Tom Norton

Planar Who? This company is new on the market, but has big plans. In addition to some potentially revolutionary flat panel displays, it introduced a full line of DLP projectors. This includes two 1080p designs, the PD8110 shown here ($8999, Feb 07) and the PD8150 (which adds a dynamic iris at a price to be determined, with spring 07 availability.
There are also two, less expensive 720p models.

Mitsubishi formally announced a new 1920x1080 LCD projector at CEDIA,the HC5000U, equipped with an auto iris, lens shift, and a price of $4495. The video processor is the new REON chip from Silicon Optix, lamp life is claimed to be 5000 hours, and fan noise is specified at 19dBA (a very low figure) in low lamp mode.

Marantz introduced its third new DLP projector this year, at a new (for them) lower price point. Details in the next blog entry, below.

TI featured SIM2's new 3-chip 1080p projector at their booth. While it looked great for the most part, it was hard to get a handle on just how good it really is since three of the four demo clips relied heavily or entirely on computer animation, and the fourth was a grainy, oversharpened trailer for a new upcoming <I>Rocky</I> (!) movie. Rocky 12, I think. An lovely but alarmingly enthusiastic presenter extolled the praises of TI's DLP technology until my teeth hurt. This must have been for the benefit of those in this professional CEDIA audience who may have never heard of DLP before.