Laser Light Engines of Salem, N.H., has hired Doug Darrow as CEO, the company announced this week, replacing company founder Bill Beck, who will remain as executive vice president of business development. Darrow is a 23-year veteran of Texas Instruments, where he served as general manager of its DLP Cinema Div., playing a key role in driving digital movie distribution and in transitioning the theater industry away from its 100-year-old film format, Laser Light Engines said. A leading expert on the future of movie distribution and 3-D, Darrow was a featured panel member at the Consumer Electronics Show 2009 and a keynote speaker at 2008’s ShoWest, where he received the Digital Cinema Pioneer Award. “We started Laser Light Engines two years ago to bring the benefits of high-brightness, energy-efficient, solid-state laser illumination to digital cinema and other large-scale projection applications,” Beck said. “Having demonstrated our technology, it is now time to drive commercialization and widespread adoption.” Laser Light Engines is developing solid-state light sources for 2-D and 3-D digital cinema and other large-venue projectors. The company said its sources, which can be incorporated into a standard digital cinema or advertising projection system, will have three to five times the brightness, 100 times the life and half the power consumption of standard arc lamps.