Christie has officially launched its high-value premium digital cinema offering, the Christie Solaria One, aimed at emerging markets and community cinemas whose screen sizes are less than 10.6m (35ft) wide. The solution is DCI-compliant, having recently been fully certified for Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC (DCI) compliance testing by AEGISOLVE, INC.
Ster-Kinekor Theatres, the largest cinema exhibitor in South Africa, will be the first recipient of the Solaria One solution. Comments Ster-Kinekor Theatres CEO Fiaz Mahomed: “The Christie Solaria One projectors offer superb quality with a heightened viewing experience for movie lovers. These projectors are perfectly suited for smaller screens and are very cost effective. Ster-Kinekor is proud to be the first chain in the world to deploy this product and we believe that this partnership meets the very real demand from our valued audiences in seeing the best film content, at its greatest.’
The Solaria One is the first solution to begin shipping in quantity that is based on Texas Instruments’ (TI) recently developed S2K DLP Cinema chipset. It delivers fully DCI-compliant images at 8000 lumens within the DCI colour space and, as the Christie Solaria One+, 10,000 lumens when presenting alternative content.
Said Don Shaw, senior director, product management, Christie Entertainment Solutions: “The DCI-compliant Solaria One projector won kudos from customers across the globe in our product previews for its all-in-one design, as it ships with a zoom lens, a high-performance Xenon lamp, an Integrated Media Block (IMB) for playing high frame rate movies and Screen Management System (SMS) for controlling the system.
“Exhibitors will also appreciate Christie Solaria One’s built-in dual DVI (HDMI) and network ports, rendering it capable of displaying virtually any form of alternative content. And customers should also note that they are not locked into a projector-based, proprietary storage system; we strongly believe that mechanical hard drive platters should not coexist within the projector chassis and that such systems featured in competing solutions are a failure waiting to happen. DCI-compliant, robust, external storage systems based on the very latest commercial RAID5 technology are available through Christie sales representatives for use with Solaria One.’
“The DCI Digital Cinema System Specification helps to ensure a uniformity of excellence among products destined for the world’s cinemas and promotes deployment of high quality digital cinema equipment,’ said Travis Spann, president and laboratory director, AEGISOLVE, INC. “The Christie Solaria One has clearly satisfied the applicable criteria for interoperability and rigorous content security as specified in the DCI Compliance Test Plan.’
