Christie Digital (Kitchener, Canada) (www.christiedigital.com) was at InfoComm with an interesting demo of a repackaged Digital Cinema projector. On display was a two-piece DLP projector with 2048 x 1080 resolution. Terry Schmidt, Christie's chief scientist, told us the unit was being shown to rental and staging customers to get some feedback.

Like the new Barco two-piece 2K projector, Christie thinks that rental and staging venues can use the extra pixels, but a conventional Digital Cinema package just doesn't work for rental and staging. Therefore, it has built a projector head that includes the lamp, but is coupled to a second cabinet that contains the lamp ballast, power supplies and other electronics. Breaking up the system this way makes sense functionally, but was also needed to keep the size and weight of each manageable for easy transport.

The projector can be outfitted with several Xenon lamps. Schmidt says a 6KW lamp, for example, will output about 20,000 lumens. But it can also use a 2KW Xenon lamp that can be under-driven to perhaps 800W. This gives R&S operators the ability to tune down the brightness a bit, but boost lamp life to 2000 to 3000 hours. Contrast for the demonstrator was 1300:1, but should reach 2000:1 if the product is commercialized.
Christie notes that it is also starting to take some orders for its regular 2K Digital Cinema projectors, the CP2000 H/I models.

Christie Digital, Terry Schmidt, 519-749-3174, terry.schmidt@christiedigital.com

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