RED 4K 3D laser projector = $10K - Page 16

LED's are in a rapid state development whether it be at the hardware or projector store. The key is increased energy efficiency. 120lumen/watt is pretty sweet with even higher rates on the horizon.

I read the quoted 2010 semiconductor article. Predictions "therefore forecasts that 10–20% of projectors will be laser-based by 2011” apparently were meant for investors...
Cost and size effective laser technology has not matured at the predicted rate, probably partially due to the great recession.

There is a battle between competing technologies of lasers and LEDs. One aspect that has become clear is LEDs are not bright enough for 3D, and especially LCOS or LCD active 3D.

We are finding out that to reduce 3D ghosting, the liquid crystal must be made thinner. Unfortunately this reduces 2D contrast. At this point combination 2D/3D LCD/LCOS projectors are a compromise I'm not willing to make.

We have at least one UHP DLP projector (BenQ W7000) which has good 2D and outstanding 3D performance, with a bright and zero ghost image.
By using a process of elimination (best man left standing) everything else (either here today or hyped) is not ready for prime-time. Apparently technology is so complex that is taken BenQ engineers well over 4 months to identify and enable something as simple as 1:1 pixel mapping. Proof that front projector is all to often a pathetically backward technology.

to see how these will run, everything that comes from RED is always much appreciated!

When Red says this projector is bright enough for a 15 foot screen, what do they mean? Do they mean 15ft diagonal or 15ft width?

I wouldn't be surprised if alot of companies have been avoiding LED and Laser tech until it is forced on them, with high lamp cost and low life it is more attractive to upgrade to a new projector at the end of its bulb life. When 1080p projectors with led or laser have 25,000 hr life and cost under $3k I doubt many people will upgrade as frequently as they have in the past. If RED manages good CR at the release their won't be much point in upgrading for years to come, JVC and others will have to step up and release some great projectors.

Can't really blame them for thinking like that. But I think it would be a lot easier to upgrade if there is a LED or Laser light source in a projector. The projector will not depreciate as much. You can easily put one up for sale after a year and the new owner will have a good decade of enjoyment. The smallest new feature will warrant an upgrade for many and not be out much when they upgrade. I am rooting for Red to deliver a great projector. They are going to push the hand of many. Even though some said that there will be no 4K models under $10,000 at Cedia, I think Red made sure there will be many coming for sure in Cedia 2013. Hopefully, this fall JVC and Sony bring out something similar to Red's projector and try to release theirs before Red gets a chance to release theirs. I doubt it because what Red is talking about is amazing, they caught many off guard. Now the annoying wait to see when it finally comes out and what others do to counter Red at Cedia.

I doubt they caught the big companies off guard, HDI3D already had the same tech and most probably knew that RED bought them. I expect there will be alot of LED and Laser projectors in the next yr that could have been ready much sooner if the companies had a reason to release them.

I really have no clue if they caught people off guard or not, but I do remember reading how a major company could not believe Red was releasing this projector for this price. Also, I read how it could save tens of thousands of dollars for Independent movie theaters. I know tech wise they didn't catch companies off guard because everyone new this technology existed, I was just saying price wise.

Probably width but it really doesn't matter since this is a subjective rating.

Doesn't really matter until they quantify what "bright enough" means. Bright 3D is great, but at the expense of CR and 2D (silver screen) won't be acceptable to most in the HT market. I can live with a screen compromise upgrade, but poor blacks is not going to fly coming from a JVC.

I would take issue with this. My SIM2 M.150 is plenty bright in 3D. I have a 100" screen, but I can extrapolate that the 3D would hold up on a 110 or even a 123. You may be right, however, about an LCOS or LCD implementation. Maybe that's why we've only seen LED harnessed to DLP.

The Lumunis LED powered SIM2 m.150 DLP projector is rated at 1000 lumens 2D at a cool $28k. Water cooled.
Runco offers the Q-650i LED DLP projector for $10K but with no 3D. Not too bright and air cooled.

The rage here at AVS and Amazon is the $600 LED powered Optoma 1280 * 800 ML-500 2D @ 500 lumens, rated highly at 4.5 stars.
http://www.amazon.com/Optomas-ML500-...5467591&sr=8-1

And then a Chinese company has been working with high brightness CREE Led's in model CRE-X1000PX. A projector with some rough edges:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post21951996

So where are the lasers? Mitsubishi rear projection?
Nichia makes laser diodes:
http://www.nichia.co.jp/en/product/laser_main.html

My inclination is to wait another year or two for solid state lighting to mature, unless someone introduces an overnight sensation. Any such product would be back-ordered (and as others have stated hurt existing sales). Yawn!
The world needs an Apple projector to cut through the paralysis.

There is never any point in upgrading for years to come ... until something better comes out 6 months later

I'm already at the point where I'm upgrading less frequently than I had in the past. Affordable LED/LASER options could be the reason why I upgrade next. I'm not so sure that people in the $3k+ market base their upgrades on the fact their current bulb is old. I certainly can see that in the lower priced market, but as you move up the scale, a new bulb becomes a much smaller investment from a cost percentage standpoint.

I can't wait for the day when high performance LED/LASER projectors are under $3k. I think we are a long way off from that day. I think a couple of technological advancements would need to take place first. Especially in the optical lens department.

I'm right with you, I never upgrade because of bulbs, I upgrade because of performance

A high-performance lens does make a huge difference, and you just don't see these on sub-$10K projectors. What you get is "ok", "pretty good", "not bad", and "good enough".

Does anyone have experience with rear projection 3D screens like Harkness translite stereo or DaLite 3D virtual black? Do these work well for 2D? On paper the Harkness preserves about 2x polarity compared to their best 3D front projection screen.

I assume you cannot use mirrors with rear polarized 3D?

