The number of tools at an integrator’s hands is growing by the day as new technology comes onto the scene. Michael Hamilton explores what’s best.

As the new year begins on 1 January 2026, Regulation (EU) 2023/2049 will enter into force. This regulation will end the manufacture and import of mercury-containing products, most notably ultra-high-performance (UHP) projector lamps, per the European Union’s efforts to protect public health and the environment.

Passed on 14 July 2023 as an amendment to (EU) 2017/852, it is intended to expand restrictions established by the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

If your bucket list contains aspirations to be on the American television quiz show Jeopardy, what follows might be helpful. Led by the United Nations, specifically under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Minamata Convention on Mercury, which began in 2009, culminated in an international treaty aimed at protecting human health and the environment from emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds while focusing on addressing mercury pollution on a global scale.

Adopted and signed on 10 October 2013 in Kumamoto, Japan, the international treaty was named after Minamata, Japan, a city devastated by mercury poisoning in the 1950s to the 1960s from industrial waste discharged in Minamata Bay. Methylmercury, a highly toxic compound, formed from mercury waste discharged into the bay and became embedded in the aquatic ecosystem, accumulating through the food chain and causing severe neurological disorders and deaths.

Controls over the manufacture, import and export of a myriad of products containing mercury began in 2020. However, many countries requested a five-year exemption period for certain types of products, which happened to include mercury lamps. These exemptions officially end on 31 December 2025.

Living mercury-free

The preamble above provides context for the transition to alternative technologies, not only for projection technologies but also for general consumer products. On 24 February 2022, the EU Commission formally published the end of the exemption for mercury-containing lamps, including those used in projectors, as part of an amendment to the restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) directive.

Since then, AV enthusiasts-turned-conspiracy theorists have tied the ban to everything from energy-saving activists to Pacific Rim manufacturers of gargantuan flat panels and LED walls seeking to quash projected video. While governments are often guilty of punitive overregulation, I’m entering this one on the okay side of the ledger.

Two-stage implementation

Note that the EU ban has two separate provisions. Manufacturing restrictions will take effect in January 2026, followed by a complete EU-wide prohibition on selling new mercury-lamp projectors effective 24 February 2027. From this date, retailers will no longer be authorised to sell new projectors containing mercury lamps, and manufacturers will be unable to supply lamps intended for new devices.

Replacement lamps for projectors sold before the established deadlines are anticipated to remain available; nevertheless, market dynamics rather than regulatory mandates will dictate their continued availability.

Early laser technology and the race for brightness

Flat-panel video display manufacturers, some of which also make projectors, began transitioning from cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) lamps to LED backlighting in the mid to late 2000s. While eliminating the mercury-containing CCFL tubes was ultimately beneficial to the efforts of the Minamata Convention, the transition preceded Minamata and was primarily marketing and technology-driven.

However, in 2001, the UNEP launched a global assessment studying mercury pollution and concluded in 2003 that enough evidence of a worldwide mercury impact warranted international action.

The shift to LEDs enabled flat panels to showcase thinner designs, though the acceleration in performance fuelled the changeover. LEDs contributed to enhanced contrast, significantly improved panel uniformity, a wider, more accurate colour gamut and faster response time with reduced motion blur.

LEDs increased longevity, ran cooler, and yielded higher energy efficiency,

All that and the elimination of a mercury hazard upon disposal – SOLD!

LEDs: Critical building blocks for HDR

LED edge-lit backlighting replaced CCFL by arranging LEDs along the screen’s perimeter. Consumers noticed the absence of true black, available from plasma-based flat panels at the time, when a scene contained bright and dark elements. Unable to regulate the LEDs separately, areas intended to be black appeared washed out and greyish, forcing manufacturers to respond.

LED technology evolved into a smaller form factor, called mini-LED. Thousands of miniature LEDs, a fraction of the size of those used in edge-lit designs, are grouped into numerous local zones behind the screen, controlled individually and dynamically, known as “local dimming”.

With the ability to be densely clustered, mini-LED technology led to greater peak brightness, foundational for reproducing HDR’s expanded contrast ratio, once exclusive to OLED display technology and its per-pixel light control.

Mini-LED flat panels are now capable of peak brightness in the 4,000 to 5,000 nits range. For future reference, 1 nit = 3.426 lumens; thus, 4,000 nits is approximately 13,704 lumens.

