The God of Home Theatre is here!

Sony Australia has recently announced the newest addition to its home cinema projector lineup with the launch of the VPLHW20. Utilising Sony’s cinema-quality SXRD panel technology, the VPLHW20 full HD projector provides home theatre owners bright, vibrant and detailed pictures.

“Sony continues to be at the forefront of delivering the best in high definition home cinema projection with the launch of the VPLHW20,” said Jason Lee, Product Manager, Projectors, Sony Australia and New Zealand. “Whether you’re a home cinema aficionado, avid gamer or armchair sports fanatic, the VPLHW20 creates a completely immersive and unrivalled cinematic viewing experience, delivering cinema quality projection right into the home.”

Utilising Sony’s Advanced Iris 3™ technology, the VPLHW20 delivers picture quality that works like the human eye, responding dynamically to the level of light in each scene and always selecting the optimum contrast. Advanced Iris 3™ brings out detail in darker sequences and prevents bright scenes from looking washed out, resulting in vivid cinema-like display with a contrast ratio of 80,000:1.

With Sony’s renowned SXRD panel technology, the VPLHW20 can deliver over 6.2 million pixels, approximately twice as much as other HD-ready projectors in the market. The SXRD technology minimises the space between pixels for crisp and vivid images with unrivalled clarity, producing the film-quality smoothness and cinema-quality digital projection demanded by home cinema buffs.

The VPLHW20 is designed to provide home cinema connoisseurs with a sleek and stylish exterior to complement any home cinema suite. The VPLHW20 is also equipped with a highly effective cooling system that keeps fan noise to an absolute minimum (as low as 22 decibels) so home cinema users can watch even the quietest parts of movies with no audible distractions from the projector.

This VPLHW20 is available to ship now from www.projectorcentral.com.au

Jonathan King is sales and marketing manager for Projector Central, Australia’s leading online store for projectors. Brisbane based, Projector Central has been servicing Australia for 15 years.

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Beyond High‐Definition: Hitachi Australia Launches New High Resolution Projector for Businesses

Brisbane, 12th November 2010: Hitachi Australia today announced the latest innovation in its high resolution projectors with the launch of the CP-WUX645N projector. Catering to all businesses, including those in technical industries that require superior quality visuals, a key feature of the CPWUX645N projector is its resolution of 1920 x 1200, which is beyond Full High‐Definition (1920 x 1080) and also includes 4,200 Lumens for vivid brightness.

These features combined allow businesses in industries such as aeronautical, engineering and medical, to project clear and easily visible images of extremely detailed figures and diagrams.
This feature‐rich projector offers businesses with the capability to provider superior quality visuals, projecting business data that is noticeably vibrant and crisper. In addition to flawless picture quality, a feature of the CP‐WUX645N called ‘Picture by Picture’ allows users to project two visual sources on one screen at the same time. This makes operation of presentations easy and convenient, and is useful for businesses that need to compare two sets of data or even display a video source next to other material.

Flexible installation is available with manual optical lens shift to minimise image distortion, greater range of installation with the two times zoom lens, and perfect fit to enable quick adjustments to a projected image. These options enable businesses to provide the right type of projected image that is suitable for the right environment.

Bill Christoforou, Product Manager, Digital Presentation Solutions, Hitachi Australia, told Projector Central Australia : “As presentations have become a necessity in today’s business environments, there is a real opportunity for organisations to utilise a projector with the ultimate in HD resolution. Businesses no longer need to spend extraordinary sums of money to purchase the most innovative and top‐of‐the‐range projector technology. Our new CP‐WUX645N provides businesses with a feature rich product that is high quality, but provides real value for money.”

“There is a growing trend towards using high definition products in the workplace. As projector
pricing continues to become more affordable, many businesses are finding that the highest resolution and ultimately the best unit for the job is within their reach. With the CP‐WUX645N, we’re aiming to make it as accessible as possible so that more users can display their HD content the way it is meant to be shown.”

