JVC has been supporting 4K imagery in recent years with its e-shift processing that has gone through several generations of products.
It's easy to forget, however, that the company introduced a true 4K theater projector back at CEDIA 2009, well before display manufacturers and videophiles were clamoring for it … also, that model (DLA-RS4000) ran upwards of $175,000.
Fast forward to 2016 and the video market has transformed into a 4K world where all the new flat-panel displays have gone Ultra HD and on the projector side the manufacturers have been focusing on 4K in some form (either natively as touted by companies like Sony and Barco or through processing such as what JVC, Epson and others have been achieving).
At CEDIA 2016 JVC introduced its follow-up to the $175K DLA-RS4000 at a fraction of the price. It's not in the four-figure range covered by the popular e-shift products, but the new $34,999 DLA-RS4500 delivers 4096 x 2160 resolution as well High Dynamic Range (HDR) and wide color gamut support.
The projector is fueled by JVC's BLU-Escent laser phosphor light engine and employs a .69 D-ILA chip, which JVC says produces a 31 percent narrower pixel gap than previous chips.
JVC notes that a new optical system for the projector features a 100mm-diameter all-glass lens (compared to 65mm on other JVC projectors) with 18 elements in 16 groups, and has expanded shift capability to +/-100 percent vertical and +/-43 percent horizontal.
The company says that the DLA-RS4500 is also undergoing testing to become the first THX-certified 4K projector; it is slated for release in December. The projector is rated to have an operational life of 20,000 hours, says JVC.
In its CEDIA booth, JVC was showing some incredible nature footage from MammothHD that highlighted the microdetail in fur color and texture of animals such as polar bears and leopards as well as ocean waves and much more.
It also showed a trailer for the 2014 movie Lucy featuring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman in which the closeups of those two stars in particular seemed to magnify every little facial feature as if it were a dermatologist's delight. Of course it also helped that the DLA-RS4500 images were being thrown onto a 16 x 9-foot Stewart Filmscreen StudioTek 130 screen.
