Optoma Breaks $5,000 Price Barrier For High-Resolution Home Theatre Projectors With The Optoma H56 DLP Projector

9-Jan-03

Optoma Technology, Inc., a leading developer of projection and digital display products, announced the world's first Double Data Rate (DDR) Digital Light Processingô (DLPô) home theatre projector for under $5,000--the Optoma H56ô. Using the advanced DLP technology from Texas Instruments, the H56 brings every detail to life, displaying clear, vivid images--even on screens as large as 200 inches diagonal. The projector delivers a high contrast ratio of 2,000:1, two times greater than that of most professional movie theatres. Available January 30 and priced at $4,995 (MSRP), the H56 is expected to be the lowest-cost high-resolution home theatre projector on the market. The power of the H56 projector can also be seen in Optoma's attention to every detail and feature desired by home theatre professionals and end-users. For example, the Optoma H56 is extremely quiet, only 32 dB, so you can hear the movie, not the projector. In addition, the H56 accepts HDTV connections in the form of component video cables, as well as next-generation DVI-I digital video. It also supports present-generation signals, such as S-video and composite video, and upconverts these signals so well that users will swear they are viewing content from a high-definition digital source. In the 4:3 aspect ratio, the H56 delivers a resolution of 1024 x 768, and in 16:9, the resolution is 1024 x 576, a 61 percent increase over standard TVs in this same mode. In addition, the H56 also offers a unique Native Mode feature that allows the incoming video signal to be displayed at its native resolution--without scaling to alter the image. This means viewers see the best possible image. H56 Improves On The Award-Winning H55 The Optoma H56 builds on the features of the multi-award-winning Optoma H55ô home theatre projector. The two products have similar specifications, but the feature sets and capabilities, not to mention the price points, vary significantly. While the H56 and H55 share the same Silicon Image Silô 504 deinterlacer and other powerful technologies, the H56 brings home theatre to an entirely new level. For starters, the new projector is built on more-advanced, next-generation DLP technology. In addition, Optoma has boosted the contrast ratio on the H56 by 100 percent, from 1,000:1 to 2,000:1. Both of Optoma's home theatre projectors are optimized for vivid true-color projection, but the H56 takes it a step further. The new projector features a new six-segment color wheel, coated with an advanced material that achieves superb color saturation--especially in the area of projecting rich reds. Like the H55, the brightness, contrast, color, and aspect ratio settings of the H56 are optimized for each video source at the factory. Because of this, end-users will notice video quality that is higher than that from other projectors right out of the box. Users can also make adjustments to these image settings for each video source and save the settings for future use. The H series projectors' reverse 3:2 pull-down and other processing technologies allow movies and other video to be displayed as the director intended them to be viewed--without the artifacts and annoying jerkiness created by competing projectors. As a testament to the H56's proficiency in deinterlacing, for instance, Optoma recommends that users defeat line doubling on many DVD players to allow the process to be accomplished inside the H56. For more information, visit www.optoma.com.

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