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Updated 10 Jan 2024 with images and further info from Hisense CES Booth
Introduction
Dynamic Light Steering has been an area of research for some time as a successor to current DCI cinema projection to move mainstream digital cinemas into the HDR era.
The technology uses LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) panels to modulate the phase (and therefore angle) of light from the lasers to redirect it to parts of the image that are brighter, therefore creating much brighter highlights and much darker blacks than possible using conventional projection systems. You can read more about the underlying technology here.*
*Please note that the technology described in the linked paper is the proof of concept, and we don’t know whether companies use LCOS panels in their final implementation, as there are other means that light steering can be implemented.
The initial system was demoed around 2018 and Barco started implementing a variation of it for commercial cinema applications as its Barco BrightTM technology.
Hisense Dynamic Light Steering
However, it is still somewhat of a surprise that Hisense has announced that they have implemented a version of this technology in their latest Trichroma laser projector. We don’t yet know if this is just a prototype or a 2024 shipping product, but still impressive nevertheless.
Stacking chips requires space in a projector’s chassis, so it is surprising that Hisense has been able to implement this in a UST projector. However, this technology certainly doesn’t look as space and power-hungry as Christie’s 6DLP system, which requires massive amount of laser power and cooling to drive the light through 6 DLP chips.
This is because Christie’s 6DLP design needs to block the light where the image is darker and bleed it off as heat without the ability to redirect it and it use for projection. This is what all conventional projection systems have done – until now. In contrast, this new system uses all the available laser power as opposed to blocking it for dark areas of the picture by redirecting the light where it’s needed.
Hisense claims to be able to halve the black level while simultaneously increase the bright level by 500% upto 2000nits. If true, the picture quality when paired with a high-performance screen will start rivalling midrange LED TVs. While this is still not OLED TV blacks, being able to increase contrast by this much in the same frame will still look staggering especially at the picture sizes we are talking about – 100″ and above.
Update 10 Jan 2024: images from Hisense’s CES Booth emerges (thanks to user Brajesh on AVSForum) which shows that the technology is indeed licensed from Barco’s Bright technology and should be in line with the previously published paper. This means that Hisense is very likely using an LCOS panel to modulate the light phase (and therefore direction) and then using a single-chip DLP to display the image.
The chassis of the projector is incredibly small considering the stacked chip design. This is absolutely amazing news as projector size and cooling requirements will not be an impediment for implementation. The only issue is that Barco seems to own the patents for this light modulation technology, which might put a damper on things as far as other manufacturer’s are concerned.
This is still a prototype product and Hisense is tight-lipped around when we could expect the technology to reach the consumer. Even last-year’s 8K laser-TV product has not entered mass-production so this could well be years away as well. But Hisense at least is continuing to make improvements to the base platform while working out the kinks with their 8K Laser TVs.
JVC, Sony and Epson
What this technology WILL do, is give Sony, JVC and Epson a run for their money with regards to their Home Cinema Projectors’ picture quality:
- While they may still be able to achieve somewhat higher black levels, they won’t be able to compete on brightness.
- Our eyes perceive the massive range of brightness on screen as higher contrast, regardless of how low the black level is. This technology could actually give DLP projectors an edge in visible contrast-performance and HDR impact. This is bad news for JVC and Sony, especially because this is the only area where they bested DLP. Every other aspect of image quality really favours DLP projection. If you say rainbows, those are a non-issue with 3DLP projection.
LCOS is the bread and butter of JVC and Sony, so the question is whether they will rise to the challenge and implement something similar for their own projectors. Even if not, expect some fierce battles for projector supremacy over the next 5 years as there’s a new dog in town: projectors with Dynamic Light Steering – likely to be DLP / LCOS Hybrids, but we should know more soon!
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“If you say rainbows, those are a non-issue with 3DLP projection.”
But where can I get a 4K 3DLP for the price range of a 4K Sony/JVC?
And, wouldn’t light steering also be significantly more complex and expensive with a 3DLP?
I’m not sure I can even imagine the cost of a 4K 3DLP with light steering. Well, maybe I can and that’s called the Christie Eclipse.
The Christie Eclipse needs massive amount of laser power and cooling because 90-95% of the laser power is bled off as heat for most frames of video. How they stack chips is incredibly bloody inefficient! Hence that technology has no hope of coming to consumer displays.
This technology actually makes the light path more efficient, not less. So while there’s a space requirement, there isn’t a requirement for more laser power or cooling. Or if there is, it’s very minimal and to cool the extra chips which aren’t blocking light.
It is entirely possible that you don’t need a separate LCOS chip per colour, but instead you might be able to split the light after phase modulation.
But even if not, considering how Hisense’s unit is not larger than their previous 8K unit, it seems likely that any resulting 6-chip unit would be relatively small.
You also don’t have to use DLP chips for the main chips. The original proof of concept used LCOS chips only.
But this is a very different ball-game from a Christie Eclipse and yes, it’s a game-changer for consumer use. The Christie Eclipse design is not even a starter for such a design.
Just to add… there aren’t any affordable 3DLP projectors not because 3DLP is so much more expensive than 3-chip LCOS. It’s because Sony and JVC dominate the segment and pushed 3DLP out to greener pastures (very high-end units or commercial cinema, both of which need massive brightness and very high reliability). Even Sony pulled LCOS back from that segment as they couldn’t compete on reliability with 3DLP.
There’s nothing inherently more expensive about 3DLP than LCOS. It just can’t compete on performance currently and there’s little incentive to bring it down to midrange again – but this might change that.