Question Why has the cost of native 4k projectors not come down ?

jeddati

Established Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2006
Messages
913
Reaction score
125
Points
206
Location
London
Why has the cost of native 4k projectors not come down? is it because Sony has a monopoly of sorts. And why are other manufactures struggling to develop native 4K projectors to the consumer market ? Why is it taking so long? 4K Blu-rays have been out since 2016.

I remember getting my first projector 720p an Optoma HD700x almost 10 years ago then later managed to upgrade to 1080p then upgrade to 3D Projector and now a fake 4K, but I have been stuck on a fake 4k for a while :( and its frustrating why manufacturers are not been able to develop native 4K projectors at a reasonable price ?
 
only 2 manufacturers in the game doesn't help

the cost of lens assemblies and the native 4K panels?

they are niche products so economies of scale don't really kick in like on flat panel tv's?

I don't think JVC can make enough N7's at present so not a reason for them to lower prices - in fact they upped the price in the USA

think "cheap" native 4K may never happen so I bit the bullet and bought an N5 last March - not regretted that decision at all
 
Until others enter the race it’s effectively a monopoly between Sony and JVC, the other problem is despite the fact that DLP brands can match Native 4K’s resolution they are a million miles away with regards to blacks/contrast so not really competing in the same market or customer.
 
Until others enter the race it’s effectively a monopoly between Sony and JVC, the other problem is despite the fact that DLP brands can match Native 4K’s resolution they are a million miles away with regards to blacks/contrast so not really competing in the same market or customer.

the DLP/pixel shifter PJ's do a great job for the money and for the majority of potential owners do all that they want for less than half the price of native 4K panels so Benq, Optoma and Epson have not been "forced" to move away from 1080p panels

you do need to be a bit obsessive to produce a viewing environment where even the cost of a 270ES or N5 can be justified - the "i cant get that past the wife" syndrome - if you cant produce a room or screen fit for purpose will an N5 be better for you anyway?

the fudging over names like 4K eshift or true 4K or 4K enhanced are all designed to confuse punters - how many think they have bought a native 4K machine?

UST projectors with laser engines and the Texas chip must be very tempting for people who want a lounge set up with little fuss and can get a "4k" 100" image in their lounge including an ALR screen for not much over £4k. the new Optoma will sell well i bet

none of this makes cheap native 4K projection ever to be very likely
 
the DLP/pixel shifter PJ's do a great job for the money and for the majority of potential owners do all that they want for less than half the price of native 4K panels so Benq, Optoma and Epson have not been "forced" to move away from 1080p panels

I did say matched Native 4K but the reality is when put side by side there's subtle differences, of course none of these will be visible from normal viewing distance or in isolation so that why I feel it's OK to call it matching the resolution of Native 4K.

The thing is for the mast majority of people even Epson and JVC's e-shift is perfectly good even, I myself did the experiment in my room with a Sony 360es and we (myself and it's owner) couldn't tell which was sharper or had more pixels from my 9.5-10ft viewing distance so really is there much to push the likes of Epson to enter this market which if they did would no doubt drive the price down?

you do need to be a bit obsessive to produce a viewing environment where even the cost of a 270ES or N5 can be justified - the "i cant get that past the wife" syndrome - if you cant produce a room or screen fit for purpose will an N5 be better for you anyway?

I class myself quite obsessive and once my other house is sold I will definitely have an N5/7 for sure, do I feel I really need it?..... no but the desire to have something better is built into on DNA. No doubt to get it there will require the wife getting something shinny so in effect this bloody projector will cost me WAY more than it cost you. LOL

the fudging over names like 4K eshift or true 4K or 4K enhanced are all designed to confuse punters - how many think they have bought a native 4K machine?

Completely agree it's all done to confuse nothing more and in truth it's doing a bloody good job at it.

UST projectors with laser engines and the Texas chip must be very tempting for people who want a lounge set up with little fuss and can get a "4k" 100" image in their lounge including an ALR screen for not much over £4k. the new Optoma will sell well i bet

none of this makes cheap native 4K projection ever to be very likely

This is the future of projectors, as the technology of ALR screens improve the idea of getting a much bigger screen than a traditional TV with little effort is a win win for all of us......... as long as performance isn't compromised which it the BIG QUESTION.
 
