It’s not going to win any beauty pageants, nor will the boring model number stick in your head, but the new DLA-SH7NL projector from JVC will make you wish you had $15,000 to blow on a new toy. It uses a set of 330W ultra-high-pressure mercury lamps to kick out 5,000 lumens of brightness, with a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. And as for resolution, the DLA-SH7NL is capable of projecting a 10 megapixel or 4,096×2,400 image, but since most people don’t have a 4K source, it can also simultaneously project two or four HD images (1,920 x 1,200) thanks to its four DVI input connections.
It’s also equipped with a network connection allowing you to adjust the projector’s settings from a web browser, and it can even email you maintenance notifications like when it’s time to replace the lamps or important error messages. And that $15,000 price tag? Just keep in mind that doesn’t include the DLA-SH7NL’s short-focus or telescopic lenses which are both sold separately.
I know I should never judge a book by its cover, but I feel confident that I can judge a projector by its price. Which is why I’m probably going to pass on this clamshell style portable projector available from Uxsight which sells for just $51.69. I mean I’d like to judge it on its technical merit, but how am I supposed to do that when the ‘Product Details’ only include the following:
- This is a home projector, the design is simple and generous, “content” plentiful, it is the enjoyment of life, the artwork in the spare time.
- The people are the centre for its design ideal, designed with slot cover, it helps to shield the ugly for many jack sockets; the bottom with leather socket which protect camera’s lens from scratch and bring out its elegant on the decoration. Electronic start up button, soft touch controlled.
- The color adopt black and white combined, glittering and translucent, give out special charms and life taste.
Besides, any time I’ve bought any type of device that gave out “special charms and life taste” I’ve always paid well over $100, so I think they might be trying to pull a fast one here.
Epson’s recently announced BrightLink 450Wi ultra-short throw projector is able to produce an image from 55 to 102-inches in size depending on how far it’s mounted from a wall, and whether it’s running WXGA or XGA resolutions. For example, at a distance of just 18 inches it’s able to project a respectable 60-inch diagonal image, but for compact spaces it can be mounted as close as 2.8 inches, though that will result in a considerably smaller image.
But that’s not the only trick it has up its sleeve. The BrightLink 450Wi is also an interactive projector, and includes a set of digital infrared pens allowing the presenter to doodle or annotate directly on the image being projected. The best feature though is that when the projector becomes available sometime in Spring 2010 it’s expected to sell for under $2,000.
There’s some kind of threshold that electronics with a high cool factor but questionable usefulness have to cross in order for them to be worth buying, and this Sanwa pico projector is awfully close at $120. I can’t figure out how many lumens it is (safe to assume not many), and it only pushes out VGA (640 x 480), but it does take both data and power over USB, which is nice, and includes an assuredly crappy speaker. It weighs 85 grams and comes with a lil’ tripod, too. So yeah, it’s a pretty “meh” little thing (not nearly as fancy as the one from AAXA that we reviewed last year), but it may be cheap enough to justify your first foray into pico projecting.
While they had little to no information about the phone itself, the good people at Texas Instruments were showing off this unnamed Samsung phone (I believe the model # 9600 was thrown around?) since it features a built-in DLP-based projector. While it’s not as thin as the Nexus One or the iPhone, it’s still remarkably compact given there’s a projector crammed inside! And a decent one at that!
Now a crumpled piece of copier paper isn’t the most ideal thing to use as a projection screen, but to be honest it’s pretty close to real world conditions. I mean if I was at my desk and wanted to show someone something via the projector, it’s probably the first thing I would reach for. And the projected image was suitably bright with decent contrast, so we’re definitely getting there!
Jealous of all those new-fangled cellphones that come with built-in projectors these days? Well the HypnosEye will level the playing field. It seems to work like an overhead projector, using a mirror and lens to magnify and project the display from your cellphone onto a wall, ceiling or other surface. There’s no light source of its own, so you’ll need to set the brightness on your phone’s display as high as it can go for best results, which also means it will probably work better with devices with large LCDs like the iPhone, iPod Touch, Zune etc. Unfortunately though the $117 price tag from the Japan Trend Shop pushes this well out of the novelty purchase price range, particularly when the results as seen in the video I’ve included after the jump aren’t great.
Logic Wireless’ Bolt projector phone, which we were first introduced to at CES last year, has gotten an update to version 1.5. Not that version 1.0 ever seemed to really get to market, but still… We heard rumors of this update at CES that mentioned a smaller prototype, as version 1.0 of the Bolt was pretty darn chunky, and this new model has definitely slimmed down, among other improvements. The flagship feature of the Bolt is, of course, the integrated projector, which is capable of throwing a VGA (640 x 480) image up to 64 inches wide. Otherwise, you’re getting a smartphone that runs Symbian, has a touchscreen, two cameras (one on the front and one on the back), and slots for two SIM cards. Oh, and there’s no 3G.
It’s certainly a strange set of features, which makes it entirely appropriate that the Logic Bolt 1.5 is currently for sale through Skymall (!) and not T-Mobile as we heard was likely to be the case. It’s $500 unlocked, which pretty much restricts interest in this thing to people who for whatever reason find that they absolutely need a phone that can do all of the weird things that the Logic Bolt can.
We’ll get a look at it in person at CES in a week or so (!!!), and hopefully we’ll be able to tell you whether there’s the remotest chance that it’s worth half a grand.
This may be a glorified Epson projector commercial, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. This guy strapped an Epson EH-TW450 projector to his chest along with a PS3 and what I can only assume is about 50 pounds of batteries and walked around London at night playing video games on walls, streets, and people. He also put on a helmet and goggles and pads, which while not strictly necessary, lent the whole outfit an “I’m from the future” type of feel.
The projector itself is outputting 720p video at 2500 lumens with a contrast ratio of 3000:1, and it appears to look halfway decent on the sides of buildings, which is rather impressive. The Epson EH-TW450 will set you back about a thousand bucks, but Epson hasn’t yet committed on the rest of the suit.
SANYO just announced their new LP-XF1000 12,000 lumen projector which they claim is the industry’s brightest model that only requires 100V AC. The new model uses two high-output 330 watt lamps, which improves light efficiency by 20% when compared to one of the company’s previous models, and offers a high contrast ratio of 4000:1. The LP-XF1000 also features SANYO’s QuaDrive Engine which adds a ‘Color Control Device’ to the 3 LCD setup in order to control the yellow light independently, which results in a 20% boost in color richness as well.
The LP-XF1000 is set to be released on December 18 with a price tag of 4,200,000 yen, or about $46,000.
Related Tags: Projectors
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By Evan Ackerman
By Evan Ackerman
