Christie's VDR verses Barco's light steering

[Alan Gouger]

Both technologies were shown at CinemaCon. Looks like Christies VDR works with all content, no need for dedicated authored content. The Barco light steering like Dolby vision does require dedicated authored content. Did anyone see the demos at CinemaCon, what are your thoughts. There are videos online of each demo, they are long but both have technical breakdowns of what they are doing if you have the time to watch through them. Looks like Christies VDR is a software update, no mention of cost. This may end up the more popular verses light steering. Both technologies seam to target HDR but it appears standard DCI content will benefit from Christies VDR. Dolby Vision has a new generation projector as well.
Christies vdr: https://youtu.be/XGtUDV5yvj0?si=SG2_oRy8ZsenUdKo
Barco: https://youtu.be/64AvGq3TEJI?si=KcrAqfRZhmVjICFT

[Steve Guttag]

I wouldn't categorize it as you have. VDR doesn't need/want dedicated content for "standard" mode. It's "trick" is that it modulates the light. So, the lasers are only as bright as the brightest point on the screen needs. So, 14fL is 14fL. However, if the brightest point is just 10fL, then, it can lower laser level down some. That has the potential advantage of lowering the black levels. What I think its biggest benefit will be is in laser life by only driving them at power when they are needed (sort of like a night set-back on your thermostat except it actively monitors the image). This sort of technology would make me much more comfortable specing a projector that starts its life at over 50% laser power because if you start it at 60-70%...with VDR...you probably would be back to 50% on average.

In performance mode, VDR also requires properly mastered content because you are trying to go for 108 or 300 nits. Without content mastered for it, you'll over saturate your colors and get the same nasty effect that running HDR on your TV with non-HDR content.

Barco's light steering is a different approach to light optimization. By recognizing that you are not outputting full white at all points of the screen at all times, you can optimize where the light goes. Barco is going for the 300nit DCI standard with that system. The downside there is that it artificially constricts the projector's maximum size. With a low-gain screen (1.0 - 1.3), if you want 300nits, you are going to be down in the 35-foot wide screen range or going for multi-projector, or worse, higher-gain screen. My observations of the LS projector have been is that it is like their HC projectors in terms of black levels. It's better than stock (3-times better) but it isn't really black. I think they would be better served by going for 108Nits (or thereabouts), which would double the normal white point and allow their black levels to get much closer to deep backs until such time as 300nits shows that it has mass appeal. It's great that DCI wants to get a lofty goal but it has no more proof that it will be a lasting format than 3D or HFR.

Then there is Dolby Vision. 108 Nits with the best black level of them all...by a pretty fair margin. In the Dolby booth, they were showing (though not operating) their new Dolby Vision projector (made and looks like a Christie Cinelife + with extra length.

In terms of appearance, there really isn't a close call on projection, Dolby Vision has the overall dynamic range and it has a track record.

As for the other two, I think that Christie's VDR will get some acceptance, if not standard for the standard mode as it seems to have only benefits and no tradeoffs. We'll see how it does with real HDR content. Remember, its trick is modulating the light. If you put up a 50% checkerboard pattern, it can't do anything with that...it has to be at full brightness to cover the white squares. So, how it performs with real content will likely depend on the content itself. it is like Perspecta stereo...at the end of day, it is just mono. VDR is just the one light source.

Barco sort of has to depend on 300Nit content and for people to accept its black levels as good enough.

The other reality is that LED screens are barking at the gates. They'll be able to handle 300nits without any issue on deep blacks too. It would appear that sound transmission is being worked on too and now by multiple manufacturers. They keep getting better and the price should keep getting better. There will come a time when people won't be putting in projectors.

[James Gardiner]

Thanks for the feedback for those who could not get to CinemaCon.

I personally think, producing content that actually fit into the DCI-HDR adendum (standard) are the key. It means anyone can make content at any post house with minimal extra costs. Its just another grade pass down from the Streaming full HDR master as required by all streaming services.

Black levels are an issue, but more than not, "Are they really?". When you see places like EVERYMAN, produce some amazingly bright and attractive seating and walls in their theatres, being part of their signature experience.... The Black levels are not going to work that well anyway.

Historically, advancements and wide acceptance are driven by standards. It's why SMPTE exists. It's why 35mm film took over. Barco-LS has archived DCI-HDR-addendum requirements. That's now the expected going forward. All these 108nit solutions are bespoke implementations. If the default has caught up. Unless they have some significantly better features that the consumer will defiantly notice. They will eventually fall away or grow to also meet the DCI-HDR-addendum.

