In a recent Large Display Monitor (6 Feb 2015), I wrote an article on the recently introduced Christie Digital Boxer 4K30 projector based on 6 mercury lamps rather than a single xenon lamps. In the article I said the “Price has not been announced”.
Christie’s new Boxer 4K30 30K lumen projector
Dave Paolini, Manager, Media & Public Relations at Christie, provided me with the information after LDM went to press. Paolini passed on a comment from a Christie spokesperson who said, “The new Boxer 4K30 has an MSLP (or MSRP) of $109,995, and dealers may sell for less”.
In addition, Paolini says the Boxer 4K30 is “selling like hot cakes. Publitec has ordered 40 and we have several hundred more on order, most for Asian partners at this point. A very successful launch for Christie.” I’d say so.
Publitec is a Christie partner and a German audiovisual distributor and events technology company in Herdecke, Germany. Publitec already offers a wide range of Christie projectors, accessories and add-on parts, and its investment in the Christie Boxer has now made it one of the largest Christie rental partners in all of Europe.
“We are very pleased to be the first company in Germany to offer the Christie Boxer for rental, and we see huge potential,” says Andreas Flemming, Publitec’s CEO. “From the very first announcements, we received extremely positive feedback about the product. Our clients are eager to see it in person at ISE. The projector is set to appear at large live events. Our investment means that we will be ready to sell and rent the quantities needed from the moment it starts to ship.” (Christie has said it will ship in April.)
The Publitek website says (in German, translation by Google) about the Boxer “We have tested the device for you, first impressions of image quality are convincing, apparently used Christie addition to excellent lenses and an internal scaling at the highest level.”
According to Paolini, Barco introduced a similar projector shortly after Christie introduced the Boxer 4K30. While Paolini didn’t identify Barco’s projector, presumably he was talking about the HDF-W30 FLEX, a 30K lumen projector introduced on February 4 and also targeted at the Pro AV rental and staging market. There are a couple of key differences between the Christie Boxer 4K30 and the Barco HDF-W30 FLEX. First, the Christie projector has 4K resolution (4096 x 2160) while the Barco projector has WUXGA resolution (1920 x 1200). For the current rental and staging business, this resolution difference may not, in fact, be an important factor. Also, the Barco projector uses a single xenon lamp as opposed to the 6 longer life mercury lamps used by Christie. This choice of lamps may be the critical difference between the two in the marketplace.
Barco’s new HDF-W30 FLEX 30K lumen Projector
Paolini’s comment was “Barco debuted what, at first blush, appears to be a similar product a few weeks later but Christie Boxer is lighter in weight and smaller in size, which rental stagers love. In addition the new Barco unit contains none of the Boxer ‘intelligence’ such as the ability of users to monitor the lamp hours and serial numbers through Near Field Communication (NFC) for each lamp – simplifying the effort required to track lamp-life and providing the ability to make fast changeovers so the show goes on!
“Barco does try to position their projector as using ‘a single Xenon lamp, compared to projectors with multiple lamps’ (aka Boxer) but for the rental stager dealing with live events, having only one lamp represents significant more risk of going dark. So we stand by our design.”
Analyst Comment
I would say the initial sales of the Boxer 4K30 show large portions of the rental and staging community stand by Christie’s design, too. – Matthew Brennesholtz
