CEDIA 2007 - Day 3: Marantz, JVC and Samsung Projector Wrap-up
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 8, 2007 2:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Samsung SP-A800: Add it to the Ranks
Samsung had a new 1080p single-chip DLP projector at its booth, but with no adjoining demo and no one around to answer questions we skipped it on our first round on the show floor.
With some extra time to kill today we went back to Samsung, determined to get a demo of the new projector and luckily we succeeded. Along the far edge of the show floor were a series of closed rooms designed for demos that couldn't fit in an already crowded booth; it was in one of those rooms that Samsung had its SP-A800 projector setup and ready to go.
The demonstration was not without its flaws, getting any of the three high definition players to properly display on the projector was a bit of a pain, so we spent a great deal of time waiting for the demo to start - but it was well worth the wait.
Casablanca (HD-DVD) - Click to Enlarge
Projected onto a 9' wide, 16:9, 1.3 gain screen the 800 threw a beautiful picture. It's tough to really compare to the other greats of the show, but the SP-A800 was easily among the best we saw at CEDIA.
Phantom (Blu-ray) - Click to Enlarge
Particularly impressive were the calibration options on the SP-A800, you can disable individual colors for calibration:
As well as switch between color standards for display:
You can easily adjust between iris opening presets:
For single-chip 1080p DLP projectors, the SP-A800 is definitely one to watch for. It's quite configurable and produces a quality image; the price point is up in the air, although we were told that it would be somewhere under $10K.
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zemane - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
I've asked this on CEDIA Day 2 article but got no response so here it goes again: 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... :-)Anand Lal Shimpi - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
What a coincidence, I asked JVC this exact question :)The problem with native 2.35:1 is that very few users actually want it, the market is too small to justify a company like JVC/Panasonic/Sony making such a projector. The other thing is that you end up sacrificing brightness by going the more pixels route, it's simply easier to use the stretch + anamorphic lens option at this point.
Looking further down the road however, just as TVs made the transition to 16:9, the time may come when everyone starts wanting 2.35:1. That day looks to be very far from now, so until then I think the best we can hope for are cheaper anamorphic lens options.
Take care,
Anand
zemane - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link
Thanks Anand!MGSsancho - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
would be cool if you could group some of these together. like sub $5k, the 5-10k, 10-20k, 20k+ or something. its great to read a particular model was your fav. but priced at 23K... yeah i love dreaming too. but something under $5k is a little more reasonable. however, this convention was all about the greatest projectors.oh and any pics of mantraz receiver porn? =P