Mitsubishi's 65-inch Laser TV prototype Revealed! Overpriced? - Page 2

Mitsubishi is quickly becoming a second tier player in HDTV. They used to be a standard like Sony. Now Samsung generally plays second banana. They need to get this thing out quickly and at a competitive price. If they are talking prices higher than an LCD in the 65" category people will walk right past a brilliant picture and buy the established plasma and LED RPTV options for that size category. Samsung already supports 3D on their DLP sets and the dualview is a niche market (although cool). Maybe everything might be enabled on a higher end HDTV, but they need to get the technology into the market quickly. A lot of people just want the intrinsic benefits of more color and the sharpness that only coherent light can provide.

Also, are front projectors even possible when concerning safety? The cabinet and screen contain the coherent laser light, but while being projected it will pack quite a punch. Looking up into the light of a front projector is painful now. Imagine if the light was coherent?

Considering that the new line of ultra thin DLP displays from Samsung will be competitively priced, supporting 3D, and some models using LED's which offer wider color gamut, Mitsubishi has a lot of convincing to do.

Still always nice to see alternative technology out there in the market!

Yeah unless the pricing is either wrong, drops quickly, or the images provided by this technology are just staggeringly superior, Samsung DLP sets could be the next unit I buy. 30,000 hour lamp life is plenty but I will admit the thought of laser being able to produce the same colors and vividness on hour 30000 as it did on hour 100 is exciting.

Novalux are supposed to be showing a front projector at ces. i read it somewhere last night, forgot where though.

If I understand the tech correctly, one major advantage of Laser DLPs over LED or conventional lamp DLPs is the elimination of the color wheel. Because there are three individual lasers (R, B, G), there is no need for sequential color (all three colors can be illuminating the same mirrors at the same time), and therefore no rainbows. And because colors can be processed in parallel rather than sequentially, I also assume that this would increase the temporal resolution of the DLP technology.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, do these sets use non-wobulated DLP chips? And still wondering about viewing angle - same old "poor" RPTV viwing angle or is this better with laser illumination?

No, the lasers will still have to be turned on and off sequentially. Otherwise it would just be displaying black and white images. Actually, turning all of them on would be a pretty cool mode for B&W movies.

I can't stand wobulated images. So, personally, I wouldn't buy this unless the pixels were square.

Of course I am not saying all the lasers are always on! Clearly they need to be pulsed on and off. But say you need to display a color on a pixel that is some part R, some part B, and some part G, you can mix those colors quite easily by pulsing the R, G, and B lasers *at the same time* (each in their own independent pulsing cycle), as opposed to a color wheel where you can only display red when the color wheel is on red, display green when the color wheel is on green, etc. This would seem to be a huge advantage!

No color wheel in LED RPTVs either. That's why I 've been saying laser is just a minor, if any, improvement over LED sets from Samsung. Both have insane life, no light output deterioration , no lamp, no wheel, low heat, low power consumption, instant on. Both allow for shallower cases.

Now, when they stick a colorimeter to laser TV and tell you it has wider gamut, it won't necessarily translate to wider gamut as perceived by human eye.

Lasers produce highly coherent light - now, to what extent and how it can be used to the benefit of visual quality in a TV, I dunno

And a brand new 1080p 50" _proven_ LED RPTV from Samsung is $1400 .

Didn't realize LED DLPs have no color wheel - three independent RGB light sources are used, and can be on at the same time? If so, I agree there would appear to be little benefit of laser RPTV over LED.

Does anyone think Mit will come out with, say a 50 inch Laser TV? Any fact, fiction and/or rumor will be appreciated. Let the speculation begin................

dunno, last year mis said that they will only have 57 inches and up, everything below would be king in the lcd/plasma market. rep is king in the larger market.

so pretty much the only thing blacker maybe are sed and that new kuro prototype thats coming in 09

ok but within a big screen size at 1080p lol and 240hz

LED backlit DLP tv's currently available (using PhlatLight led's) also eliminate the color wheel:
http://www.phlatlight.com/

At present, given that LED-based DLP sets have already been in the market for over a year and are constantly improving (sets shown at CES have even brighter pictures and 500,000:1 contrast, 100k lifespan) I can see no benefit that these future laser light source sets provide.

