Barco acquires Canadian HDR projection expertise

[donaldk]

Barco, a global leader in professional visualization technology, announced that it has acquired MTT Innovation Inc., based in Vancouver, Canada. MTT is a developer of next-generation projection technology with expertise in high dynamic range, applied imaging algorithms, advanced color science and specialized hardware development.

“With this investment, we are augmenting our expertise in the field of High Dynamic Range technology. This underpins our long-term leadership in projection technology.” said Eric Van Zele, President and CEO at Barco. “MTT’s technology is still in a research phase and will need further de-risking and development over the years to come. We welcome MTT’s team to Barco and look forward to many years of successful collaboration as applications for high dynamic range & new illumination technologies spread to end markets such as Cinema, ProAV, simulation, automotive, and virtual reality.”

Commented Anders Ballestad, CEO of MTT Innovation, “We are pleased to join Barco, a well-respected global leader in visualization technology known for its entrepreneurial spirit, with whom we share the common goal of bringing the best image quality to audiences around the world. We look forward to working together with the Barco team on this mission.

[donaldk]

MTT presented its Limelight HDR projector at SIGGRAPH in 2014 and 2015, in 2015 it received the Laval Award for its projector. Lightsteering is the technology it was seeking to license, other projector doing 19 nits in brightest part of mage, the Limelight lightsteering light engine demonstrator projected an image with 543 cd/m2 as brightest section, a 25-fold improvement. The brightest being the flames in the firepit of the Stuttgart HDR loop. As shown below.

Development was supported by Canadian development programme MITACS. In its 'Dynamic Light Redistribution Algorithm Advancement for High-Dynamic Range Digital Projection project'. This project will investigate and develop advanced algorithms for high dynamic range projection using caustic image formation. These algorithms dynamically redirect light from dark image regions to bright regions, which addresses the problems of low peak luminance and poor black levels in current projectors. The algorithms will improve upon existing lensing methods by increasing computational efficiency and improving contrast. This project will produce viable algorithms for light redistribution in cinema projectors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zny0DddT1HY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkwemTY-XiY

2014 Siggraph 605nm laser diodes demo:
https://vimeo.com/102459251

Laval Award 2015:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD_Ax5yu46c

"High-Brightness Projection for True HDR

MTT Innovation is developing a disruptive technology for laser projection that enables ultrahigh-brightness projection. With MTT’s technology, movies could be projected with incomparable realism at home or at the cinema.

While conventional projectors create images by blocking source light, MTT Innovation’s patent-pending technology redistributes the source light and redirects it to the appropriate areas of the image, thereby utilizing 100% of the light. The technology delivers extremely bright highlights, over 20 times brighter than currently possible, at a very high contrast of 100,000:1, while at the same time reducing the required laser power, and so reducing cost and conserving energy.

MTT Innovation partners with industry leaders and provides them with a chip embedded with its proprietary algorithm, reference designs, and a technology license."

2015 paper abstract:
"High-Brightness HDR Projection Using Dynamic-Phase Modulation
MTT Innovation Inc., The University Of British Columbia

Traditional projection systems use a high-power light source and amplitude (attenuating) light modulators (for example, DMD, LCD, or LCoS) to form an image by blocking light where it is not needed. This approach works well for images with limited dynamic range, but does not efficiently scale to applications that require high peak luminance and dark black levels, such as high-dynamic-range (HDR) content. Image statistics for HDR in the cinema suggest that the average picture level (APL) is typically about 5-10% of the peak luminance.

At SIGGRAPH 2014, this development team showed a monochromatic, low-power proof-of-principle projector and demonstrated that light that would otherwise be blocked in image formation can be used effectively to create very bright highlights. The demonstration was very well-received, but there were very obvious image artifacts, and it was unclear at the time how well the proposed technology would scale to the higher power required by larger screens or brighter ambient conditions for practical applications such as cinema, home theater, simulation, theme parks, and advertising.

A newly designed custom light source plus, an optimized system architecture, and improved image processing were combined to create the new prototype, which is now full color, 1000 lumens, and largely artifact-free (haloes, sharpness, uniformity, speckle, rendering). While this research prototype is still in an early stage of development, it shows that the technology has the potential to move beyond the research lab and affect our everyday lives."

