Hands-on with world's first LED DLP home theater projector, undercuts three-chip rivals

The first LED DLP projector designed for home cinema use is expected to go on sale in the UK within months. The Vivitek H9080FD, which uses a trio of revolutionary new LED modules instead of a conventional lamp, can deliver ultra-high contrast images and wide-gamut colour, in addition to: Instant On (no warm-up period), long-lifespan, quoted at 20,000 hours (so users are not expected to need to replace lamps, which can be surprisingly expensive when they fail or fade) and zero colour fringing (aka the ‘rainbow effect’) because there’s no need for a colour wheel.

LED DLP Hands-on
In the DLP projector hierarchy, the H9080FD appears to find itself up against three-chip 720p and 1080P models both in terms of size and performance. Yet with an expected list price of £10,995, it comes in at lass than half the price. So what are caveats, if any?

HCC spent some time with the Vivitek model at the UK CEDIA Expo yesterday, running through Quantum of Solace and Transformers on Blu-ray, and came away from the session suitably impressed.
In use, we found the image to be very contrasty (this despite the fact that Vivitek quotes a rather low 800 lumens light output), with punchy, accurate reds; TI’s Brilliant Colour picture processing appears to have have good synergy with LED illumination.
Black levels also looked reasonable during our demos, although the viewing room used for the preview was not ideal, so we’ll reverse absolute judgement for now. Texas Instruments' Dynamic Iris technology promises a contrast ratio of 100,000:1.  

Brian Wood, from Vivitek’s UK distributor Rapesco-AV, told HCC: ‘We now need to find some good retail outlets for the H9080FD. Our background is in the corporate and educational markets, but we need to get this unit in front of Home cinema enthusiasts.’

According to Vivitek’s James Hue, two more conventional single-chip DLP models will join the brand’s line-up this autumn. Both aimed at AV fans, one will be priced at a highly competitive £1,000, with a step-up high-end model coming in at around £5,000.

The rush is on
LED is rapidly becoming a hot topic in the DLP projector community. Norwegian specialist projectiondesign revealed its first LED DLP model, the FL32,  at last week’s Infocomm show in the US. However, unlike the Vivitek model, it’s not being positioned as a consumer product. High-end DLP market leaders Sim2 are also in the game. Sim2’s James Buckle told HCC: ‘Our LED projector is in the final stages of development. I expect we’ll unveil it at the US CEDIA Expo in Atlanta, in September.’