INTERVIEW: VIRGINIA CHENG, BENQ
concentrate on brightness and colour that is accurate rather than saturated. DLP technology allows this kind of flexibility in colour wheel selection.
DMD also produces a high
contrast-ratio image. For us, this isn’t just a specification on paper – it’s a key factor in ensuring readability for the end customer. This is critical, especially for students – better readability protects their eyesight – and for users of meeting rooms. For the home user, contrast ratio is also very important – when they watch movies they’re looking for great detail and greyscale in the image.
Regarding the lack of colour decay – can you quantify that? Simply stated, with DLP projectors, there is much less colour decay than with other technologies. This is because any colour decay comes only from lamp deterioration over time, not from the DMD engine or the colour wheel. If you change the lamp, you can enjoy an image as if the projector was new. That’s not the case with other technologies.
Our R&D department has
found that even after 2,500 lamp hours, you see the same colours, more or less, as with a brand new projector. The integrated- circuit design of the DMD engine means its operation isn’t affected by the high operating temperature of the lamp. This is the key difference when you compare DLP with other projector technologies.
Within B2B, BenQ serves a number of different vertical markets. Do you intend to enter any new markets, or just develop existing ones? Right now, we see that our completed line-up addresses more than 95% of the market. We are looking to do more within sectors that we are already focusing on, including education and corporate.
One of the ways we’re doing that is by adopting more leading technology into our projection solutions, so that, for instance, more users can enjoy the wireless application that we have developed. We’re also putting short-throw technology into more projectors – in the residential sector as well. We’re also looking to
extend the lifetime of projector lamps, because the need to replace the lamp
used to be one of the reasons people hesitated to choose a projection solution. So we’ve focused on improving this to make lamp life as long as 10,000 hours – or even adopting a new light source so they don’t have to replace a lamp at all. So rather than entering
new markets, we are concentrating on the markets that we already occupy, such as education and corporate. The environment here is changing – there are new demands from these customers that we can meet.
What can be done to prevent counterfeit replacement projector lamps from entering the supply chain? We don’t put a lot of focus on this issue. Our projector lamp life has become long enough for the customer. The longest is over 10,000 hours which, if the projector is run on average for six hours a day, five days a week, works out to more than six years’ use. So we’re seeing fewer and fewer people looking to replace their lamps. We’re focusing on investing in projectors rather than lamps.
What is your roadmap for solid-state light sources? We were the first to launch a laser light-source education projector, and we also have an LED source projector. In the future we will keep developing in both directions. For laser, we are continuing
to develop the technology, aiming for higher brightness. With LED, we will keep exploring more applications for these projectors – for example, we are considering enhancing mobility by having an embedded battery. Also we are looking into extending LED into new applications, such as home theatre projectors.
It’s difficult to put a
timescale on this development, as it’s tied in with the cost structure of the core component. Right now laser and LED sources are not at a mainstream cost level. So not only do we keep developing and making sure we have the technology available – we need to keep talking with our key suppliers over the cost structure. The solution has to be based on technology availability and also affordability; otherwise it’s not a good solution for our customers.
www.benq.eu www.installation-international.com April 2014 19
With 5,000 lumens brightness and a 7,500:1 contrast ratio, business meetings that use the SW916 projector can keep the lights on, says BenQ
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