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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

whats going on with the Red Projector?

M

Matthew Glover

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Haven't heard anything about it...was it scrapped or is it still being worked on?
 
It's being worked on and probably won't be out until next year when the 4K In The Home fist fight begins. There are issues with laser projection, both physical and legal that have to be worked out to allow a consumer product to come to market. Sony is just now releasing their laser projectors on the low-end of the projector market and will be launching a 4K laser projector for the home sometime in the next three years, so RED certainly isn't scrapping any of the R&D they have done since they unveiled the prototype.
 
L. Langer said:
It's being worked on and probably won't be out until next year when the 4K In The Home fist fight begins. There are issues with laser projection, both physical and legal that have to be worked out to allow a consumer product to come to market. Sony is just now releasing their laser projectors on the low-end of the projector market and will be launching a 4K laser projector for the home sometime in the next three years, so RED certainly isn't scrapping any of the R&D they have done since they unveiled the prototype.
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What is your basis for saying it "probably" won't be out until next year? I seriously doubt you have any basis for that statement. The statement in the converse says it could be here this year but won't make it until next year. There is simply no basis to assume it will be brought out this year or next. It might but it probably won't. There are indeed technical issues such as speckle which have not yet been solved in a practicable way and while there are no LEGAL issues there are regulatory prohibitions issued by the good old FDA near you in good old DC that will require initiation of an informal rulemaking (notice and comment) that FDA has stated it won't initiate before an industry concensus is reached. It will not issue an exemption or exception as it did for Kodack. So further high powered lasers are a no no untilr at least 2015. Such a rulemaking would take at least 18 months though shorter is possible but not likely. Low powered class 2 laser powered projectors are possible under the current regulations. As to your Sony projector statement, there is one business class projector that uses a blue low powered laser inside a lets say sealed element to ignite a white phosphor target which emits a white light just as a bulb emits a white light. I don't think anyone would consider that a laser light source as the white light emitted is non coherent and the laser blue beam is not visable or accessible to the user. If Red wanted to, it could price a machine similar to the business class Sony but suitable for the HT and post production sectors. At cedia, we will several 4K HT projectors probably near the $10K price point. These machines are not DCI compliant and simply will not be bright enough to light the minimum 10 ft wide screens needed by the post production sector to appropriately master 4K for large screens. The only 4K fist fight that might occur would be on the AVS forum among hobbiests.
 
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mark haflich said:
There are indeed technical issues such as speckle which have not yet been solved in a practicable way
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What. They really need to hire in some more "expert" opinion who have been investigating the design of home systems.

They need go go to light blue optics and license relevant technologies, that should solve most of their issues.
 
I have not heard of using light blue optics as a way of solving some of the technical problems with lasers. Perhaps you could elucidate, assuming all technical problems could be solved through licensing and regulatory issues overcome, Red would be at a disadvantage labor cost wise if it manufactured in the USA but at least for consumer projectors it would have the advantage of direct sales.
 
mark haflich said:
What is your basis for saying it "probably" won't be out until next year? I seriously doubt you have any basis for that statement. The statement in the converse says it could be here this year but won't make it until next year. There is simply no basis to assume it will be brought out this year or next. It might but it probably won't. There are indeed technical issues such as speckle which have not yet been solved in a practicable way and while there are no LEGAL issues there are regulatory prohibitions issued by the good old FDA near you in good old DC that will require initiation of an informal rulemaking (notice and comment) that FDA has stated it won't initiate before an industry concensus is reached. It will not issue an exemption or exception as it did for Kodack. So further high powered lasers are a no no untilr at least 2015. Such a rulemaking would take at least 18 months though shorter is possible but not likely. Low powered class 2 laser powered projectors are possible under the current regulations. As to your Sony projector statement, there is one business class projector that uses a blue low powered laser inside a lets say sealed element to ignite a white phosphor target which emits a white light just as a bulb emits a white light. I don't think anyone would consider that a laser light source as the white light emitted is non coherent and the laser blue beam is not visable or accessible to the user. If Red wanted to, it could price a machine similar to the business class Sony but suitable for the HT and post production sectors. At cedia, we will several 4K HT projectors probably near the $10K price point. These machines are not DCI compliant and simply will not be bright enough to light the minimum 10 ft wide screens needed by the post production sector to appropriately master 4K for large screens. The only 4K fist fight that might occur would be on the AVS forum among hobbiests.
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The projector has been shown to various forum members who have visited RED Studios and it has been tested in post production facilities, according to what has been said by RED. They were planning to have it out already but pulled it back for more refinements. RED's competitors in the projector market are all on track for launching 4K laser projectors by next year and the FDA has signed off on laser projection technology from Kodak, among others. Christie expects to be rolling their laser-backed product into cinemas in the next several months, Kodak will have their laser projection tech installed in the Smithsonian IMAX theatres shortly with a roll-out for all IMAX theatres in the next two years, and Barco's 4K laser projector is expected next year as well. Everything is on track. :)
 
When I was at Red Studios for the live to tape interview for "How We Make Movies" I had a lot of time with Ted. He was very forthcoming. He said between 3 and 6 months. Since the focus right now is getting Dragon ready to send out the door starting in September this timeline seems about right.

Even though I made Ted aware of the pilot distribution project we have is funded (predicated around the Red Projector's specs and value proposition) he was quite apologetic about not being able to supporting it. He suggested different technologies and admitted it was too bad we'd have to spend money on another projector. To that end I researched as much as I could and came up with Sony's R515. It's 4K and has the lumens...but it's 55,000 and weighs 300 lbs. But it's out there in the market and getting solid reviews.

