27,000 lumen native widescreen projector: wow!

[Boyd Ostroff]

Barco has announced the new XLM-H25 DLP projector with some pretty impressive specs:

27,000 lumen output - uses a 6kw xenon lamp
native widescreen format - resolution is 2048x1080
1250:1 contrast ratio

http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/pr...p?element=2552

I have worked with their 10,000 lumen SLM-R10 projector and it put out a surprisingly bright image on our 44 foot wide screen, so this unit must really be something!

[Greg Harris]

how much is that? and is it HD?

[Boyd Ostroff]

From the brochure

The XLM H25 is equipped with four standard input slots which accommodate both analogue and digital inputs. As standard, each XLM H25 projector comes equipped with RGB, DVI-D, SDI and HD-SDI input modules, which are all modular and can be exchanged with other input modules as required. The XLM H25 is compatible with all sources ranging from RGB-analogue, RGB/YUV (15kHz), DVI-D, SDI, Composite Video/S-video and HD-SDI.

Price? I think this fits the category of "if you have to ask then you can't afford it" ;-)

Seriously, a little over a year ago when we priced one-day rentals for large projectors we found they were around $5,000 per day for units like the Barco SLM-R10 (10,000 lumens) and the Digital Projection Lightning 15sx (15,000 lumens). We thought we cut a very good deal when we rented a pair of SLM-R10's along with two Doremi hard disk recorders and other accessories at $50,000 for a month. The purchase price on these was about $125,000 each for the projector and lens only.

Since this is a new model I'll bet the quantities will be limited and they will be in demand. Maybe you could get one if you sold your house? ;-) Seriously, the economics of renting vs buying these high end units is interesting. For most stage equipment we rent there is usually a substantial discount if you rent for a longer time period. This is not necessarily true with big DLP projectors. The main clients for these are corporations doing big trade shows or annual meetings. In this case they only need the projector for a couple days, and the events are so expensive that the corporations don't even flinch at a $5,000/day (or higher) rental fee. If you want to rent one for a month then it isn't available for those higher-paying daily clients, so you aren't going to get much of a discount. Like I said, we felt lucky to get them for $50,000. We investigated funding to buy a pair of them but never got very far. The two projectors along with the other gear would have been around $300,000.

[Ken Tanaka]

If you decide not to sell your house and just rent one for a few days you'd better check your insurance, call your local electrician, and renew your gym membership. This thing pushes 6,000 watts and weighs 400 lbs. If you notice that everything you watch with it starts to take on a sepia color tone it will be because its burning the projection surface!

[Hugh DiMauro]

Would it be a first class piece of detective work for me to assume that this projector is the very same one that our local theatre uses to digitally project "The Twenty" and various other commercials prior to the start of the movie trailers and feature presentation?

[Boyd Ostroff]

Indeed Ken, that's all just about right ;-) Even with our pair of "little" 10,000 lumen SLM-R10's we actually needed to upgrade the panel in the projection booth with a new heavier duty breaker to feed our own power distribution panel. And those units "only" had 2.2KW lamps! They were featherweights at 100 lbs each. The Digital Projection Lightning SX-15's weighed about 150 lbs each. We built a heavy platform to mount them at the proper height and angle for the booth window. We also had problems keeping the air conditioning at a bearable level in the booth with both projectors running. The little photos on the webpage really don't give you an idea of what MONSTERS these things are! Here's a photo of the Lightning 15SX'es in the booth http://tech.operaphilly.com/sets/tro...project/01.pdf

Hugh: with the correct lens any of these high end units can project digital cinema. Our consultant/vendor (Scharff-Weisberg) said they had used them to show the digital Star Wars films, outfitted with the correct lenses. The XLM H25 is brand new however, and probably not even shipping yet. It is also the brightest (and probably highest resolution) commercially available projector ever, so you definitely didn't see it at your local theatre. Barco, Christie and Digital Projection are 3 of the largest vendors (there's another that I forget at the moment) and I'm pretty sure they all have models specifically targeted at digital cinema. These would have some special features to make them suited to continuous theatre operation and color matching. Barco's cinema projectors are listed here.

The XLM H25 is (I think) targeted more towards big screen multi-media events like conventions, TV specials, theatre - where you want a huge projected backdrop. Notice one of the features they plug is the ability to have multiple "picture in a picture" windows without additional hardware.

[Dylan Couper]

That would go perfectly in my basement...

[Boyd Ostroff]

Yeah, and it could also take on the function of your furnace, so you could open up a little more space ;-)

[Rob Lohman]

At IBC I saw a new "beta" projector (think it was a Sony?) that
projected at 4K with feeds coming at 2K (being uprezzed in the
projector to 4K) and 6K. Also saw Shrek 2 on a Christie 2K
projector. All of it looked pretty stunning to my eye.

[Andre De Clercq]

The list price for this Barco digital cinema projector is $138,000 or 125.000 €.