Well, I have to mostly disagree with you. You make a couple of good points, but blaming the dealers won’t get the job done. I hate to point a finger at the audience, but let’s just say, that “a few rotten apples” ruin it for a lot of folk. That’s one part of it, which I will address. The second one is the manufacturers. They market all different ways.

Panasonic, Optoma, and Epson’s Home Cinema line market primarily online, though volume dealers. The lower overhead model allows a lower overall selling price, which is critical to getting products down to sweet spot pricing, where the volume is. A projector like the Panasonic PT-AE4000 would probably have to command a $3K price instead of a $2K price to allow local dealers to make enough to make a living…
Others like JVC Epson’s Pro line, some Mitsubishis, Optomas BenQs etc, are only offered to local installing dealers, and in general, because of the pricing differences, aren’t typically price competitive to someone not wanting/needing installation, buying everything for one source, etc.

I was a dealer, I know a decent number of dealers. I can’t speak for others. But I know the dynamics. My company was primarily online, some of you guys probably remember presentingsolutions.com Well, we also did local biz, including home theater and installations, even though the bulk of our business was online projector sales.

Well, as I said, we had a demo room. Well, as we all know, online dealers have lower overhead than brick and mortar shops. My best sales people could sell 8-10 projectors a day on a good day and 3 or 4 on a slow one.

Well, that’s just great, but we’d get a steady flow of people driving in from as far away as LA (50 miles) because we had the Pannys the Sanyos the Epsons BenQs Optoma’s Marantz, JVC, in our showroom. They would come in, and want to compare this one to that one, etc. some would bring in half a dozen DVDs. Half of them were prepared to take up hours of our sales people’s time.

OK, fair enough, we’d work with them. But then, more often or not, they’d decide on a projector. At that point the conversation would end up something like this. “I’d like to buy it from you, but I can by it online from projectorfolks.com for $xyz.

OK, I was a “big online dealer” paying the same amount as the other big guys, I could match the price. But, I’ll tell you, if I was a “local dealer”, I’d be paying 10-15% or more than a high volume online dealer that’s buying 100 or more at a crack. On most of the big name models the margins are thin to begin with. Small dealers often are paying as much as large dealers sell them for. Hey, local dealers sometimes buy from the large dealers.

You know what though? Most wouldn’t buy it from us even matching the price: I’d hear a lot of, “but projectorfolks is located out of state, if I buy from you I’ve got to pay 8% sales tax. So, if you cover the tax… I’ll buy from you.

Forget that rubbish, I changed the program – $150 to come use our demo room. 100% of it can be applied toward the purchase of a projector. Well, that dried up the traffic. Ultimately we closed the demo room to the public.

Being a medium or high end local installing dealer is a hazardous occupation, in terms of long term survival. I’m sympathetic.

There is a need, and that’s for under $5K projectors to be findable by consumers, locally, but, the market is very small, only about 100,000 units a year in the US, compared to many millions of LCDTV and Plasma.

3D, and Gaming offer the opportunity to grow the projector segment. I think new entries like LG (I’ll be reviewing a 3D projector of theirs that should be able to do 3D blu-ray movies as they come out… we shall see.

Thanks for the good words on the Ensemble HD. I agree with pretty much all your points. We are an Ensemble HD dealer and we have been watching the system for a few months now. We offer customers a Blu-Ray player as a system option and we are also going to offer the Epson UB projector as another upgrade. THe UB projector gets pricey, because first we have to order an Ensemble 720 system including the 720P projector, then add on the UB.

The really important point of this system is… “it’s easy” easy for the customer to understand, easy to sell, easy to install, easy to use. It is intended for people who just want to enjoy it. It’s priced so almost anyone can afford one, even with installation cost included.

Our customers are embracing it at an unbelievable rate. People who would NEVER have even considered a front projection system before are drawn to this product. They love the fact that the screen goes up when you turn it off. Try that with a flat panel installation.

Jim

Great info on the “Ensemble”. Last month I upgraded to the IN83 from the Optoma Hd6800 (Costco brand for Optoma HD72). I love this IN83. However, I will be relocating to a condo with less space than my current house, so I am giving the Ensemble some serious consideration. Looking forward to your followup comments.

Bob

************

Bob, in case you missed it, here’s a link to the full review of the Epson Ensemble HD 1080:

I also think the Ensemble is an absolutely great idea. It should introduce many new people to home theaters, both the audio and video sides. However I do have a couple of problems with the systems.

1) I think they list for $1000 too much. I’d like to see them at $3995 and $5995, including basic installation with the channels. Adding up the prices of the individual components, the present prices are simply a little too high. Including basic installation also gets people to not worry about what they’d have to do to get these things in their homes. Ultimately, it makes their decision easier.

2) They’ve got to include a Blu-ray drive. If this is meant to be an all-in-one solution, the lack of Blu-ray is inexcusable. In addition, this would also make the systems look far better once the homeowner started using them, and that would allow Epson to sell more of these, when friends see the picture. Epson has to make the viewing experience top notch and that must include a Blu-ray drive.

