Sony to Stop Manufacturing Digital Cinema Projectors

[Stefan Scholz]

Was quite clear, not actually news, when the letter turned in around 20th, but had to be kept confident.
There was no new product for 7 years, even the Phosphor laser just changed the illumination source. So all left after end of 2020 would have been the Phosphorous light source, as mercury ends legally.
In case of repair, all defective items had to go back to the factory effective start of the year 2020, or a premium upcharge to be paid. So they're refurbishing boards and blocks, which indicated, that they stopped production to me.
At least they keep support for another 7 years over their professional products division, and I am not sure, what it would mean for the price tag of spares. You can get them, if needed but …

The negative impact on Japanese corporations leaving the cinema market, less competition. To get a similar image on small or medium screens, you now have to pay about 3 times initial price, of what the Sony was. Ok, 3p Lasers save on bulb cost, maintenance and maybe energy cost, so it might be the same cost of ownership over time. But it's hard to convince new projects into good imaging, when there's the small DLP S2k, at a fraction of the cost, with image quality, I don't want to offer to a paying audience.
At the end 2 brands will remain, and that's not good for a market pricing.

[Marcel Birgelen]

We still have Barco, NEC and Christie, all based on the TI DLP platform though... what two brands do you expect will remain?

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

It’s not like Sony does not have a track record in abandoning cinema customers. Can you say SDDS.

Their history with abandoning consumer products is not any better.

[Greg Routenburg]

Well, at least they're not leaving people out to dry on support like they did with SDDS.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yes... Keeping SDDS going was a big headache and the owners of Sony DC projectors can look foreword to a similar thing. SDDS Sprockets and lateral guide roller became unobtainable and we ended up having LaVezzi manufacture the parts for us. Were even able to rebuild the LED arrays, having sourced out a nearly identical LED from a west coast source. Some we kept going, but others were replaced with CP-650's and BACP Penthouses...

[Randy Stankey]

I'm with you guys. I wouldn't be likely to buy or recommend Sony products.

Not only does Sony have a track record of abandoning products, they have a tendency to create "vendor lock" when you get involved with the Sony ecosystem.

Their products often use proprietary parts, connectors and hardware that aren't compatible with other brands or else it's not easy to get Sony products to "play nice" with other things. It's difficult to get information on how their products work, making repair and upkeep more difficult. It just takes a greater amount of effort to install and use Sony products, to get them to integrate with other equipment and to build workable systems using them.

After you take all that time, spend all that money and go through all that trouble, ending up being abandoned and left with equipment that is, essentially, useless is frustrating.

To top it all off, I don't believe that Sony products are any better than other, competing, products on the market that I don't think it's worth the premium prices that you often have to pay just for the name "Sony." Maybe, in the past, the Sony brand had some cachet but not anymore.

Personally, I just don't think that it's worth it to buy any Sony products, professional or consumer grade.

[Bruce Cloutier]

Are all of the projector manufacturers public companies? Because, you know, they answer only to their investors and more or less lead all of us on. Private companies have investors too. They have similar responsibilities but are not under as much scrutiny. If they are still run by their founders then there might still be some commitment to the customer.

You know, washing machines, refrigerators and generally all of your appliances used to last 20+ years... There is a reason they don't anymore. Why is your perfectly good Windows 7 computer now junk? Sucks I think.

[Steve Kraus]

I suppose Real D will adapt their split field 3D lens to DLP 4K projectors.

[Carsten Kurz]

That split lens is history now. It was never a RealD part anyway, Sony manufactured it.

[Leo Enticknap]

Why is your perfectly good Windows 7 computer now junk?

At the risk of steering this thread off topic, it isn't, at least as far as the hardware is concerned. I've upgraded something like 20 W7 computers to W10 over the last couple of years, and as far as I'm aware, all are operating happily.

Microsoft deliberately don't make this a particularly user-friendly process, I suspect because they don't want to annoy the hardware manufacturers who buy OEM Windows licenses by the million. But it can be done.

This isn't like the Sony projector situation, where you have hardware components that are not found in any other equipment, and, in the case of the prism that fails, a very life-limited part, the failure of which will brick the projector once replacements are no longer available.

[Marcel Birgelen]

We could never get them to share their protocol for commanding their projectors in automation. But I wouldn't say that we went out of our way trying. I think the closest we got was a guy that we spent a couple of hours with in a bar at the airport after Show East once.

Anyway, their projectors are out there. If anyone has the protocol or can grab it, that might be worth doing. We may still need to integrate these for some time. They might still sell off the projector business to someone.

I guess we'd all like a glimpse at that protocol. Don't know why they were so closed about it, but it's a typical Sony thing.

Sony always gives me a kind of double feeling. I really like the design and engineering they put into a lot of their products, but much their product support and commitment to a certain product range is shitty to say the least. That's both true for their consumer and their professional offerings.

As for selling the projector business... I'd say that if you want to sell your projector business, you sell it before you tell every DCI customer that their involvement in this market is going to end. Also, their core projector business doesn't seem to be affected by this decision (yet).

Taking over the DCI business from Sony would also be a hard thing to do for any competitor. Sony has designed their system from the ground up around their SXRD LCoS technology. You would be entirely dependent on Sony for those components.

I think that Sony's primary problem is, that they cannot follow in the 3P/6P laser race. Their SXRD panels probably aren't able to withstand the heat from those kind of light sources and it would require a complete redesign of their imaging technology. Since the market for DCI projectors is currently just a replacement market and since they aren't really active in the big-venue projector arena, I guess they decided it's simply not worth it anymore. The current Coronavirus situation is obviously not helping and has probably lead to speeding up their exit strategy.

[Steve Guttag]

Christ, I was just trying to control one of their Blu-ray players for a Q-SYS system and it is effectively impossible to get info out of them (its working but thanks to a Crestron guy...not anyone from Sony).

[Jim Cassedy]

SONY was apparently planning on displaying at least two projectors in its' booth at the ill fated CINEMACON
(soon to be known as "CINEMAGONE" ) show this year, according to this blurb in the April issue of "Box Office Pro"
Sony-Med.jpg

[Tacky Ting]

How do you feel about Sony Projector?
I do n’t know it because I have n’t used Sony Projector
I only know that it has high contrast and the color is different from DLP Projector.
What are the advantages and disadvantages?

[Aaron Tucker]

Guess now there's an incentive to find out if replacing the SXRD panels without the jig is impossible or not.