Who wants to see the ACTUAL $3 Million "OVERHEAD PROJECTOR"????

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/adler-planetari.html



The 78-year-old planetarium's current system weighs more than a ton, is around ten feet long and is capable of projecting over 4,500 stars on a 360 degree planetarium dome. Adler installed its first Zeiss projector in 1930 when the museum opened as the only planetarium in the western hemisphere. It upgraded a newer model in 1969, when humans first landed on the moon.

It's not surprising that nearly 40 years later it might be time for another upgrade. Once at the cutting edge of planetarium technology, Adler has fallen behind the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, which already have the latest Zeiss projector.

Still, Adler is one of the premier science education facilities in the country. It helped turn a generation onto space, and today it hosts over 400,000 school children and visitors every year. Of the many earmarks clearly listed on Senator Obama's website in the name of transparency, I find it interesting that McCain's people picked a science center as the best example they could find of egregious spending.

Besides, as space politics blogger Jeff Foust points out, the point is moot as far as the planetarium is concerned because the spending wasn't passed.

Despite the context, maybe being mentioned in a presidential debate isn't all bad. It put the Adler planetarium on the map for many people who had never heard of it, which could result in a higher turnout for NASA's Future Forum there on Oct. 10.

Glad they were debunking.

;)

Just be glad I'm not mixing DU up with /b/ :-)

This will be an excuse to rectify that. :-)

This more what he was projecting...



No confusing new fangled 'lectric switches and dials and such. :dunce:

in the 2000 election so that McCain's blackberry would have something to do in the 2008 election!

:rofl:

was true McCain had a hand in creating the Blackberry as a joke and they responded back with one of those "We'll pass your e-mail on to the appropriate person" answers.

These are the latest state of the art digital projectors for movie theaters that cost $100k to $150k and put out 27,000 lumens.

Personally I use an Epson S1+ projector at the house for showing blue ray, DVD, VCR and DirecTV that I paid $1K for back in 2004 and it puts out 1400 lumens:



More about Christies:

http://www.videotechnology.com/old0904.html

The State of Digital Cinema
Regal Entertainment Group Co-Chairman and Co-CEO Kurt Hall anticipate that it will cost $100,000-$150,000 to fit each of the United States' 30,000-plus movie screens. If this is correct, the investment required to outfit a 24-plex will be $2.4 million to $3.6 million a nearly impossible sum to recoup at current ticket prices.
The price tag to outfit all U.S. screens could be more than $3 billion.

The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) president John Fithian frequently cites the fact that "the studios stand to save millions of dollars in film print costs and distribution costs. We do not see any similar savings for cinema operators."
Julian Levin, Executive VP digital exhibition and nontheatrical sales and distribution at 20th Century Fox, points out that there are many benefits the the theater operators. Flexablity to move content between screens, better advertising and the ability to have alternative programming such as sports, concerts and things as an alternate source of funds.
According to the Hollywood Reporter the studios collectively will save $700 million-$1 billion a year. But dividing that figure by the number of U.S. screens yields an annual per-screen savings of about $26,000 -- a fraction of the estimated cost of the d-cinema upgrade.


Since 1999, TI DLP's have projected over 150,000 showing of More than 120 movies to more than 17 million people worldwide. Currently there are more than 240 DLP projectors installed in theaters located in cities around the world.
From what I can tell most of this has been on Christie projectors

Christie has their work horse 2K projector the CP200H , this will output from 10,000 to 25,000 Lumens and uses water cooled TI DLP Technology DLP are Digital Light Processors which is a fancy name for Digital Micromirror Devices (DMD).

Christie Projector

Photo of 2 Christie Projectors in the Projection booth at the ETC in Hollywood.

Barco XLM H25 projector has a light output of 27000 center lumen and a native resolution of 2048x1080 pixels. It has a 1700:1 Contrast Ratio
There are over 50 BARCO D-Cine Premier 2K DP100 DLP Cinema projectors installed at this time.

