Home cinema and projection specialist Sim2 has announced an updated version of its D80 projection unit. The new model is called the D80E - 'E' for 'Evolution' - and is capable of projecting a three-metre wide uncompressed 1080p picture.
The D80E borrows much of its technology from Sim2's multi award-winning HT3000E projector, but packs it all into a more compact unit. Better still, whereas the HT3000E costs £10,000 and the old D80 cost £7,000, the D80E will retail for £4,500.
Cinema quality
At the core of the D80E is a Texas Instruments DarkChip3 0,95inch 1080p chipset. This utilises the Digital Light Projection (DLP) technology that's used in most cinemas and widely recognised as the leading projection technology.
The D80E also incorporates Texas Instruments' patented BrilliantColor technology for enhanced colour, alongside Osram's Unishape lamp technology system. As a result the D80E boasts a response time 500 times faster than that of a standard LCD system, says Sim2.
The projector also uses Sim2's ALPHAPATH light engine, which is an optical engineering solution that enables to projector to be compacted into a much smaller unit and weighing in at just five kilograms.
Tech.co.uk spoke to Mark Franks, marketing manager for Sim2 UK, who told us that the new projector shows how the trickle-down of technology eventually benefits consumers: "The D80E outputs a 1080p image and uses the same kind of high-end technology featured in the HT3000E, however this has all been compacted into a much smaller unit that costs under half as much."
The D80E is available now priced £4,500.
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ptaaghol
June 20th 2010
1. SIM2 Domino 80E- Unreliable
2.5 years ago I purchased a SIM2 Domino 80E for about £6000 or $10K USD. It was all fine until one day 2 months ago the picture completely went into long lines all out of sync and unwatchable. Send it to SIM2 service centre via my dealer for repair. They could not find the fault for 4 weeks. Once they did, it was so expensive to fix that they did not dare tell me. The dealer forced them to do it under warranty and they went for the cheap option of finding the component that went as oppose to changing the board. I got it back with a new bulb (it was due for a change) and £750 bill. Took it out of the box and these was a screw moving lose inside the projector. Turned it on anyway and in 3-5 minutes had a message of “fan failure”. Back I have gone to the dealer again. Now I can tell you that for this kind of money you do not expect this kind of reliability and service. The high end AV dealer that I purchased it from 2.5 years ago stopped dealing with them because of unreliability. Watch out if you want to buy a SIM product. I would go for the reliable JVC range. Much better!
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