Laser light has transformed the movie images at Becky’s Drive-In in Walnutport.

“The colors are now much truer, and the overall picture is significantly brighter. We found that dark scenes in movies now have much more clarity,” said Cindy Deppe, one of the owners of the drive-in. “We’re really excited for our patrons to see how beautiful the picture looks now.”

Deppe said they upgraded the light source in both projectors during the winter. The lasers replace the xenon bulb lamp house in each projector, as well as power supplies and mirrors.

Her husband, Dean Deppe, said they had some help with the installation from a contractor in Lancaster. He has experience installing products made by Cinionics, a Barco company in the Netherlands, which makes the laser lights. Becky’s then bought them from American Cinema Equipment, a distributor in Portland, Oregon. He said the cost for both laser light kits was about $55,000.

The laser lights also reduce the power consumption by half, Cindy Deppe said.

Although the lumens have increased, the watt usage has dropped, said Dean Deppe.

Dean said the drive-in has two screens that are different sizes, so the projectors are different sizes, too. Screen 1 has a Barco 32B projector, while screen 2 has a Barco 23B projector.

“The laser upgrade on screen 1 brings it up to about 40,000 lumens, about a 25% increase. The laser upgrade on screen 2 is about 25,000 lumens,” he said. “With the laser upgrade, the power consumption on screen 1 is reduced from about 6,500 Watts to about 3,700 Watts and on screen 2 from 4,200 Watts to 1,900 Watts, so there are significant energy savings.”

Dean explained that the truer color and brighter image is because “the laser emits a whiter light than the xenon bulbs we replaced. Therefore, when the light is broken down by the prism in the light tube, it is a truer color. The image is brighter because of the increased lumens output, but an additional advantage is the longevity of the output.

“A xenon bulb could lose as much as 75% of its output after about 100 hours of operation, depending on the rating of the bulb. The laser maintains its output over several thousands of hours, so the lasers are brighter for a much longer period of time. We also don’t have to replace bulbs, which saves about $1,500 a year on average.”

Dean said that since replacing the xenon bulbs with the laser lights, customers seem to be happy about the look, because they aren’t getting complaints about a dim picture.

“It is a challenge to achieve a bright picture on a large outdoor screen with ambient light from the moon and weather conditions, such as rain or fog,” he said. “Also, with increases in special effects in movies, which are masked in darker scenes, the movie brightness itself is darker than in previous years. It is a never ending quest to improve picture quality at a drive-in, so we try to take advantage of any opportunity to improve the picture.”

Dean said the laser lights are warranted for three years, but should last for about 10 years.

The projectors themselves are 11 years old, he said. They plan to replace the projector for screen 1 sometime in the next 3 to 5 years. That will cost about $110,000.

They plan to move the old projector over to screen 2.

“Which should increase picture quality in both screens,” he said.

A few years later, Deppe thinks they will replace the projector for screen 2.

“That should spread the cost out over a few years, as it is a major investment,” he said.