noob question about digital projecting

[Bsmith]

ok this is prolly a noob question and its kinda hard to explain what I'm trying to ask so I'll try my best.

You know how when you watch a movie in the theater the movie is usually on film being showen on a film projector. Well what if the movie was shot in digital (ex. Star Wars) what is the format the film is recorded to in order to be screened on a digital projector?

 

[Erik Olson]

Most are 2k format supported 1920 x 1080 MPEG(2) at 1.485 (1.5) Gbps 10-bit HDSDI uncompressed. There were a few different MPEG formats working the last time I looked into it.

You can look at Technicolor and EVS (no, not that one) sites for the latest source players and the codecs they support.

 

[Bsmith]

should I assume something like that is really expensive?

also I didn't really understand those techincal specs...way over my head

 

[Erik Olson]

The specs on the projectors start at 8k - 25k ANSI lumens and the HD servers are robust enough to do duplicitous streams - they're spendy at $25k for a base projector. Did a little looksy after my first post to include this bit from ShoWest that talks about the emerging 4k projectors.

On the other hand, it's a heck of a lot easier to maintain and service the almost entirely solid-state technology (save for a bevy of cooling aparatus) compared to platter-style 35mm system though.