While it was more than hinted at CinemaCon 2021, Cinionic was going to be a laser based projector company going forward, the Barco web site has made it official. The S2 projectors are listed as discontinued and under Cinema Projectors, only S4 projectors are being offered. This also means that their S2 LP projectors are also gone. They also don't show the DP4K-P post-production projectors so it will be interesting to see if post houses will tolerate Laser based color. The Flagship lasers are also no longer listed.
Note, the last price list we received was for October 2021 and the S2 and S2S3 based projectors were still listed so I thought they would make it to the end of the year so, perhaps the website has updated prematurely. Regardless, it is clear that one of the three major players has finally dropped the S2 line, going forward. I think it is incredible how long the S2 projectors have been in continuous production from all three OEMs with almost no significant changes. Sure, there have been some updates here and there but nothing to dramatic and pretty much backwards compatible.
Christie, interestingly, has doubled down on xenon by introducing new CineLife lamp based projectors this year. They are owned by Ushio so there is some logic there. Plus, xenon based projectors still have are more life-like color reproduction, without speckle. I could see post houses still wanting that.
NEC seems to be banking on LP being the light source of choice (Barco/Cinionic is still doing LP on their SP2K projectors) for their entire range of projectors but they are also still offering their tried and true standards NC1200/NC2000, NC3200/NC3240. But I'd suspect that the NC3541L gets the bulk of their "large" projector sales and the the NC2041L for the next one down (LP based projectors). They also have a set of LP projectors where the LP part is a recyclable service part. Look for models with "ML" at the suffix to see them. At present they have 4 (three 2K and 1 4K though I don't know if the 4K is shipping). I wonder how well their Xenon machines are selling in this laser based world.
Note, the last price list we received was for October 2021 and the S2 and S2S3 based projectors were still listed so I thought they would make it to the end of the year so, perhaps the website has updated prematurely. Regardless, it is clear that one of the three major players has finally dropped the S2 line, going forward. I think it is incredible how long the S2 projectors have been in continuous production from all three OEMs with almost no significant changes. Sure, there have been some updates here and there but nothing to dramatic and pretty much backwards compatible.
Christie, interestingly, has doubled down on xenon by introducing new CineLife lamp based projectors this year. They are owned by Ushio so there is some logic there. Plus, xenon based projectors still have are more life-like color reproduction, without speckle. I could see post houses still wanting that.
NEC seems to be banking on LP being the light source of choice (Barco/Cinionic is still doing LP on their SP2K projectors) for their entire range of projectors but they are also still offering their tried and true standards NC1200/NC2000, NC3200/NC3240. But I'd suspect that the NC3541L gets the bulk of their "large" projector sales and the the NC2041L for the next one down (LP based projectors). They also have a set of LP projectors where the LP part is a recyclable service part. Look for models with "ML" at the suffix to see them. At present they have 4 (three 2K and 1 4K though I don't know if the 4K is shipping). I wonder how well their Xenon machines are selling in this laser based world.
Comment