4K Projectors in 2017

[Marc Wielage]

However, reading about Kodaks (cough did this become Red's) cinema laser project effort is an interesting read.

I worked for Kodak when they started their Digital Cinema division, and they quickly came to the realization that Christie and Barco pretty much owned that market. They tried to sell "everything else," namely the software to run the theater, keep track of virtual prints, make the DCPs, and all that stuff, but I think the theaters decided to do their own thing and ignore Kodak.

There are always weird R&D left turns that companies sometimes take on the way to try to create something innovative -- I would point to Apple's now-dead autonomous car project as an example -- and Kodak had a thousand projects that basically got left behind once the corporation started to sink. Heck, Kodak's digital Cineon system was so good it formed the basis for the file formats used by the entire VFX industry and it won an Oscar... but Kodak wound up abandoning it, partly because the competition was so fierce, and partly because they decided not to be in the VFX software business.

But the options for 4K projectors are still limited, at least in terms of 4K projectors that can show really high-quality images. There's a ton of projectors that claim to be 4K, but a lot of them look pretty crappy. Heck, a good projection lens costs more than most of these cheap consumer projectors, and you can't ever get away from the need for good glass.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Good glass is a red herring topic.

I was only talking about their laser projector design efforts.

I read about Apples car project last night. I forget my thoughts on it, but typical big business throwing heaps at it. Apparently there were disagreements (or was that another project) and it was closed. But in all these things it is about having people with the overview to correctly direct and design it, not a heap of engineers not able to do this. so each group and sub group needs one or more of these types of people if you want to get going with heaps of people big, and let the sub groups get on with it in consultation with their superiors for a homogenic design. These people can quickly see and move the design in holistic ways, and see deeply. Unfortunately, I don't think this happens as much, mistaken notions and ideas are plentiful, rather than great ones.

Unfortunately people stuff things up. Kodak had leading small cheap pocket cameras. One narrow chocolate bar like model is my favorite camera. But it is a shame they stuffed up before getting to more useful models with fhdp50 or 4k, and more bandwidth. Now we have mobiles, but it's not the same, they are not as good to control as some of the models, and nowhere near what could be done (plus who wants Google and every hacker to know what your working on). That model I mentioned, they had like 30 skins, or pages of skins for it, way over kill. There were so many excessive amounts of new models too because they had success with the old ones. Excess models divide the sales, confuses the customer (something that can turn off customers, they are not types of chocolate bars], weak models further enhance this. 6 or 7 good models is a range, and 6 or 7 skins that most people won't buy. I wonder how many retailers were stuck with excess stock, which is not so good. But people say "it works" and throw stuff at the wall trying to duplicate the success. Now, when you just go about willy nilly and not with good people (above) purposely, you can end up with big issues in big companies. Lots of different things is not necessarily the issue, but how you do it, is

 

[Wayne Morellini]

$699 4k under development, with 3D cameras to map the scene on the room (something I was planning for my own system earlier last decade).

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3154...line-between-your-screen-and-living-room.html

 

[Marc Wielage]

It's still pie-in-the-sky vaporware. As I said earlier, I won't believe it until they show a working prototype at a trade show like NAB and have solid prices and delivery dates.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Marc, you obviously missed that they did show the prototype. It is no use having pie in the sky vaporiouse ideas that something can't happen when somebody has already shown it has happened down to earth. You also need to readdress your definition of vaporware. I was around when they started using the term, a computer product announced to be designed and built, that never turned up, the notion disappeared into the vapor from which it came a few years latter. Also, it is completely unrealistic to call products that haven't disappeared into vapor, and never were, vaporware. Every product that has come out goes from notion towards worked out idea (design) and admin/market testing likely/planning to prototype to more admin testing and planning to arrangements and production prototype to production, marketing and distribution. Vaporware is usually notion, bit of idea and marketing, selling vapor (basically say, I'm going to invent a thing called a vacuum cleaner, with a bit or marketing hype and drawing, but with absolutely no idea of how it works and what it will be like). If you call this vaporware then virtually every product under the sun is vaporware with that definition, which aren't so, and is grossly unfair.

 

[Marc Wielage]

If you call this vaporware then virtually every product under the sun is vaporware with that definition, which aren't so, and is grossly unfair.

Not if they're taking orders, have a firm price, and a ship date. I get that sometimes ship dates slip, and that's just a standard problem with very high-tech products intended for a high-end audience. If it were easy to make 4K projectors with very high quality, everybody would do it.

Go to NAB in Vegas and see what happens next month. That stuff I can believe. There are always manufacturers who will have what is loftily called "a technology demonstration," but at least they admit "this is vaporware at the moment and we're just getting feedback from our users as to what they want and what the cost range could be."

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Don't listen to their dribble Marc. Your definition of vaporware includes just about every product, as they all aren't shipping and probably don't have a firm price before they actually do. Despite what some nave at NAB says, vaporware don't work that way (doesn't work at all actually ).

The original poster said 4k projector, not "pro" projector.

 

[Stacey Spears]

I like BenQ, they seem to focus getting true color standards into cheaper consumer projectors. But this doesn't even seem to have HDR support. There's only one road down to a 4K projector and that's REC2020, HDR and UHD support.
That's what I'm waiting for before replacing my 1080p projector.

HDR projection, outside of Dolby in the theater, is not a real thing. Right now they are slapping on the PQ curve with some mediocre tone mapping and calling it HDR. Bill Feightner and I were discussing using Transkoder (ColorFront) to create a 100 nit HDR grade to test home projectors vs. 1,000 or 4,000 nit grade they are getting from UHD BD and attempting to tone map on the fly.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Keep us informed Stacey.

