Is this the BEST Home Theater Projector in the World? The Barco Balder Cinemascope. 

Talk to is before you do. A lot has changed since we recorded this.. :-)

Hi I would love to help but we simply don’t have the time. All of our free knowledge we give away on RU-vid and that costs us a lot of money to do. We simply don’t have time to give out free advice and consultation as well. We get hundreds of requests a day! If you would like us to help you professionally you can reach out to us via our website and we will gladly work this out for you through our advice and consultation services. My humblest apologies but good quality advice and help costs money.

Are you aiming to get HDR? What type of screen material? What aspect ratio? What are your target NIT levels, are you aiming for REC709 14.7 ft lamberts as a minimum or 35-40 ft Lambert’s for HDR? These are all considerations and the reason we do room designs. It’s never just a question of can I use X projector on such as size screen..

You are correct. 3 Chip DLP enters into the scope above $100k. The thing is, 3 Chip DLP requires convergence. Single Chip DLP can be technically much sharper in picture quality. One beauty is the new Bragi which is a single chip DLP with 3 globe LED system. This is perfect for screens up to 140" anamorphic and really shines with the best of DLP and light technology. This unit is also native scope.

Thanks Joey. Yes rainbow is a bother and this projector does handle it well but it does sneak through from time to time if you are sensitive to it. Cant wait till.all projectors are descrete RGBW light sources :-). Would love to play with Wolf Cinema. Have not had a chance to date. Thanks again Joey..

You would have to be ultra, ultra sensitive to rainbow effect with respect to Barco Residential projectors. If you are you can always look at Bragi (which is 3 X LED lamp based) or Wodan and above which are 3 chip DLP

Hi Wayne. We posted this some time ago and have now had lots of time with both projectors. And, while the Balder is nice we personally believe, like you that the Bragi is better in many ways. Our main thing is the fact that the Balder uses a color wheel while the Bragi does not. Having said that the Balder has the edge with light output by quite a significant amount so 4000 lumens with the DCI colour wheel vs 2200 lumens on the Bragi. But then when we put the Bragi with a MadVR Envy the world is put right :-) So yes if you have a bigger screen and dont see rainbow then the Balder is it. But for other cases the Bragi is our go to unit. Thanks for your comment.

Love the Mars Nebula. Its certainly got portability over the Barco Balder.. Just ask Enzo :-)

Why 3 chip DLP? If you use multiple chips you have convergence to deal with, additional cost and complexity. Once we have projectors all using 3 discrete colour sources like the x12000h then the need for 3 DLP chips and/or color wheels is effectively eliminated. Which unless I have missed something is a good thing. But it is dependant also on the system used sxrd and other systems are likely to be 3 chip for a while and again the inherent issue of convergence remains.

@@HomeTheatreEngineering rainbow effect

@@Dizzy_N no colour wheel means no rainbow effect....the x1200h for example 1 chip 3 sources no rainbow

Hi. Thanks for commenting. So contrast ratio numbers regardless of what they are dont determine how black or grey something is but the span or obviously the ratio between full black and full white you will still see shades of grey. Peter here is referring to the range of limitations of the eye and how percieved contrast ratio varies with movement and activity. So yes sitting still in a darkened room your percieved CR would be higher than that as he explained. The fact is with many projectors the contrast ratio is massively inflated as the use the "all off" black and not the native black of the unit as the starting point. With 16:9 as it is a native 5k panel and designed specifically for scope screens at constant image height then the unit uses 3840 x 2160 pixels for the 16:9 image. Which of course is considered 4k. Yes of course you end up with black bars to the left and right of the 16:9 image but thats what constant image height is about and this is inescapable in any config unless you use some form of Non Linear (or linear) stretch. But to have native 4K 16:9 with no loss of resolution and higher in anamorphic is nice. Finally yes, I agree with you colour wheels are fraught with rainbow effect and I see this a lot myself on projectors with this architecture. And yes you are absolutely correct about the 3 primary light source which is why we love the BenQ X12000H/HT9060. The Barco does a bloody good job of pretty much eliminating rainbow but again I agree if you are sensitive to it then yes this may not be the perfect projector for you. I have been able to watch movies on this unit without detecting rainbow. I cannot agree more though but at higher light outputs the challenges begin, chipsets that cannot handle the light/heat but I believe in the near future we will get much higher light output units with discrete light sources.. bring it on. At that point yes they will be better than this unit. Its great to read your comments and thanks for getting involved. Much appreciated

​@@HomeTheatreEngineering Thanks for the answer ! Can't wait for the next videos :). Yes i know that companies use marketing trickery to boost up those contrast ratio numbers. That's why i always look at the native contrast ratio, but even that doesn't always tell the whole picture. Would really love to see what this projector can do. I've never seen a "commercial' projector before.

