Laser Light Engines (LLE), a developer and manufacturer of ultra-high brightness, laser-driven light sources, announced today at ShoWest that it has demonstrated the first laser light source to completely eliminate laser "speckle," reaching the level of performance required for exhibition of artifact-free, laser images suitable for Digital 2D and 3D movies.
This breakthrough industry development paves the way for commercialization of LLE's "RGB" (Red/Green/Blue) lasers as an improved high-brightness, solid-state illumination source for projection manufacturers. LLE RGB illumination will dramatically reduce operating costs for movie theater owners for a potential per screen savings of $10,000 a year by eliminating the need to replace expensive Xenon arc lamps (projector bulbs) and reducing electricity use as much as 50%.
The patented LLE system produces red, green and blue primaries from the same laser. This unique laser already eliminates the speckle artifact from the red and blue channels. LLE's most recent engineering breakthrough has now solved the most difficult challenge of fully despeckling a high brightness green laser beam. LLE has demonstrated fully despeckled 2K and 4K DCinema Standard Evaluation Material (StEM) and other Cinema content with all five types of Digital Cinema and Large Venue projectors.
"LLE lasers will reduce power consumption and cooling costs providing a cost effective and Green alternative to Xenon arc lamps," said Bill Beck, co-founder and EVP of business development, Laser Light Engines. "Unlike Xenon lamps that rapidly decline in output, the LLE system will provide full brightness over the lifetime of the projector, serving as a solution for Digital Cinema, Large Venue projection and digital signage applications."
LLE's solid-state RGB laser solution can deliver higher brightness than lamps because virtually all of the laser power gets to the projector chips. In contrast, less than 7% of the output of a Xenon lamp reaches the screen. Increased brightness is critical to the successful presentation of 3D and Large Venue motion pictures.
The Laser Light Engines solution produces powerful, spaghetti-thin red, green and blue light beams that are "delivered" to the projector via fiber optic cable. This allows the light source to be located outside of the projector housing, offering new flexibility to exhibitors and the digital signage industry. Fiber optic beam delivery also enables higher brightness images to be achieved with much smaller projector heads with the light source remotely located in a server rack or secure equipment closet.
"As the motion picture industry continues to expand 3D and Large Venue exhibition offerings, laser illumination offers tremendous benefits including higher-brightness, long lifetime solid-state performance and in the future, expanded color space, increased contrast and bit depth," commented Doug Darrow, president and CEO, Laser Light Engines. "In addition to constant brightness that ultimately could surpass bulb illumination by 3 to 5 times, laser illumination will offer significant operational cost and environmental savings for exhibition, eliminating Xenon bulb replacement and reducing power and HVAC costs."
