AVS › AVS Forum › Display Devices › Digital Hi-End Projectors - $3,000+ USD MSRP › Kroma, the first LED DLP from projectiondesign.
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Kroma, the first LED DLP from projectiondesign.

post #1 of 84
5/14/09 at 5:34am
Thread Starter 
Thought this news should have its own thread.

Kroma will be available from June 2009.

Announced on an Italian website; via http://translate.google.com/translat...istory_state0=

Quote:


Kroma, the first LED DLP from projectiondesign.

"Even avielo by projectiondesign is ready to launch on the market its solution to DLP with LED backlight. This will reduce consumption and increase both the efficiency and quality of the image, thanks to a greater gamut and the absence of the rainbow "


Kroma, one of the first home cinema DLP projectors a single chip to use LED technology as the light source is the result of an extensive research and development at the headquarters of projectiondesign in Fredrikstad, Norway.

Joe Manning, International Market Manager, Home Theater in avielo by projectiondesign, explains: "From one point of view of quality, an LED source offers a contrast ratio of infinity and the complete absence of the 'rainbow'. This means that levels of Kroma produces infinitely black blacks. "

In addition to an improved contrast, the light source LED Kroma offers a color gamut wider to achieve the ultimate in performance and a colorimetric quality that is impressing cinema purists and old sophisticated fans of TV.

In comparison to a standard dual projector lamp, Kroma has a lower consumption by 50 percent. The use of a light source that does not need to be reciprocated also makes it cost efficient and eco-sustainable.

"We are delighted to bring Kroma on the market in a period where energy consumption and operating costs of AV equipment are under review," says Manning.

Kroma will be available from June 2009.

LED from Phillips?
Reply
Reply

AVS Top Picks

post #2 of 84
5/14/09 at 5:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by coolscan View Post

Thought this news should have its own thread.

Kroma will be available from June 2009.

Announced on an Italian website; via http://translate.google.com/translat...istory_state0=



LED from Phillips?


It sounds like standard marketing B.S. of every single press release I've ever heard. Sorry to sound bitter, but LED is my most anticipated projector advancement, and it just seems like it'll be a LONG wait until any of us will actually see one in person, let alone afford it. At least there's forward movement.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 84
5/14/09 at 5:58am
50% lower power consumption than a dual lamp unit...i.e. the same as a single lamp unit. I wonder what the output might be, and how they intend to manage the output needed for a projector while taking advantage of the switching capability of LEDs. Creating local dimming in a panel is enough of a challenge, but in a projector, well, I'll be very surprised if the infinite contrast ratio is much of an advantage at all. You can get black with a lamp based unit, too, if you turn it off. We have already seen in the flat panels how useless that is.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 84
5/14/09 at 6:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cbaseuser View Post

It sounds like standard marketing B.S. of every single press release I've ever heard. Sorry to sound bitter, but LED is my most anticipated projector advancement, and it just seems like it'll be a LONG wait until any of us will actually see one in person, let alone afford it. At least there's forward movement.

There are actually going to be many this year at Cedia. But, not cheap...that is the problem.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 84
5/14/09 at 7:10am
Three things peak my interest with LED projection. Expanded color space, saturation
and claimed infinite contrast ratio. There have been a few prototype displayed at Cedia and other trade shows and none came close to displaying black beyond today's lamp driven system so it will be interesting to see what is delivered once in production as a final product. The technology in its infancy has potential but I am curious how many generations it will take before its delivers anything close to the hyped "infinite contrast"
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 84
5/14/09 at 7:15am
Infinite contrast is easy. Just put up a white 100IRE test pattern and look at it. Then put up a black 0 IRE window, and close your eyes. Voila!
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 84
5/14/09 at 9:13am
No mention of lumen output, so it must be LOW. My guess would be under 500 lumens.

IB
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 84
5/14/09 at 9:19am
Maybe, but consider that an 500 Lumen LED light source will be brighter than a 700 Lumen UHP light source after a couple hundred hours, if not sooner.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 84
5/14/09 at 9:57am
slighty off topic...My Samsung LED / LCD is giving me the the same satisfaction as my trusty Sony XBR CRT. Nice colors, depth, and contrast. My DLP projector is good, but I still love the look of my old CRT, Hopefully LED based projectors will narrow that gap or even break new ground in projector performance.

