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The cost of 4k laser projection. Speculation Red Laser Price.

W

Wayne Morellini

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We have seen those near $100 doller pocket laser video projectors for some time. By putting multiple projectors in a frame you can project a 4k image for around $2000 or so. I am sure that these will not have the features, brightness or quality of the Red Laser which nay have new 3D technique, but gives some realistic pricing of how cheap it can be done (plain low powered 4k projector, non encoded cinema system).

But being an inventor, I have known for a very long time that you can get just one of these projectors to do 4k, at a lot cheaper cost, 8k not many times more. The biggest factors are power level (there are real limitations in safety classifications, with recent research showing more limitations needed), resolution input processing, and resolution itself. However we maybe talking about hundreds of dollers in bulk. So $500 4k projector is possible, thought producers will likely will charge at least $2000 for this even if they are a low end Chinese manufacturer. Of course, this industry works by charging people through the teeth for old technology and low resolutions, but there are substantial cost savings to be had with alternative projection technologues. So our prospects of seeing a soon 4k $2000 projector at 60p are silm, unless some type of goidwill hero company intervenes :-) _

I am probably overstating the case, and a very basic 4k projector can be done much cheaper than $500. The sorts I were investigating doing were much cheaper and others over 19k resolution possible one day. However, a lot of people are oblivious to these technologies.


There are also a number of alternative laser projectors out there:
www.laserfocusworld.com/content/lfw/en/index/search.html?q=laser+projector&x=45&y=17

The recent safety research (of interest for Red too I think):
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/arti...eds-light-on-scanned-beam-picoprojectors.html
 
You can't compare 50 lumen pocket projectors to what RED is developing. It just doesn't compare. From what RED has stated their projector is going to be equivalent to the 5k-10k lumen projectors on the market today. (ok I am vastly understating this for the sake of a safe argument!!!) We are talking about 100-200 times the brightness here. Also you have no grounds to assume brightness and cost have a linear relationship. If they are like many other things I would say it isn't linear, and cost/lumen probably increases with increased brightness.

Now from a resolution standpoint you need 12 xga projectors to cover a 4k screen. Some of that resolution goes in to edge blending so you will end up with probably something like quad HD. Ok lets assume that a 5000 lumen array of projectors will have equivalent brightness as the RED Laser home version. (Again I am vastly lowering the expected specs on the RED Laser projector to strengthen my argument) You now need 100 sets of 12 projectors to match this brightness. So we now need 120 pocket projectors at $100 each. That turns out to be $12k. Ok so if we buy them in bulk for wholsale price directly imported from china then we would spend about $6k on pocket projectors. We then need to buy a computer to do the edge blending. You will need $500 for software and a $300 graphics card for every 6 projectors. To save money lets pirate the software, and also buy the graphics cards wholesale from china from someone who stole them off the shipping crate. We then need to buy 20 graphics cards for $200 each. That is $4k in graphics cards. We can only put 4 of them in each computer so we need to build 5 cheap computers at $500 each to run them. That is $3k for computers.

So now using horrid math and slightly illegal means to cut the cost to a reasonable level we will be spending $13k on our array of projectors. Any takers?

It is not kind or helpful to red to post about price in this manner. I hope you can see how unrealistic your proposal is. While it is entirely possible to build what you propose, the cost becomes enormous.

Wait, I didn't say anything about the reduced contrast and color depth such a setup would have...
 
Technologies and component cost aside, there is still all the other overhead costs of R&D, marketing, employees, facilities, profit, etc.. I'm sure RED's projector will be a great piece of technology for a great price. If it can be sitting on my doorstep for $10K and is on par with what Barco or Christie are selling for $110K and superior to what Sony is selling for $65K, then I'll be one happy guy.
 
i very much look forward to Red Laser projector ...point is WHEN and IF will ever be released ... REDRAY is "coming" since couple of years ...

it would be the Best NAB if they accept preorders and going to ship before the summer ..

g
 
I just hope it's not a Big Bertha-type box. I don't expect it to be the size of a $700 DLP projector, but a bit smaller than Sony's 4K SXRD bricks would be nice and palatable for the market.
 
