Sony tweaked its Bravia TV processing engine last year, and built two prosumer home cinema projectors around it. Now another model has joined the Bravia Projector family, which is designed to "deliver a professional-grade cinematic HDR experience in the home."
The Bravia Projector 7 comes in a shade more compact and a tad lighter than the Bravia Projector 8 and 9 models – shaping up to 18.5 x 18.1 x 7.87 in (472 x 460 x 200 mm) and 28 lb (13 kg). The margins are slim though, but such things could be important in a space-tight home theater setup.
At the heart of each member of the Bravia Projector clan is the mighty XR Processor for Projector, an optimized flavor of the video processing tech found in Sony's Bravia televisions. Designed to help make visuals pop, it brings dynamic tone mapping to the viewing party, which analyzes peak brightness on a frame-by-frame basis to deliver "images with rich gradation, high brightness, and brilliant colors."
The XR suite also includes a feature that "controls powerful laser dimming in dark scenes" for the promise of deeper blacks without impacting onscreen tones and colors. The job of the Triluminos Pro tech is to bring the billion-plus colors to life. And Sony has also cooked in upscaling smarts to bring lower resolution imagery up to 4K UHD by "using a vast database to intelligently recreate lost texture and detail, all while minimizing noise."
The projector makes use of Sony's proprietary SXRD projection system for a maximum display resolution of 4,096 x 2,160 pixels at up to 120 Hz. An automatic low latency mode via HDMI 2.1 ports should "provide the necessary smooth and clear movement for responsive and immersive gameplay," with input latency said to go as low as 12 milliseconds.
The laser light source is capable of putting out 2,200 lumens. The projector covers 95% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. There's support for HDR and IMAX Enhanced content, and throw ratio is reported to run from 1.38:1 to 2.21:1. Zoom and focus are manual, plus corner keystone correction and vertical lens shift are included for ease of installation.
The VPL-XW5100ES – to use its catalog name – lacks Wi-Fi, but Ethernet LAN is included for cabling to a home network, and Sony says that it is compatible with a number of home automation systems. Pricing hasn't been revealed at this time, but it will likely come in lower than the Bravia Projector 8's US$16k tag, and is certainly going to be cheaper than the $32k Bravia Projector 9 model. The video below has more.
Product page: Bravia Projector 7
