Star Wars Articles    Star Wars Directory   
Star Wars Message Board   Add URL  Site Map
Contact Us -- Visit All Our Sites -- Privacy Policy  -- Terms of Use -- Purchase agreement

June 22, 2006
Experiencing the new Star Wars, Digitally
By Robert Heron

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1815969,00.asp

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend a preview screening of the final chapter in the Star Wars saga, Revenge of the Sith, in a digital projection at the Metreon in San Francisco.

Fear not: I won't give away any spoilers, other than to say "It sucked less . . . barely." What did impress me was the technology used to deliver the images to the silver screen. Texas Instruments was a sponsor of the event, and its 1080p cinema-grade DMD (digital micromirror device) is at the heart of the 3-chip projectors used in digital theaters around the world.

I watched the last two Star Wars movies in 720p DLP cinema and found myself noticing the occasional aliasing artifact, particularly along curved edges, and a slight screen-door effect when viewed at a close distance. The move to 1080p increases the resolution by over 1.2 million pixels and the results were breathtaking. Screen-door and aliasing artifacts are history. The few artifacts I did notice were likely the result of the source material and not the projection system. I plan to see the movie again on celluloid to compare the visual experience. Suffer I will for the sake of my craft.

Each DMD used in the latest generation of cinema projectors offers a native resolution of 2048x1080 (one pixel per micromirror.) Today's cinema-class DLP projectors utilize 48-bit color processing (3 x 16-bit) and can re-create some 35 trillion colors. Barco and Christie are two leading manufacturers of these multi-hundred pound projection behemoths. Of course, projectors at this scale are best suited for large venues (with deep pockets). Some of this technology (resolution and color processing), though, should eventually find its way into more affordable consumer designs.

If you are fortunate enough to live near a theater that offers digital projection, be sure to treat yourself to a show. As more movies are being shot digitally, theaters equipped with digital projectors bring the experience to the big screen in pristine quality—be it the first showing or the five-hundredth.

This article courtesy of http://www.starwars.all-science-fiction.com.
You may freely reprint this article on your website or in
your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author
name and URL remain intact.

Copyright 2005 - Mainstay Enterprises Int'l - All rights reserved