Apologies – this article was missed in our production process and should have been in the Cinemacon pdf issue last week.
At last year’s CinemaCon, Christie was showcasing its new RGB laser projector that is a fully integrated model – i.e. no external chiller or cooler. This product, the CP4325 RGB is now shipping. It offers 25K lumens. New for this year was the introduction of two 2K versions: the CP2320 (14K lumens) and the CP 2315 (18K lumens). These will ship in the fall and both offer 3000:1 sequential contrast.
Perhaps the most interesting tidbit I heard from Christie was their forecast for sales in the cinema market. For 2018, they expect 20% of sales to be RGB laser, but in 2019, that figure will rise to 50%. That’s a very aggressive forecast but it reflects their continued focus on RGB vs. laser phosphor as the replacement technology for cinema light sources.
Christie has been saying this for about three years and has been debating this with Barco for some time with Barco stressing that laser phosphor is the future replacement. I remember these two debating this very strenuously at Display Summit a few years back, when RGB pricing was significantly higher than laser phosphor. Clearly, laser phosphor is gaining large market share today, but Christie’s point has been that this is a transition stage to RGB laser. Time will tell who is right – or if neither is right and LED screens become the dominant new technology in five years.
We were told the CP4325 is now available for “sub $100K”, which makes it a mainstream alternative. Christie is apparently using the new Nichia green laser diodes instead of the frequency double Nichia solution of previous RGB projector implementations. These diodes currently operate at 520nm, so the projector only now covers 92% of the BT.2020 color gamut (but all of DCI-P3). Christie intends to move to 525nm in a few months to increase coverage of BT.2020 (the green primary in BT.2020 is 532nm). Lifetime is specified at 30K hours to 80% of initial brightness (i.e. 10 years if operated 8 hours/day, seven days per week).
On the roadmap is a 4K 35K lumen RGB model slated for the end for 2018. By Q2’19, Christie intends to have a full line of RGB cinema solutions from 10K lumens to the largest PLF application. And, RGB will start to move into the ProAV segment as well by the end of 2018.
These new projectors also have a new user interface that can be accessed via the web for remote control. It is nicely laid out and has a “rental” mode. This is for non-fixed applications and can be used to control the KDMs, shut down HDMI or Display Port interfaces and control the light output. This is all designed to prevent exhibitors in India, for example, from renting the projector to show Hollywood movies from an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc player (and not paying Hollywood royalties because there is no logging over an HDMI interface).
Unfortunately, I missed getting into the theater to see a demo of the CP4325 projector. However, clips from Avengers Infinity War, Black Panther and Rampage were shown.
On the Xenon lamp front, Christie introduced its LightTIME Guarantee, which includes all the lamps necessary to support its operation during the warranty period of a customer’s Christie CP2308 cinema projector. Exhibitors can pick from three different illumination packages appropriate for their screen. Once purchased, the projector will ship with two lamps and additional lamps will be automatically sent based on the illumination package chosen. Christie is beginning the program with the CP2308 but intends on expanding the guarantee to every Christie Xenon cinema projector as well as its extended warranty programs in the future.
Christie also offers a range of high contrast projectors for potential use in Extended Dynamic Range application, but to get to 6000:1 requires a loss of up to 20% of the light. –CC
