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Related Sections: HDTV  Home Theater

Marantz bows first 1080p DLP front projector

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If you're in the market for an HDTV, you've probably heard the term "1080p" once or twice. The cryptic number refers to the highest of high-definition formats, rarely sighted in the wild (Samsung's just-released Blu-ray Disc player is one of the only devices that can produce a native 1080p signal) but rapidly becoming the gold standard of high-def. A small but growing number of TVs can actually render every single pixel in the bandwidth-heavy 1080p signal, although so far there has been no DLP front projector capable of spraying a screen with a full-HD 1080p image… until now. Marantz's VP-11S1 is the first projector to include Texas Instruments' 1080p DLP chip, and it has the processing chops to use it: a souped-up image processor from Gennum, which upconverts all lower-resolution video to 1080p. Although the projector uses only a single DLP chip instead of three, its color wheel spins faster than any previous DLP projector, said to reduce the potential for any color-smearing artifacts (sometimes noticeable as a "rainbow effect" on single-chip models). But the single-chip design at least keeps the cost down to a mere $20,000 — still worthy of a spit take, but not bad for such a first-ever, ultra-high-end item, considering. Basically, once you have this baby, you shouldn't have to upgrade your home theater until they start broadcasting holograms.

 
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