Scott Wilkinson

For those who are challenged more by space than budget, Runco's new LS-100d can be mounted flush to the wall directly above or below the screen, taking only 18 inches of depth and producing a 92-inch image. Its LED light source turns on instantly and will last 50,000 hours while consuming 70 percent less power than a conventional lamp. It ain't cheap at $20,000, but that includes an outboard DHD4 video processor.

Runco upped the 3D ante at its press conference with the new D-113d dual-engine projector system. Each 3-chip DLP engine includes twin UHP lamps, which means even 3D images have plenty of brightness—the company claims it can fill screens up to 420 inches diagonally. Instead of linear polarization to separate the left and right images as in the D-73d, the new model uses spectral filtering similar to Infitec/Dolby 3D, though this system was developed by Panavision with five spectral bands rather than Infitec's three.

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.

Projectors are always big at CEDIA, and Panasonic has two new models on display. I already covered the PT-AE7000U in a previous post, but new at the show is the PT-AR100, an entry-level, 1920x1080 LCD model spec'd with 2800 lumens of light output and a dynamic contrast ratio of 50,000:1. Features include a 2x zoom lens, lockable joystick to adjust the horizontal and vertical lens shift, and the ability to change the lamp and filter without unmounting the unit. It will be available by the end of October for a list price of $1999.