Hybrid Front Projectors to Take Aim at CE Market with Lower Prices

The hybrid models, which combine a blue laser with either phosphors or LEDs, carry about a $1,000 premium over lamp-based models. But with a 20,000-hour lifetime to 50 percent of original brightness, the hybrids can generate a savings over lamp-based projectors, which typically peak at 5,000-6,000-hour lifetimes, executives said. Casio is seeking to push lifetimes into the 30,000-40,000-hour range, said Tamaki Sato, assistant general manager of Casio’s business products division. Replacement projector lamps sell for around $300, executives said.

Viewsonic’s Pro9000 hybrid, which features 1080p resolution and 1,600 lumens, has seeded the home theater market since being launched last fall and is available online at prices ranging from $2,599 at Newegg.com to $1,999 at TigerDirect.com. But Casio, which introduced the first hybrid model in 2010 and has the leading market share in the category, is readying a consumer-oriented line that could start below $1,000 by next year, Matt Mustachio, general manager of Casio’s business products division, told us. Brightness requirements -- business models top out around 4,000 lumens and will eventually reach 8,000 lumens -- won’t be as crucial in a home theater as in commercial applications, executives said. And Casio and other manufacturers are working to lower component costs, specifically the blue lasers mostly supplied by Nichia that contribute the most to higher prices, executives said. Osram also supplies blue lasers, but remains a distant second to Nichia, they said.

Blue lasers are “what has made it hard so far” to hit lower prices, Mustachio said. “We are going to address that issue shortly with units with a high brightness picture and a good price,” said Mustachio, who hinted at hitting under $600 for entry-level models by 2014, but declined to give more details. Casio has low-cost manufacturing in having Hon Hai Precision’s Foxconn assemble its projectors in China, executives said.

Hybrid-projector suppliers also need to educate consumers on the merits of the technology, which suffered from phosphor-related lifetime issues when the first models came to market, executives said. The consumer segment remains small for front projectors overall -- less than 10 percent of the total market excluding pico models -- and the hybrid technology has yet to be promoted outside business, education and commercial applications. Casio recently landed a 1,200-projector contract with an unnamed school district and the Buffalo Wild Wings chain has installed an unspecified number of Casio models in franchised locations, Mustachio said. About 55 percent of Casio’s hybrid sales are through the education channel, he said. Overall, analysts see hybrid sales growing fourfold to a million units by 2015 from about 250,000 this year.

"Hopefully within two to five years” there will be a consumer market for hybrid front projectors, said Mitsubishi Product Manager Wayne Kozuki, whose company introduced three hybrid models at InfoComm under the Laservue banner that it once used for a 75-inch rear-projection TV. “There is going to be a price premium” over lamp-based models “for the time being and hopefully people will start to understand the advantage of doing away with the lamps,” Kozuki said.

Epson, which owns the top market share in projectors overall, has no immediate plans to enter the hybrid category, Product Manager Jason Meyer said. Epson is one of the few front projector vendors to manufacture its own lamps, which have increased in lifetime to 5,000 to 6,000 hours, he said. The hybrid category had been dominated by projectors using Texas Instruments’ DLP chip, but Sony broke through with a 1080p model containing three 0.79-inch LCDs that delivers 4,000 lumens. Epson also focuses on LCD-based models since it makes the panels. “We are constantly looking at the backlight options, whether it’s LED, laser or hybrid,” Meyer said. “It’s not that we are tied to the lamps. We want to bring value to the customer. And while those technologies are very interesting, they also are very expensive."

Hybrid-projector suppliers also are seeking to carve niches for their technology. Casio has debuted a dual-projection system that stacks two projectors within an enclosure to deliver higher lumens performance. The system sells for about $10,000, including the enclosure and a pair of XJ-H2600 or HJ-M250 projectors. Both projectors feature a 0.65-inch single-chip DLP that delivers 1,280 x 800 resolution. When stacked, two H2600s deliver 6,500 lumens and two H250s, 6,000 lumens. The dual-projector system comes with a geometric correction box that connects to the projectors to correct and align images.

