Design Considerations for Cinema Exhibition Using RGB Laser Illumination

Projection displays: New technologies, challenges, and applications

“…Many technologies for visible laser light have been developed, but only recently red, green, and blue laser arrays with multiple watts of optical light output are gradually becoming practicable as illumination sources for high light‐output projectors . Using such components, very high light‐output, wide color gamut projectors can be realized with excellent characteristics, because of the good efficacy, very small optical étendue, small spectral bandwidth, high luminance, compactness, and long lifetime of the solid‐state lasers . In Furukawa et al ., a compact RGB laser light source module with a total optical output power of 21 W corresponding with approximately 5000 lm white light is described.…”

“…Laser‐illuminated projectors can realize a substantial higher light output, compared with xenon arc‐lamp‐illuminated projectors. For example, Houston and Beck and Ludé describe aspects of a 60,000 lm single DCI‐compliant DLP ® ‐based laser projector for digital cinema applications, whereas comparable digital cinema projectors with xenon short‐arc lamp illumination are limited to a light output of about 32,000 lm. Another important benefit of laser‐illuminated projectors is their ability for substantial brighter stereoscopic projection in particular when wavelength multiplexing – also referred to as “six primary” or “6P” or “color 3D” – is applied for realizing a left‐eye image and a right‐eye image.…”