does ANYONE prefer laser to xenon?

[Scott Norwood]

Subject says it. Is there any argument at all for laser light sources' being superior to xenon with respect to picture quality in a cinema installation (assuming a non-flickery, properly aligned bulb)?

I don't think that I have ever seen a laser setup that didn't have the "shimmering" effect and/or inferior color when compared with an equivalent xenon system. I get the marketing benefit of laser ("we have lasers" sounds better than "we have light bulbs"), but I'm not sure why anyone would want it other than that and the potential (small) labor savings in not having to change bulbs. Am I misguided here?

[Steve Guttag]

The financial benefit of laser is more than little. It is, particularly on new systems designed from the ground up, ⅓ the electric consumption of xenon, per lumen. And then there is the heat load to the booth. Lasers don't need to vent to the outdoors so your HVAC system is no longer having to vent and then replenish itself. Picture wise, the potential for laser to get a wider color gamut is there but at what cost to the overall image quality? You get speckle that is taking on various forms of mitigation. Then there is the whole metamerics where different people see the color differently despite what a meter may claim. Those are two some pretty significant dings to the laser image. Except for NEC, a laser system also tends to come with a notably higher contrast ratio, which is a big plus, particularly for 4K where xenon's contrast was poor. If you are a drive-in or large-screen indoor, laser offers more more light on a single projector (upwards of double, at the moment) and with a much higher degree of stability. Furthermore, the light loss by moving to an even higher contrast lens has a lesser impact on overall light output.

The above is why I think emissive (LED) screens will be our future. The biggest hurdle is getting the sound to come from the screen rather than around its perimeter or bouncing off of it. I'm less worried about cost as I believe technology and continued adoption in industries besides ours, including consumer will drive those down. Emissive screens get the color right, the contrast right, focus is always perfect, image aligned, no keystone or curved screen distortions, lumen choices abound. From a service standpoint, being able to repair pixels, in some form such that they color match and lumen match the repaired area's neighbors will be critical.

[Leo Enticknap]

As someone who has now been involved in installing four LED cinema displays, I would argue that at present, at any rate, up front cost is a bigger hurdle than the audio issue. From an empty room (or one with a conventional projector or screen), you're likely looking at $500K to $1M to have one of these systems ready to play movies. As well as the LED cabinets themselves, there is the frame, in some cases upgrading the floor loading capacity, and, crucially, the labor. A projector can be replaced by one or two people in one or two days. At a rough guess, you're looking at 300 to 500 hours of skilled labor to get a LED cinema display up and running, from the trucks arriving at the loading bay to the first paying customers sitting down in front of the display.

While I agree that the cost of the LED cabinets themselves may come down, I can't see that economies of scale will bring down the other costs by very much. A lot of the labor consists of mounting the cabinets on the frame and tweaking the alignment of them, such that there is no visible gap, and replacing modules that arrived with bad pixels. I suspect, therefore, that cinema LED displays will establish an IMAX-like niche, as a premium product at a premium price.

As for conventional projectors, as Steve notes, their attraction is more economic than aesthetic. Screen surfaces are coming on the market that are designed to mitigate speckle, which is a positive. But there seems to be a retro attraction to xenon developing, analogous to the attraction to VHS and vinyl records: some people just prefer the look of it.

[Scott Norwood]

Sound aside, does the LED screen thing at least look like a movie? When I think of giant LED screens, images of stadium scoreboards and electronic billboards come to mind.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

What's the cost to re-laser a projector that can't be brought into spec... I was told by one of the projector manufacturers a couple years ago, that it is extremely expensive and at that point, xeon, including electricity, would have cost less overall. And also, that's the way the industry is heading irregardless of cost. Since it's doubtful the lasers will last the life of the projector, what's the real life story on cost to re-laser? I know it's not too early to determine this...

[Steve Guttag]

The cost of re-laser varies by manufacturer. The older Laser systems are going to be pricey. NEC's approach to the "ML" series of projector is to create "laser as a service" such that you unclip the back of the projector, which as the lasers and phosphor wheel(s) and you put on an RX one with new lasers and phosphor wheel. Barco has moved to laser "plates," which are about the size of a deck of cards. They come in Red and combination of Blue and Green lasers. With this, one can have different decay rates of the colors and change them as they decay rather than an all or nothing approach. I am unfamiliar, at this point, with Christie's method of their Cine-Life + (current version).

