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We got 4k mobile phones, tables, TVs...but still no affordable projectors..pathetic

3K views 79 replies 24 participants last post by  NorthSky 
#1 ·
Seriously how pathetic is the projector industry? We have 4k mobile phones, tablets, and TVs but still no reasonably priced 4k projectors.

Its beyond pathetic at this point, seriously and don't say there is no 4k content because there is PLENTY of 4k content if you know where to look.

It just amazes me, projectors are the one item that can benefit the most from increased resolution and there is NOTHING on the foreseeable horizon sub three grand. How did this happen? Who are the morons that make product decisions for the projector industry because they have more than dropped the ball.

Rant over :(
 
#3 ·
I was @ my local computer store the other day: 4K laptops.

Cell phone store: 4K smartphones (5-6" screen).

♦ The smaller the screen the more resolution (ultra high definition moving pictures) we have.

Tomorrow, some day, eventually; we'll have 4K front projectors. ...By then our smartphones will have a 16K screen resolution. ...5" size.
{I know, we already have some.}
 
#72 ·
Dude the w1070 is a 1080p over rated pos. I had one for a week and returned it.
The only POS I can see here is your comment. Really are you trolling or just clueless?
 
#6 ·
I think the same thing as you guys. I think that at the end the projector market will disappear, at least at home. Every day we have more and more news about some kind of hologram technology, and augmented reality devices, and at the end I think those devices will be a much better option if projectors don't improve quickly.
 
#7 ·
But front projectors are still part of the ultra high-end video market; I'm talking about the best ones here, real 4K and with true light output for a 200" screen size. ...Something in the neighborhood of over $25,000 and up to $100,000.

You get what you pay for; and for a true 4K front projector of quality, you won't get for just few thousand bucks.

It's one thing to watch a great film on your smartphone, and totally another on 15-20 foot screen.
On the smartphone you can watch on the toilet seat of your bathroom, on the larger screen you are inside the movie.
 
#12 ·
I know that you are going to tell me that it isn't the same to have a projector or an AR/VR device, but with a good VR/AR device you can see a movie wherever you want, and at the same time be inside the movie. And with those devices you can really be "inside" the movies, because there are already projects to make 360º movies.
So the thing is, if you can pay less and have better resolution, do you think a lot of people will choose to pay more?
 
#9 ·
The high-end A/V market with 4K will be there for projectors, and the business market is probably just fine with 1080p, hopefully moderately priced 4K models for home theater are available too. It is unfortunate that the one truly beneficial application of 4K doesn't have even a semi-reasonably priced product yet, even while the big box stores are pushing 4K TVs in sizes that offer, at best, a minuscule benefit over 1080p.
 
#11 ·
Uh oh. He told you not to say that. [emoji33]
 
#13 ·
You can go anywhere in the world (if you have enough money), in any city, in any cinema house theater, any IMAX, and watch all the movies (3D or not, Dolby Atmos or not) you want.

You can also watch on a mini screen (iPhone) on the bus, on the metro, on the boat, @ work in your office, in a taxi cab, on the train, on the plane, in the jungle, in the forest, on the mountain top, in your bed while making love, @ your friend's cottage, in your kitchen, dining room, @ the beach, ....anywhere you want.

But to be truly inside the highest resolution movie with all the high definition sound all around, only in real life when you are living and interacting with other humans, animals, nature, ...you are truly making and living inside your own movie.

The real 4D holography is life itself, with its own natural light.

And the point of having 4K in the palm of our hands for basically free (with a plan), plus all the 4K downloads available, is a hard contrast with quality 4K front projectors and all the 4K Blu-ray movies available today.

* But! The emotional human impact that we all get from watching a high-def movie on our smartphones, is equally disproportional to the effect we get from a large screen (say over 10 feet diag) @ home. ...And the difference between a pair of surround headphones and a full blown Dolby Atmos/Auro-3D system @ home is unprecedented in the overall sensory effects (viewing and hearing).

It is true that the picture technology is extremely slow when it comes to very large screens (both @ home and @ the theaters) in the best high definition moving pictures possible, and in 3D.

When we watch a movie filmed with 3D IMAX cameras on a eight-story high definition/resolution 70mm screen, we can easily see all the minute imperfections and un-synchronized movements during fast action sequences. ...The rate of frames per second in an analog world is different than in the digital one; the overall moving cadence.

We are so far away from picturing real live events on our screens in our living rooms. ...Auditory and visually. ...We have much better lock with our miniaturized world (iPhones, iPads, smartphones, tablets, laptops, eBooks, ...). The overall impact is just not the same. ...Bigger is better, but bigger is more visually flaw too.

Maybe we should take a 4K smartphone 6" screen picture and just zoom it on a 120" screen?
 
#14 · (Edited)
One of the big reasons why the price is higher is the simple fact that the lens must be of much higher quality. It's not too unlike owning a full frame sensor DSLR... you need a quality glass lens to get something good out of that camera... and that will cost you some nice dough.

