NEC starts selling NC1700L Red-Blue laser, Green phosphor, Digital Cinema projec

[donaldk]

The new NEC NC1700L Projector Features Innovative Red and Blue Laser Technology to Deliver Richer Colors and Brighter Images for Mid-Size Theater Market

Designed for 2D and 3D playback on small to medium screen sizes, the NC1700L projector delivers 14,000 lumens of brightness with richer colors – thanks to its industry-first RB laser system. The new laser system features red and blue lasers paired with green phosphor to produce a rich color spectrum with unsurpassed brightness for the ultimate cinema experience. Cinema operators also benefit from a reduced total cost of ownership and less maintenance because the RB laser design eliminates the need to replace a lamp, which also extends the projector’s lifetime.

“With the NC1700L, we’re bringing not just another laser option to cinema operators, but also a whole new laser design that offers flexibility for small and medium screen sizes with a brighter, richer set of colors,” said Richard McPherson, Senior Product Manager for Projectors at NEC Display Solutions. “By offering this new dual laser system, cinema owners will not only receive the desired brightness, colors and uniformity they’ve come to know with NEC digital cinema projectors but also peace of mind for the customer experience.”

The new laser design offers flexibility in other ways, too. The projector does not require a special exhaust system, and it uses a much wider lens shift ratio without sacrificing image quality. Furthermore, its connectivity options enable non-cinematic content, such as presentations and games, giving cinema operators more events with which to grow revenue.

The NC1700L represents the next evolution in laser projection for small to medium sized screens and is the latest addition to the Digital Cinema Projector Series, which also includes the single-laser phosphor NC1201L projector.

The NC1700L is available for purchase now. Also available now is the NC1000C, a compact and silent 2K, DCI-certified digital projector equipped with a S2K chipset from Texas Instruments®, designed for theaters with small screens, booth-less cinema, or mobile theaters. Please contact your local NEC Display Solutions representative for pricing.

Both the NC1700L and the NC1000C will be featured at CinemaCon 2017, taking place March 28-30 at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, in Milano Suite 4.

[Peter CINERAMAX]

Sometimes, it's interesting to see how the same challenges come up for different display technologies, and despite the differences between the core technologies, similar ways of achieving the same effect are used. Getting a good colour gamut is one of those challenges.

Often the challenge in getting a wider colour gamut is to achieve primary RGB colours that are more pure and less diluted by colours that are away from the pure colours at the extremes of the colour triangles.

In LCDs, you can use separate LEDs for red, green and blue in the backlight, but that causes a lot of problems in getting consistent results over time and over a range of conditions because of the variation in the driving needed for the different colours of LED (always a big challenge in LEDs). Another way to avoid the variability is to use blue LEDs and convert to red and green using quantum dots and that is being used in LCDs in TVs and in monitors. However, it is not a cheap solution.

We've talked about how those looking to provide a wider colour gamut in monitors and TVs have tried to improve the colour gamuts of LCDs that are illuminated by white LEDs, using yellow YAG phosphors, which is the cheapest way to backlight the LCD. A problem with the yellow produced is that it is very impure, so it's hard to get the pure primaries need for WCG. Ideally, as when you use RGB LEDs, is to use separate sources, but that is challenging.

NEC RB Projector Gamut

The other way to get a wider gamut is to filter the light to take out the frequencies between the red and green, an approach that is followed in LCDs by LG with its Nano-Cell technology. (Palomaki and Bertram Uncover LG's "Nano Cell" Secret). Another way is to change the phosphors used to individual red and green rather than the mixed yellow. (There's More than One Way to Make a WCG LCD).

Projection Challenges
Projection faces challenges too. There is no question that the widest colour gamuts can be created using laser projection - in fact, at the moment, the only way to make a projector that meets the full Rec 2020 colour gamut is to use red, green and blue lasers. Lasers, of course, emit very pure light in terms of frequency. But lasers are expensive and green lasers, in particular have been very difficult to develop with good efficiency. So, one way to get round this is to follow a similar approach to that used in LCD backlights and use phosphor to convert blue light to yellow and that is how most laser phosphor projectors work - with a blue laser and a yellow phosphor wheel.

As with backlights, some makers are using special filters to chop out some of the light between red and green to achieve purer primaries and wider gamuts. However, filtering out light is never a good idea if you want the highest possible efficiency.

Adding to the mix in-between 'pure lasers' and the volume laser phosphor market, which is rapidly driving lamp-based projection to only be sold at the lowest priced entry level, is another approach. We recently got an update from NEC on its RB laser technology which is being used in very bright (up to 35,000 Ansi lumens) projectors as an intermediate method.

NEC RB System

The RB laser system, as the name suggests, uses Red and Blue lasers, while relying on phosphor to convert blue for the green - which means a relatively pure green can be created and without the challenges of having to use a green laser.

Of course, this kind of projector competes with projectors using Xenon lamps. However, over a five year lifetime, NEC believes that the bigger outlay for the RB technology is paid back  and we have replicated the data it presented below.

[donaldk]

The 3501 and 2601 from the PH series do 80% of Rec. 2020.

NEC's large projectors are assembled/build by DPI, wich gets technology from its 42% shareholder Delta Electronics.

Christie indeed has R+B laser phosphor illuminated projectors, under the BoldColor brand. BoldColor was extended from the single chip line(s) to the 4 3 DMD projector line with the new Crimson.

Coretronics also has MCL(A) with additional Red laser array. NEC, sofar is first to offer such a wide color gamut. MCL by default offers a wide coverage of Rec. 709. Unlike most Blue Laser-Phosphor projectors that offer just shy of Rec.709 gamut. However last year it did show a prototype that was said to offer P3 color.

Eiki was the launch customer for the MCL illumated projector, first launch at Infocomm 2016, shipping around December/January 2016/17. Optoma also has launched at least one MCL projector, but Rec. 709.
So all the major DLP vensors, except fo Barco, I guess