Audio Video News

If you thought 1080p is as good as it gets, think again. Long known for its reference-quality audio products, Meridian has announced a new video projector with five times the resolution of 1080p. Dubbed the 810 Reference Video Projector, this 140-pound behemoth uses three D-ILA panels, each with a resolution of 4096x2400 for a total of nearly 10 megapixels.

Based on a similar JVC projector that is designed for professional flight simulators, the 810 is intended for the ultra-high-end home theater market. How ultra-high-end, you ask? A mere $185,000 gets you the projector, an outboard video processor, an ISCO3 anamorphic lens with motorized sled, and two complete calibrations—one for a white screen such as the Stewart Studiotek 130 and another for a gray screen such as the Stewart GrayHawk.

The calibration process, which was designed by video guru William Phelps, takes four days for each type of screen material. In addition to grayscale, color accuracy, and other typical parameters, the process also focuses on white-field and color uniformity, with less than 0.3% deviation in both across the entire screen. The calibration ends up putting 16 foot-lamberts (the SMPTE standard for commercial cinemas) on a 2.35:1 screen up to 24 feet wide.

Unlike its JVC counterpart, the 810 does not mask the imaging chips, which have a native aspect ratio of 17:10. To fill a 16:9 and 2.35:1 screen, the system must do some overscanning, which uses more pixels than masking. Even better, Stewart can make custom 17:10 screens for the 810.

The outboard processor is based on a chipset from Marvell and connects to the projector with four DVI cables that drive quadrants of the D-ILA panels. It can accept any signal from 480i to 1080p and upscale it to 10 megapixels. Interestingly, the processor has only two inputs—one HDMI and one DVI—so most systems will need a switcher upstream. However, it also has 12 memories called "phantom inputs" that can be tweaked for different sources.

If you haven't heard of Marvell, it makes chipsets for various applications—for example, the WiFi chipset in the PS3 and iPhone. The company is now entering the A/V market with a suite of technologies under the Qdeo ("Quiet Video") marketing moniker; click here for more info.

All of this sounds great, but how does it look? I was fortunate enough to attend a sneak preview at Stewart Filmscreen in Torrance, California, on July 22, and all I can say is, Wow!

Well, okay, I can say more than that. The demo was presented on a 14-foot-wide, 2.35:1 Studiotek 130 (not perforated), and it did not include any native 4K content—we'll see that at the official launch during CEDIA in September. Instead, we saw lots of 1080p from a TViX hard-disk server upconverted to 10MP. The server had off-air HDTV broadcasts from NBC and PBS, clips ripped from Blu-ray and HD DVD titles, and QuickTime HD material such as one might download. Unfortunately, the TViX box can only output 60Hz, but the projector can accept 24fps and display it at 48Hz.

At the demo, the tiny TViX hard-disk server sat atop the Marvell Qdeo-powered processor, sending 1080p clips at 60Hz.

Even though the content was upconverted 1080p, it looked far better than any 1080p I've ever seen. The white-field and color uniformity really paid off in the depth of the image, which looked positively three-dimensional. Blacks were stunning, colors were gorgeous, and detail was breathtaking.

That isn't to say there weren't a few glitches—for example, I noticed a bit of vertical stretching on 16:9 material and slight horizontal stretching on 2.35 clips. The Meridian reps admitted there were still a few kinks to work out, which, I'm told, were already fixed by the time the system was shown in San Francisco later that week.

After the demo, I contemplated the awesome power of this incredible projector.

Of course, there is no native 4K commercial content available—yet. But if Fox has its way, there could be in the future. Still, what this system does with 1080p is almost magical, so those with $185,000 burning a hole in their pocket can easily surpass anything their neighbors might have.