InfoComm Notebook

Persistently low yields and color accuracy issues with large-size OLEDs have partly been responsible for their sluggish rollout, LG and Samsung executives said at InfoComm. Samsung and LG have developed 55-inch OLED panels for TVs, but neither has delivered product in the U.S. In commercial markets, which often trail the launch of new technology in the consumer segment, LG doesn’t have OLED “on the roadmap for the next year,” said LG Signage Sales Director Dan Smith. “Broadcast may adopt it if they can show that it is color accurate,” Smith said. “There is a lot of tweaking happening right now and the original panels weren’t as good as we expected. The black level is phenomenal, but the color accuracy is not as good as we originally hoped.” The color accuracy has improved during the past few months and LG’s commercial business will change its product plans “if we start to see a lot of demand,” Smith said. Samsung, which has said it would ship a 55-inch OLED TV in the U.S. in the second half, also has struggled to bring the technology to market. Samsung’s commercial business has no immediate plans for an OLED display, said Product Marketing Manager Michael O'Halloran. “The mass production of these has been a major issue, which is why they are so expensive,” O'Halloran said. The commercial group also has no immediate plans for the 85-inch 4K LCD that’s being sold through the CE division, O'Halloran said. Samsung demonstrated a 95-inch LCD with 1080p resolution that’s expected to be available by year-end, O'Halloran said. LG, which is among few remaining plasma panel manufacturers, has seen a 40 percent decline in sales for digital signage so far this year as the lower price advantage it enjoyed over LCD in the past shrinks to 15-20 percent from 25 percent, LG’s Smith said. “We are still in the plasma market because we have the plants and will be for a while,” Smith said, “If you go back five years, as you went up in size, the plasma was much less expensive than LCD, but large-format LCD has become very competitive.” LG also is marketing 84-inch 4K LCD panels for digital signage with 350 nits and 500 nits brightness. The 84-inch has had several deployments, including two models installed in Terminal D at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. It also has started pilot installation in bus shelters of a 72-inch LCD with 1080p resolution and 2,000 nits. The 72-inch is largely being used for advertising.

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Digital Projection expanded its assortment of 2.35:1-capable front projectors, introducing a fixed installation version that will be available built to order for $30,000, the company said. The dVision Scope uses a single 0.95-inch DLP chip with 2560 x 1080 resolution, 2,700 lumens and 7,500:1 contrast ratio in building a line that started out delivering 2.35:1 content natively and dispensed with the need for an anamorphic lens to move between different aspect ratios (CED Sept 12/11 p4). The projector has Digital Projection-designed software that senses when letterbox black bars are present in the signal and shifts the image to fill the height of the DLP chip. The fixed-version projector will be built at Digital Projection’s Manchester, U.K., factory with a 4-5-week lead time, said Brian Blumhardt, central market development manager. It will initially target training and simulation applications, he said. “It’s a one-projection solution designed to have the look and feel of a two-projector blend,” Blumhardt said. The company’s original home theater projector has generated “borderline” sales volume, largely because it lacks 3D capability and is a single-chip model that’s more expensive than Digital Projection’s three-chip $24,995 Highlite 330-3D model, Blumhardt said. The Highlite 330 has 1080p resolution, 5,500 lumens and 2,000:1 contrast ratio, but isn’t compatible with the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. “The first version of the Scope is $30,000 and doesn’t have 3D and that has been a point of contention,” Marketing Communications Manager Michael Bridwell said. “It’s an Achilles heel not because people love 3D,” but because 3D is an “assumed feature for a super premium projector,” he said. The fixed-installed model “gives us another opportunity” to sell the Scope line “because it’s something that has to be seeded first for people to understand the value of it,” Bridwell said.

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Sharp expects to pass 1,000 units in U.S. sales this month of its 32-inch $4,000 IGZO TFT-oxide-based LCD monitor ($4,000) that’s being marketed for video production and trading desks, said Michael Marusic, senior vice president-marketing and business solutions group. Sharp launched the monitor in late March. It has 4K resolution and draws about 50 percent less power than a standard 32-inch LCD monitor, Marusic said. IGZO displays offer the potential for lower costs than amorphous silicon and have a high electron mobility, which can be used to reduce device size, increase aperture ratio and allow electronic device integration on the glass, Sharp has said. It also increases TFT speed and is capable of 4K resolution at 240 Hz. Sharp has been producing IGZO panels at its 8th-generation plant in Kameyama, Japan. The monitor has been on backorder, but Sharp hopes to remedy that by month’s end, Marusic said. In addition to video production, the monitor also has drawn interest from videogame developers, Marusic said. “The demand is coming from the PC side where people really want the ultra-high resolution,” he said. Sharp expects to have the market for the 32-inch 4K IGZO LCDs to itself “for a while,” before its factories produce them for other OEM customers, Marusic said. “It’s not a giant market yet and we are pretty good at filling up all the capacity right now,” he said. Sharp has slashed the price on its 90-inch LCD monitor for commercial markets to $21,000 from $26,000 and gained installations at the Victoria’s Secret and Uniqlo retail chains, Marusic said. The 90-inch model features 1080p resolution and direct-array LED lighting. The display dispenses with the fans used in Sharp’s $9,000 90-inch LCD TV in favor of a “fanless” system of ridges that allow for enhanced air flow, Marusic said.