Epson was showcasing their new Pro L25000U, a 25,000 lumen laser phosphor projector at NAB in a big way. Not only was it lighting up a big and visible screen, but the colors were purposely over saturated to accentuate the wide color gamut and high brightness. It definitely looked over saturated, but it made an impression. Epson said the unit was an engineering sample and they have not yet measured the color gamut. It will not ship until October. Come to Display Summit in June if you want to learn more about testing done by Lang AG on this unit.
Epson’s images were over-saturated, but eye catching!
Epson was also showing their new ProG series that will ship in May offering 5500 to 8000 lumens with 1920×1200 resolution 3LCD panels. This is a so-called ‘image shifting’ projector but this capability is marketed as a ‘4K enhancement’. What that means is that the projector can accept native 4K content and do some image processing to create two sub-frames that are projected to create an image with resolution somewhere between 1920×1200 and 3840×2160. We asked Epson if they try to measure this resolution using grille patterns developed by the International Committee on Display Metrology (ICDM) and the answer was no. They just call it an enhancement.
Epson also highlighted its ProL series running from 6000 to 12000 lumens. This has a built-in stereoscopic camera to help with focusing on curved or irregular surfaces and to aid in color correction for blended or stacked projectors.
The ProL and ProG models are laser phosphor-based and feature a 20K hour lifetime to 50% brightness. Each can run in different modes. For example, the 12K lumen projector will degrade to 6K lumens in 20K hours, but if you operate that same projector at only 6K lumens, the lifetime to 3K lumens increases to 40-50K hours. If you want an even longer lifetime of save 85K hours, then run it at a constant 3K lumens. That’s not bad – over specify the lumens to get really long lifetime. The laser phosphor models cost nearly 3X the lamp-based equivalent, but offer some interesting benefits. (CC)