But really, comparing a cell phone 4K capture to what a quality 4k projector would need to perform well? It's not a very good comparison. Have you seen the footage tests of stuff like the Sony Xperia Z3? I've seen plenty of 1080p video that looked a lot better. A medium quality consumer grade 4K camera will still cost at least 2k.

And while I agree 4k matters more for projection size images than most... I'm willing to trade it for better blacks and higher dynamic range in a heart beat. :) (Something that still has tons of room for improvement.)

And finally, don't forget, projectors are and have always been, a niche market. It's always going to be a higher price when you don't sell as many. :)

EDIT ADD ON:

Actually, I almost forgot to ask... what counts as "affordable" anyway? $2,999? We're close, JVC has models a grand away from that... maybe another half a year to a year? That's not nearly as dire as all that, is it?
 
#15 ·
You mister, are abso!utely right; the lens(es) on a front projector are the most vital/essential/critical/important/expensive parts of the projected quality picture in front of our eyes.
Small sizes we don't see the details, but bigger sizes we do.
 
#16 ·
If you read some of the posts here in the forum, for example in the new Dolby cinema thread, you can see that are a lot of people living hours away from a decent cinema. In my case I live 4h away from the nearest IMAX, and the same about Dolby Atmos. So the logic for people like me is investing my money in technology I can use home any time I want, and that's where VR/AR starts to become an interesting solution.
If you think a little bit about it, wouldn't it be great if you could redesign one of your room virtually so you can have the illusion of having a large screen, or the same way you can have the same home theater that you saw here or in other web pages and you don't have the space or money to build it. These are the situations when an AR could be really useful. I know that right now the technology to achieve it isn't available, but maybe it will be in the near future and then the projector market will have a big problem.
 
#17 ·
Pff!!, keep ranting about 4k prices, I love my 1080p projector, and it´s not a even Benq W1070, nor and Epson 5030 or a Sony HW40ES.

I stopped watching movies in theatres, and I´m a happy man.

I don´t get eye cancer for watching 1080p content in a 110" at 9 ft viewing distance.

Aaaand, if I don´t have money for something I want, I just stop craving it, it´s fool to crave something you can´t get.

I life gives you lemons...
;)
 
#18 · (Edited)
You love your 1080p projector, great how wonderful for you! Welcome to 2008!

However, after being spoiled with an LG 65UB9500, an LG 31UM97 and a Galaxy S5 with 432PPI I find it absurd that there are ZERO $2,000-$3,000 4k projectors on the market at this point....and ZERO on the product availiblity horizon! Surely Benq can do a 4k version of the W1070 for under three grand.....or optoma with an HD 141x 4k version...but there is NOTHING....NOTHING on the horizon to even give us some hope!


One of the big reasons why the price is higher is the simple fact that the lens must be of much higher quality. It's not too unlike owning a full frame sensor DSLR... you need a quality glass lens to get something good out of that camera... and that will cost you some nice dough.

But really, comparing a cell phone 4K capture to what a quality 4k projector would need to perform well? It's not a very good comparison. Have you seen the footage tests of stuff like the Sony Xperia Z3? I've seen plenty of 1080p video that looked a lot better. A medium quality consumer grade 4K camera will still cost at least 2k.

And while I agree 4k matters more for projection size images than most... I'm willing to trade it for better blacks and higher dynamic range in a heart beat. :) (Something that still has tons of room for improvement.)

And finally, don't forget, projectors are and have always been, a niche market. It's always going to be a higher price when you don't sell as many. :)

EDIT ADD ON:

Actually, I almost forgot to ask... what counts as "affordable" anyway? $2,999? We're close, JVC has models a grand away from that... maybe another half a year to a year? That's not nearly as dire as all that, is it?
This is complete poppycock! Benq or Optoma could EASILY do a high quality 4k projector for under THREE GRAND if they wanted to right friggin now. Hell they could do it for well under 2 GRAND. There is a heck of a lot less tech that goes into a projector versus tiny cell phones and gigantic heavy UHTVs.

There's no 4k content.

Cart before horse.
There is a metric ton of 4k material out there now for those who put an ounce of effort into looking.
 
#22 ·
Not only is there little 4k material at this point, it's becoming apparent that to realize the full benefits of 4k over 1080p you've got to sit VERY close to the screen - as in a few feet. I don't know about your space but I sit 9 - 10 feet away, maybe enough to make a small difference, but not by much.

I'm actually about to go in the opposite direction, I'm switching from a 60" plasma to a 100" projector screen this month. The prices for a decent projector and screen still come in less than a 4k screen. I'm talking CAD here, but for a sable 100" screen and a Benq 1070 I'll be looking at about 1300 plus tax. For a basic vizio or lg 4k I'm looking at about $2000 and I'm not sure if they can even do 60fps. It actually seems like a better route - even if I have to replace the bulb every 1 1/2 years.
 
#24 · (Edited)
Forgetting for a moment that a bargain set of 4K lenses would be showing a decent amount of chromatic aberration (about as visible as it is on a w1070..which could be bad or just fine depending on how you think about it), you still need one other thing.
Either a $2000+ budget for LCoS (cheapest theater LCoS start around 2grand), OR TI to release an affordable consumer 4K DLP chip, OR you'll have to put up with the LCD screendoor effect from sitting close enough to an LCD to reap the benefits of 4K (multiplying pixels doesn't make the inter-pixel gaps magically shrink).

