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September 8th, 2008 Art Feierman
Greetings all,
I’ve already briefly mentioned the new PLV-Z700, Sanyo’s new low cost 1080p projector with a $1995 list price. As it turns out, it is not a replacement for the current PLV-Z2000, but these are my first comments regarding the Sanyo PLV-Z60 home theater projector.
Let’s take one more look at the Sanyo PLV-Z700:
Contrast is good, at 10,000:1 but not quite as good as the Z2000 (15,000:1). The Z2000 however, had very good black level performance, better than some other projectors with similar contrast ratings, so, despite the “low” 10,000:1, the PLV-Z700 should still be pretty respectable when it comes to black levels.
Brightness is claimed at 1200 lumens, the same as the Z2000. That said, the Z2000 has been one of the least bright projectors, best suited for 100″ diagonal or smaller screens. Expect the same.
Placement flexibility is excellent with a 2:1 zoom lens, and vertical and horizontal lens shift! Like the Z2000, a lens cover slides in front of the lens, to keep dust out, when not powered up. This Sanyo, based on published specs, should be one of the quietest projectors around, in terms of fan noise.
A three year warranty combines with the low price point to make the Sanyo PLV-Z700 a serious contender. I should note that the Sanyo PLV-Z2000 has always been a favorite among the DIY home theater crowd. the PLV-Z700, I imagine, will receive the same attention by those with more limited budgets, but don’t want to have to settle for a 720p projector.
With 1080p projectors now dominating the market, some companies are sticking with their older 720p models, and not replacing them this fall, while a few others have new 720p home theater projectors.
Sanyo, who didn’t bother to replace the popular PLV-Z5 last year, has finally done so, with the just announced PLV-Z60. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Industry, News, Products | 4 Comments »
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September 8th, 2008 Art Feierman
Greetings All!
OK, I’ve already blogged about the Epson Pro Cinema 7500 UB, but missed a few details. First of all, the pricing, will be under $5000 (which sounds a lot like $4999 to me, but we shall see). Final pricing is not yet set. I will update the first blog with this same information.
So, let’s talk Epson Home Cinema 6500 UB. First of all, it is not officially announced yet, and it sounds like it won’t ship until December. That means some of this info may not be completely accurate, as the product isn’t finalized yet. Normally I don’t worry much about products 3 months out, but it seemed that Epson was releasing a fair amount of information, to the CEDIA public, and I can’t rationalize keeping a secret, since much of the information is already circulating! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Industry, News, Products, Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
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September 6th, 2008 Art Feierman
Greetings from my last day at CEDIA. I’ve got less than 10 minutes to head back over to the show, so this will be brief.
Epson showed several new projectors, and I’ll discuss them in more depth later, but the basics are - the Epson Home Cinema 6100 is their new entry level 1080p projector, with a price tag of $1999! This model claims, I believe 18,000:1 contrast, so, in terms of black levels it likely won’t quite match the current Home Cinema 1080 UB, but better than the standard Home Cinema 1080 (15,000:1) There are a number of other improvements however.
Next is the new Pro Cinema 7500 UB, this is Epson’s top of the line. Geez, it only claims 75,000:1 contrast ratio, Read the rest of this entry »
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September 3rd, 2008 Art Feierman
Greetings all,
OK, The CEDIA expo show floor opens tomorrow, but I’m spending much of today at press conferences. So, far, I’ve been to Panasonic’s where they rolled out the new PT-AE3000U 1080p home theater projector.
