Barco’s Laser Focus on HDR Could Brighten Digital Cinema Market

When Belgian cinema tech giant Barco introduced a new laser projector this week at film exhibition convention CinemaCon, it put high dynamic range images on theater screens utilizing “light steering” technology, the company’s proprietary approach to projecting the brightest and darkest colors.  

Though what is now billed as HDR by Barco has been in development for many years, this was the first public presentation to the theater owners, whose options for putting HDR imagery on their mainstream screens are currently quite limited.   

A growing segment of the exhibitor business seems poised to upgrade. Of the roughly 200,000 installed mainstream digital cinema projectors worldwide, Barco estimates that roughly 150,000 are xenon lamp-based projectors that were state of the art in digital cinema’s earlier days, dating back to 2009, when the release of “Avatar” prompted a notable move from film to digital projection. 

Roughly 50,000 (more than 30,000 of which are Barco systems, according to the company) offer newer standard dynamic range laser light-based projectors, which are the most common new purchases in today’s cinema market. (The rest make up the premium large format, or PLF, market — for instance with Imax and Dolby Cinema.) 

Some tech insiders warn early xenon projectors are starting to show their age, pointing out that maintenance may become more difficult and costly in the coming years. They suggest that replacements will be prudent at some point.

A Cinema Foundation survey published in March 2023 (based on polling of exhibitors representing nearly 20,000 screens in North America) found 53% of respondents planned to upgrade at least some of the projectors in their auditoriums and 39% planned to add more PLF screens within three years. 

But laser projectors are not the only HDR solution for theaters. Instead of projectors, there are theaters outfitted with LED displays. Think of those as giant TVs in a cinema environment, the most notable in the U.S. being from consumer tech giants Samsung and LG. Sources estimate there are roughly 100 LED walls (also known as direct-view displays) in cinema auditoriums worldwide (mostly in Asia). 

Retrofitting an existing theater for an LED display involves accommodations for weight, size, power and AC requirements. It also means rethinking the sound configuration, which many see as an obstacle facing this type of tech.  

Depending on size and capabilities, pricing for LED options could start around $300,000 — “significantly more expensive” than a laser projector of a comparable size, said Pete Ludé, CTO of consulting firm Mission Rock Digital, in an interview with VIP+. 

Costs of standard laser-based projection systems can also vary greatly. Laser projectors for small screens start under $50,000, but turnkey dual projection systems with related tech for the largest screens could approach $1 million. 

And it’s debatable how quickly such investments may be made, as the global box office has not yet returned to its pre-pandemic level. Additionally, key to the digital cinema transition was the virtual print fee (VPF) funding model, meaning that studios made contributions to theater owners to offset the expense of going digital. Today, VPFs are no longer offered.

During a press briefing this week at CinemaCon, National Association of Theatre Owners president and CEO Michael O’Leary identified the costs of upgrading aging xenon-based projectors as the biggest technology-related challenge facing today’s theater owners. “You want to have the best projection,” he said, “[but] there’s not a lot of extra capital in the system.”

Given that an HDR rollout will involve multiple moving parts, many stakeholders agree cooperation and consistency is needed to bring it to theaters. 

A notable step toward that goal occurred in 2023, when Digital Cinema Initiatives, a consortium of Hollywood studios that developed the technical requirements enabling a consistent and broad rollout of digital cinema, released an addendum to its digital cinema spec to support HDR. 

According to Barco, its new projector can reach the parameters of the DCI blueprint.  Ludé adds that there are currently roughly 15 manufacturers with direct-view displays that can meet the DCI spec.  

That standard isn’t just for projector makers; HDR content is also needed for a rollout. With digital cinema, a tentpole already might involve a dizzying 500 delivery versions, but that hasn’t dissuaded Pixar from experimenting with HDR cinema, most recently creating an HDR version of its 2023 movie “Elemental” to support Samsung displays. 

Barco is already working with the studios to test grading content for its HDR projector.

And while there’s been talk in the community about the potential of developing a more uniform way to create these versions, that isn’t likely to happen soon.