Scaling up the microvision laser pico projector ( I have one , great toy! ) isn't so easy.
Moving the 1mm DEMS mirror is easy. It's small mass is easy to vibrate.
More power means bigger mirror means more expensive. Moving at 4k pixel placement accuracy is hard too.
The microvision is 1mw power. You would want a few watts for a good projector. More money there as well.
Modulating the 4K beam at about 80 MHZ is tough as well, at those powers.
I'm sure RED is having fun with all this !
The color gamut is amazing on the pico projector, and when it's black, the lasers are off and it's pretty much black too.
 
Hey Les,

I have been wanting to get one of those pico lasers but I really want it to see what is on my iphone 4s and iPad Gen3 (just in today) screen. I don't want to buy something that can only show the video out. I want to see what is on my screen like with airplay. (I want to be able to project my Kindle Whisper app onto the ceiling when I read in bed)

The Wife is sure I'm crazy........

When do you think this will be possible?

Alan
 
Alan, it plays out from the iphone with slideshow, netflix and youtube. No 'desktop' type of output as far as I can tell.
I call it my micro RED laser projector ;)
The HDMI from the Scarlet won't drive it. I wanted to play with a laser EVF idea I had.
 
Guys scanning your posts I got to say I accurately covered all the things you are objecting.

Martin, in my experience things are often as cheap as they seem when they are already developed and sold cheaply, and when you know about designing them especially, scaling them up is another thing, but it is unlikely to be more than the $2000 to buy a heap of them and put them in a frame to make basic 4k (16:9 super HD). It would almost have to be incompetency to get a high volume single unit product that is more costly to make.
 
For some reason it just posted by itself and left out the rest of my reply.

Zach,

Did I not say I was not directly comparing a Pico projector to the Red Laser, but how much the minimum price could be for a basic projector without all Reds features. However, scaling this up as a single unit (definitely non linear, I would be contemplating sacking any engineer that said this case was linear. Your example is linear.) gives a good price indication of what a projector like the home Red could be done for (for legal safety reasons the cinema one should be much more powerfull than the home version and cost may go up more steeply). I definitely never said that brightness and cost had a linear relationship, the opposite is true over certain ranges, you will get a lot more brightness for relatively less increased cost, otherwise your bluray player would cost many times more. If you look at what I wrote you can see this is what I was getting at.

These assumptions are wrong, and based on retail pricing that generally is hiked up the better the performance, that in reality is the opposite in cost terms until you get to a high level of performance where it is difficult to manufacture cheaply. Also remember we are dealing with lasers, and the cost reality is different compared to conventional lamps, you have to look beyond what prices companies think they can get out of you and also to reduced costs producing tens of thousands to tebs of millions. It is entirely different to retail logic, which can only show you what maxinum prices (cost being a subunit of that) henceforth the Pico projector rig example of how much a non red laser, very basic shd resolution should cost. To answer another question, we are talking about 17 times plus the brightness of a Pico over a 100 inch pus screen. The talk of graphic cards and comouters dies not relate, this is only an example of maxinum cost on the duspkay side, I illustrated how you can drasticalky reduce the cost by using one projector and one dispay input processing section (which of course you could also do if you simply used 17+ projectors). Also, you, of course, would align projectors so there is no overlap and resolution loss (overlap would show up as bright box boundaries), but only an example anyway, not something we want to do.

I see that you mention reduced color and contrast, we are talking about Pico laser ptojectirs, there is little drop iff., not normal projectors, you can see in my post. Please, instead of being so negative read and understand the post before answering. It woud help community spirit if you could rewrite yours (and from the common mistakes in replies most people could do this). My post is a reality check benchmark. Just because somebody down the road will charge $4 a kilogram for potatoes when they could be $2 at a profit , does not mean you should.

Jeff,

Are they not selling a home and a seperate cinema version? The home version should not compare to those cinema projectors. It probably quickly became evident the laser safety issues. The home version might be very much less bright on a screen as big as a cinema. There are certain issues with how frequencies resonate with various materials in the eye (and the focusing pinpiont problem) that may limit the maxinum energy potential compared to normal light, I remember years ago the maintainer of Sam's Laser Safety FAQ dismissing my concearns, but as usual, I turned out to be justified. I am not saying you still won't get a fantastic image compared to a normal projector, but people should not go too overboard in terms of brightness.