Overall though, I like the Ensemble. I think it’s an idea whose tie has come. If Epson handles this correctly, they could put a lot of these in people’s homes.

Jim

On a side note, it looks like you may have an illegal installation there. You can’t run a power cable through the ceiling (or the wall for that matter). I can’t tell from the picture if this is the case or not, but it certainly looks like it. This is becoming a big problem because of all the plasmas and LCDs mounted on walls. Although you can pass plenum rated signal cables through walls and ceilings, that is never the case with power cables.

*******************

Ahh, last first. Yes, I am aware of wiring codes. The guys put in romex, and attached the traditional three prong power cord connector back outside the walls.

OK, Can’t argue pricing with you – lower is better. On the other hand, I don’t find any price discrepency when you add up the individual components.

Beside the projector, you have a motorized screen, you’ve got 5 Atlantic Technology speakers (which aren’t high end audiophile, I know. Still, the cost of really serious speakers for high end music audio, (like mine my front left and right speakers in my bigger theater) can cost far more than what a complete installed Ensemble HD system sells for. The Ensemble HD sound is most impressive for movies, and quite honestly, not bad at all for my music DVDs which I listen/watch frequently.

Then there’s the Atlantic subwoofer, the amplifier, with Tuner and dvd player, wiring, etc.

OK, that takes us to your comment about Blu-ray. Again, I have no problem with what Epson has done. Sure, a blu-ray player would have been better, but, they provide two extra HDMI ports, and I have my cable box now running into one, and a PS3 for Blu-ray, for the other.

Try to remember, that Epson may have just started shipping the product in the last month or so, but they’ve been showing the product for almost a year (early last Sept.), which means development of the product goes back probably at least 18 months. Would you have been happy if it had an HD-DVD player instead of Blu-ray? That would have been almost as likely, based on when the system was designed. Worse, with the exception of the PS3, and a couple of $1000+ Blu-ray players (Pioneer…), none of the units around when this product was designed, were even able to go online to receive upgrades. Thus, most likely you’d end up with a blu-ray player that could only support Blu-ray 1.0, 1.1, and though unlikely, 1.2, and Certainly, no blu-ray 2.0.

In fact, congrats are in order, the system supports goodies that weren’t supported in almost any product back 18 months ago, like hdmi 1.3 with deep color, and also 24fps…

So, grab a PS3, and the blu-ray issue goes away. And then, as you point out, this is perhaps the first real projector based, mass market appeal product except for some “all-in-one” projectors from Epson, Optoma, and Toshiba, only one of which is even HD resolution.

From my end, I have several complaints – but none are critical for most buyers. Most importantly, I would have liked to see the Epson Home Cinema 1080 UB in there instead of the older Epson Home Cinema 1080. Those of us, really into projector performance will miss the “UB” black levels, but, most will never care. I just those local dealers selling the Ensemble HD, are in a position to occasionally do a trade up to the UB. I don’t know how that would play out with Epson warranty, but Epson has (IMO), always been first class when it comes to after sale support.

Myself, I would love to see the option to get the UB for $500 more, but expect that if a dealer does it on their own (if practical), that it will likely cost a buyer more like $1000. Still, even that is less than 15% more when you consider the total system price. I know I would pay the extra, but, I’ve been watching this system for probably 25-30 hours now, including movies, music DVD’s and even some Olympics (and the pre-season Panthers/Eagles game on as I write this). And most everyone of our friends who I have walked through the room, in the last two weeks, has said, “this is great, I need to get one”, and the primary question is: “How much?” Now most of these people have had a chance to watch lots of hours at my house, on my JVC, the Epson UB, InFocus IN83, and everything else I’ve reviewed (but those three add up to at least 85% of all the hours in my theater in the last year), so it’s not like they’ve never seen/heard, an excellent projector based home theater system.

On my short list, I also think Epson should offer a 92″ screen option, as well as either a 106″ or 110″, and, who knows, maybe they will make it more modular, if it proves to be truly successful.

OK, enough for now, and I’ll have to repeat most of this in the actual review, which I will start writing up tomorrow, and hopefully publish by next Tuesday.

have fun! -art

Maxim

***************

I love the IN83. I’ve asked InFocus if I can keep it for an extended period. I’ve got the JVC RS1 here, and though it has better black levels I now favor the sharpness and brightness (and even better color) of the IN83. I’ve also got an Epson UB here, also with better black levels.

Despite that, the IN83 is my current favorite. I don’t plan to buy one (hey, even I can’t afford a new projector every year), But my wish list for my next purchase would be an IN83, with the addition of a dynamic iris so that at its best it can match or beat the Epson, the Sony VW60 or the even better JVC RS1. If it can do that, I won’t care if it can’t match the JVC RS2.

Whether InFocus does something like that in a year, or someone else provides the equivalent product, that is when I’ll shell out the dollars again. Meantime, I’m willing to modify my wall mount to inverse mount the projector to the bottom of the shelf, and sell off the RS1, if they will let me keep it for a while.

I think that pretty much answers your question. -art