Lights, camera, action: Displaying the future through digital image projection

Friday, January 6, 2012

by Kylee Willard

In 2009, Greg Pettitt was invited to Beverly Hills, Calif., to receive the much sought after Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science Award. The Academy recognized Pettitt along with Brad Walker, D. Scott Dewald and Bill Werner in February, with a 2009 Academy Scientific and Technology Award.

“The award was based on a collaborative and cumulative work completed on the DLP Cinema® projector from 2000 to 2009, which produced a projection system that could produce bright, color accurate images,” Pettitt said. “Today, over 50,000 theatres use our projection system with many theaters having converted to all digital projection.”

It’s a bright and colorful world

Pettitt’s work at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas began 27 years ago following his education at Oklahoma State University. Pettitt received his bachelor of science degree in 1982 and his master of science graduate degree in 1983 in electrical engineering from OSU.

“Upon accepting the position at Texas Instruments in 1984, I worked as an algorithm development and system engineer in the defense systems division,” Pettitt said.

Pettitt spent his first nine years at Texas Instruments working with infrared technology systems working on several projects in the area of target tracking on both ground based and airborne systems.

“I worked with infrared imaging systems, which utilizes heat to image objects,” he said. “The infrared imagery is used, for instance, to track various types of objects from tanks to aircraft and missiles.”

In 1987, Larry Hornbeck invented the digital micromirror device, DMD. Later, Texas Instruments founded a corporate venture project to utilize the DMD in both printing and display applications. Pettitt joined the project in 1993 and the projector technology was eventually given the name, DLP®.

“The DMD semiconductor device uses millions of mirrors to produce a projected image,” Pettitt said. “A custom ASIC was developed to drive the DMD. I joined the algorithm team to work on the ASIC development. The first products launched in 1996.”

Over the course of time, Pettitt’s work with algorithms led to an interest in the human visual system.

“I became interested in how the eye perceives the projected image and how one could improve that image,” Pettitt said.

With no formal educational background or training in the area of the human visual system or color signal processing, Pettitt found answers to his questions though his acquired knowledge in color processing.

In 1997, the DLP Cinema engineering team headed west with their projector.

“We took our projector to Hollywood,” Pettitt said. “We set-up and presented various digitized movie clips. In the end, our projection system offered great contrast, stable picture and color with an overall appearance like no other system prior.”

On June 18, 1999, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace was projected in both New York and Los Angeles with the new DLP Cinema® projection system.

“This was the first time a movie had been presented in a public theatre in a digital format,” he said.

“The system began to be used in theaters but also found uses in the animation studios and post-production houses. Many animation studios use the projectors to screen the material before being released to the theaters.

“The stability and color accuracy of the projector make it perfect for this application and was the basis for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award,” Pettitt said. “Now, thousands of movie theatres around the world feature the DLP Cinema® digital projectors.”

Exploring new interests

With success in the digital projection realm, Pettit moved into the conference room and home theater projection market.

“I again focused on how the eye perceived color and image quality,” Pettitt said. “At the time, standard displays used just red, green and blue to create the picture. I was looking into expanding the number of colors used by the system and expanding the display into a multi-primary display.”

Pettitt’s work on multi-primary displays is known as the BrilliantColor™ algorithm. Rather than the standard three-color processing, BrilliantColor™ uses a six-color processing to display brighter, more colorful images.

“The majority of the DLP projectors on the market today use the BrilliantColor™ algorithm,” he said. “DLP projector manufactures can choose from many colors beyond the traditional red, green and blue, extending into yellow, cyan, magenta and whites.”

Today, Pettitt focuses his time in developing solid state projecting systems.

“Solid state projectors use either light-emitting diodes (LED), lasers or phosphor conversions to be the light source to the DMD,” Pettitt said. “This will allow for long life, high brightness projectors.”

Currently, traditional projection lamps last 2,000 to 8,000 hours.

“The new solid state illumination sources will last from 15,000 to 20,000 hours,” Pettitt said. “The lamps should never have to be replaced.”

What the future holds

Future work for Pettitt includes the ongoing work in projection systems.

“DLP is continuing its work on conference room projectors, and is branching into pico and embedded projectors, which can fit into cell phones and other handheld devices,” he said.

Pettit is currently assigned to the Kilby Labs, an advanced research facility at Texas Instruments.

Today, Pettitt lives in Farmersville, Texas with his wife Connie. They have four adult children: Kristen (husband, Daniel Ostertag), Crystal (husband, Cody Maynard), Brittney and Ryan. Pettitt also has three grandchildren: Ethan, Meranda and Ty. When not working on projection technology, Pettitt enjoys working on his small ranch raising miniature Herefords.