I believe this is as much to do with the optics as anything else. The vast majority of projectors have optical systems that are barely adequate as it is and that's before you bring 4K into the mix.

A quality optical system costs ££££ and cannot be 'value engineered' in the same way just about any other component can.
 
The main issue with 4K has been and will be the optics
Which must be glass to resolve all those pixels
Sony does cheaper versions but these use plastic to replace some lens parts which softens the image so
Whilst a 4K panel it’s not that sharp..
I agree with the other comments that the dlp contrast is
Not good enough and they also gave a faux 4K panel

Market needs competition and it’s rumoured that
Epson is launching a native 4K soon.. but it won’t
Be cheap...
 
Lenses, yes, but there are models that cost three times what others do and have the same lenses. There are other factors such as the quality of the lamp or laser light engine. Brighness and heat create additional engineering problems, especially the way they interact with both the panels and the lenses. Then yes, as mentioned further up it's a smaller market. They will sell less of them than a typical TV model as really, unlike a flat panel, you need a dedicated room, which the vast majority of people will not have, or will not want.

And think about it this way: On a 65" flat panel 4K screen manufacturers have over 1800 square inches to put nearly 9 million pixels. On a 4K SXRD projector, they have about 5 square inches to achieve the same thing. This is very difficult and expensive to achieve.

Then you have to think about just how difficult it is to produce decent blacks on a projector compared to a flat panel. Trust me, it is extremely hard.

Anyway, personally I don't know what sort of numpty would blow that much money on a projector, but apparently they exist. :rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
Which must be glass to resolve all those pixels
Sony does cheaper versions but these use plastic to replace some lens parts which softens the image so
Whilst a 4K panel it’s not that sharp..

This isn't actually true. There are some plastic elements in Sony's lenses right now, but it is mostly glass and the plastic elements do not affect sharpness. The image is PIN-sharp, even close-up. However, the ARC-F lenses on Sony's absolute top end do offer slightly improved focus uniformity (sharpness into the corners being same as in middle of screen), where lenses on the other models do sometimes exhibit one corner or other being very slightly, almost indistinguishably, soft. Depends on your exact unit, though, as units of the same model can differ slightly one to the next.

What it is not reasonable to say is that the quality of the lenses make native 4K pointless. 4K, provided it was shot and mastered in 4K and isn't a 2K upscale, looks night and day sharper compared to 1080p on these projectors. Just insanely sharp.
 
Last edited:
Today I watched Elysium on Sky Q UHD through my Optoma UHD51 and it looked astonishing. I fail to believe (with my set up anyway) that a native 4K could make it look so much better to warrant the extra cash. I’m more than happy with this for less than £1.5k.
 
Today I watched Elysium on Sky Q UHD through my Optoma UHD51 and it looked astonishing. I fail to believe (with my set up anyway) that a native 4K could make it look so much better to warrant the extra cash. I’m more than happy with this for less than £1.5k.

and that is a perfectly fair point well made - you can get some great images on your screen for £1500

sky q is, even in UHD, a relatively low quality source - the resolution is very compressed compared to disk with no HDR/WCG - i have sky q and am disappointed with 4K movie quality

most streaming sources i find significantly better than sky - the apple + tv looks excellent through my apple 4k box

if it wasn't for sport I might well have cancelled sky - they have a LOT to do to make their picture quality a premium experience in my view

i might agree that my N5 might not look a huge amount better than your optoma with sky q as the source but the better the source you feed it then the difference will be significant

as always whether that makes the spend worthwhile depends on the demands and resources of the individual
 
i might agree that my N5 might not look a huge amount better than your optoma with sky q as the source but the better the source you feed it then the difference will be significant

Yeah, exactly this. The very best quality signals will look better when you spend more. I've no doubt you're getting a hugely enjoyable image out of your PJ, though and that's great.
 
I suspect the image you are getting from your "budget" 760ES must be excellent - any temptation for the next one up the price list?
 
I suspect the image you are getting from your "budget" 760ES must be excellent - any temptation for the next one up the price list?

