Everyone was waiting for the new arrival to the family… Sony proudly announces the birth of “Pearl” ! Well, delivery will officially be in October in Japan for about 6,000 $US. This new model will be positioned between the middle and the upper range of the new generation line-up of “Full HD” video projectors from Sony.
Under the reference VPL-VW50, Pearl is the little sister to Ruby , or VPL-VW100, that we had the pleasure to see for the first time in Europe (see our exclusive video clip) at the What Hi-Fi Show in London last November. Both incorporate three SXRD™ (Silicon X-tal (Crystal) Reflective Display) chips, which you can see really up-close in the complete product demonstration by Nathalie Muijtjens, Senior Product Marketing Manager Europe, in our video clip at ISE. This technology delivers full 1920 × 1080 high-definition resolution.
One of the differences is that Pearl uses a 200 watt SHP lamp rather than the Xenon 400 watt for Ruby, however a similar cooling system technology has been integrated to maintain the low noise level of 22 dB. Another difference in the specs is that Pearl will offer a brightness of 900 lumens. The contrast ratio is 5 000:1 and it appears that an auto-iris system like Ruby will be available to push it to 15000:1. We’ll bring you more on this as we get full documentation and details.
The lens is the same as the big brother, with a series of very practical focal lengths with the 1.8x zoom range, which means that from distances between 3.5 to 5.5 meters back, you can cover a 2 meter wide projection screen. Pearl also has the double manual horizontal and vertical lens shift for parallax adjustment. Another difference is there are 2 HDMI ports, instead of just one.
With the price announced, despite our taxes in Europe, this should make for a SRP of about 30% cheaper than big brother Ruby.