Infocomm 2019 Projector Roundup – Day 2, Vivitek

Greetings Projector Fans, Educators, Presenters – etc.

I intended to have this second Infocomm projector feature - this time Vivitek, up days ago, but life is crazy. Our house is in escrow and closes in a few days. I have to move my testing room and home theater next week!

But, back to work:

Let’s start off with Vivitek - one of the projector manufacturers and their latest and greatest in projectors, from my second day of meetings. (We also have a video from the Vivitek booth. Nikki, I remind you, is will be posting it, as well as producing a number of other videos from the show. Only a few will go up on YouTube, but all will be posted on our site.

Let’s talk Vivitek!

Not everyone knows Vivitek, but they seem to be grabbing market share in projector space, rather quickly, so, you are probably wondering – who are they? Well, first of all, they are part of Delta Electronics, an almost $8 Billion (US$) conglomerate, with 83,000 people worldwide (per Wikipedia).

Some of you may remember that Delta, which is definitely a huge Taiwanese company, spun off another projector company almost 20 years ago: BenQ.

Well, they also own Vivitek, and on the very high end, they own Digital Projection. I visited both booths, and both had some impressive “stuff!” But here I’ll focus just on Vivitek.  (The Digital Projection booth, almost certainly had the coolest projector displays - we'll blog on that too.)

Their booth was loaded with models for business, education, digital signage, and other commercial applications, but the thing that first catches everyone’s attention is the top of the booth screens that go all the way around a large booth. They are doing a lot of cool edge-blending up on top. As you can tell from the pictures (and our video - elsewhere), they weren't going for 360-degree edge blending, rather they had several different very wide, but not tall, edge-blended videos running.

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Vivitek is showing quite a few laser projectors. Of the ones I looked at and discussed, they ranged from 4500 lumens up to the 13,500 lumen DU8195Z. Doing rear screen and seeming impervious to ambient light is was their DK10000Z (aptly outputting 10,000 lumens). Shown here, is the 4500 lumen WUXGA.

In terms of mainstream projectors for higher education lecture halls, conference rooms, etc., that 4500 lumen DH3660Z, looked especially impressive. It’s native 1080p, gets 20,000 hours on the laser engine, offers very respectable placement flexibility with vertical lens shift and a 1.5:1 manual zoom lens. It touts HDBaseT and advanced networking with support for Crestron RoomView, AMX, Extron and other protocols.

The DH3660Z nicely fits into the general description of an "affordable laser projector."  It lacks advanced features such as interchangeable lenses, and projection mapping, but as noted, definitely supports advanced networking, making it a very good choice for enterprise-level installations - whether in school districts, corporations, military/government, and universities.

We will definitely be bringing in the DH3660Z or one of the other variations in the DH3600 series for a full review.   And that projector will be featured and competing in our 2020-2021 Best Education Projectors Report, for our top Best In Classroom Awards.  Look for that next full report to publish March 2020!

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New major installation, or perhaps upgrading that auditorium, church, or large entertainment venue to 4K capabilities?

Vivitek’s 7500 lumen 4K UHD DLP laser projector – the DK8500Z (shown here with an ultra-short throw “Periscope” style lens) should be an excellent performer! (Don’t they get tired of all those “Z”s in their model numbers?) The list price for this 61-pound projector offering interchangeable lenses is $22,500,

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As the DK8500Z is brand new, there's no street pricing yet.  That requires a quick comment.  Projectors in this price range sometimes have MSRPs (list prices) others do not.  That's because this is a serious commercial projector that normally will be sold/installed by a professional A/V integrator.  That tends to make list prices pretty irrelevant, since the pricing is usually bundled with installation and support, with this type of higher end gear.

My point - this early on, there's no way to say whether this Vivitek DK8500Z's list price is reflective of what they will sell for, or on the other end of the spectrum, some brands/models get very heavily discounted.  (up to 50% off).  It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. Sorry, I can't help more with expected selling prices.

Enough Vivitek for now. We have a video too, from the booth.

Thanks for checking in! My next Infocomm blog will look what NEC is up to, in terms of projectors.