News

Grass Valley Meets Growing Demand for HD Film Transfers with New Member of the Spirit Family (12/2/2007)

Thomson Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Spirit with New HD Telecine Version; Field Upgradeable to 2k or 4k Film Scanner

With the markets for HD movie transfers and HD post production continuing to grow, Thomson (Euronext Paris: 18453; NYSE: TMS) has launched a new version of its market-leading film scanning platform: the Grass Valley Spirit HD telecine. The new machine shares all its optical and mechanical components with the Spirit 4K film scanner, allowing the Spirit HD to be upgraded on site with the minimum of downtime as the user's requirements move from HD to digital intermediate post production.

"It is 10 years since we launched the original Spirit DataCine, which instantly caught the industry's attention and rapidly overthrew the then market leader," recalled Marc Valentin, president of the Grass Valley business within Thomson. "Our customers in the post production industry tell us that the transfer of film originated content is still very important to them. They also tell us they need a dedicated HD telecine, whether for re-mastering movies for high definition television or for movie post in HD. We have met and exceeded their demands, with a new scanner built on our proven Spirit platform, giving them the opportunity for a simple and quick upgrade later to full 2k or 4k capabilities."

The new Spirit HD scans at all standard and high definition formats, in both 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 colour resolutions. Outputs are available as SDI, HD-SDI, dual link HD-SDI and as data, allowing the Spirit HD to be used as the input to 1920 x 1080 digital intermediate post production. Gates are available for both 35mm and 16mm film. With prestige productions for television continuing to be shot on film, post production facilities need a cost-effective route to scan to high definition, as do those facilities charged with giving a new life in the HD era to classic television series and movies.

The Spirit 4K film scanner was launched in 2004 as the next generation film scanning platform. Together with the Spirit 2K derived from it, they offer 2k digital intermediate scanning in real time and fast 4k resolution scanning. Spirit HD shares the same mechanical components for gentle film transportation, the same precision optics and the same broad spectrum xenon light source for consistent image quality and optical scratch concealment. The upgrade from Spirit HD to Spirit 2K can be completed on site with less than a day's downtime, and the upgrade to a Spirit 4K in less than two days.

It is clear there is a demand from the post production industry worldwide for an upgradeable HD telecine which shares the same speed, uncompromised image quality and flexibility that the current Spirit family provides.

Pricing and Availability

The list price for the Grass Valley Spirit HD starts at US$698,000 (€550,000) and represents a saving of nearly 40% over the previous entry-level system. The system is scheduled to be available from February 2007.

At the same time as launching the new Spirit HD new, lower cost configurations of both the Spirit 2K and Spirit 4K film scanners have been launched, aimed at meeting the requirements of facilities moving into digital intermediate post production more precisely, and maintaining the market position of the Spirit family as the most popular realtime film scanning source.

www.thomsongrassvalley.com

[more HD news]