LED walls are definitely interesting, but I cannot see costs i.e. weight and physical installations costs (theatre floor reinforcement), Power consumption, basic fact you are buying something that is 10 times in physical equipment size of a projector and the costs associated, or the audio transparency issue ever being competitive to traditional perforated screens. But they will have their place. Especially in experiences where more ambient light is required.

[Mike Babb]

Barco hiring Stuart Bowling could be a serious factor, he was promoting Vision and Atmos with the creatives in Hollywood. Personally I think content availability will determine which method "wins".
300 nits vs 108 vs whatever else is proposed is certainly not apples to apples.

[Stefan Scholz]

WE have to keep in mind, the 50 candles/nits (14fl) standard is the border to night vision. Human eyes are not in full color mode. It was chosen initially, as the first digital implementation had extremely bad black levels, and this compromise was chosen for that. In film projection the aim was always to be on the upper border of the standard, at around 76 candles/nits. This ensured a a way better color reception, images in these theatres looked way better than at the lower border.
There is no difference in DCI these days. Auditoriums with a low light level look inferior to those that are on the upper level, as long as a modern High Contrast projector is used, and not 0.69" High Brightness.
Even those have improved significantly in black levels with recent models.
I have often screened images at 110 nits, the brightness set for the initial Todd AO standard being on the same level.
There was no oversaturation of colors, simply the images looked way better. With 12 bit encoding, there's enough dynamic range without a specially mastered output.
Another working mechanism on the human vision, the actual dynamic range is rather small, and far away from what we are doing. The eye accommodates to the brightness level, and then has a dynamic range below a 6 bit computer display of the legacy type.
WE must still keep in mind, a theatre is a dark environment, unlike a sunlit living room, which requires a 300+ candles/nit direct radiator. Also, our main sense is hearing, and image in 90's blockbusters has been only 15 to 20% of the perception value, when great dynamic mixes were norm.

LED direct radiation has a future, but there a many issues attached. I feel, they will find a way for sound with these. Remaining are 4 x around 9 Million micro radiators with control electronics. Even at 0.0X ct/ LED the price will never be 0. A power dissipation of 0.5 Watts in full brightness mode for LED and control, is still around 18 MW with full white short term, and an average that is significant, to be cooled away by A/C in the hall. Plus, a heavy load of plastics, eventually combustible plastics. I had a fire engineer that voted against heavy, active driven plastic in n assembly hall. In theory, I learnt from him, he has a problem with 100 lbs of PVC on the front wall (movie screen).
It comes down to price, that I doubt zo be low enough in in near future, fire safety issues, static structural issues, as well as maintenance issues. I expect small to midsize units to be first.

[Steve Guttag]

Projecting any standard content at higher than 48Nits is wrong and is oversaturating the colors. The movies were mastered at 48Nits. The light level was chosen to match film projection using a 16fL open-gate (no film so you have to allow for processed film exposed to the maximum light) so that when they did "butterfly" tests, the white points were as near to identical as possible.

You may prefer showing the movie at double luminance but you have no documentation as to it being better or not over-saturated. Have you had ANY film-maker/color-timer in your room think it looked better than when they set the color/image in their post house?

There are people (too many) that use 1.8 gain screens too and with those it is easier to hit 98NIts...in the middle. I'm sure some think it actually looks better too. It doesn't.

[Ryan Gallagher]

The Barco link is now to a missing video.

I've been trying to grock what all is out there in the HDR/DVis space for to better understand our potential future upgrade paths if we wanted to dip into HDR with our next projector. I don't make these decisions but can have influence.

Can ya'll confirm my understanding, that we basically have the 3 offerings right now, Dolby Vision system (DVIS+HDR mastered content only), Barco Light Steering (HDR mastered content only), and Christie VDR (HDR content only for the moment, an option on CineLife+ RealLaser units, with a coming "Standard" mode of operation for SDR content).

I'm also understanding that most HDR content is currently mastered at 108nits, where as the proposed DCI standard is 300nits, and only Christie and Barco have leveled up to offer 300nit performance so far in this competing "standards" space for HDR. Presumably they can both do 108nit and 300nit mastered content?


If money was no object and we were to purchase "now", I feel like our room design and use cases would steer us towards the Christie VDR offering. (Moving from our Christie 2K CP2220). My Logic:

1. It is not a black box, it's a classic decorated vaudeville theatre, so black level gains will be underrealized on the "best" system for that (Dolby Vision). Nevermind that I expect there are "room certification" requirements to meet the Dolby Vision standards, which we would definitely fail.