 

[Marc Wielage]

HDR projection, outside of Dolby in the theater, is not a real thing. Right now they are slapping on the PQ curve with some mediocre tone mapping and calling it HDR.

I agree. There's a lot of specious consumer stuff where they're calling it "HDR," but I think it's far from hitting anything close to the published specs. This kind of bogus specsmanship game has been going on for decades, from audio amps that claim ridiculous power wattage to TV sets and VCRs claiming ridiculous resolution numbers. Brightness is just the latest thing.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Are you saying that simply putting the words "new and improved" on a product doesn't actually mean it truly is new or improved? There's no gambling going on in here... ;-) hehe

Cheers - #19

 

[Christoffer Glans]

HDR projection, outside of Dolby in the theater, is not a real thing. Right now they are slapping on the PQ curve with some mediocre tone mapping and calling it HDR. Bill Feightner and I were discussing using Transkoder (ColorFront) to create a 100 nit HDR grade to test home projectors vs. 1,000 or 4,000 nit grade they are getting from UHD BD and attempting to tone map on the fly.

I hate this, it should be a crime to tell people there's something in the box when there's not. How can manufacturers still get a away with this? Like the fake 50 fps thingy we all hate. Instead of selling TVs based on giving the actual standards of motion picture and television they need things like this to sell. Why can't there be a gold standard stamp on TV sets that are correctly calibrated and follows industry standards? Giving consumers the perfect match to the filmmakers and content providers creations.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Isn't that Dolby Vision :smile:

 

[Marc Wielage]

Isn't that Dolby Vision :smile:

No, Dolby Vision is real and it's actually a pretty sharp idea. I think the technology goes back ten years to a company called "Brightside Technology," whom Dolby bought in 2007. It's fair to say that Dolby has put many, many millions of dollars into HDR research. It's a good question whether Dolby Vision or HDR-10 will become the widest-accepted consumer standard for new 4K TV sets.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Why can't there be a gold standard stamp on TV sets that are correctly calibrated and follows industry standards? Giving consumers the perfect match to the filmmakers and content providers creations.

Marc, I was having a go at this thought. So you believe Dolby Vision gives a perfect match to the film makers creations?

Just love to see how midday scenes looking down white beaches turn out on average on TV field shows? I can imagine a filmmaker turning it down, but a TV guy just slapping it together, especially if they wrestle the look from the camera man.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Hopefully, both DolbyVision and HDR10 will be supported by display manufacturers. Many higher end devices already support both Dolby and DTS audio formats.

I can't count how many TVs in public places and friends homes I've seen where the image is mangled by various, and often multiple, errors in settings. Count me as a cheerleader for the DolbyVision model of an interactive relationship between the source content and the display. Most RedUsers are savvy enough to make the necessary adjustments to a display based on visual feedback and knowledge of how to dial in various picture parameters. I'd wager 90% of the general public couldn't get past adjusting brightness, contrast and maybe color saturation.

Throughout my career I have been appalled by the vast gulf between what I see in the color bay and what actually gets delivered to the viewer. Over the last decade plus, the biggest image quality killer has been over-compression, typically well beyond the design parameters of the codec, most commonly MPEG-2. In addition to macro blocking and other obvious artifacts, we have also been robbed of color fidelity due to aggressive color sub-sampling schemes that effectively squeeze the color gamut into a pale imitation of what was on the master.

If there is one thing I could accomplish in my lifetime, it would be to put the stunning imagery I get to see on calibrated professional monitors in front of the people we are making the content for. With the recent impetus to create higher quality programs, perhaps image quality will finally get some very overdue attention as the shifting content consumption landscape engenders competition between programming sources, vs the "least objectionable content" proposition noted by Marshall McLuhan.

Cheers - #19

 

[L. Langer]

Hopefully, both DolbyVision and HDR10 will be supported by display manufacturers.

Already there. Dolby Vision and HDR10 can be implemented via software on pretty much any UHDTV now, so companies like Sony, Samsung, Vizio, etc. are updating older UHDTVs with DV in the near future and some non-HDR sets have even had HDR enabled via software updates. Hell, Sony's even coming out with HDR HDTVs and those might pack Dolby Vision at some point.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Marc, I was having a go at this thought. So you believe Dolby Vision gives a perfect match to the film makers creations?

Sure, as long as the theater is calibrated. Have you read the dozen or so papers on HDR through the links I posted? Have you seen Dolby Vision in theaters? I'm actually fairly impressed at the two theaters in LA that have it -- the El Capitan on Hollywood Blvd. and the AMC in Burbank (and there may well be others now). It's a good, solid process.

I think HDR is a lot more sketchy for consumer sets, though, and I'm nervous at how it's going to be implemented. There's a lot of room to get it wrong there.

If there is one thing I could accomplish in my lifetime, it would be to put the stunning imagery I get to see on calibrated professional monitors in front of the people we are making the content for. With the recent impetus to create higher quality programs, perhaps image quality will finally get some very overdue attention as the shifting content consumption landscape engenders competition between programming sources, vs the "least objectionable content" proposition noted by Marshall McLuhan.

And the audience cheers!

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I wanted to get one here, at the new casino, biggest of its type in the world, but that all got cut back now. Shame, with 25k guests, plus visitors, could have run a Dolby and a IMax, even an omnimax.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Sorry, that could have been 25k rooms