Leo, I think you'll be amazed at how LED screens will come down...I predict that as this technology migrates towards consumer, the size/weight/cost of putting in an emissive screen will all come down...the same way original large flat screen TVs went from 10s of thousands to 100s. Time will tell. For now, for sure, Laser projection is the norm of the day. In 10-years (if the industry itself is allowed to survive...probably the bigger question as the studios seem to try to do everything they can to kill it)...we'll see where we are on emissive screens.

[Leo Enticknap]

Also, I am starting to see evidence that the predictions for laser life made by the manufacturers were likely pessimistic. In particular, I look after a DP2K-20CLP that is running with the lasers maxed out all the time at a theme park since 2018. It's now done 32K laser hours, and at the last PM, its light output hadn't declined significantly; though as I didn't install it, I don't know what it was when it was new. The phosphor wheels are supposed to be replaced after 20K, but haven't been on this one (the customer isn't seeing anything wrong, and didn't like the cost), and I was able to calibrate the colors to DCI last time with only fractional changes in the numbers. There are other laser projectors I look after that are well north of 20K, again with no evidence that the light output or ability to hold their colors is in decline.

So I suspect that the manufacturers were being super pessimistic in their predictions of light source life for the early models.

Sound aside, does the LED screen thing at least look like a movie? When I think of giant LED screens, images of stadium scoreboards and electronic billboards come to mind.

Cinema LED displays evolved from the same fundamental technologies as LED billboards, jumbotrons, airport displays, etc., but the pixel pitch is a lot finer, and the dynamic range of each pixel is a lot greater. You'd need to be standing within a couple of feet of one to make out the individual pixels.

[Steve Guttag]

It's weird...I have some SP4K-15C that seem to have gained in level (2-years in, I started getting CLO errors that it couldn't ramp down low enough). That was odd. I have noted that there is SOME decay in lasers in 4-years of use but it isn't all that great. I've tried to start my laser systems at under 50% as lasers hate heat. The cooler you can run them (via keeping them cool and not running them higher than they need to) the longer they will last. The decay is definitely slower. I do wonder if there will come an avalanche point. You're humming right along and not having to bump it up much and then the next PM...you have to crank it up 20% or more (if you got the range left). We'll see.

[Stefan Scholz]

Xenon has best white and overall color. No doubt for me. But 4k DLP sucked, no contrast, the chip area is too small. Lasers and Ultra High Contrast lenses have changed that drasticly. Now there's good contrast and bright image.
If you're driving the machine on lower to mid range of the light output (meaning with UHC buy a machine 2 steps larger, than normally), I expect good lifespan.
Today everything is about cost saving. No more lamp changes in the next 40 to 50 k hours. That's, with larger lamps, equal to 40 to 70 bulbs, at expected 1k per bulb over the time. Add the labor cost...
Ok, than, electricity her for instance is a factor. Going down to 50 to 60% with UHC lens, that's a factor over the years. Plus, the heat load in the room is significantly smaller. You also save on A/C electricity.

With all the savings, picture quality is second, for the economist running the corporation. THe new equipment "pays for itself" in a few years, and then we can't stop the train.

I do not really expect self radiating screen to be really reasonable. THere are nearly 9 Million x 4 individual radiators (R/G/B/W). Even at a cost of 0.0X ct per radiator, the price is high.
Consuming 0.1 Watt per element 36 Millions x 0.1 is still 36 kW of power consumed with high bright white.
That's heat, which has to be extracted from the auditorium. There's more, than just the audio issue, which can be overcome by immersive audio systems.

[Marcel Birgelen]

What should I say...

I don't hate laser...
And I don't love Xenon...
Every imaging technology comes with their own sets of challenges.

Xenon may have the most consistent colors, but laser clearly has a contrast and brightness advance. I hate speckle, but if you refrain from using high-gain (silver) screens. the speckle issue seems to have been mostly solved in the latest generation laser machines, even without gimmicks like screen shakers.

