The Hindu Business Line : RDX — for mind-blowing cinema

CHENNAI'S Sathyam Cinemas is the first in India to introduce the Real Digital Experience (RDX). It holds the proprietary rights to Digital Light Processing (DLP), a high definition technology pioneered by Texas Instruments. DLP follows specifications laid down by the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI), a global body monitoring digital films' distribution and projection. There are only 166 DCI-approved theatres in Asia, including Sathyam.

Swaroop Reddy, Director, Sathyam Theatres, says, "Theatres in India have been using low-end electronic projection systems (called E-Cinema) to show digital films. We are the first to use RDX in our Sathyam and Sree theatres." They bought the system from BARCO (Belgium) and Christie (Canada).

While DLP is a new technology to make and project films, what is amazing is that even films made on 35 mm celluloid can be screened on these projection systems. "Using post-production techniques like colour correction and conversion to digital intermediate form, we can showcase any film," says Reddy.

Each system costs Rs 60-80 lakhs and has three basic parts — the communication system, storage system and the projection system.

The theatre can procure the film either on a hard disk or through a satellite download (real time). Sathyam currently has the hard disk for the film Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. This disk can store six movies and is erasable. For every download, Sathyam needs to pay the film distributors a premium.

The technology works like this: Projectors transfer the digitised image file on to three optical semiconductors or Micro Mirror Devices. Each of these chips contains over one million microscopic mirrors, each representing one pixel of the projected image. When the mirror tilts, an image is created on the chip surface. Each mirror can move up to 5,000 times a second. Light from the projector lamp is reflected off the mirror surfaces and split by a prism into three primary colours — red, green and blue — before falling on the appropriate Micro Mirror Device. The final image is formed by recombining and projecting the reflections from each device.

The advantages of this technology are: good colour quality and contrast (35 trillion shades), uncompressed clear sound, image management (which enables screening any film with sub-titles) and security (to prevent piracy). "Even if someone steals the hard disk, he won't be able to play it on any system other than a DLP," explains Reddy.

All the seven major Hollywood studios, including 20th Century Fox, Universal, Paramount, Dreamworks and Sony Pictures have released movies for DLP Cinema systems. More than 100 films have been released digitally.

eworld@thehindu.co.in

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