Thirty-three members of The Detroit Section met at Technicolor on February 13th for a presentation dealing with Digital Cinema projection technology by Scot Kneisley and Chester Hartwell.
Digital Cinema is a joint venture between Technicolor and Qualcomm, the purpose of which is to provide end to end digital delivery of theatrical motion pictures to theaters worldwide. A beta-testing program is currently in place to help determine the hardware requirements and associated costs to the film industry. There are a number of services provided that entails the following:
1. The release of material and coordination thereof.
2. Security of that material while in transit and ultimate disposal.
3. Uploading of the material at the theater site as well as necessary scripting.
4. Quality control.
5. On-site maintenance of the hardware.
6. Authorization and de-authorization of the media.
Technicolor is well placed to provide both the traditional film and the digital delivery methods to the motion picture industry.
There are currently 32 theaters worldwide, that have Digital Cinema projection heads installed, typically on Christie consoles identical to those used for traditional film projection. In some instances a film version of the media is run concurrently in an adjacent projection system to provide backup in case of unforeseen failure of the Digital Cinema head. There are a total of 50 of these heads in existence, all prototypes built utilizing Texas Instruments DMD (Digital Micro-mirror Device) chip assemblies. Digital Cinema is designed for use in darkened environments. It is capable of 10,000 lumens of brightness and at greater than 1000:1 contrast ratios. Resolution is 1280 x 1024 and it will accommodate aspect ratios of 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 utilizing anamorphic optics. The system runs at 24 fps at a typical color temperature of 6500 K. Screen size can be greater than 60' and the component color performance has a depth of 15 bits.
The chip itself is a marvel of design and manufacturing. Made up of well over a million tiny (16 microns square) mirrors, these micro-miniature reflectors, suspended on posts, tilt back and forth at a frequency rate that determines gray scale. Liquid cooling is built in to the rear of the assembly. Three of these are bonded to a prism to provide the primary lights, RG and B. The raw light from the lamp house passes through a liquid cooled infrared trap, passes through a light integrator and then on to a mirror before entering the prism assembly.
The media (data) is stored in a Qu Bit digital motion recorder. Up to 288 GB of data is stored on a pair of mirrored arrays. Technicolor personnel located throughout the various testing regions do the downloading of the data from 5" discs. The delivery process consists of the following steps:
1. The film release is digitized.
2. The media is encoded and encrypted.
3. The media is transported to the local theater.
4. The media is loaded in to the local storage device.
5. The media is decoded and projected.
6. The media is finally destroyed at the end of authorized use.
While we were not able to actually see a projected image using this technology, the reports from the field, notably from film directors, indicate that this will be the future of theatrical motion picture distribution. We were treated to a tour of Technicolor's vast tape duplication facility after the presentation and wish to thank Scot Kneisley and Chester Hartwell for their excellent presentation, Technicolor, for their hospitality and our own Hal Miller, for arranging the program.