The very first laser projectors start to hit the 10 year-mark pretty soon. Most exhibitors seem to have mostly positive experiences from their laser switch. There has been a noticeable reduction in power usage and up until now, the economics of not having to switch expensive xenon lamps every so often seems to be working out too.

The biggest challenge for me, for lasers is in post production, as nobody wants to color grade on them.

As for direct view screens: No projection system currently in existence beats a high-end 4K LED screen. Period. There's just one very important aspect: You need to be far enough away from it as not to be able to see the pixel grid. There is no cheating with LED screens, you can't simply de-focus them slightly.

Audio remains a challenge, I still hope technology will evolve to a point that even those high-density screens can have their audio sources behind the screen. While some solutions I've seen sounded halfway decent, it still lacked the overal quality of a direct source behind the screen.

[Ryan Gallagher]

For us, laser is becoming appealing because it will eliminate a few things in the optical path that degrade quality. Our booth angle is such that our install couldn't tilt a liquid cooled xenon enough without causing massive keystone/stretch issues and exceeding the tilt limits for xenon. Periscope mirrors were the solution for the 2k install to reduce those distortions. If we go to 4K soon, a laser unit that does not have such tilt restrictions, no ducted blower exhaust requirement, and certain models and licenses will permit us to do the warp file correction to completely eliminate our vertical stretch and keystone. Obviously it comes with a 1to1 pixel penalty, but compared to our 2K setup still a vast improvement.

I'm sure warp file correction is possible on 4K xenon too now, but would probably still require our periscope to keep the lamp level-ish.

A couple other benefits will be a quieter booth, our 2K exhausted in the booth was louder in the auditorium than a 4K laser on scaffolding placed directly in the house. Obviously soundproofing our historic booth better is the other way to go there. ;-)

As seasonal classics/art-house that also does premieres and big festivals. We never get our money's worth out of the xenon lamps. By the time the next premiere/festival season arrives it's time to put a new lamp in, even though the prior lamp is only at 800 hours or so. We feel we were a bit undersold on the projector lumens in this regard for our throw... hitting DCI spec for premieres requires a relatively fresh lamp. If we were serious about using those lamp hours on non-critical screenings we would probably keep one lamp for premieres, and use another to it's limit for everything else, but that's a lot of lamp handling.

[Dennis Benjamin]

I got to run carbon arc once. It's the best picture I've ever seen on a screen—a 35-millimeter film running on a carbon arc projector.

I've run xenon and laser now. I am more familiar with Xenon than Laser, so until I get more familiar with laser, it's xenon for me.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The biggest challenge for me, for lasers is in post production, as nobody wants to color grade on them.

I know a west coast color grader that has that attitude towards laser... But I can not help but wonder if the releases were actually color graded FOR LASER if they would look better overall. He can't answer that for me since no one wants to use the laser projector they have, and therefore have no results to compare.

And no one has actually answered my original question as to the cost to re-laser a projector when they drift out of spec. Or is the manufacturer just going to tell that customer to buy a new projector?

[Steve Guttag]

The problem with color grading on laser is metamerics. If you take two color graders with xenon, they both see the same color. If you do the same with laser, they don't. So, if one person tends to see the image shifted red, they'll color correct and those that tend to see a laser image shifted green will see that exaggerated because the person that sees laser shifted red did the grading.

The cost to relaser varies by manufacturer so it isn't a concrete number. The LIST price for laser plates range from about $2,000 to $8,000. Naturally, street prices will be less. How many plates and of which color and which model are going to vary by projector size. And, instead of a complete re-laser you are going to just replace those that don't meet the level anymore. But that is how Barco does it...how Christie and NEC handle it will be different.

[Mike Blakesley]

We moved to a laser projector just over a year ago. It's a Barco SP4K running at 50% on a white screen. When we installed it, I was all ready to promote it up as "Montana's first laser projector!" but then I found out our neighboring theatre down the road had put a small one into one of their auditoriums when they remodeled. So we didn't really promote it. Even so, we got (and still get) multiple comments on how good our picture is.