The arrival this year of a handful of LED projector models signifies that, in the home theater market, the torch is being passed from the lightbulb to the light-emitting diode. The experts consider LED the new standard for the backlight source that enables projectors to project images on the screen.

"Within a few years, the bulb is going away," says Sean Hotchkiss, who designs home theaters for Grand Home Automation in Hudsonville, Mich. Eric Thies shares Hotchkiss’ sentiment. He’s the CEO of DSI Entertainment Systems, a company headquartered in Los Angeles that designs and installs home theaters as well as audio and lighting systems for homes. "Everything will be LED at some point," says Thies.

Defined concisely, an LED is a piece of metal that glows when electricity passes through it. An LED’s primary advantages over an incandescent bulb are that it consumes less energy—as much as 70 percent less when used for a home theater projector—and it lasts longer. Much longer. Projector bulbs usually burn out after about 2,000 hours of use; an LED is good for 60,000 hours. Also, when lit by an LED, says Thies, a projector displays a wider range of colors, and colors that are more accurate. "The color spectrum is phenomenal," says Thies. "The colors are so vibrant and saturated. The difference with LED is like when Technicolor first came out."

The LED’s energy-conserving quality is a pleasing perk for anyone who wants to be greener. A new bulb (also referred to as a lamp) for a projector can cost anywhere from $400 to $4,000, depending on the projector, but the LED projectors are pricier than comparable bulb-lit models. So the real value of an LED’s durability can be measured in terms of convenience, not cost-savings.

As Thies explains, when you install a projector, you initially calibrate the colors it displays on the screen based on the output of light that its bulb produces. But over time, the bulb weakens and its light output decreases, which in turn alters the colors on the screen. "The projectors with lamps perform very differently from the first day you turn them on compared to the 500th hour of use," says Thies. "By the 1,000th hour, they might have lost as much as 50 to 60 percent of their projection. With an LED, the brightness output remains the same from day one until 30,000 hours of use. So you don’t have to recalibrate the colors nearly as often."

Among the companies that have introduced LED projectors in the last few months are Runco (QuantumColor Q-750i), Digital Projection (M-Vision Cine Line), SIM2 (MICO 50), and Wolf Cinema (DCL-200FD). The starting prices range from about $15,000 for the Runco model to about $25,000 for the Wolf Cinema projector. These projectors also use DLP technology, as opposed to LCD. It’s widely accepted that DLP projectors display images that are superior to those shown by LCD projectors.

Not So Hot Is Cool
As an LED burns less energy, it also produces less heat than an incandescent bulb. A cooler-running projector can make a home theater designer’s job easier. "Heat generation can be a big problem," explain Thies. "Some people don’t want to see the projector, so you have to hide it, usually in a tight location. But tight locations and heat don’t go well together. You have to plan well to allow enough ventilation. A lot of problems will be mitigated if the projector is not throwing off a lot of heat."

LED projectors have another innovative feature, one that could change the viewing habits of home theater owners. Unlike the bulb-lit projectors, an LED model turns on and off instantly. As Hotchkiss explains, it takes about 20 seconds for a bulb projector to warm up when you initially turn it on, and it takes even longer to turn back on after you shut it off. Like the lights at a stadium, the bulb has to cool down before it can warm up again.

Hotchkiss describes a demonstration of the new Runco QuantumColor LED projector that he attended. The demo used the opening sequence of the animated film Cars, during which racers zip across the screen for a couple of minutes, and then the screen goes black for a second or two. To show that the projector will indeed shut down and fire up instantly, the Runco rep at the switch turned the projector off when the screen went black and turned it on before the action resumed.

In addition to allowing you to accidentally turn off the projector without creating a major disturbance, this feature also lets you watch programs in a more casual manner, as opposed to creating an event around watching a movie or a ball game. "You could flip it on and catch a couple minutes of CNN," says Hotchkiss, "instead of using it just to watch two-hour movies."

Let There Be More Light
The LED technology isn’t perfect. As with a bulb projector, it won’t display a good image unless you keep the light in the room to a minimum. "You still need a light-controlled space," says Hotchkiss. "It’s hard to compete with the sun."

A more significant issue is the amount of light that an LED produces. The bigger the image, the more light it requires to be displayed. While the LED technology allows for more light with less energy consumption and less heat generation, none of the current crop of home theater projectors produces enough light for a really big screen display, says Thies. "For anything wider than 10 feet I’d use a lamp projector," he says.

What’s Next?
Yes, 3-D will be coming to home theaters. At least one home theater 3-D projector model already is on the market: Digital Projection’s iVision 30 series. The problem is that no one is producing a component that delivers the 3-D source material to the projector—yet. The Digital Projection projector currently works only with the company’s server.

"Everyone wants 3-D," says Thies, noting that his company has been wiring the theaters it installs to accommodate 3-D technology, "but someone needs to make the little widget box so that the projectors have the source material." Such a box would connects the output from a 3-D Blu-ray disc to the input of the projector. Thies says he expects such a component to be on the market by the fall.

It could be quite a while longer before 4K, an even higher definition than the current high-def, comes to home theaters. The name refers to a resolution of about 4,000 horizontal pixels. The current HD has about 2,000 horizontal pixels. "The picture is so clear it’s insane," Hotchkiss says of 4K. The projectors exist—JVC and Meridian make models that are priced at about $180,000—but good luck finding anything shot in 4K.

"There’s not really any 4K source material," says Thies. "There’s no revolutionary benefit until some material comes along, and it might not come along for a while because so many people have so much invested in [the current high-definition] technology," he says. Thies wouldn’t be surprised if the adoption of 4K took as long as that of 2K HD—a drawn-out process that he monitored very closely. He started selling HD TVs in 1992.