The kings of lamps in their heyday…

While Barco and Christie mainly focused on large venue projectors circa 2010, they impressed by taking lamp technology to the galaxy’s edge. In 2010, the Barco DP2K-32B set the Guinness World Record as the “brightest digital cinema projector on the planet,” delivering 43,000 centre lumens after colour correction to DCI standards, using a single 7kW Ushio pure xenon, high-intensity, short-arc lamp. For the curious, the lamp is still available for US$1,946, with a lifespan of 300 to 500 hours. If it’s any consolation, Film-Tech Systems has free shipping.

Christie’s 2014 Boxer 4K30 was capable of 30,000 lumens, using six longer-life mercury lamps instead of a single, pure xenon type. Multi-lamps provided redundancy, reducing risk during live events.

The Runco D-113d, released in 2011, was considered a home theatre projector, though not just for any home. It was a dual-engine (two-chassis), four-UHP lamp configuration specified as having 20,000 ANSI lumens in dual-engine, 2D mode (it was designed as a 3D projector).

But hang on, lamps are far from dead… WHAT!

Christie continues to manufacture Xenon lamp projectors, which thrive in post-production and colour-grading environments. They are favoured for their benchmark colour fidelity, more natural-appearing image and colour stability, and their entry price is substantially lower than that of equivalent-performance RGB laser machines.

Christie is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ushio, Inc., and the Xenolite lamps in this class of projectors feature longer lifespans of up to 3,500 hours or more, depending on screen size, and cost as little as US$500. Another benefit of many of Christie’s CineLife + Series projectors is the ability to operate on split power, making them capable of running from UPS backup in mission-critical applications.

You might wonder, and rightly so, why Christie would continue with xenon lamps on the eve of Regulation (EU) 2023/2049. Simply, xenon lamps are mercury-free and exempt from regulatory compliance.

LED, laser and laser-LED hybrid projectors

One of the earliest examples of LED as a light engine source was the ProjectionDesign FL32, which debuted in 2007. While lean in brightness by today’s standards at 800 lumens, its ReaLED solid-state illumination had a specified lifespan of 100,000 hours. Featuring cool-running RGB LEDs aimed at a single DLP chip that eliminated the need for a mechanical colour wheel, the primary use was intended for mission-critical applications such as simulation, control rooms and surveillance.

In October 2008, Mitsubishi introduced the world’s first laser-powered television, the L65-A90, which was, by strict definition, an ultra-short-throw, rear-projected image. Called LaserVue, Mitsubishi sold the series for four years until announcing on 2 December 2012 that it was halting the sales of all rear-projection televisions, the last major manufacturer to do so.

The technology, however, remained viable, with Epson introducing the PowerLite Pro Cinema LS10000 in 2014. This was the first consumer home theatre projector with a 1,500-lumen laser-based light source, using dual blue lasers and a phosphor wheel to create colourimetry.

In 2010, Casio released the first hybrid LED/Laser consumer projector, the XJ-A130, with a reasonably robust ANSI lumen rating of 2,000. Briefcase-sized and not specifically designed for home entertainment use, as a Japanese company and mindful of the Minamata tragedy, the hybrid was the first claimed “high-brightness” mercury-free data projector for consumer use.

Today, hybrid LED/Laser technology criss-crosses the projector landscape, from Christie’s Saphire 4K40-RGBH with 40,000 lumens, and a 922 x 635 x 380mm footprint that tilts the scales at a hefty 92kg, to the tuck-under-your-arm, toaster-sized 5.2kg XGIMI Horizon Ultra, sporting 2,300 ISO lumens.

TV Lumens, projector lumens and high dynamic range

As mentioned, miniature LEDs mounted behind a TV screen can produce a prodigious amount of light compared to just three zeroing in on a solo DLP chip, particularly when there are 5,376 zones, such as with the 100” Hisense U8 series. Flat panels, whether OLED or LCD, adjust their light output based on displayed content. OLED achieves this by dimming or completely switching off individual pixels, while LCDs use backlight local dimming to achieve a similar effect, particularly with mini-LED. The result is close to OLED’s performance, though it is still incapable of delivering OLED’s deeper contrast ratio.

Above, I pointed out that 1 nit = 3.426 lumens, with a growing number of flat panel displays having peak luminance output capabilities of 4,000 nits, or approximately 13,704 lumens. OLED is now in that lane, with LG’s Primary RGB Tandem “four-stack” panel design, which Samsung also uses on the S95F, adding a quantum dot layer on top. Mini-LED TVs such as Sony’s Bravia 9 and Hisense’s U8 series achieve the 4,000 nit threshold, with TCL’s QWM8K reportedly reaching 5,000 nits.

