Sony Sets Off Battle Of Digital Movie Projectors Dow Jones Newswires
Friday March 25, 2005 3:29 PM EST
http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&feed=dji&src=704&news_id=dji-00056220050325&date=20050325
VANCOUVER, Wash. (Dow Jones)--There's a showdown brewing at the local movie theater, but it's not playing on the screen. It's in the projection booth.
Sony Electronics Inc., a unit of Sony Corp. (SNE), last week demonstrated a projection technology for digital cinema that displays images at twice the resolution of existing digital cinema projectors. Sony plans to begin shipping the system in July, setting up a race with Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), whose technology is at the heart of digital projectors already on the market. The competition is emerging at the same time Hollywood is seeking an equitable way to roll out digital cinema nationwide.
Critics question how well the eye can distinguish between 4,000 and 2,000 lines of resolution on a giant screen, referred to as 4k and 2k in the trade. They also question whether color separation and contrast are any better with a higher line count. Regardless, Landmark Theaters, owned by entrepreneur and technology visionary Mark Cuban, announced it would be the first to use the projectors, giving Sony a high-profile partner in the quality debate.
"We wanted to be ahead of the curve," said Cuban, who founded streaming media company Broadcast.com and sold it to Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) in 1999 for $5.7 billion.
Seven major film studios working as the Digital Cinema Initiative have adopted standards for digital projection that embrace both 2k and 4k formats. Film makers are beginning to use digital technology to make films, including using 4k devices to play back their daily work and store films. For that reason, Cuban says the industry is making 4k resolution a standard and it makes sense to move his theater chain in that direction as well.
"The picture quality is amazing," said Cuban. "And we felt this would be a long-term selling point to our customers."
That fits nicely with Sony's goal to position its projectors as the premier technology.
"Our current plan is not to license the technology, but to manufacture the products ourselves," said Tom Mykietyn of Sony Electronics.
Texas Instruments has licensed its "digital light processing," or DLP, technology to makers of conventional film projectors such as Christie, a unit of Ushio Inc. (6925.TO) of Japan, and Barco N.V. (BAR.BT) of Belgium. NEC Corp. ( NIPNY) of Japan also has entered the cinema projector market using DLP technology.
Sony makes theater sound systems, so it's not new to the marketplace. And the Sony Pictures unit is one of the dominant Hollywood studios. But the so-called SRXR will be Sony's first venture into commercial cinema projection equipment and while the technology is promising the time to market has been long.
Sony demonstrated the technology a year ago and said it would be in commercial production by winter. The date was moved to March and now July.
Mykietyn admitted that Sony used "aggressive forecasts in the beginning," but the larger goal was to get Hollywood's suggestions for the technology. Sony demonstrated the technology most recently at ShoWest, an industry trade show held last week in Las Vegas and before that in December in Hollywood.
"We've gotten glowing reports of the improvements we've made in just three months," said Mykietyn. "Ultimately if we deliver a better performing product it will be worth the wait."
Studios spend $750 million annually supplying copies of films to U.S. theaters and $1.5 billion for theaters elsewhere in the world. Distributing digital films by satellite could cut that bill in half. But doing so without creating digital haves and have-nots among studios, theaters and distributors has stymied Hollywood's effort to create a business plan to roll out the technology.
"We're not missing an opportunity here," said Mykietyn. "I think the whole industry is waiting on a business model. We think we had the time to work on the quality aspect of the projector."
Sony will begin shipping two models of its projector in July, he said. The first will project 5,000 lumens of brightness, equal to about a dozen 100-watt bulbs, and cost $63,000, and the other will be twice as bright and cost $93,000. Lenses will cost an additional $17,000 for either model.
Exhibitors will have to purchase computer storage and playback servers plus management software which could add up to another $30,000 to the cost. The cost of outfitting a screen around Sony technology could range up to $140,000.
Sony's first output will go to Landmark, said Mykietyn.
"Clearly we want to position 4k as an advantage over 2k," he said. "Some theater owners will use quality to distinguish themselves and we will use quality to sell our system as well."
Texas Instruments' DLP technology is already playing in 315 theaters worldwide. That number is expected to top 1,000 in the next 12 months. DLP delivers 2,000 lines of resolution, which TI says is superior to film images and equal to Sony's technology.
"Resolution has become a proxy for quality," said Doug Darrow, product manager for DLP Cinema at Texas Instruments. He discounted resolution as "something engineers measure." What's important to moviegoers and the film industry is sharpness, said Darrow.
"We have never once heard from the creative side of the film community that they needed more resolution," said Darrow. "What they talk about are black levels and color performance and we deliver that."
Darrow said that to his knowledge the only side-by-side comparison of Sony SRXR and DLP was conducted last year by China Film Group, a government film board in China. The Chinese have not shared their data with others, but Darrow said the Chinese film authority has purchased 100 DLP systems. Sixty-eight are already in operation in China, including nine in Shanghai and six in Beijing.
A Sony spokesman couldn't confirm such a test, but said the projector Sony demonstrated this month at ShoWest was a much improved version of the technology.
At TI, the goal "is to replace every projector in the world with a digital projector," said Darrow. To do so, the company believes the cost of a total digital projection system has to be under $100,000 per screen.
Said Darrow: "Business models don't work above $100,000 for widespread introduction of digital cinema."
================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu
Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post.
_______________________________________________
MEDIANEWS mailing list medianews@twiar.org
To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
