The catalog of the Italian company SIM2 has always had enough powerful projectors, but until recently, with a laser-phosphor light source, it had only short-focus models of the xTV series, intended for installation in living rooms and bedrooms, but not in large specially equipped halls. And only now the company has released a laser model for this purpose.
The projector was named Crystal 4 SH, where the last two letters stand for SuperHybrid. Hybridity in this case means that the light source is laser-phosphor, and not purely laser – and this suggests the prospect of a three-laser projector produced by the company.
In terms of design and construction, the new product does not coincide in any way with the predecessor model SIM2 Crystal 4 and is rather close to the models of the Nero series. It is based on a 0.66-inch chipset from Texas Instruments with an optical converter of resolutions up to 4K, which, according to the manufacturer, has a higher contrast ratio than the 0.47-inch used in the Crystal 4.
SuperHybrid also used a different optics: a large lens assembled exclusively from glass lenses with a 1.6x zoom. It allows you to create an image with a 100-inch diagonal from a minimum distance of 3.1 m. However, the projector is clearly not designed for such diagonals – it needs larger canvases, because its luminous flux reaches an impressive 3600 ANSI-lumens.
For ease of installation, the lens provides an optical shift of 15% of the vertical image height to either side of the neutral position. The model supports displaying HDR video, but only in accordance with HDR10 and HLG standards, since video processing takes place in 10-bit form. At the same time, the maximum color gamut of Crystal 4 SH reaches 80% of the area of the DCI-P3 standard.
To display 4K video with HDR, the Crystal 4 SH projector is equipped with one HDMI 2.0 port with HDCP2.2. The second port is version 1.4 and is intended for Full HD sources.
The austere body of the projector is made of 6-mm glass, and the color of the finish can be chosen from two options: black or white. In the US such a projector will cost about $ 18,000.
