CEDIA 2007 - Day 2: 1080p Projector Roundup, High Def Players & Ferrari Sound
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on September 7, 2007 3:21 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Panasonic PT-AE2000U
Panasonic has been quietly dropping the price of its PT-AE1000U, a 3-chip LCD 1080p front projector, over the past couple of months. Through the end of this month Panasonic will continue to offer a $1000 mail in rebate on the AE1000U; we expected to see an updated unit from Panny at the show and were not disappointed as we walked over to its booth and discovered the new PT-AE2000U.
It looks identical to the PT-AE1000U
Most of the updated projectors at the show achieved better brightness/contrast through the use of better panels and better processing, the PT-AE2000U was no different. The projector has a 1500 lumens rating thanks to improved LCD panels, and an improved 16,000:1 contrast ratio. The 2000U features a new lens and new dynamic iris motor as well as 3 HDMI inputs.
The PT-AE2000U will be available in October and we'd expect it to be priced at under $5K.
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zemane - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
I don't know much about projectors but, is it too difficult to manufacture a native 2.35:1 projector? This way only 16:9 and 4:3 movies would have black bars on each side. Imagine, a true 2538x1080 image... :-)Fluppeteer - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Well, there are 4K projectors, if you've got the input and the money. (Or you can just run two SXGA projectors on their sides, overlapping.)This is the first I've heard of the anamorphic business. I'm confused: given that there's no more data available to add pixels, why digitally scale up (removing some high frequency information in the process, unless there's something exceptionally clever going on) to fill the 1080 pixels of the image, then stick an additional anamorphic (expensive and complicated, and probably not quite as high quality as a "normal" lens) lens in front of the existing optical elements? What does this gain you that sticking a bog standard wide angle lens on the front of the projector (and putting a couple of bits of cardboard over the borders if your projector has a poor black point) doesn't?
It just sounds like a really complicated and expensive way of making the image worse. Am I missing something?
Guuts - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link
The last (bottom-most) picture on Page 7 appears to be upside down.BigToque - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link
The projector could also be upside down and attached to a ceiling mount.