By Carolyn Giardina
BAR-HDR-C Hodr Cinema Projector Overview
When Belgian cinema technology giant Barco introduced a new laser projector at the CinemaCon film trade show this week, it delivered high-dynamic-range images to cinema screens using “light steering” technology, the company’s patented approach to projecting the brightest and darkest colors.
Although what Barco now calls HDR has been in development for years, this was the first public presentation to cinema owners. Currently, they have limited options for showing HDR images on their regular screens.
A growing segment of the exhibitor business appears poised for an upgrade. Of the approximately 200,000 mainstream digital cinema projectors installed worldwide, Barco estimates that about 150,000 are xenon lamp-based projectors that were state of the art in the early days of digital cinema, dating back to 2009, when the release of “Avatar” sparked a notable switch from film to digital projection.