The CP‐WUX645N also features many of the impressive specifications already found on most Hitachi projectors that improve convenience, ease of use and increase presentation quality. The projector range features a hybrid filter, ensuring maintenance is hassle‐free. In addition, the range also includes advanced network and versatile security functionality.

This CP‐WUX645N is available to ship now from www.projectorcentral.com.au

Jonathan King is sales and marketing manager for Projector Central, Australia’s leading online store for projectors. Brisbane based, Projector Central has been servicing Australia for 15 years.

Projectors Brisbane | Projectors Gold Coast | Hitachi Starboards Brisbane | Interactive Whiteboards Brisbane | Interactive Whiteboards Gold Coast

New Ultra Short Throw Projectors

Brisbane, 12 November 2010: Today we announced the new
ultra short throw LCD projector range from Hitachi; a smaller, lighter and more functional
unit that delivers optimal image quality.

Designed to meet the increasing needs of both businesses and education users the CP‐AW250N is the first release in the new A3 range that Hitachi is calling its ‘Ultimate Short Throw’ projector range. With additional models due to hit the market in 2011, these projectors will feature shorter throw distance, easier installation and offer greater reliability.

Finding the best distance to position a projector has been a consistent challenge for both installers and users in the past. Smaller spaces often require projectors to be installed as close as possible to presentation surfaces, therefore limiting screen size. Additionally, presenting from the front of the room is often made difficult by shadowing caused by the speaker standing between the screen and the light path. This also results in annoying eye glare for the presenter. The CP‐AW250N projector helps solve these problems.

It can project a sharp 80” WXGA (1280 x 800) resolution image from as little as 56cm from the screen. This not only maximises screen size within confined spaces but also means that shadowing and eye glare are significantly reduced as the presenter is no longer standing in the path of the light.

Developed for installation in corporate and learning environments and for use in conjunction with interactive whiteboards, the CP‐AW250N is smaller and 2kg lighter than its predecessor, meaning it can now be installed by one person. A new six‐axis wall mount, which comes bundled with the projector, ensures that the projector can be installed in the perfect position, as fine adjustments can be made on each of the six axes independently of each other.

Hitachi’s ‘perfect fit’ digital correction feature means that distorted images can be adjusted digitally, from up to eight different points independently, allowing the installer to make fine corrections and ultimately resulting in a straight and correctly aligned image. Also, ‘barrel’ or ‘pincushion’ distortion, which occurs on rounded surfaces, can be corrected.

Hitachi has also included inorganic LCD panels in the projector, which have a higher resistance to light. This makes for a more durable projector, which ultimately extends the life of the product. Bill Christoforou, product manager, Digital Presentation Solutions, Hitachi Australia, said: “We’ve seen encouraging quarter by quarter growth in the ultra short throw market, particularly from schools who have installed interactive whiteboard solutions, and we expect this to continue. We have developed an ultra short throw projector that provides our customers with the most optimum image quality, product reliability and value for money.


Jonathan King is sales and marketing manager for Projector Central, Australia’s leading online store for projectors. Brisbane based, Projector Central has been servicing Australia for 15 years.

Projectors Brisbane | Projectors Gold Coast | Hitachi Starboards Brisbane | Interactive Whiteboards Brisbane | Interactive Whiteboards Gold Coast

Projectors – LCD Vs DLP (The downfall of DLP technology)

The most common question asked when purchasing a new projector, for the home, office or classroom is; do I buy an LCD projector or a DLP projector? LCD, which stands for ‘liquid crystal device’ and DLP, which stands for ‘digital light processing’ are the two most common projector imaging technologies. With so many brands and models available it can be overwhelming for customers to make a choice between both technologies. The fact is LCD projectors offer superior image quality and colour accuracy. The following article explains why DLP projectors struggle with reproducing the same level of image quality.

