CEDIA Report

CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) 2008 is the largest expo of home theatre gear in the world. There were a small number of 3D displays, with only a couple pieces of new gear.

- Samsung 50" plasma 3D
1368x768. Looked coarse, not smooth in detail. Ghosting was bad, even using their own heavy nose-bridge-bashing shutter glasses. Did not seem to flicker, but the colors were dead. Compared to a real plasma TV like the awesome Pioneer Kuro, just a bummer.

- Da-Lite "3D virtual gray screen"
Rollable, but not foldable. Goes on a rigid Da-Lite "fast frame" via snaps. Gray (gain 1.3), lumpy (like Harkness Hall but bigger lumps). "Much cheaper than Stewart". Good extinction. Da-Lite claims a "best in business" 99%. But it's hard to tell in a demo that is not side-by-side. The presentation used 2 Panasonic DW5100's (5000 lumens) onto an 11' wide screen. Just barely bright enuf, but not snappy in color/contrast, and very grainy. They played a DepthQ/Lightspeed production that was fairly good in itself, but it showed poorly.

- Mitsubishi DLP 73" RPTV
This had excellent color, sufficient sharpness (given the diffusive effect of RPTV), and good material (they played Beowulf, etc.). Glasses were small and light, and the images were ghost free. The Regional Rep said they will have a demo package for retailers before Christmas, so maybe you will be able to see 3D at BestBuy's one day. Aspen Media Products will distribute glasses and 3D material. The Mitsubishi 3D line uses TI DarkChip4 and arc lamps. The similar-operating Sammy RPTV's (not shown at CEDIA) uses DarkChip3 and LED (or arc). I kinda liked the look of the DC4.

- JVC-RS2
JVC-RS2 projectors (2) with retarder plates rear-projecting circularly polarized material (including Beowulf) onto an 8 foot Stewart Screen. This was clearly the best 3D at CEDIA. Bright enough (in the totally dark room), and with the best sharpness and color of any 3D. Minimal ghosting. Most apparent when Angie lifted her gold tail up against the black cave wall (but who was watching the tail). The rep said JVC will supply the RS2 and RS20 in 3D setups for $1000 more (presumably for the retarders and mounts). He claimed this system would work well (in a darkened room, with dark walls, etc.) on a front projection screen of up to about 10 feet wide.

Interesting (2D) Items:
- Mitsubishi had some nice LCD projectors (G polarized horizontal, RB vertical, or vice versa, which will work with 45 degree polarizers). The HC7000 has about 1600 un-tuned lumens. The HD8000, at 5000 lumens, would light up a big screen (at a street price of around $10K each). IMO the LCD images (from these and from the Epsons and Panny's) were inferior to the LCOS/DILA/SXRD's. Not as smooth tonally.

- The Projection Design two-head F10 1080p 3D shutterglass DLP was not at the show. Bummer.

- Chilin had the only LED driven DLP projector, using Phatlites. It's a big box and puts out only 600 lumens. But the image is very saturated, wide-gamut, and with a claimed 100,000:1 contrast. Optoma (not at CEDIA at all) is said to be coming out with an LED-drive projector in Q1-2009. My guess is it won't be bright enuf for polarized 3D.

- Mitsubishi had the first laser-illuminated RPTV. Not 3D though. More saturated colors, especially the reds. It uses three semiconductor lasers for the three primary colors.

- I was very impressed with the Sony VPL-VW10 "entry level" $3K 1080p SXRD projector. The bright (8' wide screen, gain 1.3) images were crisp, sharp, saturated, and with great contrast. Subtle shadows were good enough. With an ~8' wide high-gain silver screen, a home setup using these would be great, except that the beam appears to be circularly polarized in a strange way. I held a pair of JVC's circular glasses up to the beam when it was white. On the screen, the beam coming though one lens was pure green, and the beam coming through the other was magenta (R+B). Rotating the glasses had no effect at all. A linear polarizer changed color slightly (somewhat yellow tint to blue tint, sort of) when rotated. So, the colors appear to come out of the projector circularly polarized but in opposite rotations for G and R+B. Can one do something cute with this?

- The JVC-LCOS HD750 projector (and the Pioneer KURO clone) were great with normal (2D) material on a 130" diagonal (9 foot wide) screen. These can be used with low-loss retarders for circularly polarized 3D projection. DLP's were not well represented or demo'd at the expo, except for some $50K+ ones from Wolf Cinema and Digital Projection. The stars of this expo were LCOS/SXRD.

- Though not a 3D gig, the super-nova of the show was, IMO, the JVC DLA-SH4K (4096x 2400) "consumer" (according the Regional Rep) projector, and its relative, the Meridien 810. Driving these beasts requires some computer horsepower. JVC showed native material, from Canon 1Ds-2 still cameras and from their own recently-introduced 4K video camera. Meridien showed scaled up "readily available" content like movie trailers. The JVC blew me away with the full-rez stuff. It was like being in IMAX but with no film grain, better color, corner-to-corner sharpness, no jitter, etc. With one of these $150K puppies, who the heck needs 3D? The images have so much "depth" as is. They had two SH4K's stacked as a pair, and the rep said they could provide them with the same circular polarization setup as they had going with the RS2's (though I didn't get to see them operating in this mode). 3500 lumens, 10,000:1 native contrast, no external air-cooling, 115 volts. Awesome stuff on a 20 foot wide, gain=1.3 screen. Significantly better than the RealD/Christie 2K x 1K DLP units in commercial theatres. Considering that prices for really good 1920x1080 projectors have come down by a factor of 10 since the early Qualia's, maybe in a decade or so this will be a home standard (at least in second homes in towns like Aspen...;-).

By John Hart, Crystal Canyons