Haha. Nah. The only upgrade for another 10k would be a *slightly* better lens. This is my next-5-6-years projector and as you can imagine, I am thrilled with it.
 
we can all be obsessive and I have little doubt the better lens is, well, better but you have a great PJ and fully understand why its a keeper - I was only joking (sort of)

obviously my N5 was a "bit" cheaper than your 760ES but I feel the same way that it is a keeper for quite a while
 
and that is a perfectly fair point well made - you can get some great images on your screen for £1500

sky q is, even in UHD, a relatively low quality source - the resolution is very compressed compared to disk with no HDR/WCG - i have sky q and am disappointed with 4K movie quality

most streaming sources i find significantly better than sky - the apple + tv looks excellent through my apple 4k box

if it wasn't for sport I might well have cancelled sky - they have a LOT to do to make their picture quality a premium experience in my view

i might agree that my N5 might not look a huge amount better than your optoma with sky q as the source but the better the source you feed it then the difference will be significant

as always whether that makes the spend worthwhile depends on the demands and resources of the individual

It is the same mantra as HiFi. Rubbish in, rubbish out.
Just as high quality speakers will show up every deficiency in a compressed recording, a high quality native 4K display will show every deficiency in a compressed video stream (even a 4K one).
 
Haha. Nah. The only upgrade for another 10k would be a *slightly* better lens. This is my next-5-6-years projector and as you can imagine, I am thrilled with it.

Especially after the recent firmware upgrade I would guess!
 
I am glad that many manufacturers are pursuing image quality over specs. JVC led the way here by holding off until the 2K based panel could be bettered.

It’s clear that image quality is more that pure resolution, contrast, motion, colour, and so on have a significant effect. Many articles well written demonstrating that the resolution limit or target is probably under 4K depending where you sit. Add the material quality and it’s obvious why everything needs to be excellent before 4K significantly betters 2K

I also suspect making a very good high contrast 4K panel is hard, the finer you go the more of the panel will be gap between pixels

8K is stupidity if we could have stellar 4K I am quite sure that’s all we need ?
 
Now we need projectors with HDMi 2.1 CES 2020 hopefully
Now when we can get 12 feet wide OLED goodbye projectors
 
not sure if the last 2 posts were serious or not but an NX9 for $5000 ? that's a useful deposit to finance one new or the second hand price in maybe 5 years time as it is never going to be the new price. you'll be lucky if the N5 or its replacements are that cheap in 3 years time

12 feet wide OLED would be interesting but not too practical and given the 77" OLED diagonal is still at least £6k or the 88" oled at £30,000 ish we might have a bit of a wait for even 100" diagonal oleds to be vaguely affordable

all great ideas till you think of the practicalities of vast flat panels even if they are modular construction like "the wall" that Samsung showed a while back

I suspect there is life in projectors for a good while yet
 
and we need HDMI 2.1 for projection?
 
not sure if the last 2 posts were serious or not but an NX9 for $5000 ? that's a useful deposit to finance one new or the second hand price in maybe 5 years time as it is never going to be the new price. you'll be lucky if the N5 or its replacements are that cheap in 3 years time

12 feet wide OLED would be interesting but not too practical and given the 77" OLED diagonal is still at least £6k or the 88" oled at £30,000 ish we might have a bit of a wait for even 100" diagonal oleds to be vaguely affordable

all great ideas till you think of the practicalities of vast flat panels even if they are modular construction like "the wall" that Samsung showed a while back

I suspect there is life in projectors for a good while yet
All of this. Plus, there is something in the 'cinematic' nature of a projected image that makes it feel like the cinema experience. A hundred inch OLED image won't do that for me. Obviously that's down to actual cinamas using projectors and not 100-foot TVs, and perhaps that's something more psychological than measurable, but given the choice between my projector and a 133" OLED, assuming same price, I would still choose my projector. When I'm in my home theatre I feel like I am in an actual cinema, albeit without bastards talking, munching, texting or farting.
 
Last edited:
Jakimp,

I agree with you. I find that I prefer standard bluray discs to UHD on Sky (N7). It seems to lack some clarity. Hopefully they will up their game at some point (maybe when introduce HDR?)
 
I am starting to lose faith with sky

premium pricing with poor picture and seems that they rarely produce atmos tracks now

it can be done by everyone else like prime, apple, Netflix etc who all produce large amounts of content with 4k, hdr and atmos - the new apple tv service is excellent for picture and sound - movies purchased of apple are miles above sky quality

and they seem to be losing sports coverage to bt all of the time
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom