This week Denver is the site of the home theater expo called CEDIA. We are here to gather the news and divine the trends that will reshape this industry over the next year or so. There are several interesting industry wide developments, but for today, let’s take a quick look at two of them: the proliferation of new 1080p projectors at attractive price points and the expansion of light rejection screen offerings.

Chris Chinnock
Sr. Analyst and Sr. Editor
of Insight Media

On the 1080p front, this is clearly on the lips of everyone at the show. This includes many new LCD-TV models with 1080p resolution, a few plasma models and demos, and a whole new crop of front projectors with full HD resolution. So far, we have counted about a dozen models from the likes of Cinetron, Digital Projection, InFocus, JVC, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Planar, projectiondesign, Optoma, Runco, Sony, Sharp and Sim2. Many are DLP models with single-chip square pixel solutions (wobulation-based projectors are not typically offered to the more discerning custom-install crowd). But Sony, JVC and Cinetron are offering equally high quality LCOS projectors. Panasonic is even offering 1080p projectors based on 3LCD technology.

Performance on what we’ve seen so far is very good indeed. And, the price points for some of these models will raise eyebrows, too. Sony’s new VPL-VW50 LCOS projector for example, will retail for about $5K - half the price of the preceding model. Mitsubishi’s new DLP 1080 model is scheduled to retail for $4,500.

These developments will put a lot of pressure on other suppliers to offer similar pricing - or show a compelling value proposition on why they’re worth more money. This is both good and bad news. Good because the lower pricing will open up many more opportunities to sell projectors into the home, but bad because as the price declines into the more mainstream consumer channels it may spill over into the CEDIA channel, making for a more challenging business environment for these dealers.

The other trend associated with these projectors is the emergence of light rejecting screens. DNP pioneered this technology with the SuperNova screens, which are being adopted by the CEDIA channel. Runco for example, is working with the company now to perfect an offering.

Stewart Filmscreen has also debuted a new screen, which the company says has been tuned for best use with Sony’s VPL-VW50 projector. The two are demonstrating the combo, but not necessarily offering a bundled solution.

Planar is debuting its XScreen here at CEDIA and even HP has new screen technology it is planning to commercialize with a screen partner.

All of this is aimed at allowing front projectors to be used in homes with the lights on without compromising the contrast very much. The CEDIA guys will love this as it should enable big-screen projection systems to move into multi-purpose living rooms instead of being relegated to the darkened theater.

We will have complete coverage of CEDIA in the next edition of our newsletter, Projection Monthly with Flat Panel Coverage.

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