Also, when looking into this, l would be cautioous of the claims of Novalux for the characteristics of competing technologies- they tend compare underperforming previous generation LED products to the potential performance of laser products that might be available sometime in the future.

those were prototypes , the new samsungs for 2008 are 10k:1 contrast still

Any reviews from those who saw the Laster TV demo?

I was hoping for at least a 73 inch display (really hoping for an 80 inch). I don't see any mention of anything but a 65 inch?

I'm sure they'll have a 73'' announced some time this yr. Where's the articles & videos from the demo of this Laser TV? I want to read/see peoples impressions from the demo?

That information was not posted on any Samsung press releases, it was only seen on engadget? The only other site reporting news concerning (HLxxA650/A750) models was Gizmoto which mentioned no specs for either series 6 DLP or series 7 LED DLP displays. A brief blurb was also on PCMag.com.

I'm not sure any of those specs are valid.

Novalux, Inc., developer of Necsel laser technology, will demonstrate a proof-of-concept JVC home theater laser projector during the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), January 7-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The demo will illustrate the enhanced image quality Necsel lasers provide when combined with JVC's proprietary D-ILA® (Digital Direct Drive Image Light Amplifier) high-definition (HD) projection technology.

Found at:
http://www.oled-display.info

i wonder if jvc is or has dropped out of rptv buisness though, since no rp announcements.

as mentioned above, the 500,000:1 was for a prototype. Here is the TI DLP press release:
http://www.dlp.com/tech/press_releas...1340&year=2008

Another potential enhancement for Lasers vs LED in FP as opposed to RP is the narrow spectrum of the emitted light, possibly allowing a screen to be developed with high ambient light rejection. The theory goes like this... The current dark screen technologies absorb some frequencies of light and reflect others. For current projectors this only works so well due to the very wide spectrum emitted through the color filters in the DLP color wheel. With a laser light source, there are only 3 very small light spectrum peaks to reflect off the screen, EVERYTHING outside those 3 small frequency bands can be absorbed. Novalux laser emits the following; blue (460-nm), green (532-nm) and red (620-nm), with a spectral width of 1-2 nm. design the screen to reflect blue from 458-462nm (4nm window) and do the same with green and red and you now have deep blacks and vivid projected colors. Will this screen be easy to design? I have know idea, but I'm sure it is possible. This would greatly increase the adoption factor of FP due to the huge number of potential rooms that could take advantage of such a setup. No longer would FP be the realm of "fanatical cave dwellers".

For the RPTV crowd I think another potential advantage of Laser over LED is to do with the laser light being polarized by definition. I think the front surface of the RPTV's screen could with a simple polarizer aligned to the laser's polarized light orientation which should reject over 50% or ambient light while reflecting close to 100% of the projected light. My polarizer assumptions may be 180 degrees out, or totally out in left field...

Just a couple of guesses about why it's worth developing the laser driven DLP set.

If they deliver a great picture and 65" + sizing at 10" thick ,I think they will sell a ton of them around said quoted price

I agree, I don't see there being a big market for laser RPTV unless they undercut plasma by a fair margin. It was stated by Novalux last year that the laser light setup could be produced in volume for 50% of the cost of the typical DLP light engine. I hope they can be produced for that price point.

Keep in mind they are getting rid of quite a few parts in the light path. If this is true, we shouldn't see a huge of a jump in price. If they can keep the 10" depth at 65" and keep the price $1-2K below comparable LCD and Plasma offerings we might see these hang around for a while. Keep in mind 65" Plasma is around $6500-9000, 65" LCD is around $5500 (all these have contrast ratios in the 5-10K range), while Sony's 70" LCD is $32,999.00. Not sure on the picture from the Sony 70", but the 65" aren't exactly cutting edge in contrast or color reproduction. The current Mitsubishi's 65" DPL set runs $1800 or so, seems they should be able to undercut LCD and Plasma on price.

I'd also be skeptical of the pricing quote from Wired: "The Lasers will be released late this year, around Black Friday, and will retail over the price of current LCDs. " Since Wired didn't get the size of the TV they were looking at correct, (All the Laser sets in the room were 65" not 50" as stated in the Wired article.) what are the chances they didn't goof on the pricing info? My guess is the quote should have been "and will retail over the price of current DLPs."? Could very well be wrong.

Also Keep in mind Mitsubishi skipped LED DLP development and went straight for laser. Seems they bet big, I'm guessing they see potential or they would have just went LED like Samsung. Can't imagine they goofed so much on costs that it will make their set retail 4x times what it currently does.