Premiere Design

If $100,000 for the Force One DLP projector is too rich for your blood and/or you don't need to light up a 50-foot screen, Cineversum offers an attractive alternative—the new BlackWing Four LCoS projector.

Available in matte black or a faux carbon-fiber finish, the BlackWing Four boasts a dynamic contrast ratio of 70,000:1 while retaining details in dark areas thanks to a proprietary process called True Cinema Black. HQV video processing enhances the input signal and removes video noise, and a color-management system provides gain and saturation controls for each of the three primary and three secondary colors—though it should also include a hue control for each color to be considered a complete CMS.

The all-glass lens offers motorized zoom, focus, and lens shift, making placement and orientation very easy. Even better, the Cinemax anamorphic-lens option lets you fill a 2.35:1 screen with Cinemascope movies. Interestingly, the anamorphic lens does not sit on a motorized sled; instead, it remains fixed in place, and the projector's aspect-ratio control lets you switch between 2.35:1 and 1.78:1 with constant height. This requires the video processor to compensate for the lens' horizontal stretch when displaying 16:9 content—not my favorite approach, but if any processor can do a good job of it, HQV can.

So how much? $17,325 for the projector in either finish, and an extra $9825 for the anamorphic lens. That ain't chicken feed, but it's a whole lot less than the company's flagship Force One. The BlackWing Four might not be able to light up a 50-foot screen, but it should perform admirably in most real-world home theaters.