Pro class projector (1 Viewer)

[Peter.LeBlond]

I am trying to find some information for a friend of mine who is opening an indy/art movie house. They are slated for 2 35mm screens and I'm begging them to try to squeeze the budget to either have a 3rd smaller screen for digital or to throw a projector in one of the 35 screens so they can go either way. I know there is tons of knowledge here and was wondering what people could throw at me for research beginings.

Was thinking of something at or under $50k USD

How big can you go with what res and what brightness? I have found some 6000 lumen projo's but they are all XGA or SXGA. Are there any reasonalble Hi-Def machines in this arena? What is SXGA gonna look like when it is that big?

If anybody works in a theater with the digital pre-show entertainment (haha), what do you have in the booth there?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Ryan FB]

Barco and Christie seem to be the two main competitors in this arena of projectors. Maybe the closest to what you're looking for is the Barco iCon H600, a 1920x1080 LCD projector with 6000 lumens and an MSRP of $45,000. Most of the other sub-$50k HD projectors I could find probably don't have the kind of brightness you'll need. A better place to ask might be Film-Tech, as many people over there do keep track of this kind of thing or run digital pre-show.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

How big a screen are you trying to push? If you're trying to do main features, i dunno that budget might be kinda small...

 

[Kenneth Harden]

Don't forget lamp prices

 

[Leo Kerr]

Christie Digital's Roadie S-6 is a nice little (quiet) SXGA 3-chip DLP projector, 6000 ANSI lumens, nice contrast, et cetera, et cetera. The body goes for about $35-$40K, lenses extra, and lamps are about $2200/each, lifetime dependant upon usage, of course. (If you max it out, it'll die sooner than if you run it low-power.) Anyway, Christie claims 1000 hours at full power.

It's a fairly nice projector, it might even be bright enough. For the PHANTOM MENANCE showing in digital I saw, they were using a 10K lumen SXGA projector, anamorphic encoded to use the entire chip, with a customized anamorphic lens for the projector.

This was also onto a 50' wide screen (or so.)

The X6 is also a very easy-to-service projector, and with a little practice, the lamp can be changed in about 10 minutes, requiring only a long (14") phillips head screw-driver.

If you've got money to burn, however, the Christie CP2000 is a very nice unit. But it's probably in the neighborhood of $125k plus options. On the other hand, depending on what lamp you put in, you can crank the sucker up to 25k lumens. >1000:1 contrast, and 3 2k DLP chips.

Don't forget, of course, that no matter what projector you put in, you also need the front-end playback hardware, and you need a source for material, and I don't know how that's being distributed right now...

Leo Kerr

 

[Kenneth Harden]

Leo - good point on the source components. Even if you are showing indie films, will they be available on a digital source?

Or, does he want to show DVD's?