Joey
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 84
5/14/09 at 10:06am
Sounds good so far, I hope to see the Kroma next weekend and hopefully get some more info on its performance and price.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 84
5/14/09 at 10:33am
Yeah none of the LED's I have seen to date have been light cannon's. But, still plenty for the majority of room setups. Plus as others have said, there are other advantages.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 84
5/15/09 at 8:28am
http://www.avielo.com/HighEnd/pdf/av...20EN%20web.pdf
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 84
5/15/09 at 8:49am
"about 600 lumens."

What do we think this means in real life? If this is accurate and at 6500k, that would not be too bad.
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 84
5/15/09 at 11:42am
Sounds to me like they are simply turning of the LED's for 'full off', hence the 'infinite' on/off contrast. The PDF states 'system contrast' > 2000, up to '7500' adjusted. That sounds like typical DLP contrast to me.
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 84
5/15/09 at 11:49am
So is it 600 ANSI lumen at a static contrast ratio >2000:1.
Then I would like to know what the lumen output is at maximum static contrast?
RBE at 24x must be gone!
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 84
5/17/09 at 9:32am
Jason. How many HT LEDs protypes have you seen? I`ve only seen two and they both used the Phat (hope that`s spelled right, too lazy to look it up) LEDs which are known to have about a 600 ANSI limit lighting a DLP. The lens effective aperture would have a lot to do with the actual ANSI out.


What does the 2000 system contrast actually mean? And how is it adjustable to 7500?

Assuming the price is a little south of $30K, will it sell? It would save power (oversees is much bigger on going green than we are) and one would never have to replace the LEDs, the machine would be throw away obsolete before that would happen.

So exactly what benefits does one get. A wider gamut than the standard for TV and movies No thanks. Colors spending more time on the screen much as a three chip machine improves the solidarity of the image but it still wouldn`t approach a three chipper in this regard.

A machine like this is going to at least need a DI and I doubt this has one.


I really am getting a little tired of manufacturers presenting a spec without a definition. useful contrast improvement? System contrast? Adjustable to, how?

Suppose this thing was $15-20K street, would it sell?
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 84
5/17/09 at 9:55am
"What does the 2000 system contrast actually mean? And how is it adjustable to 7500?"

My guess is that 2000 is static/native CR and 7500 is duty-cycling the LED's to behave as dynamic iris.
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 84
5/17/09 at 10:32am
This projector will go obsolete faster than you can sneeze. If it sold for 2K it would be an OK deal. Any more than that and you are throwing money down a hole.

IB
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 84
5/17/09 at 11:25am
I put an email in to a guy that is involved with PD as a tester/consultant of sorts. Great guy. I asked him for the 411 on the Kroma. I will let you know what I find out.
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 84
5/17/09 at 12:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephan View Post

Sounds good so far, I hope to see the Kroma next weekend and hopefully get some more info on its performance and price.

Stephan: Just for info, the german head of distr is there on thirsday and friday. This fox, he didn't tell me that...
Reply
Reply
post #21 of 84
5/17/09 at 12:11pm
"If it sold for 2K it would be an OK deal."

If it performs as well as, say, a Planar 8150, w/same brightness and no lamp replacement required, why should it sell for a fraction of its price?
Reply
Reply
post #22 of 84
5/17/09 at 12:35pm
I am very skeptical about LED lighting.

First, in the only widely available commercial LED light source displays I know of--Samsung rear projectors and LCD flat panels (not the local dimming units)--the LED-lit versions perform WORSE than the conventionally illuminated alternatives. They have higher black levels or worse screen uniformity or both.

Second, what are the purported benefits of LED illumination?

1. Longer lamp life. This simply relieves consumers of the cost of replacing the lamp every 750-1000 hrs or so. But the increased cost of LED more than outweighs this advantage.

2. Quicker start-up times. This is a small usability advantage that has no impact on image quality and hardly justifies the higher cost.

