Digital Projection had in my opinion, the best looking display on the I/ITSEC 2017 trade show floor, but it got the prize by kind of cheating. It was showing native 8K HDR/WCG video content shot by NHK whereas everyone else was showing IG-based simulator content which is decidedly not HDR in nature. Plus, the 25K lumen projector (in RGB mode) was illuminating a rather small 10-foot (3m) wide screen allowing for great dynamic range and an image that clearly “popped.”
DP is owned by Taiwan-based, Delta, and the new platform leverages some existing technology in the DP line. For example, the projector is based upon the 4K Dual Insight chassis with features dual laser phosphor engines. This is a 3-chip platform that uses a 1.38” DLP chip with 4096 x 2160 resolution. To get to 8K on-screen pixel resolution, DP uses image shifter technology from the Highlight series projectors. This is a 4-shift actuator allowing a 4K imager set to display 8K pixels on-screen.
DP only saw the projector for the first time when it arrived at the trade show and was set up. As a result, not many specifications are available on this prototype. Since it is laser phosphor-based, it may or may not achieve DCI-P3 color gamut depending upon how aggressively the light is filtered to reach that goal.
8K content came from the Evans and Sutherland planetarium business and from NHK. The content was loaded onto an Astro server which used 16 3G-SDI connectors to send content to the projector.
DP could not confirm it, but the projector must have loaded the HLG EOTF onto the projector to play the NHK content and. It is unclear what EOTF the E&S content used.
Some of the content I recognized as from Carnival in Brazil that I have seen on the RGB OLED mastering monitor from Sony (X-300). By comparison, the black level looked a little elevated and the color slightly desaturated, but this could have easily been explained by the ambient light on the trade show floor (photo under exposed to capture highlights).
Using my phone-based Lux app, I measured a peak Lux of 3500 (~1100 cd/m²) and a black level of 6 Lux (~1.9 cd/m²) for a practical contrast level of 579:1. This would undoubtedly improve in a black room, but an impressive image it was, nonetheless.
Availability is expected in September 2018 with a price to be announced. – CC
