Laser Projectors

Home cinema fans have been waiting years for laser projectors to hit the marketplace as lasers potentially offer better image quality and will do away with the need to replace bulbs.

LED is being touted as the future for home cinema projectors but laser may also find it's way into the home. There are speckle issues to be resolved with lasers when used for projection but hopefully they are working on that issue and will find a way to overcome it.

A new laser product has recently been released in America. The AAXA A1 Laser Pico Projector. The AAXA has 20 Lumens which isn't much but you get perfect focus on any surface. You also get a built in media player and a 2GB thumb drive and it has it's own USB slot. The resolution is 800×600 and it throws a maximum 50 inch image. You get 90 minutes on a charge. This projector is not cheap for what is on offer with the AAXA costing $599.

On a more exciting note Sony have announced a laser projector intended for either home cinema viewing or theatrcal cinema viewing. Prices are as yet unknown but it won't be cheap. Sony announced last week the development of a new laser light source module suitable for cinema projection consisting of three lasers for red, green and blue. The lasers have a power output of 10W for Red, 6W for green and 5W for blue.

The developed module can be used for a range of projectors with 1000 Lumens to 10,000 Lumens. This makes it suitable for home cinema and digital theatrical cinema screenings. Multiple modules can be stacked together which means higher brightness, lower power consumption which will be around 110 Watts at 5000 Lumens, better contrast and colours, increased life of over 10,000 hours and miniaturization of the optical prism.

The colours on laser projectors will be better than anything seen to date and focus will never be a problem again. Contrast and brightness will be perfect for home cinema standards. Sony is expected to introduce these new projectors during the latter half of 2010.

JVC have also announced an 8K resolution 3D compatible Laser projector. Hopefully the future of the projector is either LED or laser and i for one hope the bulb is eventually a thing of the past. The only stumbling block at the moment is the price of this new technology although it has to be said lasers have been under development for projectors for well over five years but it finally looks like products will hit the market.

Speckling is also an issue that needs to be overcome with laser projectors. Speckling is an issue with light bouncing back onto the laser beam and this causes the speckling issues which can make it seem like there is dots on the image. It's possible in the future that LED could combine with laser and make the ultimate viewing experience but for now the technology is still in it's infancy and faces a tough battle to grab some market share.