And I picked up a press kit for Mitsubishi, with whom I’m meeting with later this week. While Mitsubishi is already advertising their new Diamond 1080p home theater projector, I was surprised and pleased to see an announcement for the HD8000, which I will also discuss below. Mind you I haven’t seen either of these work, and in the case of Mitsubishi, the HD8000 press release leaves some things unanswered. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 24th, 2008 Art Feierman
After much thought, I’ve decided to produce a report following the Infocomm show last week. It will feature capsules on about 35 or so, newly announced projectors and related products. In additional to the usual news and announcements on business and home theater projectors, I’ll be focusing on the new class of cell phone sized projectors (8-12 lumens?), that we’ll see hit the market late this year or early next year, Read the rest of this entry »
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May 9th, 2008 Art Feierman
OK, time to pick up where I left off. We’ve already discussed a bit about 3LCD’s strengths in terms of more color per lumen, and in color accuracy at full power. There are, however other issues which came up in our discussions. One of those was the cost of maintenance.The guys on the other side of the isle - those DLP proponents at Texas Instruments, claim a big advantage in terms of cost of maintenance. So, let’s investigate. This isn’t about reliability, but about routine maintenance. The DLP folks point out that that most DLP projectors do not require dust filters, because DLP projectors use a sealed light path. 3LCD projectors require filters, and therefore, frequent changing of them, because dust can be a problem, and can even mar the image with what are called (aptly) dust blobs.
The 3LCD folks counter, that many of today’s 3LCD projectors don’t need filters cleaned any more frequently than they need lamp changing. If that were the case, they would have a strong case. As I said to the 3LCD folks, hey, you don’t have to be better at everything. I said that, because I do think DLP has the advantage here.There are basically two scenarios. Projectors that are placed on a table top, and those that are permanently mounted. Since cleaning or replacing a filter is a very quick thing, if you have easy access to the projector, using your projector on a table top, negates any real advantage of projectors that don’t need filters changed frequently. Ceiling mounting is a whole different story. Often, accessing a ceiling mounting projector requires at least a ladder. And it can be a real challenge if you have really high ceilings. In some commercial applications, reaching the projector can be daunting, consider many church sanctuaries, where the projector could be 50 feet up in the air, or perhaps a small auditorium, large multipurpose room, or hotel ballroom. not only a pain, but expensive timewise, especially if you contract out, or have a support department run as a profit center. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Industry, Opinion, Products, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
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May 6th, 2008 Art Feierman
What a whirlwind trip. Japan and back in four days (from San Clemente California). Overall, the trip was a bit brutal, a lot of fun, and, actually rather enlightening. I’ll give you a taste of the travel schedule, and then get into the substance of the trip.
The brutal aspect of the trip started with a 10.5 hour flight from LAX to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. I’ve got to thank the 3LCD group for dropping the big bucks on Business Class. Those seats are the size of a small car, and really do open up into a flat bed. Amazing. Of course I had to leave the house 3+ hours before the flight, and once landing, there was the almost hour to get luggage, and take transport (90 minutes) from the airport to the hotel in Tokyo. Ok, that doesn’t sound so bad (if a 10.5 hour flight can ever be good - the food was).
The killer, though, was we left LA on Monday, and arrived Tuesday (crossed the international date line), around dinner time at our hotel, only to have to (after some catch up sleep Tuesday evening), meet in the hotel lobby at 7am on Wed morning, for a ride to another airport and a “short” two hour flight to northern Japan.
Once arriving on the island of Hokkaido (near Sapporo), it was a short ride to Epson’s automated 3LCD plant, located right off the airport grounds. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 12th, 2008 Art Feierman
Greetings all,
I’m working hard on the report, but with 20 projectors under consideration, it has become a much more formidable task, than last year’s. While my goal has been to publish this Friday evening, I am convinced, that I can’t complete the entire report by then.
