[opendtv] Sony HD (1080p) projector in Qualia store in Manhattan
- From: Henry Baker <hbaker1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 19:44:23 -0700
I took a moment to visit the Sony Qualia store in Manhattan
today, at 56th & Madison (basement of the Sony bldg).
Sony was demonstrating the $30K Qualia HD projector, which claims
to be the first true 1080p projector.
The room was a prototype home theater, but with the screen about
9 feet from the projector, and projecting to a screen at least
6 feet wide. The room was well-darkened, and the images appeared
to be quite bright with good color.
(Please note, I am _not_ a "golden eye", so I'd be interested in
reviews from those with considerably better eyes than mine.)
The salesman made a big deal out of the fact that the projector used
a 100% Xenon lamp. I asked him if this was a "3 chip" or a "1 chip"
model, and he said it was a "3 chip". He said that it was much better
than a DLP because the pixels were "softer".
The demo used 2 HD clips, both playing from a Sony Blu-Ray DVD player
(this must be a pre-production prototype, as I hadn't realized that
these were available already).
The first demo was the trailer for Spiderman 2, and it was spectacular.
I walked up to the screen, and couldn't see any artifacts at all. The
image was sharp & bright, and very compelling.
The second demo was a clip from Lawrence of Arabia, which included some
footage that had split screen in normal DVD resolution, and the other
half in HD resolution. The difference in detail was quite obviously better
in the HD portion of the screen.
However, even the HD Lawrence of Arabia clip was not nearly as sharp and
clear as I would have expected. It had little halos around all the edges,
and I couldn't tell whether this was from the original film, the
post-processing, the scanning, or possibly MPEG2 artifacts. Perhaps
1960's processing technology just isn't up to today's standards.
It is also possible that the film loses a lot of visual appeal because the
limited color gamut of HDTV simply can't do justice to Lawrence of Arabia.
I looked for motion artifacts from the projector, and didn't see any
(once again, that doesn't mean very much).
I wasn't able to see any color banding from the 8-bit color, but that
may only show up with different images than what was being shown.
The 9' distance to the screen was probably less than it would be in
most homes, and the salesman did indicate that the projection lamp
came in only one brightness, so the screen would be somewhat darker
in a more normal application.
All in all, a pretty good showing, but $30K pushes the budget of
most _commercial_ movie houses...
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