4K Sony VPL-VW100 tested by German folks
 

The folks from the German site cine4home.de were the first in Europe to
test the Sony VPL-VW100 4K Projector:

http://www.cine4home.de/tests/projek...ny4K/SR110.htm

Because they didn't have any native 4K material to feed the projector with it was decided to let the Sony display a 1080p Robbie Williams concert 4 times (Quad-mode - no scaling whatsoever) onto the Screen!

Very interesting to see 4K becoming a reality with this projector and the RED camera.

I can translate the review if there's an interest.

I'm interested, got a translation there, pal? =)

I was toying with buying one of these for a home theatre room for my production company's use.

Technology is such a beautiful thing. I look forward to the day when every cinema will have a 4K projector.

You can also see something similar here in the U.S. if you watch Steve Soderbergh's Bubble. It was shot on HDCAM and released at Landmark Theatres on 4K projectors.

Here's the press release:
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/6022.html

Also here's a good interview with Soderbergh regarding Bubble, check his comments on using HD and digital intermediates later on in the interview.
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/tech...dies/5973.html

The test was done in Wolfgang Mayer's (Home-)cinema: 4m x 7 m Screen, walls completely black and it has motorized seats (.....*sigh*......)

2. The Technology

The projector also raises the bar in terms of size. With dimensions of 740 x 500 x 1330mm (29 4/5 x 19 4/5 x 52 3/5 ") and a weight of at least 220 pounds it will require a separate room in most cases.

The design is unusual: Instead of being just a black box the projector sports a design that is more similiar to a science fiction spaceship or a military weapon.
The chassis is black metal and the lens has to be purchased separately for about 20.000 Euro (25.000$)
4 lenses in different focal lengths are available.
The chosen lens is attached to the front and is quite huge. Upon close inspection, we see the lens has an Iris (where the arrow points to in the picture), most likely for optimizing contrast.

There is a diffence between the models R105 and R110: The lamps and subsequently the achievable brightness. Each model uses 2 lamps but it is possible to run the projector with only one lamp active.
The R105 uses 2 1000W Xenon lamps and the R110 uses 2 2000W Xenon lamps.

The model R105 achieves a maximum of 5000 Lumen brightness, the R110 reaches 10,000 Lumen.

The brightness can be adjusted in several steps to optimize the projected image.

In our test we ran the projector with a single 2kW lamp. The necessary cooling produced a noise that makes us recommend installing this unit in a separate room.
The image is created by 3 separate SXRD-panels with a native resolution
of 8,85 million pixels, almost nine megapixels.

In the picture you can see the details of one of the panels which works somewhat like a mirror.
The panel is based on the HD-panel of the Qualia004. To quadruple the resolution the panel's dimensions have simply been quadrupled.
The exact native resolution is 4096x2160 pixels, that is not the video aspect-ratio but the American 1.85:1 cinema aspect ratio.

If one feeds the projector with widescreen material of the video aspect ratio, the remaining pixels on the sides can be used for a horizontal lens shift.
The following diagram shows how high the resolution of this projector is compared to lower-res formats.

The colored rectangles compare visually the different resolutions
The approx. 414.000 pixels of standard PAL/NTSC material only amount to a small corner of the 4K projection image.
Even the small HD res only delivers approx. 900.000 pixels.
The full HD res with its approx. 2 Megapixels covers less than a quarter
of the screen. The potential of the Sony projector becomes glaringly obvious.


To be continued....

@Michael Wisniewski : Thanks for the link! Holy cow, they're talking about 8K.................