3. Reduction of DLP color separation artifacts. This is a real advantage for those who are very sensitive to this. However, modern single-chip DLPs have virtually eliminated this problem in any case with conventional technology. What percentage of the population is bothered by rainbows from Planar or Marantz DLP single-chip projectors? For those who are not sensitive to this in the first place, LEDs make no difference at all.

4. Wider color gamut. You don't need LED for this. Conventional DLPs are quite capable of providing gamuts out to the DCI standard. But more importantly, why would we want this? This is exactly what JVC has valiantly and successfully labored to fix--a pointlessly oversatured gamut that greatly exceeds production standards. A wider gamut is no more than a marketing gimmick that decreases image quality. Unless and until we get widely available source material mastered in wider gamuts, an extended gamut is a problem to be solved through calibration, not a "feature" to be celebrated.

Home theater technology is getting very close to the place where high-end audio got many years ago. The quality of performance has advanced to the point that all the low-hanging fruit was picked long ago. There is simply very little to be gained in the way of increased performance.

So what are we left with? Only marketing strategies designed to convince consumers of the need to invest in a "new" technology. New doesn't necessarily mean better. In this case, it may very well mean worse.
Reply
Reply
post #23 of 84
5/17/09 at 2:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TomHuffman View Post

I am very skeptical about LED lighting.

First, in the only widely available commercial LED light source displays I know of--Samsung rear projectors and LCD flat panels (not the local dimming units)--the LED-lit versions perform WORSE than the conventionally illuminated alternatives. They have higher black levels or worse screen uniformity or both.

Second, what are the purported benefits of LED illumination?

1. Longer lamp life. This simply relieves consumers of the cost of replacing the lamp every 750-1000 hrs or so. But the increased cost of LED more than outweighs this advantage.

2. Quicker start-up times. This is a small usability advantage that has no impact on image quality and hardly justifies the higher cost.

3. Reduction of DLP color separation artifacts. This is a real advantage for those who are very sensitive to this. However, modern single-chip DLPs have virtually eliminated this problem in any case with conventional technology. What percentage of the population is bothered by rainbows from Planar or Marantz DLP single-chip projectors? For those who are not sensitive to this in the first place, LEDs make no difference at all.

4. Wider color gamut. You don't need LED for this. Conventional DLPs are quite capable of providing gamuts out to the DCI standard. But more importantly, why would we want this? This is exactly what JVC has valiantly and successfully labored to fix--a pointlessly oversatured gamut that greatly exceeds production standards. A wider gamut is no more than a marketing gimmick that decreases image quality. Unless and until we get widely available source material mastered in wider gamuts, an extended gamut is a problem to be solved through calibration, not a "feature" to be celebrated.

Home theater technology is getting very close to the place where high-end audio got many years ago. The quality of performance has advanced to the point that all the low-hanging fruit was picked long ago. There is simply very little to be gained in the way of increased performance.

So what are we left with? Only marketing strategies designed to convince consumers of the need to invest in a "new" technology. New doesn't necessarily mean better. In this case, it may very well mean worse.

I a agree that a wider gamut means nothing if there is not source material for it but

The leds out put can be controlled with on off times of 1 usec and have up to 255 gradations in output. that means you effectively have an extremely fast adjustable iris for each color. also you can adjust the output power without using an Iris and without shifting the color spectrum

You should be able to get rid of the fan and the color wheel and reduce dithering artifacts considerably on both single chip and 3 chip dlps
Reply
Reply
post #24 of 84
5/17/09 at 2:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by inky blacks View Post

This projector will go obsolete faster than you can sneeze. If it sold for 2K it would be an OK deal. Any more than that and you are throwing money down a hole.

IB

"$2k ok deal"???? You are a moron sorry.
Reply
Reply
post #25 of 84
5/17/09 at 2:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by inky blacks View Post

This projector will go obsolete faster than you can sneeze. If it sold for 2K it would be an OK deal. Any more than that and you are throwing money down a hole.

IB

This will certainly not be a cheap projector. Some quality aspect will not go down quickly though. Have you noticed the lens in the referenced information sheet pdf. This is a superb quality lens and something like this will always cost real money. I have seen it and held it in my hands (plural in case you missed it). So yes the electronics will get cheaper but the mechanical and optical side of things have a price associated with real quality.
Reply
Reply
post #26 of 84
5/17/09 at 5:06pm
Look what you can get for pocket change these days. If it were a laser projector with 2,000 lumens, that would be another story.

