SIM2/TI BFI Feature (Part 2): HT5000 1080p 3-chip projector
This is part 2 of SIM2's presentation at the BFI.
The star of SIM2's high-end projector line up currently has to be the Grand Cinema HT5000 projector.
It's currently unique (nothing else comes close to its features) because it's a full HD 1080p, 3-chip projector, and it comes with a very impressive spec sheet.
Specifications are all well and good, and I'll come to those in a minute, but what everyone really wants to know is what does it look and sound like?
From the moment the first picture was projected on screen (an animated "Universal" logo), I was transfixed. These have to be the crispest, brightest, most colourful images I've seen yet on a digital projector, with deep blacks to match.
We watched movie trailers from "Goal", an Eddie Murphy film that I can't remember the title of, and "Flushed Away", plus scenes from King Kong and Mission Impossible III. I have to say, all were stunning in their own way, and I felt as if I was in the cinema. In fact, it was almost better than being in a cinema because it was much more personal.
The BFI's screen was 12 foot diagonal, and the picture easily projected onto that without losing any brightness or detail. All source material came from the Toshiba HD DVD which they'd brought in from the States. The projector will quite happily project any format thrown at it, upscaling to 1080p as required. Natively it likes 1080p 24fps, which is great for movies, and obviously what the unit excels at.
Of course, it was not only a demonstration of the projector, but also of the Toshiba HD DVD player. Despite some technical handshaking' difficulties before we began, it all seemed to run smoothly. There's no denying that 1080p on a huge screen is amazing. There's so much detail. Both 'real life' film and CG animation looked fantastic in their own way.
SIM2 make no apologies that you really do get what you pay for. Whereas LCD projectors disperse light as the image is projected through filters, in the DLP system, light is simply refracted off glass-coated optics, making for a much brighter image.
Talking of brightness, the HT5000 uses a 300W UHP bulb, which produces an intensely bright picture that is absolutely stunning, even with surrounding ambient light.
The projector features a 3x0.95" 1080p DLP DarkChip3, and has a full ON full OFF contrast ratio of over 5000:1. It can be fitted with any of six lenses including two giving fixed wide angle, and four with varying throw ratios, up to 6x.
It has a staggering six HDMI inputs, which is plenty for several inputs and is probably in place to appeal to more commercial ventures with multiple inputs (for example, several HD DVD or Blu-ray players). There's also the usual array of analogue inputs, although we marvelled for a second at why anyone would want to pump analogue signals through it.
I asked how well the projector handled broadcast-quality HD such as Sky HD, and was told that the projector would show up any glitches in the source material. So, if Sky pump out a low-bitrate, heavily compressed HD offering, it will stick out like a sore thumb on this projector. Mind you, this is an investment (see the next paragraph for re-mortage details) and broadcast HD quality will only get better over time.
Now for the bit that puts this beast purely in the reach of extremely rich home theatre enthusiasts and lottery winners - the price. It comes in at a whopping £38,000.
Yes, that's a hefty price, but bear in mind that you have cutting edge technology that is actually quite expensive to create (for example, apparently the glass for the lenses takes 5 days to grind). Prices will probably come down somewhat as 1080p and this kind of projection becomes more popular, but it will always be pretty high-end stuff.
Those on a more modest budget would be better looking at the SIM2 D80 1080p projector, the SIM2 HT3000 1080p, or the C3X 720p projector. Still in the thousands, but a little more attainable.
My final thought as I left Tom Cruise battling in MI3 was that, despite the fact that I'm not a real movie buff, I actually found myself getting really involved in the film and wanting to stay and watch it.
If you're after the ultimate home theatre experience, have a large wall and a larger wallet, then this really is an incredible piece of kit.
Take a look at the HT3000 single-chip 1080p DLP projector
