After missing the mark for their quarterly profits expectations by $8.9 Million USD, Infocus is evaluating alternative strategies in order to make up for the profit loss, including selling all or parts of the company. While Infocus dominated the projector market in the early part of the century, they have been losing considerable ground in the budget projector market to other low-cost manufacturers like Dell, BenQ, and all of the Japanese electronic giants. Infocus attributes the loss to the limited quantities of their IN32, IN34, and IN74 projectors, and expects them to be more available in the 4th quarter.
[via Reuters]

Epson is beginning to offer their first 1080p projector in Japan, the EMP-TW1000, with some nice features coming to market with it. This 1200 ANSI lumens projector offers a contrast ratio of 12,000:1 thanks to Epson’s new D6 LCD panels that all the big LCD projector manufacturers are using. Connectivity is everything you can hope for, including the rare HDMI 1.3 connector, RGB, Component RCA, Composite RCA, and S-Video. Sure, it’s in Japan, but when it makes it to North America, you’ll be calling it the Epson Powerlite Pro Cinema 1080.

[via Engadget]

Toshiba has always been known to make inexpensive and powerful projectors, but as an added bonus, when they announce a projector, it’s always available the day that it is announced. The projector they released today is no exception, either. The TDP-S35U is definitely an inexpensive solution for presentations on the go. Its 2000 ANSI Lumens brightness can easily project an image in a well-lit hotel conference room or office, while colors are rich and plentiful, over 16 million colors and a contrast of 2000:1 thanks to the Texas Instruments DLP chip. The resolution isn’t anything spectacular at SVGA (800 x 600), but for $699 and immediate availability, mobile presentation can’t get much better.

[via ToshibaDirect]

ViewSonic offers enough projectors to accomodate for everyone’s needs, it seems. Following up with their home theater Cine5000 projector released last week, they’ve released two new business projectors today: The PJ1158 and PJ558D. The PJ1158 is for your standard large conference hall with its 4000 lumens and can project an easy 300″ diagonal image. The three 0.8″ Polysilicon LCD panels have a native XGA (1024 x 768) resolution and allow for contrasts up to 1000:1. A couple of the other special features of the PJ1158 are the four integrated SRS speakers and ethernet network connectivity. As for the PJ558D, you’re looking at a much more portable projector than the PJ1158. At 5.8 lbs, it puts out 2500 lumens and the XGA (1024 x 768) DLP chip allows for a contrast of up to 2000:1. While the PJ558D is certainly not as powerful as the PJ1158, it is considerably cheaper. Both are available now with an MSRP of $999.00 USD for the PJ558D and $3999.00 USD for the PJ1158.

[PJ1158 Press Release]
[PJ558D Press Release]

Panasonic gave a sneak preview at CEATEC today of two new three-chip DLP projectors that are obviously designed for large venues. The TH-DW10000 and TH-D10000 are some of the brightest projectors available at 10,000 lumens with a 4000:1 contrast and an ability to project a 600 inch diagonal screen. Both projectors share nearly all of the same features, with the only difference being the TH-DW10000’s HD (1920 x 1080) resolution and the TH-D10000 SXGA+ (1400 x 1050) resolution. No word on pricing or if they’ll make it to North America, but we’ll keep you posted on any new information that is published for these and any other upcoming projectors.

[via AkihabaraNews]

One of the problems that has always plagued home cinema projectors is that while they will handle widescreen movies and television just fine, they must scale and compress content from a personal computer due to the differences in resolutions. Luckily, the Viewsonic Cine5000 is going to let you have your cake and eat it, too. Instead of the traditional HD 720p (1280 x 720) 16:9 resolution, the Cine5000’s DarkChip2 DLP chip improves upon it by adding a few more vertical pixels giving it a unique 15:9 resolution (1280 x 768). The Cine5000 easily accomodates for the PC-friendly XGA (1024 x 768) and the widescreen WXGA (1280 x 720) without scaling or compressing either. As far as the other details of the Cine5000 goes, it offers 1000 ANSI lumens and a 2000:1 contrast ratio typical of a lot DLP home cinema projectors of the DarkChip2 type. Making it good to go for years to come is the HDMI, Component, and D-Sub 15 ports which about covers your current and next generation devices. The quoted MSRP isn’t particularly bad for this unique projector at $2599.00 USD.

[via Viewsonic]