I'm as big a supporter of Red as anybody but we simply cannot wait to roll out this distribution model...there is so much riding on it, but we have to start it very soon.
 
Oddly enough, Sony is the quietest company in all of this. They ARE doing laser projector work, but at the same time, they are rather dismissive of laser projectors as being "not ready" or "too expensive" compared to their current LCOS projectors and they haven't wheeled out any laser projector tech to show to anyone outside of the company while their competitors are singing and dancing about the awesomeness of 4K laser projectors. Sony relies on a lease model for digital cinema markets, so I guess they don't need to really do much right now though it will hurt them in the long-run if they don't have something available by the middle of next year, when competitors will be heading to market with their products.
 
mark haflich said:
I have not heard of using light blue optics as a way of solving some of the technical problems with lasers. Perhaps you could elucidate, assuming all technical problems could be solved through licensing and regulatory issues overcome, Red would be at a disadvantage labor cost wise if it manufactured in the USA but at least for consumer projectors it would have the advantage of direct sales.
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Mark, Light Blue Optics is a company, that has some interesting technology, including fixing speckle. I have not looked into how that technology works, I have my own, but they did design a cheap laser projector design that should be much safer than scanned projection. By posting that it was about light blue optics you might have put Red people off of what it was about if they have a few real experts, they should know about this company anyway and be reminded. There is another English one too that does glasses free 3d screens, better scanning systems and also desktop/living room use display technology that should suite Red, plus maybe over a frozen active portable laser systems projects around the world, but they have not hired me as a consultant yet.
 
Well, Sony's got this.
 
Wayne Morellini said:
Mark, Light Blue Optics is a company, that has some interesting technology, including fixing speckle.
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If I had to guess I would guess that RED is using HDI's tech in their projector.
http://www.linkedin.com/company/253792?trk=prof-exp-company-name
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/home-thea...ergy-efficient-lower-cost-walks-on-water/1571

RED has historically sourced their parts from local california companies so it would make sense to have their projector also designed by a California company.

I think HDI went bust though... so that might explain why RED's projector dev stalled out.
 
HDI disappeared from the scene back in early 2012. No word around the tubes of information invented by Al Gore on what happened but they were just about to ship initial laser-based products or so they claimed at the time. What little I found in records vaguely implies the company is still up and running but in super ninja happy funtime monkey squad stealth mode as of the beginning of 2012.
 
HDI is an interesting theory, however it seems they went bust some time ago as they were never able to launch a product. And I think they shut down well before RED showed off their projector at NAB 2012. FWIW, the little bit I've seen of the RED projector, there were no signs of speckles. All things considered, it looked very promising. There were some chroma ghosting issues due to not having a screen properly matched for the laser polarization, the ghosting would go away when viewed with no glasses or for 2D only.

All I know is that I really want to see this projector soon. RED needs to get it on the market ASAP. Not only would it be a compelling offering as people start to move to 4K, but they could add $5K to their price tag and still undercut Sony's MSRP for the 1000ES by $10K. The REDRAY player hardware is built in and there's no intermediate interface such as HDMI or DisplayPort that would dictate or cripple gamut and color space when playing REDRAY content.
 
Jeff, HDI completely disappeared right around NAB 2012. Their website was shut down in May/April and their other online presences had gone suspiciously dormant at the end of 2011, a few months after they had already begun production of their laser projectors, set to ship in early 2012.
 
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Was it HDI that had the peculiar and oddly shaped projector models on their web site? The 3D renderings of them anyway... There was someone around that time that was promoting laser projectors, yet they had nothing to show for it. I'm familiar with HDI's laser based flat panel -- the 100" prototype monster -- a few years back. That Gavin linked to. It's too bad they couldn't have finished off that concept and shipped it out the door.
 
I asked Ted directly about the refraction issue on the screen and whether it had anything to do with why Red Projector was being held back and he flat out told me it wasn't true. Given his forthright nature I believe him.

That said, I have had to move on given our very pressing needs and have found the Sony R515. It's $54,000 with a lens, server, has 15,000 lumens, can do 3D if wanted, and plays back up to 60P. I went away from Sony for a long, long time by first getting behind Panasonic, then quickly embracing Red.

But as Jim said Sony is a huge company and them coming into the 4K market is a good thing. This projector is rock solid and is being used extensively across the USA in some major theaters. I hope to have ours within a couple of weeks.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Was it HDI that had the peculiar and oddly shaped projector models on their web site? The 3D renderings of them anyway... There was someone around that time that was promoting laser projectors, yet they had nothing to show for it. I'm familiar with HDI's laser based flat panel -- the 100" prototype monster -- a few years back. That Gavin linked to. It's too bad they couldn't have finished off that concept and shipped it out the door.
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HDI had a fully functional 3D laser projector demonstration unit with special silver screen in addition to their laser TV. The projectors they were going to sell were kinda funky looking, like modern art pieces. The one they were going to ship first was called "The Cube" and it was a basic model, around the same size as the RED demo unit. They were in the process of building the first run of projectors by hand when the company went silent. From what I saw, they decided to dump the laser TV product - which was also ready to begin manufacturing - and suddenly moved all their R&D to projectors instead. Dunno why, but it may have had something to do with their Chinese manufacturing source that they were going to use to build those. The projectors were going to be made and assembled in the US by HDI, at least at first. Every name tied to the company has been dead silent since then and the company is still an active business according to records, but not at their old address.
 
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