Scott Wilkinson

At the award-presentation ceremony for its annual international design competition on July 4 at the Essen Aalto Theatre in Essen, Germany, the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen bestowed its prestigious "red dot label for high design quality" on six Sony products. Among a record number of 1857 entries in 12 product categories, the international jury selected the following Sony products: HDR-FX1E HDV1080i camcorder, Qualia 001 Creation Box (a video processor/upconverter that is not available in the US), <A href="http://ultimateavmag.com/videoprojectors/504sony/">Qualia 004 SXRD front projector</A>, Qualia 005 LCD flat-panel television, <A href="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/directviewandptvtelevisions/705sony/">Qualia 006 RPTV</A>, and DAV-SR4W wireless home theater in a box.

The latest budget projector from Sony is the VPL-HW10, which should be available in the fall for $3500. It boasts a dynamic contrast ratio of 30,000:1.

At yesterday's Sony press conference, the company didn't demonstrate the new VPL-VW1000ES 4K projector—that had to wait until this morning at Sony's booth on a Stewart Ultramatte 150 screen measuring 180 inches diagonally. As with most Sony presentations, this one was mostly talking and not much demo material, but that material was worth the wait—except for the first clip, which was from Resident Evil at 1080p upconverted to 4K. The clip exhibited severe banding and solarization, which I learned was due to sourcing and processing issues, not the projector. (The original file was 16-bit, which was truncated to 10-bit in the server and then 8-bit for HDMI to the projector.) Also, this clip was projected using Motionflow frame interpolation, which I don't mind, but Tom Norton objected to that more than the banding.

By contrast, the trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man due next year was in native 4K from the server, and it looked, well, amazing. Detail was stunning, and the blacks were better than yesterday's showing of the same clip from the Sony 4K digital-cinema projector. After the formal presentation, I confirmed that the VW1000ES can indeed accept a 4K signal over a single HDMI 1.4 connection. Of course, that won't help most consumers see native 4K content, which will be nonexistent for at least a couple of years to come.

In the realm of front projectors, Sony unveiled the VPL-VW85 (though Tom Norton has already conducted a review of a pre-production unit for <I>Home Theater</I>, and he liked it very much). With a new auto iris, it claims a dynamic contrast ratio of 120,000:1, and it refreshes the image at 120Hz with dark-frame insertion, a Sony hallmark. It should hit retailers in October for around $8000.