2. We spend entirely too much time in back catalog films in our programming for Barco LS/Dolby to make sense unless they also add some mode that benefits SDR content as well. At this time a Barco or Dolby choice would only benefit premieres and festivals... and leave 80% of our programming untouched.

3. We have an improved feature "requirement" that is, from my understanding, unique to Christie's VDR offerings (and some of their non-VDR systems). Geometry correction for a steep and off-center installation. ImageFit(tm)/Mystique/WarpFiles would be as large (or larger) an improvement to our presentation quality as any HDR capability (when rarely used) would be. Especially improved would be mixed ratio films!

There is a real argument for debating if adding HDR (in any form) is even worth considering for us. And I don't know that anyone is even seriously considering it. But I do know one of the goals in the eventual upgrade is to put us back on the board as far as appeal for studio premiere events etc. Due to our desire to preserve the historical architecture look it seems unlikely we'll graduate to ATMOS though, and remain a 7.1 house for the forseeable future, So 4K (and maybe even HDR) capabilities might be the only technical thing we can offer in a revamp (at this time).

[Alan Gouger]

It seams the Barco video was removed due to copyright issues.

[Scotty Wright]

The Barco link is now to a missing video.
Can ya'll confirm my understanding, that we basically have the 3 offerings right now, Dolby Vision system (DVIS+HDR mastered content only), Barco Light Steering (HDR mastered content only), and Christie VDR (HDR content only for the moment, an option on CineLife+ RealLaser units, with a coming "Standard" mode of operation for SDR content).

I'm also understanding that most HDR content is currently mastered at 108nits, where as the proposed DCI standard is 300nits, and only Christie and Barco have leveled up to offer 300nit performance so far in this competing "standards" space for HDR. Presumably they can both do 108nit and 300nit mastered content?

There’s also Cinity; I’ve only seen it once but it was pretty impressive. Dolby has a new single projector Dolby Vision system now.

Obviously with all these systems, specifically mastered content is going to look better and use the system’s full capabilities, but standard content should look great too.

I work at an imax venue and both of our imax dual projector systems “nerf” non-imax content by only showing it with 1 projector and thus half the brightness. But even single projector on our laser system looks pretty fantastic with nice deep black levels. I haven’t heard of any other specialized Dolby, Barco, or Christie systems, or even the imax single projector systems doing this.

[Ryan Gallagher]

There’s also Cinity; I’ve only seen it once but it was pretty impressive. Dolby has a new single projector Dolby Vision system now.

Thanks for the reminder, I wasn’t including direct view in my list cause it will be a while yet it seems before such tech is applicable to a mixed use venue that has to “fly” the cinema rig for full stage shows.

I realize there will be some subjective quality gains even on SDR content in any laser/4k upgrade from where we are now, even on systems that don’t do anything fancy to them like the VDR promises, but at least right now it’s combo of features is feeling the most relevant (to our situation).

[Scotty Wright]

Thanks for the reminder, I wasn’t including direct view in my list cause it will be a while yet it seems before such tech is applicable to a mixed use venue that has to “fly” the cinema rig for full stage shows.

I realize there will be some subjective quality gains even on SDR content in any laser/4k upgrade from where we are now, even on systems that don’t do anything fancy to them like the VDR promises, but at least right now it’s combo of features is feeling the most relevant (to our situation).

Cinity has both led direct view and traditional projection systems. Their projection systems are christie projectors but I don’t recall the models. They were developed in conjunction with the release of Gemini Man. I’ve heard James Cameron has become quite taken with them for Avatar screenings in China; unfortunately they haven’t taken off in the states. There’s only 1 public venue with cinity projection at Majestic Brookfield in Milwaukee, WI.

dolby’s vision system are modified christie eclipses

[Jim Cassedy]

I've worked with both DolbyVision™️ and I've got one of BARCO's LS4k-HDR
projectors here at my venue. I'm not ready to declare one 'better' than the other,
without precise measurements and without a way to do an actual "A vs B" comparison.
It's quite possible that one system might look better in one auditorium than another,
depending on size and age of the screen, and ambient light level, etc.

