Cineramax raving about Barco's Canadian light redirection HDR demo at Cinemacon

[donaldk]

Shhhh – a TOP SECRET, pioneering concept that boosts movie image quality to never-before-seen levels!

http://dci-forum.com/d-cinema-hi-end-cinema-home/11/barco-acquires-canadian-hdr-projection-expertise/813/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEUsLfF31fY

Lumiere Brothers.

Barco 9" CRT in 1989.

Uhm Dolby chose wisely, as this technology did not exist, secondly Dolby is only interested in IP it can own to license. So should Dolby have bought MTT Innovation Inc., perhaps. But if one could have obtained a DV Projection system five years ago, one would have happilly paid up and build that theater.

[lygren]

...so; Peter is the only guy that saw this super secret stuff?? What is it, I NEEDS TO KNOW?! 1mill:1 contrast? 4th contrast chip? When is the ETA on anything official on this system? In any case I would say an alternative to DV HDR is very good news for the residential portion of the industry as such - given that Dolby does not seem very capable of getting their tech - or at least some version of it - implemented in residential projectors...

[donaldk]

There was some info in the linked article, published here when the acquisition was announced, including some info from the company's early Siggraph demo and presentation. Light is being re-directed, so less gets wasted, added to the wanted signal/image. The full Siggraph paper was not freely available.

Since Barco hired a videographer to record vox pops about its Vision 2020 (hindsight?) campaign at Cinemacon, there must be more, but Peter's was the only one I could find last week. Perhaps Barco has posted some after the show ended?

[lygren]

Got it, will look more into it... Interesting tech for sure, but it remains to see what side effects such an added engine might introduce. 20x peak brights and lower blacks does seem very interesting though, but then again - not so sure it was beneficial to the overall residential market after all that Barco did purchase the tech - except - potentially - for the very highest end of the market that is...

[lygren]

After having seen and read just about everything I could find on this tech I do find it very interesting. The maximum available amount of light remains the same, i.e. 1000 lumens at 100 APL remains 1000. However, frames are very rarely "all white", even a snow scene is typically utilising only 30-40% of the available light whereas the remainder is blocked off (well, to the extent the chip is capable of blocking that is...). By harnessing the available light and directing it where it is needed - and also directing it AWAY from where it is not - the tech is capable of producing 20-100x peaks (depending on the size of the peak in relations to the overall APL of the particular frame), as well as removing light from areas where it is not required. This is certainly one hellofa computing job required to adjust to every single frame without creating a bunch of artefacts, but the tech is seemingly a combination of the hardware required to do the light modulation and the software (also stored / enabled via a proprietary chip) needed.

VERY INTERESTING! I also see one of the founders is a Norwegian, Anders Ballestad - nice one!

[lygren]

I guess my first thought would be - how the heck would they control light in a sufficiently precise manner? Even the slightest off-pixel inaccuracy would lead to light bleed - especially apparent on highly contrasted objects such as a star in a pitch black sky... It´s certainly a very nice idea and concept, but it really remains to be seen if it can indeed pass prototype... Any observations, particularly in terms of the degree of light control would be very welcome!