Projectors at and around that light output level exist, and handily do HDR and Dolby Vision, albeit at prices comparable to Cupra Leon V Tribe Edition. But what about the broad range of projectors rated for 5,000 lumens — not nits — or less? Most in the home theatre category nominally measure between 2,000 and about 3,600 lumens.

For a tangible HDR experience with light output at those ratings, screen size typically must be between 100-110” diagonal (16.9:1 aspect ratio). While projector tone mapping algorithms, the process that adapts HDR content to a projector’s limited brightness and contrast capabilities, have steadily improved in the past few years, home theatre projectors still must contend with attempting to reproduce both the brightest spectral highlights and the deepest shadows simultaneously, from a single source of illumination.

This is the most prominent drawback for HDR playback in a residential cinema environment. Content mastered for high-nit displays must be tone-mapped by projectors to accommodate lower luminance capabilities. The projector uses the HDR metadata from the source to perform this mapping. HDR implementation for most home theatre projectors is based on static metadata, resulting in a reduction of the average picture level (APL) to enable spectral highlights to appear more dynamic. A problem integrators and consumers have faced is when identical SDR and HDR content are compared, with the SDR version always brighter due to a higher APL than the HDR version.

Some new consumer-level projectors from Epson, JVC and Sony attempt to mitigate the lower APL issue by combining maximum content light level (MaxCLL) and maximum frame average light level (MaxFALL) static metadata with features such as auto tone-mapping and frame adapt HDR as a hybrid method of making dynamic tone mapping adjustments within the projector’s prescribed brightness capability.

Still, fundamental projector brightness reduces effective dynamic range. Adding more light to the equation is the only way to overcome this technical constraint.

Wider colour gamut and filters

Some projector manufacturers use physical filters or digital methodologies to achieve 100% DCI-P3-D65 colour accuracy in wider colour gamut for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision content. Invariably, this often includes an additional loss of peak light output, and from some manufacturers, substantially.

On the content creation side of things

From 2011 to about 2018, HDR10 and Dolby Vision content creation were stalled at 1,000 nits due to the combination of Sony’s pure RGB OLED BVM-X300 mastering monitor, which was limited to just over 1,000 nits brightness, and most consumer displays during this period, which were similarly constrained.

When Sony changed its top mastering display from OLED to LCD, higher brightness levels were possible. With the current BVM-HX3110 (we have this monitor in the AVPro/ISF Video Lab), peak light output of 4,000 nits is possible. Still, only a handful of movies have selected scenes mastered at 4,000 nits peak brightness (the most recent was 2021’s The Green Knight).

What lumens amount is needed from a projector to properly do HDR10+ or Dolby Vision?

The answer is not necessarily found in a specification, because a single light source cannot modulate individual parts of a scene like local dimming does with flat panels. Screen size and gain formulation are also factors. However, there might still be a way to accomplish this.

Video processors to the rescue?

The precipice for tangible HDR on a home theatre projector is approximately 3,500 lumens on a 110-inch screen, in a conducive viewing environment, with external HDR video processing.

Although using different approaches, companies like Lumagen and madVR have unique solutions for lower-light-output residential cinema projectors, albeit at a price. While full explanations of how each arrives at a solution are too detailed for our purposes here, both perform complex tone mapping to the signal before it reaches the projector.

In summary, Lumagen employs a hardware-based solution with FPGA-based hardware processing that converts HDR into an SDR-compatible feed optimised for the projector’s light output capabilities. The company, madVR, features a GPU-based software-driven approach, performing advanced dynamic tone mapping on a frame-by-frame and even pixel-by-pixel basis, within the construct of the HDR metadata. Its complex algorithms map the full luminance range of the HDR signal into the constricted brightness range of the projector, also sending the projector an SDR signal.

So, what is the answer?

Some manufacturers’ personnel (to be unnamed) candidly express the opinion that with less than 10,000 lumens, most consumers who can set aside the notion that HDR and Dolby Vision exist, will find that displaying all content in SDR will provide a dynamic image with more than satisfying brightness. The penalty that HDR metadata applies to the APL, without adequate lumens for oomph, is too detrimental for most viewers.

As for external processing, to quote Ferris Bueller: “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”

Today, the integrator’s role is to evaluate screen, projector, and processor combinations to arrive at a point where a lower-lumen projector, which is lower priced, paired with an external video processor, provides a more dynamic metadata-enhanced image than a substantially brighter and exponentially more expensive projector that is hand-strapped by a lower APL.

External processors can deliver scenes with simultaneously bright and dark areas proportionately adjusted, as a high-end local-dimming-equipped display does, eliminating this task from the projector.