[donaldk]

MTT INNOVATION IS CHANGING HOW YOU’LL SEE THE MOVIES
BY JOHN GRAY
SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

With domestic receipts topping $10 billion, the movie business proved in 2013 it’s still big business. Vancouver’s MTT Innovation is working towards significantly changing how we’ll be watching movies in the near future.

“The cinema experience is as much about the sounds, the smell of popcorn, and having this enormous picture in front of you. It’s not the contrast or the image itself that necessarily making for an awesome experience. Hollywood is painfully aware of this,” according to Anders Ballestad (co-founder and CEO)

The MTT Innovation team is developing a disruptive technology for laser projection that enables ultrahigh-brightness. With MTT’s technology, movies could be projected with never before seen realism.

While conventional projectors create images by blocking source light, MTT Innovation’s patent-pending technology redistributes the source light and redirects it to the appropriate areas of the image, thereby utilizing 100% of the light. The technology delivers extremely bright highlights, over 20 times brighter than currently possible, at a very high contrast of 100,000:1.

The three co-founders (CEO) Ballestad, (CTO), Gerwin Damberg, and (VP Engineering) Eric Kozak, came together while working at Dolby Canada. When Dolby decided to consolidate operations to San Francisco, they were all offered moves. Despite “serious consideration, because they were a fun company to work for, we all came to the independent conclusion that we’d rather stay in Vancouver.”

With a strong background in optics and display technology, Ballestad also offered that “we know what makes a TV look good, we know what it takes to make nice images. It took us a little while for the good idea to come along, but we had lots of good ideas”

After some consulting work, the three co-founders each sequestered away to a quiet corner of the room to work on their favorite idea for two months. This was leading up to as Ballestad put it, “a shoot out. We talked about technology, feasibility, market sizes, timing, can this be done? will anyone care?” Ultimately it was the projection idea that came out the winner.

For them this product is the epitome of cool (at least in their world), as it represents doing something different. “It isn’t an incremental thing that makes things 10% better, or saves 10% on a bill of materials. We’re changing the way images and formed in the first place.”

Having emerged for “stealth mode” in April, the MTT team is focusing on a very specific market first. While there’s other market opportunities Ballestad shared that approximately 15,000 theatre projectors are sold a year. After being very well received at this years Siggraph 2014 event, they are negotiating with four of the five major projector manufacturers for them to become technology demonstrators.

He shared that this is an “image quality they’ve never seen of a large screen. It’s going to change a number of things, such as how content is produced, how they create different images for different screen sizes in post-production process. The industry has been waiting for this solution. Getting high contrast and high dynamic range images is all about leading towards even better storytelling.”

Better pixels make for better images, enabling artists and creatives to make their stories much more immersive and the viewing experience much more enjoyable. “Coming to a theatre near you” will take on an entirely new context because of this Vancouver startup. It’s the motivation of delivering a dramatically improved visual theatre experience in the next two years that has Ballestad jumping out of bed everyday.

[donaldk]

UBC authors present their version, ACM wants money though:

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2857051


Cinema projectors need to compete with home theater displays in terms of image quality. High frame rate and spatial resolution as well as stereoscopic 3D are common features today, but even the most advanced cinema projectors lack in-scene contrast and, more important, high peak luminance, both of which are essential perceptual attributes of images appearing realistic. At the same time, HDR image statistics suggest that the average image intensity in a controlled ambient viewing environment such as the cinema can be as low as 1% for cinematic HDR content and not often higher than 18%, middle gray in photography. Traditional projection systems form images and colors by blocking the source light from a lamp, therefore attenuating between 99% and 82% of light, on average. This inefficient use of light poses significant challenges for achieving higher peak brightness levels.

In this work, we propose a new projector architecture built around commercially available components, in which light can be steered to form images. The gain in system efficiency significantly reduces the total cost of ownership of a projector (fewer components and lower operating cost), and at the same time increases peak luminance and improves black level beyond what is practically achievable with incumbent projector technologies. At the heart of this computational display technology is a new projector hardware design using phase modulation in combination with a new optimization algorithm that is capable of on-the-fly computation of freeform lens surfaces.
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