First HDTV African sports broadcast
El Grande Nu Metro Theatre at Monte Casino, Johannesburg, was the venue for Africa's first live high definition (HD) television transmission, which took place during the 2006 World Cup finals last weekend. The event was broadcast via Sony's new Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD) 4K 'super' projector.
"Picture quality of this nature has never been experienced in this continent," says Jess Goedhals, General Manger of Sony Broadcast & Professional SA. "It is only a taste of what is to come in the build up towards the broadcasting of the 2010 World Cup event in South Africa. The SABC will soon take delivery of the country's first HD Outside Broadcast unit built by Sony."
"We designed the SXRD projector to display the highest-quality, most visually stunning video images in the highest resolution, in order to recreate the feeling of `being there' as closely and faithfully as possible. The 10 000 ANSI lumen system performs at levels that easily address the quality-critical demands of digital cinema and large-venue display applications. A 4K projector has long been considered the holy grail of digital cinema."
Technical specs
In addition to this high performance, these projectors are designed to be small and lightweight enabling ease of installation in almost any type of facility. Equally important, their HD-SDI input - which provides an encrypted connection - enables digital contents to be securely projected onto screens with absolutely no compromise in the quality.
The 4K SXRD imaging panel used can be driven at single-mode, dual-mode, and quad-mode projection. In quad mode, four screens of full HD images (1920 x 1080 pixels) can be projected from the panel simultaneously. In single mode, the industry's long-desired 4096 x 2160-pixel images are no longer imagined - they are a true reality.
The Sony system is also compliant with all of the specifications of digital cinema initiatives (DCI) for digital motion picture projection.
Sony also recently presented designs for its 18 000 ANSI lumen version of the SXRD 4K projector, intended for screen sizes of 50 feet or more. This new model was designed specifically with the needs of exhibitors in mind for installation in commercial movie theatres.
