The German publication Elektronik Praxis reports that Kenneth Tai, Chairman of Jasper Display, has pushed the idea of creating UltraHD home theatre projection solutions based on a new UltraHD LCOS chip which the company presented at the recent Photonics Festival in Taipei.
Jasper received the ‘Outstanding Photonics Product Award’ for its first UltraHD LCOS chip, the 0.7″ chip, which has a resolution of 4160 x 2400, resulting in a pixel density of over 6,800 ppi.
Kenneth Tai sees an increasing demand for larger high resolution displays for the home. With 100″ being the goal, standard LCD displays may run into some difficulty (this is not new, as Panasonic would demonstrate, following its venture in large size PDP display). Besides weight issues, Jasper also sees cost and power consumption as severe barriers to such displays. Projectors on the other hand can create large displays at a lower cost and with lower power consumption.
If you are looking for a 100″ display, front projection has been the display technology of choice for quite some time now. While this is not likely to change, the question of who needs a 100″ display in the first place limits the potential market size.
According to Projector Central, there are already five UltraHD home theatre projectors available in the market, four models from Sony and one from Wolf. Of course, the Sony models are based on SXRD displays and the Wolf projector is based on D-ILA chips.
So far, the prices of these projectors range from $10,000 to $30,000, which is expensive when compared with a 65″ 4K LCD TV selling for as little as $2,200 in Best Buy. This is, however, the cheapest model and there are other TVs priced in the $3,000 to $10,000 range. Of course, for this, a consumer would only get a 65″ display versus the promised 100″ projected image. The existing UltraHD home theatre projectors create 1,300 to 2,000 lumens, clearly making them home theatre projectors. – Norbert Hildebrand
