Sanyo, who has been producing front projectors for many years and is considered one of the world’s largest manufacturers of LCD and DLP projectors, is going “one step beyond” by creating a completely new optical engine, called 4LCD. While other manufacturers are focusing solely on 720p or 1080p models, Sanyo is looking for ways to differentiate itself from the pack of projector brands. Currently, the market for front projectors is divided into 90-pecent commercial and 10-percent home theater. Technological innovations, therefore, come to the commercial sector first before trickling down to the home cinema arena. 

The demand for brighter projectors continues to come from the field as systems integrators are asked to install video displays in extremely large venues such as convention halls, conference rooms, auditoriums, houses of worship, and large home theaters. The problem has arisen, however, as to how to increase brightness levels on 3LCD projectors, but not dilute the colors on screen. Up until now there has been a reverse effect in color reproduction as brightness is added to 3LCD projectors. As 3LCD projectors become brighter, colors become noticeably washed out, lacking vibrancy and realism. What to do?

4LCD – How Does It Work?
Sanyo has come up with what it believes is a unique and perfect solution. 4LCD builds upon standard 3LCD optical engines by improving color reproduction with something the company calls “QuaDrive.” The QuaDrive optical engine makes a noticeable difference in shades of color that contain yellow, and range from green to red. According to the company, its goal is to produce more photorealistic images.

Sanyo’s QuaDrive system (see image below) starts with a conventional 3LCD optical engine, which is comprised of a lamp, light integrators, three dichroic filters, three LCD panels, and a combining prism. Then, it adds a fourth, single pixel LCD panel to filter and pass yellow spectral energy as needed. Basically, 4LCD adds a Color Control Device to conventional 3LCD (red/green/blue) systems. In other words, the additional Color Control Device in the 4LCD optical engine allows a projector to automatically control the amount of yellow light in the image, producing higher luminosity with improved color accuracy and clarity. It works by slightly changing the spectral response of a conventional 3LCD engine. Sanyo’s new Color Control Device (the 4th LCD) panel gives the viewer shades of colors that are apparently closer to what is seen in the real world under natural daylight, which the manufacturer believes gives the viewer a more photorealistic image.

Reportedly, color gamut isn’t the only thing affected by adding the Color Control Device. According to Sanyo, image brightness also increases by as much as 20-percent, while image contrast remains about the same. It should also be noted that Sanyo’s QuaDrive system does not require a special projection lamp to achieve its goal. Conventional short-arc lamps used in other projectors will work just fine. According to the company, the lamp’s inherent spectral imbalance is corrected by the specially-tuned dichroic filters, which results in higher frequency response in greens and yellows.

Sanyo PLC-XP200L
The first projector to launch this innovative new 4LCD engine is Sanyo’s PLC-XP200L. The PLC-XP200L is rated at an amazing 7,000 lumens. Coupled with the impressive high contrast ratio of 2,200:1, the PLC-XP200L is capable of generating clearer, richer and more realistic images than was ever possible with high brightness 3LCD projectors. For a first offering, this projector offers a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, and an aspect ratio of 4:3. While the PLC-XP200L is a commercial projector, Sanyo expects to offer a widescreen (16:9) home theater version with 1080p resolution next year. The PLC-XP200L is currently available at $9,995.00.

Sanyo has also developed a new high-speed image compensating LSI for the 4LCD engine. The combination of the 4LCD engine and the new LSI allows for up to a reported 20-percent more color space than conventional projectors. With the controlled yellow light, Sanyo’s Advanced Color Correction technology separates each color histogram for additional color processing and correction, resulting in beautiful and naturally rich colors.

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