Thomas J. Norton

For VERY high end home theaters, Digital Projection offers the Insight 4K projector. It has the professional 4K resolution of 4096 x 2160, and is available with either LED or laser illumination. In the latter form, it's specified for an output of 12,000 Lumens, a laser lifetime of 20,000 hours, and a color gamut beyond Rec. 709. Yours for $120,000.

With LED illumination the output drops to a still considerable 3000 Lumens, the claimed LED lifetime increases to 60,000 hours, and the price rises to $150,000. In LED form it's also claimed to be the first projector capable of the Rec.2020 color gamut. In a darkened room demonstration, however, the LED version had heavily oversaturated colors, suggesting not that there was anything wrong with the projector, but rather that the playback gamut didn't match the gamut of the source material--a guarantee of inaccurate color. The laser version was being demonstrated in the open area of the booth, and its color looked excellent.

B&O is widely known for making excellent, stylish, but very expensive products. While its BeoVision Avant 85-inch 4K/Ultra HD LCD set isn't exactly cheap at $25,000, it's not that far off from the prices its competitors charge for similarly-sized 4K sets (and cheaper than some). The set comes with a unique powered, rotating stand and remote. A B&O sibling 55-inch 4K set is also available, but its $8,000 price (the stand for this model is optional at $2,000) it's not as competitive.

Wisdom Audio teamed up for its demo with Datasat (preamp-processor), Barco (projector) Seymour Screen Excellence, and HTE (Home Theater Environments), and likely others to whom I apologize for leaving out here due to my rapidly scribbled notes. The wide-ranging selection of program material was particularly noteworthy. 2K from Blu-ray, and no Atmos in sight, but it was excellent nonetheless (though the videophile in me whispers that the gamma was a bit too high, making for rather dark and contrasty images!). HTE deserves special mention for the most stylish room at the show, which should be evident from the picture above. But HTE is from Italy, so that's not surprising!

Splitting an HDMI source to feed both a video projector and a flat panel set is an increasingly popular option in custom home theater installs. But consumer-priced splitters that can do 4K are only just starting to appear. The HDS-12i from Transformative Engineering is one of the first. It can mix output resolutions and both up- and down-scale to 4K. A typical setup might involve a 2K projector and a 4K flat screen Ultra HD TV.

The device also provides full HDCP security and will recognize different EDIDs for each display. Output 2 also can be configured for pass-through, selectable scaling, or an AVR mode which bypasses 4K and 3D to route audio to an AVR or surround pre-pro that lacks the ability to handle these formats.

The HDS-12i's main limitation is that it's only HDMI 1.4a compliant, not 2,0, but that should be adequate for today's source material. It's firmware upgradeable (though not to 2.0--that's hardware) and sells for $299.