Xenon Projector Lamps and Sony

Sony of Canada has recently unveiled a new projector that is supposedly the greatest achievement in projector history. Well, perhaps they have designed the best Home Theatre projector ever when you consider the color saturation and the resolution.

Color reproduction is sometimes the hardest thing to achieve since ultimately you want the picture to look like real life. The best way to get this result is to use a light source that closely resembles sunlight.

Sony has implemented the use of a 400 watt projector lamp in its newest projector, the VPL-VW100. The reason why they are using a Xenon projector lamp is due the extremely pure white light that it can produce.

The white light produced by the projector lamp is very close to that of sunlight and enables it to project the LCD image with “true� color reproduction. If you want an everyday example of why and how white light makes a difference in color reproduction simply take a look through some old photographs of yours.

You may have taken photographs in the past with your camera flash at night when there is no other light present and noticed that the colors seem very true to what they look like in real life. Then at other times you may have taken photographs in your home with ordinary lights on but this time you did not use your flash. If you noticed that the picture came out looking a little bit yellow it is because most lights do not produce white light.

The camera flash is designed to produce white light and therefore helps your color reproduction. The Xenon projector lamps however require a high wattage to produce enough lumens to keep your image bright enough.

The Xenon projector lamp that is employed in the VPL-VW100 is a whopping 400W and compared to the standard UHP projector lamps of today, is moving in the other direction regarding energy consumption.

With higher wattage, comes more energy required and therefore more heat. With more heat, there is more cooling that is required to keep the projector from overheating. Fortunately, for Sony and VPL-VW100, they have come up with an efficient cooling system that keeps the noise level down as well.

There is a price to pay for the more expensive cooling system giving the VW100 a $12,000 price tag. Xenon projector lamps are also very expensive to manufacture and therefore will fetch a pretty penny for the retail consumer. For more on Xenon lamps and the new Sony VPL-VW100 make sure to check back for updates!