It started as an improvisation, a gizmo created by staff at NASA’s USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Far West Regional Technology Transfer Center (RTTC) to enable the center’s chief to give presentations that would be more vivid and striking. “I am always traveling,” said Kenneth Dozier, who is responsible for marketing technology created by NASA-funded research to commercial concerns. “I am always giving presentations of our technology and what it can do. But I was dissatisfied with the demonstrations I was able to give. They were dim and flat, and you could see people getting distracted or bored.” The gizmo that RTTC staffers came up with – an ultracompact and inexpensive device that can present ultrahigh definition video – is now stepping up to a new level. In August, the Los Angeles chain Landmark Theaters used it to show an Ingmar Bergman film. Landmark’s use came after extensive out-of-town demonstrations by Dozier and staff at Sundance and other film festivals of “Road Warrior,” the fourth generation in a series of digital video servers developed by RTTC wizards. The demos were arranged by Jim Steele, who runs a company called Digital Cinema Solutions. Steele saw an early version and helped to refine the device by acquiring commercial high-definition digital material – mostly theatrical trailers –for test projections. One of the first tests was at a Maui film festival where the system screened the surfing documentary “Step Into Liquid” and “it was a big wow thing, such a little box driving such beautiful images,” Steele said. Work on the system began in 2001. Responding to Dozier’s request, staff set off to work using ordinary computer components, assembling them into a device that would maximize the bandwidth of the information stream coming out of its memory. By 2004, a device called “Toaster” was able to put out 20 MB per second of video signal, allowing Dozier to present images as brilliant and high-resolution as those seen in movie theaters. Toaster’s successor “Road Warrior” produces 80MB per second of output, resulting in extremely large, high-definition images, like those seen in IMAX theaters. The cost for the devices is approximately $1,500 in off-the-shelf components, plus labor – “about what an ordinary computer costs,” Dozier said. Connecting “Road Warrior” to an ordinary digital projection system yields brilliant imaging. Connecting it to a higher-end theatricals system – the Landmark demos will use Panasonic 6000 lumen digital projectors – produces images “indistinguishable from 35 mm film,” said Ray Price, Landmark vice president of marketing. The system already has had one experimental screen testing in August, projecting Ingmar Bergman’s film “Saraband” in a West Los Angeles Landmark theater. “It was shown for four weeks,” said Steele, “without a hiccup.” Dozier does not see the system going into regular commercial use for theaters in the immediate future. Rather, he hopes that schools will be able to acquire versions of it to improve audiovisual presentation at all levels. “I think it can make a difference there,” he said. But he emphasized that his team’s work was not aimed at creating a commercial product. “We developed the system so that NASA footage could be shown in all its glory at a fraction of the cost,” Dozier said. “This is particularly appealing for the education library and museum market. We are not selling the box. It is a scalable solution that can be used in many venues, from classrooms to auditoriums. Many communities have no capability to show high-quality educational content.” Still, the possibilities are clear to Steele, who sees similar devices heading soon for the home market “and houses will be transformed,” he said.