OSRAM exiting Xenon

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

If they did exit, I'd say Good Riddance! Their digital lamps are garbage for the most part. Film lamp's are just passable.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Only at the trade shows...As such, I didn't have any extensive testing/observations. The Flagship Lasers (6P) are down to two models, I think (one with a high-contrast variant). They are priced many times higher than their SP4K projectors, which I would hesitate to call 3P as the spectroradiometer shows multiple peaks on at least two colors (I don't have one in front of me at the moment to show).

I guess they're using two types of laser diodes then for those colors in their laser plates/modules, which would explain why they never introduced a stackable setup that supports color-seperated 3D, like Christie. That makes them 3.5P machines then, or how do we classify such a light source?

[Sean McKinnon]

DCI-P3_D65.svg.pngI wrote a whole reponse to you yesterday Steve then the site went down for me lol. I don't have a lot of experience with the Qualif yet I am mostly used to photoresearch but looking at the peaks of the spectograph against a chart of the DCI-P3 colorspace it seems like they are very close to the "points" on the triangle in that corrected DCI white and the color temperature is very close to 6300 K. Unfortunately I did not screenshot my red blue green verification but I dont remember anything sticking out as being way out. I don't question that the phenomena exists I just can't see it for whatever reason.

[Stefan Scholz]

I doubt, Xrnon is a big business today or in the future. There are also some Chinese vendors, making Xenon bulbs in the higher kilowatt range, so its not only 2 vendors left.
There are a some anti Xenon arguments.
Work safety. Xenon lamps are operating under high pressure. They can explode when handled, and yes, we all know that there is PSA, in many times, it's not used. For those doing safety legislations, any possible hazard is a no go, even the one during handling. So to get rid of these "Explodotrons", is a good measure. Even mercury super pressure does not omit any hazard, when cold.

There used to be large market for non film or theatre based used in the entertainment industry. Many followers, spotlight, theater effects, moon spots, etc. were Xenon based some time ago. They were using wattages from 2 kW up to 12 kW. Most of the newer gear is based on LED technology, that is claimed to have more flexibility, way lesser energy consumption.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine brought Xenon based lights from an amusement park's large stage, that could seat a couple of 1000 people. They were based on Xenon 2, 5 or 10 kW, had small switchmode modules stacked to reach the required wattage, and offer fault tolerability. To archive a rainbow of colors, stepper motor controllable dichroic filters were used in front of the main reflector.
This park had all kind of different ones, from those color flooders, to spots and followers, all around Xenon lamps.
They renewed them for high power RGB LED. Same light output, fraction of power use, and therefore also less heat generation to be extracted by HVAC.
Just another example for a market that has collapsed, like moving image projection.

Same could apply to car headlights, cause most modern designs are LED based.
Stadium floodlight, formerly based on metal halide, from the process of manufacturing, a process similar to that of making Xenon bulbs. The large wattage ones were also made by hand and by skilled craftsmen.

My feeling, glass envelope lamp production will come to an end. Well, there are those retro style filament LED ones, that resemble an old piece of Edison bulb, but that's the exemption to proof the rule.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Well, there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Xenon spot lights and search lights around the world. So there certainly needs to be a reliable source for Xenon Lamps. And Reliable no longer includes Osram or any Chinese Lamp. I will only sell Ushio right now. There is also ASL, but I have little experience with theirs.

[Gordon McLeod]

If they did exit, I'd say Good Riddance! Their digital lamps are garbage for the most part. Film lamp's are just passable.

Well we have had the opposite experience the 1.8KW for the CP2210 form Osram outlasts the Christie by far and never develops the flicker issue the christie lamps did

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The 1.8k didn't exist back when I was using Osram digital lamps. I was using 2k, and 3k lamps. None made it half way to end of life. A few even gassed out. All exhaust systems also met spec and were relatively new. I actually gave not had any Ushio lamps fail early in nearly 7 years. Even the NC-900 lamps make it to 3000 hours. We also tried a few LTI that also gave horrible results.