An Integrated System for Digital Cinema Projection and Security

Abstract

Several groups have been active in publicly setting expectations for the digital cinema manufacturing and exhibition communities; most notably the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) sponsored by the seven major Hollywood studios. The successful commercial adoption of digital cinema rests on addressing three major concerns: image quality, content security, and cost This paper describes a range of developments that go a long way to addressing these major concerns. In the first section of the paper, a new projection system is described, utilizing Silicon Crystal Reflective Display technology, a development of Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS), which achieves superior contrast ratios, higher resolution, and longer device lifetimes, but benefits from simplified manufacturing, compared with conventional Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) panels. The second part of the paper discusses the integration of this projection system into a secure distribution system, along with the complete security and traceability strategy that needs to be applied to provide a sufficient level of protection to the very high-value digital content that is to be handled.