The only DolbyVision set up I've worked with was actually at Dolby's screening room,
where everything from acoustics to ambient light levels were pretty much as perfect
as it was going to be anywhere on the planet. So it looked damn good. But I've also
been very impressed with BARCO's HDR content. The number of HDR titles seems
to be increasing. A couple of weeks ago a very well known movie studio here in
Northern CA which is going to be releasing its first HDR title soon rented the theater
after hours to see their work on a big screen, since they'd only seen it on monitors
(albeit very good ones) while editing. BARCO also advertises on several web sites
which new titles are in HDR, and we get posters and sometimes standees promoting
HDR titles for our lobby. As for who pays for all the extra steps to render an HDR DCP,
I don't really know, but I understand that we do pay a higher rental fee for HDR titles,
and, there is a yearly HDR license fee. I'm not sure if DolbyVision works the same way.
The BARCO techs have been very pro-active in keeping our system up to specs, both
remotely and with personal, sometimes unannounced, visits by their technicians.
And they've been very patient in answering all my tech questions while they're here.
My only 'complaint', as I've mentioned before, is that for the type of events that we
do here, which often intermix formats and live intros or Q&As, the projector takes
(in my opinion) a long time to switch between HDR and standard content and even
longer to switch to the HDMI input, which at this time can only be semi-automated,
and I still have to into a set-up menu and manually switch the colorspace settings
for the HDMI input. (and also playback of any DCP shows scheduled will not play
until you switch out of HDMI, which you must do manually. You can't seem to
program it to happen automatically. To be fair, at venues where all they play is
DCP's this isn't a problem. And BARCO promises this situation is only temporary
and will be fixed in a future software release. (soon, I hope! )

[Marco Giustini]

The fact that you're thinking of which is better is a good point towards Barco I think.

When it comes to Contrast ratio and blacks, there are two considerations to be made

1. Black levels are heavily affected by light pollution and reflections. Most cinemas cannot remove emergency lights and regulations change across the globe so it's a lottery. Even the fainter LED steplight in the auditorium will spoil a perfect black. So "perfect black" might work in a private screening room where you can turn everything off but in a regular cinema, this is most of the time unachievable.

2. When it comes to contrast level, there is BIG difference between 2000:1 (DCI) and, say, 6000:1 (some Lasers, the older Sony 5xx etc). But once you get on 5-digits numbers, the difference between 20.000:1 and 1.000.000:1 is much less noticeable also considering point 1 and also considering that those figures are "ON-OFF field". That is, you measure a full white then you measure a full black.

In a real world situation where you have something else on screen which will scatter inside a lens and around the auditorium, numbers are definitely going to be smaller.

[Steve Guttag]

It has been my experience that apparent contrast ratio goes up dramatically from 1600 to 2000 to 3000 but then you get progressively less bang for the buck as you move into the 5000-6000 range. I would never look down upon the 5000:1 versus the 6000:1 because you never get a side-by-side comparison of that. I do know that 5000:1 is a near impossible sale against a 3000:1 (and even 2000:1). Most projectors that are boasting these numbers are really talking about getting deeper blacks...which is less customer apparent.

Being able to get the brightest brights higher is customer apparent so getting good blacks becomes more important. If you just take a standard projector and turn it up to double brightness...your black level just doubled too so they turn grey (or lighter grey).

Real contrast levels are not as high as any projector company claims. They are using the full-on/full-off. Real contrast ratio uses an alternating checkerboard with an approximate 50% white/50% black. On that test, you will find techniques like VDR start to fall apart because they have to cover the bright parts. Even the Barco Light Steering projector is going to have a hard time with that and they don't have anywhere near as deep as black as Dolby does, at the moment, with full-black. They are having to ramp their light up to about 6x normal to hit their 300nits. So, they have 6x the light to tamp down for dark. It is hard. In a normal scene, they're steering the light, which helps their cause. Checkerboards don't help as you need light...everywhere while needing dark everywhere too.

As to light pollution...it is a very real challenge. There are things you can do to mitigate it way down. Ever look at a Dolby Cinema? They go with subdued greys so the light that is in the theatre doesn't bounce about to land on the screen. How you set up your exits and where those signs are going to go has to be thought out. Stair treads don't need to have their lights pointing/projecting at the screen.

Really, until we get emissive screens as the norm, I don' think we're really going to get incredible contrast since then the screen itself can reject ambient light. They can hit real high contrast ratios.

At the moment, to my eyes, I've found the Dolby Vision to be the best compromise of increasing the white level (just over double) while having incredible black levels. There are also a lot of titles mastered for it and most every significant release gets a Dolby Vision version. I'm rooting for Barco too but, at the moment, Vision just looks like the more complete system to me.