Mitsubishi's LASERVUE

[almy]

Have any of you actually seen the new laser TVs coming from Mitsubishi? One reviewer wrote about their appearence at a Mitsubishi Expo, lined up with competitor's models, but the Mitsubishi guy admitted that none of the models had been ISF tweaked.

[Beta Man]

Haven't seen them, do they have pricing in place?

[vick vega]

Yeah I'm kind of curious to see how much $ the 60+ inch ones are. Any info on street dates/prices?

[dobyblue]

Gary Merson had a little snippet up about them.

http://hdguru.com/the-madness-contin...panasonic/230/

Mitsubishi revealed to a small gathering of industry press its 2008 model line which includes new LCD model series, new DLP rear projectors and the first production Laser TV.

Laser HDTV

LaserVue is the official name of Mitsubishi’s Laser TV. The demonstration revealed an image that was significantly improved compared to the prototype I viewed at the 2008 CES. It is now quite bright and the colors (especially the reds) are the most vivid of any display device I have seen . This was quite evident in a side-by-side demonstration against a 65″ Sharp LCD and a 60″ Pioneer Kuro plasma. Mitsubishi is keeping most of the specifics, such a specs, number of models, pricing and feature list under wraps till the end of June, however they let a few details slip out.

The LaserVue HDTVs will ship in the 3rd qtr. of this year. They consume only one half the power of LCD flat panel (for the same screen size), and the sets will be capable of delivering a 3D image (movies may arrive later this year)

[Beta Man]

nice!!!!

So I can tell my wife it uses less energy than our Aquos, thus it saves money

[SquidPuppet]

Anyone know how it works? Or a basic concept?

[marzetta7]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

Anyone know how it works? Or a basic concept?

I've been following the LaserTV or LaserVue as it is now called for a while now...I'm really excited to see one in person when they come 3Q so hopefully they live up to my own hype. Here are some answers to some commonly asked questions from their official web page...

http://www.believingisseeing.tv/faq.html

Their gallery can be seen here...

http://www.believingisseeing.tv/gallery.html

Also, here is a favorable review from a NY Times blog...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0...t-impressions/

From what I've heard, they are about 10 inches deep with the prototypes and could be thinner by the time they are sold commercially. For a LaserTV technology primer, I suggest you go here as it gives a broad description of how the technology works...

http://www.novalux.com/

Yeah, I want this to be my HDTV. Looks awesome. Just waiting on the price...

[BStecke]

Aren't these supposed to be relatively cheap, even compared to plasmas?

[marzetta7]

Originally Posted by BStecke

Aren't these supposed to be relatively cheap, even compared to plasmas?

That's been my understanding...they they are supposed to compete directly with plasmas and LCDs....but I just have a feeling there might be a premium.

[dmbphan041]

for what it's worth

Mitsubishi’s slim DLP TV line-up, which was demonstrated at CES, has a new name: LaserVue. The sets diagonals will range from 60” to 73” and cost between $1800 and $4700. They are only 10” thick, which is quite small for this category. For reference most rear-projected TVs are 16-18” thick, however some models are as thin as 6” deep.

The new sets will have high refresh rates (120hz?), which make them to be fast enough for use with games using a Stereo 3D mode. We recently tested World of Warcraft on a Samsung 3D DLP and it was very cool (it required glasses).

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives...rvue-hdtv.html

[vick vega]

Anyone go to one of the shows and, seen one yet? How did it look? It Sounds like it's an awesome tv. I wonder what formats it can accept(1080p/60 or better and display it?. 3D Blu-ray's would be cool on this tv I'm guessing. Not going out on a limb on that one.

[mgonzo2u]

I've been watching the OLED v Laser HDTV projects the past 2 years myself.

Glad to see they are making progress.

My only personal holdup will be waiting until some other company besides Japans war manufacturing machine to put out a model.

In this lifetime, I will never buy anything badged as Mitsubishi. That is in honor of all my fellow Americans who died at hands of Mitsubishi made Japanese military equipment.

Honor before pleasure.

[Shinma]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

Anyone know how it works? Or a basic concept?

Essentially, it will likely operate as do most DLP TV's except that the source conditioning will be different, and there will be no color wheel (compared to lamp based illumination). The biggest problem with laser based displays is speckle. I'll be really interested in seeing how they deal with this, as your eye is very sensitive to small changes in intensity, and it is very difficult to suppress. Most likely they will use something like the Novalux source, which has several lasers for each color. Unfortunately, even if you use 100 lasers, you still have a 10% intensity fluctuation from speckle. Basically, the reduction factor is the square root of the number of sources. There aren't many ways to improve on this, other than reducing the coherence of the lasers, or bouncing the light around so that portions of the light are delayed beyond the coherence length of other portions. The problem with reducing the coherence is that it also broadens the spectral width and the divergence of the source, though it is generally beneficial to a point. I don't remember what the beam quality of these sources is, but the last time I looked, it was certainly enough that speckle is an issue. As far as a light pipes go, they are not particularly cheap, and you need a pretty long one to really do the job. Coincidentally, the space required to drop the coherence to the point it is acceptable will probably make it suitable only for very large displays. My guess is that they are using a light pipe, though there are other techniques requiring similar space that can be use, which I'm not at liberty to mention. If they are using anything truly novel, a patent search would turn that up, so there isn't much of a need for secrecy. Most of the techniques I've seen patented are really variations on the same idea, even though the method may seem exotic.

The only other options I can think of is that they could be vibrating the source. This doesn't actually get rid of any speckle, but the hope would be that your eye would time average it. If the light before the DLP vibrates fast, with respect to how quickly your brain interprets the frame, and it vibrates a large distance compared to the speckle size, you shouldn't be able to detect any non-uniformity.

[marzetta7]

FYI, Mitsubishi's site has been updated...

http://www.laservue.tv/home.php

Looks like it will be here sometime Q4 instead of Q3.

[sokrman14]

$7000 for the 65", way too much considering plasmas are cheaper, and LCD's are about the same price. I don't see projection lasting much longer than a few years anymore.

[btf1980]

A buyer at CEDIA is telling me that he is not impressed by the Laservue. I trust his word. Hopefully it's a source issue, not the display itself.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by sokrman14

$7000 for the 65", way too much considering plasmas are cheaper, and LCD's are about the same price. I don't see projection lasting much longer than a few years anymore.

I don't think there's a plethora of 65" plasma's to choose from that are cheaper than this.

Most 65" Panny's list for $6,999

[ajt458]

the 65" has been priced at $6,999. seems a little pricey for the alleged benefits of this technology

[SkillzthatKillz]

where did you find the pricing? i wanna see a laservue go head to head with a kuro and see which one takes the cake

[mojo1978]

if u google laservue vs kuro you'll get your answer. i'm very interested in laservue they fixed alot of the bugs like speckling & made it brighter but $7000 is too much i'll wait for the next model.