Texas Instruments DLP Digital Video Projection System
Well, here it is. This is the machine that will one day perhaps wipe out projetionists and film.
The projector mounts on a standard pedestal and uses a normal theatrical xenon lamphouse.
The lamphouse in this demonstration is a 5000 watt Strong.
There are two lenses used with the system. One is a normal spherical lens and the other is a 2x1 compression anamorphic lens, just like 35mm film.
The "guts" of the monster.
One wonders how much tweeking will be necessary once digital cinema is a mainstream commodity. Here is one of the technicians making final adjustments before the demo.
The source material came from a Panasonic D5 digital videotape player.
In normal applications, the movie will be downloaded off of satellite and stored in the computer's memory for public showings. This D5 player is uncompressed video. The actual downloaded data will be in a compressed state. No one knows how that will affect the quality of the image. However, this demo I saw rivaled 35mm...and I believe it was better than 95% of the theaters after 2 weeks of running a print.