I’m now expecting to have the full report posted on Tuesday, March 18th. If I can, I may post some sections as early as this Friday, but no promises. Hang in there! -art
Posted in Industry, New Projector Reviews, Opinion | 5 Comments »
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February 19th, 2008 Art Feierman
In my last commentary shortly after the CES show last month, I (like many) declared Blu-ray the winner in the battle with HD-DVD. It now looks pretty official, thanks to Toshiba’s new announcement.According to articles appearing all over the internet, Toshiba announced yesterday (Feb. 18), that they would stop making and marketing HD-DVD players.This announcement followed another major blow to HD-DVD, when Wal-Mart announced last week that they would no longer offer HD-DVD players AND HD-DVD movies, by June of this year.Toshiba announced they would continue to provide support and service to existing HD-DVD player owners. Hmm, I do believe I can hear the “fat lady singing”. OK, all you home theater people without hi-def players, it’s time. While the difference between standard DVD’s and Blu-ray, in overall picture quality isn’t as great as between standard TV and HDTV, it’s still a rather dramatic. It’s time to bite the bullet, get a Blu-ray player and really enjoy the potential of true hi-def. -art
Posted in Blu-ray, Industry, News, Opinion, Products | 1 Comment »
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December 18th, 2007 Art Feierman
I’ve been roaming the usual brick and mortar stores this week to see what’s going on in the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD wars.
Perhaps the first significant thing I saw, was lower prices on Blu-ray players, first, at Best Buy in Lake Forest, CA. Samsung Blu-ray players for $299 (one disc included, Spiderman 3, I think).
Then I just read somewhere (not confirmed) that Circuit City is offering a Sony Blu-ray player for $299, with five free titles. Now that works out to well less than $200 after you figure at least $25 per disc.
I’ve seen Toshiba HD-DVD players around for $199 for a while now, but I haven’t followed whether they have bundled discs.
Also good news for consumers, Wal-Mart apparently offered up an HD-DVD player for $99 at one of their “secret sales” which go out to their mailing list. (That was back before Thanksgiving.) A more recent Wal-Mart secret sale had the Toshiba HD-A3 player for $298, but with 12 free HD-DVD titles. Now based on the normal selling prices of HD-DVD discs, that’s pretty close to a free HD-DVD player!
On the bright side, thanks to Wal-Mart, my original prediction back in late 2006 in the first Blu-ray vs HD-DVD article, turns out to be in part true. Back then I predicted that consumers would probably be able to buy a hi-def player for under $100, and Walmart has made that happen. Of course I predicted both HD-DVD and Blu-ray would be at that price, so I didn’t get it all right.
Still HD-DVD for $99, and a $299 Blu-ray player with $125-$175 worth of free discs, is going to make for very happy shoppers this month.
As to who’s winning the war? Well, Blu-ray still has the advantage in most areas (except player price).
I noted that the local Best Buy had 3 sections of Blu-ray titles, vs only 2 of HD-DVD titles.
Last time I wrote about Blu-ray vs HD-DVD discs, the big news was pro HD-DVD - that Paramount joined Universal as the two exclusively HD-DVD studios (except for Spielberg’s formidible library). This time around, no major announcements, but, interestingly, I see that Warner, who has been consistantly supporting both formats, just released Blade Runner, in standard DVD and Blu-ray, but no mention of HD-DVD. Does this mean anything? Who knows. On the other hand, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is right around the corner (2nd week of January), and it is a time when announcements can be expected.
(Update: One of the comments received below just advised that Blade Runner is available on HD-DVD, and I thought that worth adding to the blog itself. Strange that they aren’t advertising HD-DVD, but that should have HD-DVD owners feeling a little more secure.)
Perhaps most significantly, I found this quote on another blog: “During the Black Friday period, BD titles made up 72.6% of all high-def purchases, with HD DVD totaling 27.4%, according to Nielsen/VideoScan figures cited by the [Blu-ray Disc Association].”
What to do? Personally, I’m rooting for Blu-ray, even though I have both a PS3, and a Toshiba, but it doesn’t really matter. At worst case, if you pick the format that doesn’t survive, you’ll still amass a collection of many dozens of movies, (before the dust has settled) for the format you start with, and you will always be able to play them as long as you have a working player.
With prices on Blu-ray and HD-DVD players at their current levels, my advice to all of you with home theater projectors, or planning on one soon, is to definitely get at least one format immediately. The differences between standard DVD and either hi-def format, are astounding on the big screen. It’s more than just resolution, the overall picture quality is usually dramatically better for viewing. Those of us with home theater projectors can truly appreciate these differences. Go for it. -art
Posted in Industry, News | 4 Comments »
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