This year is definitely the year for 4K screens and projectors as they compete to knock 1080p off its pedestal and claim its place as the industry standard. Some companies (ie, LG) are even going as far as making sure all new models released are 4K from this point forward. Sony has been one of those competing hard, and although they haven’t gone strictly 4K, they are still maintaining their position in it.
Now they have announced their VPL-VW350ES 4K SXRD projector. In fact, they were just showing it off at CES earlier this month. We wish we could have brought you full coverage with an interview, but Sony was very strict with upholding a no press interviews policy. Although it was odd, it seems they want to maintain full control of the information being released at the moment, mostly probably to do a lot with the recent hack against them by (supposedly) North Korea.
The new projector packs in Sony’s SXRD LCoS chipset, Triluminos image enhancement optical engine technologies (for richer colors and deep contrast), Motionflow picture technology (for smooth delivery of fast moving images), a brightness of up to 1500 lumens, HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 support and connectivity options for home automation systems.
It will be available this year at a price tag somewhere below $10,000 (we are guessing that mean $9,999). It still doesn’t fall into the price range that the average American consumer can afford, but still shows 4K is making its way down the ladder towards a more reasonable price range.
Some of us have been a big fan of the SXRD series from Sony since the latest of projection TV series (somewhere around the 2005 time range). Sony still holds the top position for projection TVs, mostly because when they came out with the latest SXRD models (which topped anything else in the market), everyone else stopped producing them outside of Sharp (which didn’t hold up to the quality back then).
We look forward to seeing more of the new SXRD projector!
Update: It is available now. It can be found via the following link (button), and the price is $7999…
