VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) -- There's a showdown brewing at the local movie theater, but it's not playing on the screen. It's in the projection booth.
Sony Electronics Inc., a unit of Sony Corp., last week demonstrated a projection technology for digital cinema that displays images at twice the resolution of existing digital projectors.
Sony plans to begin shipping the system in July, setting up a race with Texas Instruments Inc., whose technology is at the heart of digital projectors already on the market.
The competition is emerging at the same time Hollywood is looking to work out a fair way to roll out digital cinema nationwide to replace the ubiquitous 35mm film projectors.
Critics question how well the eye can distinguish between the 2,000 lines of resolution that current digital projectors have and the 4,000 lines Sony's new projector promises (by comparison, high-definition TV sets show up to 1,080 lines). They also question whether color separation and contrast are any better with a higher line count.
Regardless, Landmark Theaters, owned by entrepreneur Mark Cuban, announced it would be the first to use the projectors, giving Sony a high-profile partner in the quality debate.
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