I also wanted to know about the Da Lite Silver Lite 2.5 also. Don't hear too much about them anyways

Home Theater Mag's web site has a write-up on the Red Projector at NAB. Story is HERE.

I caught this projector at NAB on Wednesday... so after the Monday evening tweaking, but still at 2K per eye and 8 bit color. They were hoping to get it running at 4K/10bit before the end of the show, but never did (I asked Jarred).

Very interesting unit. Hard to do a critical evaluation in a setting like that, but the picture was darn good even in it's current beta state. It could use some more CR and crosstalk elimination, but RED acknowledged both of those are being addressed before we even saw it. The simultaneous L/R display made for a comfortable 3d experience, and I couldn't detect any sequential-color rainbow effect (which I often detect on some DLP sequential setups).

All in all it looks to be quite a piece of gear for the price, and may well set the bar for price/performance.

I also got to play with some of the rest of the RED camera gear I normally lust after. The new OLED based electronc viewfinder they have for their cameras is amazing.

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them based on what I saw.

-sc

What other projectors do u have experience with?

Experience?

I own a VPL-VW50, and have been waiting for the right unit to come along and upgrade. I've seen most of the Sony and JVC unitis since. I'm not a big fan of single-chip DLP, but have seen some.

I've viewed several of the 4K Sony SXRD and Christie units.

I have a yellow labrador.

Good?

-sc

I wasn't saying it as if are you qualified, just wanted you to compare the the new Red to the ones you seen. Well, that's if you saw 2D, I hear about 3D most of the time. Basically, I want to know about how it compared to a JVC, since I have one

Crosstalk ?? your the first one to say that after seeing the red 4k. as it is a polarizing system im not supprised, but none have said so. as bright as the image is from what i hear i only imagine ghosting would be enhanced.
i dose sound like a great unit and their quality has been wonderfull on the other products but its hard to avoid certain limits with technology.

Given there's more than one JVC model, and it's pretty hard to compare even production units unless you have identical enviroments and source footage, and what I saw was 3D as compared to 2D, and on a pre-production screen... I'll say what I said originally: it's pretty hard to do any cirtical evaluation.

That said, if you have any specific Q's I'm happy to relay my impressions.

I'd bet if you have one of the recent JVC DILA's in the high 5-6 digit CR range that it beats this thing. Hard to tell what was 3D crosstalk vs. the darkness floor level, however. It was also not a completely unpolluted room... but they did a decent job blacking it out.

-sc

Yeah, there was certainly some ghosting. From what Jim Jannard said in his introductory comments what we saw was improved from the first day... and they expected the next upgrade would reduce it further, along with delivering the 4K resulution to each eye, and displaying 10bit color. Jim also alluded to a better lens for the 3D glasses at some point (the units we used were Oakleys of course).

The brightness was quite good... and I suspect you are right that there is likely a real engineering challenge in increasing brightness while at the same time reducing crosstalk. I don't know if the uniformity of the laser light helps with polarization or not... as it's been indicated that the laser light is incoherant once it emergences from the optical fiber bundle.

Incidentally, I've seen the screen size reported as 24' wide... and that seems about right. Given that RED's announcement suggests that the base unit would be good for up to 15' screens, I don't know how many laser pumps they were using for the demo... the math suggests 2-3...

In any case the crosstalk I saw in the demo was easily as good as what I've I've seen in commercial RealD presentations. If it gets better from here as they move out of beta I think it bodes well.

-sc

The light would have to be re-polarised prior to the chip/s.

Since a single lens is used, I'd imagine it would have to be of very high quality, to minimise de-polarsation, as this would possibly add to crosstalk in a passive setup?

I would think the screen's polarisation retention level would be critical as well for crosstalk minimisation.

Yup... I've read the same thing that suggests a prism block in the head re-polarizes the light in the HDI-tech assumed to be used in this system. I just don't know if the uniformity of laser light helps in that arena or not.

The lens used appeared to be a 50mm Red Pro Prime PL mount lens that they sell for use with their cameras. It's a very high quality lens, but I've heard that camera lenses don't have ideal characteristics as projection lenses (specifically in iris design). My initial impression is that there would be more to gain in CR than in crosstalk rejection by improving the lens, however.

-sc

Did they show any 2D on the RED?


Not for me nor I imagine many others who are perfectly happy with their JVC lenses.

Not in the presentation I was at. It was 3D the entire time, including titles.

-sc

yes the light would have to be polarized at the chip level. but the leans should not have any issues with maintaining polarization, the screen would be one factor in ghosting but circualr or linear polarization has a limit as to how much extiction is possible. on contrast we talk about levels of 500:-100,000:1 as far as the signal to noise reatio.. RealD on axis is ~200:1 signal to noise on the right screen and correct setup. that is actually pretty good.
its frustrating as my filter system is 1500-2500:1 in the right setup with no silver screen and to hear something as great as what RED is doing that has any crosstalk/ghosting when there is more cutting edge filter tech. heck even Dolby with its color issues beats RealD, XpanD, Master Image and the Technicolor 3D systems.

I know the way the red 4k is setup not it cannot use my filters but there are ways. i dont expect them to change what they have invested in. constant passive 4k in each eye at 120hz is a great thing. maybe someone else will want to take things up a notch and do this with more cutting edge tech.

On a design note if one uses two image systems or light engines weather or not they are fed with one light source you lose 50% of the light when you combine the two with a beam splitter. dual lenses reatain most of the energy. now a single LCoS imager split into two lenses with 3D filters after the imager but inside each lens also retains most all the energy...

unless there is something special inside the light guide RED is using it will merge coherent. lots of laser systems use fiber guides and always retain the speckle. it must be something in the laser head or image head that reduces it.