Digital Cinema Initiatives, (DCI) was created in March 2002, and is a joint venture of Hollywood’s leading film studios such as Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros Studios. After DCI’s inception, most of the cinema equipment, including film projectors need mandatory certification of compliance with DCI standards. Modern digital projectors that met DCI standards use 2 types of technologies:

DLP (Digital Light Processing) is patented by Texas Instruments and is based on the use of deflectable micro-mirrors and SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display), developed by SONY, where liquid crystals on silicon (LCOS) are used instead of micro-mirrors.

 

Until recently, main light source in the projectors was short-arc Xenon lamps of up to 7 kW rating, except for some small projectors that use less powerful UHP lamps. But with the perpetual advancement in technology, new projectors with a Laser Light source, having greater brightness and contrast, made appearance in the market. This development meant a direct saving on money for lamp replacements, as well as reduction in power consumption.

RGB laser technology which is based on the use of lasers of three "primary" colors; red, green and blue, is rather expensive and not available to everyone today, therefore, projector manufacturers began to look for cheaper solutions based on laser technologies. So there came Laser Phosphor Projectors using lasers of the same color (red or blue) or two different colors (red and blue), the so-called RB in the market. These RB-based projectors use phosphoric elements and special optical scheme to receive the missing "primary" color, thus getting a projector with a laser light source, but much cheaper than the one with RGB technology.

 

But that's not all - Barco has started production of the "Retrofit Kit" module that can be installed on an already running Barco projector to make laser projectors even more accessible for end users, enabling them to spend relatively less money for upgrading their old lamp-based projector into modern laser projector.