Epson PowerLite Pro Cinema 7100 Projector

http://www.projectorcentral.com/Epso...inema_7100.htm

Street Price (USD) :$2,999
Brightness (Lumens) :1800 ANSI
Contrast (Full On/Off) :18000:1
Audible Noise:30.0 dB
Eco-Mode:22.0 dB
Weight:16.1 lbs
Reply
Reply
post #27 of 84
5/17/09 at 5:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TomHuffman View Post

Second, what are the purported benefits of LED illumination?

1. Longer lamp life. This simply relieves consumers of the cost of replacing the lamp every 750-1000 hrs or so. But the increased cost of LED more than outweighs this advantage.

I agree, this is of dubious benefit to many here, considering we rarely buy a lamp that's not included in a projector

Quote:
2. Quicker start-up times. This is a small usability advantage that has no impact on image quality and hardly justifies the higher cost.

Well here's a consideration. With traditional lamps, you want to minimize restarts because startup/shutdown are the hardest operations. Would our usage model change if we could fire it up for 5 minutes, turn it off/on without thinking about lamp life?

Quote:
3. Reduction of DLP color separation artifacts.

4. Wider color gamut.

You're forgetting/neglecting the contrast benefits. Right now DLPs are horribly inefficient, the spoke time means a lot of light is projected for black that doesn't do us any good. Eliminating that waste light could have a significant effect on CR. This is where I hold out hope for LED illumination. Eliminating filtered light source to create primaries, spoke time, it will be interesting to see just how much of a positive effect eliminating all that waste light has.

And then there's the before mentioned dynamic lighting possibilities....

Quote:
Home theater technology is getting very close to the place where high-end audio got many years ago. The quality of performance has advanced to the point that all the low-hanging fruit was picked long ago. There is simply very little to be gained in the way of increased performance.

So what are we left with? Only marketing strategies designed to convince consumers of the need to invest in a "new" technology. New doesn't necessarily mean better. In this case, it may very well mean worse.

Yeah, LED and Laser hold a lot of promise, but you can always go lazy and do what Samsung did, just swap out the traditional lamp with LEDs, which does nobody any good. Hopefully FP manufacturers will skip the lazy step and use LEDs and lasers to improve performance.
Reply
Reply
post #28 of 84
5/17/09 at 8:01pm
"Longer lamp life. This simply relieves consumers of the cost of replacing the lamp every 750-1000 hrs or so."

Not so for those of us who need all the lumens of a new lamp and will be wanting after a couple of hundred hours.

But that's assuming the LED pj doesn't cost more.

"You're forgetting/neglecting the contrast benefits."

The CR spec's indicate we'll have to wait longer for that to be realized.
Reply
Reply
post #29 of 84
5/17/09 at 8:42pm
Basically, I said most of this in my short post. I would expect that for a projector at this street price, the adjusted contrast would have to be in the 100,000 to 1 class. We are now effectively achieving 35,000 to 1 or so now with decent lumens. a non decreasing 600 with am adjusted on\\off of 5000 won`t cut it.

Are projectors good enough now Tom? Surely you jest in saying they are. The Lumis is getting close for its street price. Better convergence and a better lens would I'd say be good enough but even then on\\off and ANSI CR still have a way to go. But a tight convergence spec and lenses such as in the PD line up and HT5000 by Sim2 would substantially raise the cost.
Reply
Reply
post #30 of 84
5/18/09 at 8:00am
If I paraphrase what info I got, "IMO PD is a bit early to announce the new projector (I viewed it about a month ago), and I'm currently not completely happy with the performance in terms of "correctness"- colors somewhat oversaturated and greyscale wasn't 100% . My Avielo Spectra is definitely better...But I'm sure they will come around - price is about 30,000 uro"
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home

AVS Top Picks

AVS › AVS Forum › Display Devices › Digital Hi-End Projectors - $3,000+ USD MSRP › Kroma, the first LED DLP from projectiondesign.