R&D is not such an issue, as most of the work has allready been done, and true volume manufacture spreads the costs thinly and reduces manufacturing, facilities etc costs. A $5k (or $4k, nice one Mohamed :-) ) can sell hundreds of thousands, given no competition, even more, $2k millions. So, it is not as irrational as it may seem. The reality, is that keen producers to sellers of goods generally try to reduce the cost as much as possible and charge as much as we will pay to the level that maximises their profits. This does not mean a good producer will not charge less than they can expliot from us. A good volume manufacturer (from a community piont of view) will seek the lowest price to raise volumes to make good profit. This is the option, to remain small and specialized, and self obsessed, or large and volume. When most everybody is explioting people with overly high priced low performance (for the price) products you can undercut them and take market share, producing volume and reducing pricing, as Red did against the cinema camera industry. Red Laser home edition presents an opportunity in a much much larger market that is also readily exploited with high cost low performance products, and there is opportunity for them to price Red Laser accordingly to produce this volume.

Jeff, you know me, I usually don't post unless I'm already know I'm right, or speculatively, unless I have a good chance of being right.


L.

It should not be a big Bertha.


Les,
Les, you misunderstand. I like the the micrivision concept because it is like one of my older designs and has some usefullness for what I would like to do (instead of developing my own, the r&d is already done, saving all that money). But I have my own version and know how to get the EXISTING version to do 4k, most of your concerns are not a concern. I obscure the answers because I have over a hundred different new laser scanning projector designs that I could develop, and don't want to give things away. I, in general, deal with things way more advanced than Red.
 
Really !

Have you seen the amount of positional jitter in the thing ? Even if you lock the x scan with a clock derived from the mirror position, you still have the rubber banding of the Y axis to get locked. No easy method for that.
The mirror is tiny. it would fry under much more power. Remember it's 1mm with probably 5% absorbtion.
The 1mw lasers are obviously out. Are you aware it's hard to modulate lasers at 80Mhz?
So pretty much none of the thing is useful for up scaling to 4k high power.
Don't get me wrong, I personally love to get the cheapo techniques going, but I don't think there is much there in this case.
I'm happy to play devils advocate if you want to throw out some solutions ;)


Wayne Morellini said:
For some reason it just posted by itself and left out the rest of my reply.


Les,
Les, you misunderstand. I like the the micrivision concept because it is like one of my older designs and has some usefullness for what I would like to do (instead of developing my own, the r&d is already done, saving all that money). But I have my own version and know how to get the EXISTING version to do 4k, most of your concerns are not a concern. I obscure the answers because I have over a hundred different new laser scanning projector designs that I could develop, and don't want to give things away. I, in general, deal with things way more advanced than Red.
Click to expand...
 
Really yes Les. I've said enough to get any competent enough engineer that maybe watching thinking I should not say this, jitter is not a probem, timing is to compensate, I've used a very low jitter system. 5% high absorption, changes things, some modification maybe, possibly, needed on one design, not the other, especially if limited to 1mw. Sorry, I know it is similar design, but not that absorption was so high. Keeping it simple, how do they moduate ultra high frequency pulses in communications optcs. I am light years ahead of this stuff now in design terms, there are much better ways, a few best, one worth still having for hundreds of years, the new crt. There is a gulf between your understanding of the problems and solutions and mine. If only I had the money.

I should not jest, it is possible that Red has the same laser and compression discoveries I have made, but it is unlikely, there are so many other things well in advance to the norm.
 
Timing can, as I said, can correct x axis jitter.
Y axis can NOT be compensated for with timing, because the beam is simply in the wrong place in Y. You have only one chance and the stupid beam is too high or too low.
So the microvision is out. Using a piezo or galvo to correct is no longer using the microvision as a base.
There are plenty of engineers who think up ideas for amazing products on paper,but avoid 'going there' for the things that in the back of their minds are known complications. Those things burst the bubble, but then the fantasy idea dissolves into the ether and they have nothing.
Saying there is a gulf of difference is an easy way out. Have you built anything that works off paper that is this complex ? Just wondering/calibrating ....
 
Would I want to do grading and post production on a number of pocket laser projectors put together with duct tape?
 
The goal has always been 4K 3d laser for $10K. Let's see how we do...

Jim
 
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