Sony has a new 4K (4096 X 2160) digital projector SRX-R110 , this outputs 10,000 Lumens and uses their LCoS technology called Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD)
Sony SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display)
Size: 1.55" across Diagonal
Resolution: 4096(H) X 2160(V) Pixels
Reflectivity: 72%
Contrast: Over 4000:1
Pixel Pitch: 8.5µm
Width (between pixels): 0.35µm
Response Speed: 5msec (tr + tf)
Liquid Crystal Mode: Vertical Aligned Mode
Alignment Layer: Inorganic Thin Film
Backplane Process: 0.35µm MOS Process
Liquid Crystal Cell Gap: Less than 2µm

JVC's flavor of LCOS is called D-ILA. JVC has it up 2048 x 1536 pixels on a single 1.3" chip (labeled a QXGA device). Enough for 2K Projection as well as 1080p HDTV.

Kodak Digital Cinema system is based on the JVC LCoS device. JVC also has the DLA-QX1G QXGA resolution, 7000 ANSI lumens and 1000:1 contrast but it too pricy at $225,000.00

Some other cinema projectors are the
Digital Projection from the UK
InFocus ScreenPlay 777, 2000 lumens of with 3000:1 contrast ratio, for smaller screens.

On the back end, current compression methods used in theaters today include MPEG2, Qualcomm ABSolute and QuVIS wavelet.
ABSDCT™ Qualcomm DCT Image Compression | QPE™ (Wavelet) Quvis Wavelet Image Compression

These projectors take image data in 10 bits/component (Y/Cb/Cr) in 4:2:2 format. Since the DMD is a linear display device (i.e., no gamma characteristic as does a CRT), the data is gamma corrected and converted to linear RGB data. Each DMD displays at least 15 bits/color, linear data.

For Film distribution there are also many interesting things going on.
Microspace’s digital cinema initiative called VELOCITY is a Ku-band satellite service for high-bandwidth data transmission from one location or to many. Microspace offers its VELOCITY® satellite service under an innovative fixed pricing model. The Microspace’s VELOCITY service has been tested and proven for the digital cinema industry, specifically in the Digital Cinema Laboratory, a unit of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California (USC). Microspace donated a complete system to USC for testing in conjunction with other digital cinema technologies.

Photo of ETC Theater in Hollywood.

DRM, Digital Rights Management is a critical component of the New Digital Cinema systems being deployed. As of yet these are not really worked out.
See Last months issued on Digital Cinema System Specification

DCinema Today Online Magazine

HDTV Record My Notes on HD and Digital Cinema Recording and processing hardware

Windows Media 9 Series for Digital Cinema Applications

Display Technologies Guide at AudioHolics.

Cinema Systems India

Only god above kin git plants and them stars on ....

Now where was I...

Oh yea, dag nabbit... Spenin money on that thar contrapshun.. Tain't right, I tell ya, tain't right...

His blatant distortion of the facts in this case is the technological equivalent of calling THIS:



one of THESE:



I am so disgusted with him. He used to be one of the few Republicans I had any respect for back in 2000. Now I guess it's just Chuck Hagel.

Finally as an aerospace engineer from Georgia Tech, the money spent on the planetarium to educate the public about science is MONEY WELL SPENT. We invest so little in education and even less in science and engineering.

Kudos Obama!

Doug D.

Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology

Private Pilot Single Engine Land,
Federal Aviation Administration

I knew by the way McCain phrased this that it was not as it seemed.

Planetarium
$3Million
Highly technical equipment
= BS from McCain

I KNEW IT!

like so much so that he was the president of the Astronomical Society of Nevada. I can visualize him popping a vein over McCain calling this useless spending. It's sad when something like this is not passed. Once again the education of our children, and even other adults, has gone by the wayside. *sigh*

AS I stated above this stunk from the moment I heard McCain say it

:grr::mad:

Oh :hi: to you

at ours here in ABQ someone put together a fractal show. It's basically one hour of traveling through the visual representation of mathematical fractals. They add in colors, etc. so it looks like sort of tie-dyed. Holy shit it's trippy! :smoke:

No company makes better optics.