[dealmaker]

Guys,

What with work comittments then holidays I've been out of the loop for a little while.

What's the latest and greatest prospect on the Horizon??

I'd sort of made my mind up to get the Marantz VP12 S3 but with the S4 now released I have another can of worms wriggling on my desktop!

I guess the Samsung never materialsed and I'd also heard that Immersive were about to release a new super duper model?

I'm usually and advocate of stopping looking at what's round the corner, drawing a line in the sand, and buying the best of whats available TODAY, BUT with so many developments in terms of LYCOS, 3 chip DLP's, DILA, and "improved" single chip DLP units becoming available I am totally at a loss as to where to go.

Maybe Marantz will solve my problem for me by introducing the S4 at the £5k mark

Any thoughts?

[loonatic]

I too am on the verge of getting a HD2+ DLP PJ and the S3 is at the top of my list too after several demo's.

I have also been seriously considering the Mitsubishi HC2000 which is an awful lot cheaper than the S3 but still provides a very nice image and set of features. It is also damn quiet with a noise rating of just 23dB which I can confirm is true. It's main drawback to me was the lack of decent onboard processing which is provided by a trident chipset which in my breif comparision of Sky+ between the S3 and the HC2000 the S3 was nowhere near as good as th S3's Faroudja processing.

Have you any details on the S4 ? or are you just assuming it's that time of year again for new models to be announced ?

Do you think that the S4 might have a lower RRP ? they have recently upped the S3's by £500.

I also demo'd the Sharp 12k which was nice but way too loud for me.

Cheers, Lee

[dealmaker]

An ex-pat friend/colleague of mine lives in Tokyo - he has the Sharp 12K (which he is looking to replace - too noisy) and has told me that the Marantz VP12 S4 is in certain retailers there now.

He also seems to think that it is coming in cheaper than the S3!

Go figure?

I am too looking at the S3 and HC2000, funny how these 2 PJ's seem to be the current 2 favourites with people and yet they are in different price ranges.

I would really be interested in any info people have on the S4.

I see Sim2 are launching 2 new PJ's at Cedia with:
0.8 720p DarkChip3™ by Texas Instruments, together with a new video calibration software system.

So I suspect the next crop of PJ's will all have this chip???

[dealmaker]

I'm hoping to get some news from my colleague in japan on the S4 as he was supposed to be going for a demo at the weekend.

As for the SIM2 - well here we go again - another reason to wait a bit longer

I just hope that SIM2 sort out their throw issue and give us a projector that can be used effectivley, in sensibly sized rooms!