China's Hisense has announced that it will launch a full range of TriChroma Laser TVs during 2021. The lineup of ultra-short-throw laser projectors will include a limited edition model capable of throwing a 100-inch image onto the matching screen.
Laser TVs are nothing new of course, Hisense launched its first 100-inch Laser TV in 2014 and brought the first model to CES in 2015. In introducing the latest lineup, Dr. Xianrong Liu, chief scientist at Hisense Laser TV, said that over the last five years, Laser TVs have moved from a niche market to the mass market, gone from 2K to 4K, and stepped up from a one-color light source to three, while thrown image size has grown from 75 inches to 300.
Laser TVs are essentially ultra-short-throw laser projectors, and the Hisense range will use a new RGB laser light source architecture with separate lasers for each color light source that's described as a high-class DLP solution featuring double-area micromirrors for a 20 percent increase in brightness at the pixel level. As a result, projected images are claimed to be brighter than some big-screen TVs at 430 nits.
The company says that it's managed to improve color performance over its original devices by 128 percent, which means that the upcoming Laser TVs will manage 107 percent of the BT.2020 and 151 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamuts for the promise of "extremely high color purity" and "an amazing color performance."
Thrown image capabilities in the 2021 lineup will range from 75 to 100 diagonal inches, and the units will come with AI smart cameras cooked in, to support such things as interactive home workouts and even family karaoke.
During its online CES presentation, the limited edition 100L9 Pro 100-inch throw model was revealed, which will feature a front-mounted display that can show local time, temperature and content information, as well as full color animations, and integrated pop-up speakers for delivering 360-degree audio. It looks like the unit will also come supplied with a screen in matching colors but beyond those few details, no further information has been announced, so we'll have to wait for the official product launches to learn more.
Hisense did hint at where it expects the technology to be taken in the near future too, with the company looking to move into the AR/VR space, vehicle displays and eventually on to 3D holographic-like imagery.
Source: Hisense