Setting up a home theater system can be a complicated and costly business involving the purchase and placement of multiple components and arranging seating so that all viewers get the optimum movie experience. Optoma aims to simplify the process with a high resolution ultra short throw projector that also packs its own soundbar.
"The Optoma P1 Smart 4K UHD Laser Cinema brings together the best of both worlds – large, true-to-life images with high quality sound – for a truly cinematic, ultra-immersive home entertainment experience," said Optoma's Brian Soto. "The P1 is the first entertainment product we've developed that we can confidently say stands to replace TVs in a large number of homes."
As the name suggests, the Optoma P1 Smart 4K UHD Laser Cinema is built around a laser projection unit rather than a traditional lamp-based setup. Optoma hasn't given any specifics but does say that the P1 can throw a 3,000 lumen, 8.3 million pixel image on a home theater screen or living room wall.
Placing the unit just a few inches away from the screen or wall will result in a UHD resolution image at up to 120 diagonal inches, while HDR10 and Hybrid Log-Gamma compatibility should translate to life-like colors and sharp contrast.
Optoma acquired California audio brand NuForce in late 2014, so when thinking about developing an all-in-one home theater hub, it's only natural that the company would keep things in the family. The NuForce soundbar is made up of individual woofers and aluminum full-range drivers housed in isolated speaker enclosures, with Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus audio decoding capabilities promising immersive audio with a wide frequency response and crystal clear sound.
The smart part of this smart projector shapes up as IFTTT support for painless integration into the modern smart home, and voice control courtesy of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Users can control smart features using the Infowall feature of the Connect companion app, and wireless connectivity is cooked in for streaming the latest content from Netflix or YouTube.
The Optoma P1 Smart 4K UHD Laser Cinema is due for release towards the end of Q2 for US$2,999, but the company is demonstrating the projector ahead of release at CES 2019.
Source: Optoma