the problem, you're still stuck with at least one primary, monochromatic color.

I think that laser-based projection is a good example of a false idea of progress, at least when it comes down to the quality of the end-product. There definitely is progress when it comes down to energy usage, brightness and contrast, but is it worth the trade-offs? While I really do like the increased contrast of most laser projection solutions, it's now becoming apparent that color and image consistency due to interference artifacts remains a problem with this technology.

Why not add a little bit of rainbow to the image? Note, I have not verified that GDC's projector is a 2-chip, nor had heard of such a thing before this thread. I have not observed it in operation but I have observed MANY single-chip DLPs and have seen...too many times, the rainbow effect of spinning color wheels...even the "really fast ones."

I haven't seen this particular projector in action, but I've seen some cheap LED based ones, that don't have a color wheel, but cycle through their colors faster than a color-wheel would allow (centrifugal forces do put a maximum speed on how fast a color wheel can turn before it will automatically disintegrate...). While the rainbow-effect is reduced, it's still there and once you see it, you keep seeing it. I think the only thing that a single-chip design has going for it, besides the cheaper cost to implement it, is that color convergence won't be a thing...

[Leo Enticknap]

The "shading" or "banding" artifacts you see are probably the result of some laser interference patterns.

If you mean moire and speckle, as it was explained to me, it's the effect of the very precise wavelength of each laser diode combined with a perforated screen. The output of some of the diodes simply goes through the perforations, while that of others hits the white surface. Defocusing the lens slightly will make the artifacts go away - but at the cost of image resolution, of course. It can also be helped by adjusting the angle of the perforations of the screen. The last time we had an SP4K in the shop in preparation for onward shipping to a customer, someone from a screen manufacturer came by to do some experimentation on determining the optimum angle for the rows of perforations to minimize this problem.

As Mark points out, post houses don't like laser projectors, as a general rule, this being the main reason. Of course they also don't like how the color temperature of a xenon arc bulb's output changes over time (and over the last third of its warranty hours, a lot), meaning that they have to reshoot colors very frequently for applications where color space is critical. But as a general rule, they consider this to be the lesser of two evils.

[Carsten Kurz]

We need to see a spectrum of Xenon or HPM lamps AFTER the color filtering. No digital projector shows the full Xenon or HPM spectrum.

Barco does very good with their flagship DP4K-60L - it uses special speckle mitigation techniques, one of it is it's use of very many laser diodes and wavelengths. I think they also modulate the spectrum and so make it wider than it is normal for a single LD. They also use this on this unit to create the 6 wavelengths for spectral separation 3D. Comes at a price, though.

On the other side of THAT 'spectrum', I recently saw a Christie CP4440-RGB Laser on a Gain 1.7 Clarus screen, and the amount of speckle was just embarrassing. The integrator still wanted to sell it (it was a free test installation), but it simply was out of the question. Gain or silver screens and RGB Laser just don't go together. Look at those awful IMAX Laser installs with their silver screens. Phosphor conversion is the only laser option for silver or high gain screens.

[Leo Enticknap]

Interesting. I haven't touched any 60Ls, but in my last job at the Egyptian I operated a 30L, and since then have installed one 30L and one 45L. I did notice with all three projectors that moire and speckle was much less of a problem that it can be with precisely focused SP4Ks. The NEC phosphor projectors seem less prone to it, too - I would guess, because the phosphor wheel messes with the beams from the individual diodes.

[Harold Hallikainen]

My simplistic view of color vision is that we have three bandpass filters, X, Y, and Z. The X filter has a peak in the red region and another smaller peak at a frequency a little above blue. The Y filter has a peak for green, and the Z filter has a peak for blue. We judge the ratio of these filters to determine the color of light. A monochromatic yellow source results in output of the X and Y filters. A source with monochromatic red and monochromatic green also results in the same filter outputs, so it looks yellow to us.

The peak response frequency and the filter shapes vary person to person. But, our brains compensate based on our experience with broad band illumination. It seems that we would all judge the same colors if we varied the amplitude of monochromatic sources that are at the peak response frequency. Person to person variations would be where the curve slope is the smallest (flat top). However, making lasers for these frequencies appears difficult. So, laser-based projectors often use frequencies that are on the skirts of the filters. A small variation in filter frequency or in filter shape can result in a large variation in the output of the XYZ filters resulting in variation in perceived color.

My simplistic view of color perception, anyway..

[Martin McCaffery]

Is anyone losing their ability to show movies because they are not DCI compliant on their light levels (either center or uniformity)?

We almost did once. I won't identify the studio or film, but they sent a tech to check our setup before a movie opened here (and at the AMC, which he was going to check afterwards). We can't get anywhere near 14fl even with a new bulb, but we made it within .1fl of the acceptable +/- for luminosity. Everything else passed with flying (metaphorical) colors.

The tech did say he has rejected other theatres for various things, but the chains are usually able to grab a piece of equipment from another theatre and get things up to minimal standards in time.