Off the show floor at I/ITSEC, a new projector company was launched called norxe (pronounced Norse). It is Norway-based and founded by Jorn Eriksen, who also founded projectiondesign, which was sold to Barco a few years ago. Norxe’s first product, the P1, is aimed squarely at multi-channel, mission critical markets including training and simulation, virtual reality, control rooms, mining, law enforcement and medical applications. The company plans a big ISE debut as well.
The P1 is an all-LED based single-chip DLP projector that offers 4000 lumens of peak luminance or 2500 lumens in a calibrated D65, BT.709 mode. That is considerably brighter that most other LED projectors in this mode.
It uses RGB LED but also has an IR LED for night vision goggle use. According to Eriksen, “The P1 platform introduces a virtually zero-artifact, high brightness and high resolution image with low maintenance and long lifetime. Why? Because we implement solid-state the way it should be – namely solid state with no moving parts. By utilizing and all-LED, next generation technology, we do away with the double phosphor/clean-up wheels that are currently used with laser-phosphor projectors,” explained Eriksen.
“Eliminating the mechanical wheels in the illumination path also eliminates the image break up commonly found in laser-phosphor projectors, greatly improving image stability and quality,” continued Eriksen. “The lack of rotating wheels in the illumination system allows for an extended lifetime of the total system, with reduced need for service maintenance. We have designed the thermal management to extend the lifetime by keeping the LED junction temperatures low. There is no complicated water cooling in the system, that otherwise could be susceptible to leaks and increased demand for service and maintenance.”
The company also designed all-new zoom projection lenses that have ‘virtually zero’ distortion and very high optical resolution, according to the company. The lenses also maintain their f-number over the zoom range to minimize brightness loss. They also employ precision indexed motors that allow for highly accurate and repeatable adjustments for horizontal and vertical shift as well as zoom, focus and iris.
ANSI contrast is 500:1, while the sequential contrast is 1600:1 (fully open iris) to 8000:1 (iris fully stopped down). Dynamic contrast is rated at 500 000:1 through control of the LED illumination power on a frame-by-frame basis.
One of the founders, also the VP Global Sales, Espen Olsen, explained the motivation behind the establishment of Norxe. “Really it comes down to the partner network asking us to return to where we came from – to being small, agile, responsive and able to fully exploit new technology .”
“Our business model is to go with value-add system integrators world-wide based on competitive pricing,” concluded Eriksen.
