M
O
LIS.C
P
O
T
AIRE
.CL
WWW
I
CTURE:
P
Is now the right time for planetarium operators to upgrade? Email
kathleenwhyman@leisuremedia.com
mainstream content. Planetariums Our problem was, which to choose? In
SKY SCAN
want to keep their unique nature 2008 we visited other planetariums, took
Marcus Weedle,
and not merely become giant- note of the latest trends and tested several
marketing director
screen theatres. Planetariums manufacturer’s projectors. We had a lim-
with great real-time content offer ited budget, so the cost of the installation
something that no video pro- and ownership was a driving force. But,
duced months or years prior can with an in-house production team, perform-
do, which is to stay up-to-date ance couldn’t be seriously compromised,
It’s a great time to upgrade in our opinion and offer an interaction with the audience. as it’s their home demonstration system.
and many customers seem to agree. There’s a real value there that customers Ultimately we agreed with our prelimi-
Providing giant-screen quality in digital are now forced to balance against show- nary research that the PD performance
is no longer a “when?” question. The tech- ing linear videos. So we’re seeing the was superior for our application and
nology is improving constantly, but we’re technology fade as the biggest factor and selected the PD F32 as our projectors.
getting tens of thousands of lumens on the content becoming the most important. So This is a single chip DLP projector, but its
screen at 4K and 8K resolution. We just the question then becomes, what are you main strength is that it can be specifi ed
demonstrated Sony’s latest projector, the going to show on the screen? with different colour wheels. In our case,
T420, which puts out 21,000 lumens. Do one optimised for producing good
that with two or six projectors and you’re contrast and black levels albeit
looking at a very bright, high-resolution pic- NATIONAL SPACE at lower ultimate brightness. This
ture. 3D stereos also taking hold – we’ve
CENTRE, UK
is the PD VisSIM option typically
installed a Defi niti 3D 8K in Macao that has
Graham Law,
used for night time fl ight simula-
higher resolution and is brighter than giant-
head of
tors and proved very capable.
screen fi lm, with 3D. Sites with older 70mm
technical services
We teamed up with Global
systems have gone to digital-only, such as Immersion (GI) to colour match
Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre. the units. They supplied the
For 2010, we expect the Sony T420 to be We upgraded our system in 2009 as our mechanical blending masks to blend
one of the brightest projectors at 21,000 circa 2000 Electrohome CRT Fulldome pro- DLPs, but in all other respects we installed
lumens. While projectors are in the works jection system needed replacing, primarily ourselves with our own design and manu-
at higher resolution, we expect them to be due to ageing tubes, high maintenance facture of the projector mounts and blend
in the 5,000-20,000 lumen range. If you and a lack of performance by today’s mask frames. GI also confi rmed by CAD
need more today, say 30,000-plus lumens, standards. The backend system was, and some of our home grown calculations
you can get it from multiple projectors. is, an E&S D3, which we considered to be when it came to lens selection and pro-
The real issues are getting the price still serviceable and capable of feeding a jector positioning. We’d never previously
down for customers who are showing less higher resolution to a new projection array. attempted such an upgrade on our own. ●
AM 1 2010
©
cybertrek 2010 Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital 31
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86