CEDIA Expo: No More "Down In Front!"

It was hard to miss Optoma's BigVizion rear-projection monitor, because it was really, really big--the largest 1080p product shown at CEDIA, Optoma insisted, and I believe it.



This 100-inch display (above) uses a DLP projector throwing images onto a 100-inch-diagonal mirror, all behind the screen. The mirror, in turn, reflects it onto the display panel.

You only need 30 inches of depth behind the screen for all the equipment, but once you've built it into your theater room, people can walk around the room, and you don't have to worry about them obscuring your view and making rabbit puppet shadows with their fingers, as you would with a room-mounted projector. Price: $20,000 when it ships in the second quarter of next year, not including construction costs to build it into your room.

Optoma also showed a hybrid projector (meaning, it's meant for either home theater or office applications). Mainly that's because it uses Texas Instruments' DarkChip3 DLP chip set, which allows it to generate 1400-by-1050 (SXGA+) resolution.



The EP910 (above) will project a 16:9 widescreen image, or a traditional 4:3 image, or a 5:4 image (suitable for widescreen notebooks). It has a DVI connector, so to connect a device through HDMI, you must use an adapter. It also has ethernet for network management (you can check out things like how much longer the lamp is going to last).

The projector will cost somewhere between $3000 and $4000 (but closer to the higher figure, says an Optoma rep) when it ships in the first quarter of 2006.