Imagine a set of blinds in your home covering your bedroom window. With the twist of a rod you can have the shutters open or closed, depending on if you want to let light in or not. This is exactly how an LCD projector works. Each Pixel works like an individual shutter on a set of blinds to either pass light through or to block it. DLP on the other hand is made up of millions of microscopic mirrors or ‘pixel elements’ as professionals like to call them. Each pixel element works to either reflect light or block it.

How the light source is processed from the time the projector turns on to when the picture reaches your screen is vitally important to image quality, brightness and colour accuracy. LCD projectors process white light from the lamp by splitting it into red, blue and green components by three mirrors which direct the coloured light to 3 different LCD panels. The 3 LCD panels create the elements of the image by turning each pixel on and off, which are then combined in a glass prism to deliver the projector image. An important point to remember about LCD projectors is that all three colours are projected into your wall at the same time. The way a DLP projector works is vastly different and even the way an image looks is not the same. With DLP, white light from the lamp is directed through a spinning colour wheel with transparent red, blue and green segments at speeds up to 11,000 rpm/s. This approach to creating an image creates a sequence of red, blue and green light. The millions of micro mirrors described above reflect the coloured light on the pixels to create the image elements. The elements of the image are projected in sequence on the screen, one colour at a time. The viewers eyes will then combine each coloured element of the image into a single complete image. With LCD projectors all colours are available all the time to deliver high brightness and fantastic colour accuracy. In DLP, only one colour is available at a time resulting in lower colour brightness and accuracy. Some manufactures have included a white segment into the colour wheel to improve over all brightness, but this further degrades colour accuracy.

I read in forums all the time that DLP has a higher contrast ratio and therefore must be better. For those unsure, the contrast ratio is a measure of a display system, defined as the ratio of the luminance of the brightest white to that of the darkest black that the system is capable of producing. DLP projectors do have high contrast specifications compared to most LCD projectors. At first glance, this seems to be an advantage, however, in the real world the true black level is determined by the ambient light in the room when the projector is used. Do not be fooled by contrast specifications on websites and brochures.

When the content you want to view includes moving images, DLP projection technology can also create image errors, or ‘artifacts’. The most common artifact that a DLP projector displays with moving images is colour break up. Colour break up is inherent in DLP systems because moving images change position between the time red, blue and green colours are displayed. LCD projectors do not have this characteristic because all colours are delivered simultaneously. DLP manufacture’s have developed 3DLP solutions using 3 chips to solve the colour break up problem, but the cost of these projectors make them impractical for most businesses and consumers.

Another difference between LCD and DLP is how they compensate for the refractive qualities of light. Take yourself back to high school science and remember how different colours of light refract different amounts when passing through the same lens. The downfall with DLP projectors is that it uses the same panel and the same lens to project Red, Blue and Green. All 3 colours are not the same and refract light different. Most of the time with a DLP projector an extra yellow colour will appear above and an extra blue will appear below something as simple as a straight black line. During manufacturing LCD projectors can be adjusted to minimize these effects on the projected image as each colour is processed on separate LCD panels.

The only real advantage (excluding price) with choosing a DLP projector is its overall smaller size and weight. However, this is only relevant for portability and must be traded off against the image advantages of LCD projectors. If overall picture quality is important to you, then the solution is simple. Choose an LCD projector!. LCD projectors will always produce bright, colourful images with less image errors. If you want to learn more about LCD technology in more detail, check out this fantastic resource website Explore 3LCD. If you have any more questions go to Projector Central and send me an email.

Jonathan King is sales and marketing manager for Projector Central, Australia’s leading online store for projectors. Brisbane based, Projector Central has been servicing Australia for 15 years.

Projectors Brisbane | Projectors Gold Coast | Hitachi Starboards Brisbane | Interactive Whiteboards Brisbane | Interactive Whiteboards Gold Coast

Sony unveils two new high-brightness 3LCD projectors for fixed installation applications

Projectorcentral.com.au is please to announce that Sony is adding two new models to its line of high-brightness 3LCD business projectors, designed for fixed installation applications.

The new VPL-FX500L model delivers 7,000 ANSI lumens of Colour Light Output and is capable of the widest lens shift in its class, suitable for large-screen applications in venues such as university lecture halls and corporate auditoriums. The VPL-FX30 provides 4,200 lumens of Colour Light Output, and is equipped with 1.6x standard zoom lens for flexible installation, ideal for midsized classrooms, lecture theatres, boardrooms or meeting rooms.

Both projectors incorporate Sony's next generation Bright Era™ technology, with a native XGA resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels and feature a sleek, white cabinet, allowing them to easily blend into white ceilings when installed. There are no terminals or ventilation slits on the rear side, allowing both projectors to blend neatly into the ceiling when mounted.

"These are the first in a series of new projectors that offer outstanding total cost of ownership, through long-life lamps and filters and extremely low power consumption – all while delivering high-brightness and high performance," said Les Boros, Product Marketing Manager, Display Technologies, Sony Australia.

The VPL-FX500L's twin-lamp system provides fail-safe and economical operation. It can output a total of 7,000 lumens with just one lamp. However, a second lamp is built-in to provide automatic back-up should the primary lamp fail. The two lamps are alternatively used, allowing the expected lamp life to total approximately 8,000 hours.

The VPL-FX500L ships without a lens, and offers backwards compatibility with models of Sony's existing and older model accessory lenses.

The VPL-FX30's 1.6x zoom standard lens allows customers to easily upgrade from a majority of existing projectors to the VPL-FX30 without having to change ceiling mount positions. For applications where more than a standard lens is needed, the VPL-FX30 is compatible with the VPLL-Z1032 and VPLL-Z1024 accessory lenses for Sony’s current VPL-F40 series.

Depending on the lens used, the VPL-FX500L can shift images approximately vertically +/-96% and horizontally +/-64%, from its original position, making projection possible without having images distorted by digital keystone correction. This feature is recommended for applications where the ceiling mount position is limited by lighting fixtures or water sprinklers, or where the position is higher than screen.

The VPL-FX30 will be available to purchase online in June, and the VPL-FX500L in July.

Soon Only Not Yet!

In 2001, Sony launched the highly successful VPL-FX50 series projector which became popular for their installation flexibility, such as providing lens options that also fitted other Sony models.

Word on the street is Sony will announce the first in a series of new installation projectors featuring even greater installation flexibility; with more versatile lens and positioning options. These projectors can be located just about anywhere.

Sony is keeping very tight lipped about their new range, but information is slowly being leaked about what will actually appear in the line up. Rumour has it, we can expect to see a 7000 ANSI Full HD 1080p projector and possibly a short and ultra short throw range. If Sony does not release any short throw projectors I for one will be very disappointed. A company like Sony, who is a leader in projection technology should have every option available for its customers. There is a huge chunk of the education market that Sony is missing out on. Invitations have not been sent out yet, but I have heard Sony has locked in the 5th of May to launch its new projectors at the Sydney Opera House.

2010 Mitsubishi Electric Update

Calling all valued Consultants, Resellers and key University departments. Advanced Video Integration in conjunction with Projector Central is hosting the 2010 Mitsubishi Projector Update Presentation and everyone is invited to attend.

As a leader in the Australian projector market, Mitsubishi Electric features one of the largest ranges of projectors available. With a choice between DLP or LCD technology, Mitsubishi Electric has a projector to cater for any use from education, government and corporate.

We invite you to join us on the 26th of April as Mitsubishi presents an exclusive and exciting look at their new range of Full HD projectors designed for boardrooms and lecture theatres. Limited seating is available - RSVP now to secure a seat.

Session 1 - 10:00am

• AVI Key Clients
• AV/IT Consultants
• Resellers

Session 2 - 1:30pm

• Universities
  
• TAFE
• K-12 Education
  

Registration will automatically close on the 22/04/2010

For more information on this event please email jonathan@advancedvideo.com.au or call +61 7 33673300