Sony Unveils Prototype Projector At Special Screening of 'The Da Vinci Code'

The old Pacific Hollywood theater that opened in 1928, locked behind heavy black security gates seems like an unlikely place for Sony Electronics Inc. to debut a long-awaited concept 4K digital projector with 18K Lumen.

Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" staring Tom Hanks showed Monday night at a special digital screening at the Hollywood, Calif., theater, now home to the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC-USC) digital cinema lab.

The center screened the digital cinema release, courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures, on the Sony SXRD 4K (4096 x 2160 pixel resolution) concept projector with 18K Lumen, the first public showing for a digital projector with these specification.

"Until now we have been dealing with 4K screens between 20 and 40 feet, rather than this 52-foot screen," said Andrew Stucker, manager of Digital Cinema Systems at Sony America. "We brought down our prototype 18K Lumen projector from San Jose for tonight, and you're seeing it here for the first time publicly."

Sony Pictures has released several movies digitally, including "Superman 2," "Stealth," "RV," The Da Vinci Code," and "Casino Royal," which should hit theaters on Nov. 17.

The original file, 10 terabytes, compressed to 210 gigabytes for the complete Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) package, which includes encrypted audio and image files.

The ETC-USC center's executive director and CEO Charles Swartz hosted the event. Panelists explored benefits and issues of producing "The Da Vinci Code" digitally in a question and answer session following the screening.

Movie goers will see more movies distributed in the latest technology from Sony Pictures. In fact, Al Barton, vice president of digital cinema technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment, said the studio will release the majority of movies in digital 4K by January 2008. "We get better prints and imagery," he said. "Sony wants to pull archives off the digital intermediate, which has become the master, unless you're going to go back and redo the entire film."

Barton said an editor for "The Da Vinci Code" arrived at one of Sony's basement screening rooms to view a few frames, and remained to watch three complete reels noticing sequences in the movie he had not seen prior because of the clarity in the 4K digital technology.

Josh Haynie, head of production at digital laboratory Efilm LLC, called production on "The Da Vinci Code" a "global undertaking" because the negatives had to remain in England where they were scanned, and several versions in various languages were released with subtitles burned into approximately 160 frames, rather than added later.

Barton, Haynie and the other panelists, Sony Display Systems senior product manager for digital cinema products Gary Mandle, and Deluxe Digital Media vice president of digital cinema technology Jim Whittlesey, agreed 4K holds the focus better than other technologies for scenes that move from reality to special effects.

In "The Da Vinci Code's" final scene, for example, where the camera goes through the glass ceiling of the Louvre Museum in Paris and into Mary's crypt. "If you've ever been to the Louvre, for one, you can't walk out onto the glass like, and second you can't take the shot through the glass," Barton said. "The transitions match beautifully."