So pick your poison: $2k+, waiting game, screendoor, or sitting 4ft away from your 55" flatscreen.

I do agree that projectors need it more than TV's, and I do think the livable amount of chromatic aberration from a cheaper lens will still be livable for inexpensive 4K.
I also agree that I'd much rather have an inexpensive true contrast of 5000:1 or more than extra resolution that'll just end up getting compressed and bit-starved anyway. Remember that a movie at decent 4K quality will need 100-200gb of room. One movie. The streaming bandwidth required basically shows 4K streaming will be a placebo.

Now just imagine how large the file-sizes will become with not only a resolution increase, but if the rec2020 increases beyond 256 gradient. That 4tb external drive you picked up will hold 10 movies. Time to go shopping.
 
#25 ·
Where are the 4k DLP chips from Texas Instruments? I'm sure Benq would release a cheap 4k projector as soon as they could if Texas Instruments had some home theater 4k DLP chips to sell. But they don't, so no 4K. The situation is a little better on the LCD side, but progression to cheap 4k is still very slow to being a reality.

No cheap 4K DLP chips. No cheap 4k LCD (or LCOS) panels. That's what's holding everybody back.
 
#26 · (Edited)
So many posts in here are rife with excuses and failure. As if a 4k lens is such a rare and difficult commodity to source that they can only be forged from the hands of Zeus on every third Thursday of every fifth month! Spare me, the BS!

Projectors and their uses go far....FAAAAR beyond home theater use and a reasonably priced high quality 4k projector would appeal to many varied market segments. I hear so many members here ***** an moan that the projector market is shrinking, has limited appeal and will eventually fade away. Well why is that? Could it possibly be because the manufactures are lazy and half sighted with zero vision?

4K UHTVs are available everywhere in the US now as well as tablets, laptops & cellphones with insanely high DPI screens.....yet there is jack squat 4k projector offerings....geeee wonder why the projector market is loosing its appeal? What a mystery?

Currently I have an LG9500 65" 4k UHTV, and a 31" LG 4K desktop monitor and I have no problem finding tons of content....and even 1080p content upscaled on my 4k UDTV looks better than it did on my old 1080 HDTVs...so there are plenty of CONTENT reasons to go with a 4k right now. There simply is no excuse why we dont have a decent 4k projector on the market sub $3k....Hell sub 5k even!

And to the guy spouting about me not liking the W1070...I was fine with the W1070s colors, contrast & picture quality...I just simply loathed its 1080p pixel structure. If benq released an "affordable" 4k version of the W1070 I would be happy...in fact that is exactly what I am bitching about. Where the HELL are the 4k versions of those projectors? HDMI 2.0 has been out for a while now, display port has been out for ages, so there are plenty of TCONs to handle the 4k now...so what gives? We don't even have RUMORS about a 4k version of the W1070. Seriously, that is just sad!
 
#34 · (Edited)
Projectors and their uses go far....FAAAAR beyond home theater use and a reasonably priced high quality 4k projector would appeal to many varied market segments. I hear so many members here ***** an moan that the projector market is shrinking, has limited appeal and will eventually fade away. Well why is that? Could it possibly be because the manufactures are lazy and half sighted with zero vision?
Projectors have seen growth in sales, not decline.

http://www.pmaresearch.com/press-re...cording-to-latest-forecast-from-pma-research/

There simply is no excuse why we dont have a decent 4k projector on the market sub $3k....Hell sub 5k even!
Why didn't you say so?

(see attachment.)

Can we close this thread now? :)

(PS - That last bit was slight sarcasm, I'm aware that projector isn't "true" 4k)
 

Attachments

#28 ·
unfortunately I think that 4K is a lot like the 4G offered today. More of a marketing gimmick. So I would not feel like the industry is leaving anyone behind just yet. In fact its probably a good thing we dont have it yet. They can't even get the blacks levels to match the KURO line of plasmas on most LED/LCD sets but they already want to sell 4K units.... oooookay. :eek::eek::rolleyes:
 
#33 ·
is it really 4K streaming?? how do we prove its real 4K. I cant see the broadband providers allowing 4K streams. they are already running around going crazy because of netflix, hulu, prime etc...streaming in standard def 480.

just saying..... but I cant wait myself till everything is 4k... in 10 years ;)
 
#38 ·
Maybe instead of speculation we should do some research into 4K chips coming out next year. If there's a "Dark Chip 4" that could pave the way for a higher end BenQ model with a cheap 4K equivalent model the year after.

CES is coming soon, so maybe we'll see some news then.
 
#40 · (Edited)
Yes! This is the constructive conversation that I am looking for. In the lcd realm we can always lookup what panels are on the horizon by the panel makers through their various financial reporting docs. Isint Texas Instruments pretty much the only dark chip maker? What other companies can we research?


There are several. The only thing lacking is your wallet.
Not really, but if that fantasy wets your willy then have at it buddy!
 
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