@@Quetzalcoatl0 we will do our best to report once it is installed. The challenge of course is always trying to reproduce what we can actually see..

We are about to top even the Raptor !

Ok that’s interesting. The Barco 808 graphics is a 3 gun projector with only 1250 lumen output. It can barely do REC 709 and there is no way at all it can do 4K or CinemaScope. The two are not the same projectors by an measure. There is a difference between saying “I like my projector” and insisting that it is “better” then the new technology with all the development that has come with it is, especially from the same company. There are solid reasons they left this to technology behind. As a line scanning REC709 projector it is cool and once calibrated can do great things. But it does not compete with the Bragi on any parameter I can think of.

@@HomeTheatreEngineering Contrast. Blacks. Motion Handling. No contest.

OK so here's the thing, great blacks are only ok if you have good white levels, this is what delivers dynamic range. Great black on its own is......just great black. It doesn't mean the image is stunning. This same argument is used on OLED's "They have great blacks, yes, but they don't have enough white level to achieve HDR so the LED's can actually do better in terms of contrast and dynamic range (at the moment). This is why some studios and colorists use them. The same argument. It's great that you are passionate about your projector. I used to love the 3 gun units myself and calibrated plenty of them but having measured them and measured the capability of products like the Bragi and Balder I simply cannot agree. Things have moved on.. I know I can't convince you and we are unlikely to be able to put them side by side but having worked on both I can be very confident in the outcome.

@@HomeTheatreEngineering I just don't like the grey I've seen on every digital projector. I tried out a JVC HD750 a number of years ago and in my light controlled dedicated room I couldn't get in with it. I've viewed other high end units in demo rooms or fellow enthusiasts and never felt my own setup outclassed. I do have a beautiful Barco Cine 9 that needs some work and a blue tube that I plan on getting around to someday and that for me is my end game. I still believe the most important metrics for image quality were at a peak during the CRT era and have since gone down with the popularity of LCD and similar panels. Its funny you mention OLED as being insufficient for for HDR but I have a 77 C9 in the living room and I find the image to be quite good for a digital display. Not particularly natural and definitely processed but some elements such as the contrast are what I'd consider at the apex.

Yes. Nice. But price of the Christie Eclipse is what? From what we can see, the starting at $75-100k USD (I dont have exact figures) but the Barco is about $37k USD?? And Availability? Well we cant get them here as far as we are aware. Plus its 16:9 std 4k and this Balder Cinemascope is native 5k anamorphic and 4k 16:9 which is perfect for a cinema projector.. When this Eclipse is available and we can get our hands on it we would love to test it. Especially with its advertised 20,000,000:1 contrast ratio. And dont forget with 3 lasers with only 30,000 hr lamp life for each.. thats gotta get expensive too..! So yes, that is where we are going but at the moment performance and value for money..its not a real contender yet. Plus one final comment. There is only so much light you can throw at a projector screen before its own reflected light present in the room begins to degrade the picture. This is now a topic at ISF courses. Which brings us back to 20,000,000:1 contrast ratio. Which I am sorry is um err ...bull. Because as soon as there is ambient light in the room from any other part of the image it immediately starts to degrade your blacks. So you 'might' pull these numbers in on/off test condition but never while watching a movie.

Home Theatre Engineering I will admit the Eclipse is on a different level then any projector out not only from a standpoint of performance but also price the eclipse is well over 100k also I can promise you even though it’s 16:9 there is no need for an anamorphic lens the blacks are just that black when I was at the facility we not only watched clips of movies in SDR and HDR but a full movie as well these were not only test numbers. It’s difficult to compare this to a projector the closest display I have seen would be an OLED but even the OLED has many shortfalls this projector does not. When you get a chance check out the Christie eclipse thread in avsforum a few of us interested buyers flew to California for the event and I must admit was very impressive and I have no doubt the Balder is extremely impressive as is everything Barco makes by the way absolutely love the content you put out keep the good stuff coming.

The Christie unit in price point would be more relevant to compare the 4k Barco Residential Wodan or Prometheus 1. They are more on par with the Christie price point. This is an entire different category, we are heading into 3 chip DLP for starters and much brighter machines. Barco Residential even goes higher with Thor and if you are talking "best image" out there for Home Cinema, you need to go see a Thor projector. That is around US$290k and the Thor+ is around US$400k. Those are 6P Laser. Barco Residential had a Thor demo at Cedia USA a few years back, and pretty much everyone I spoke to who saw it felt "how is it even possible to even go better than this"? On top of that, if your projector is 16:9 native and you show an anamorphic image you loose 30% of the resolution through those black bars...so you are no longer 4k. If you digital zoom you crop therefore losing image, if you overshoot you now loose contrast and brightness as well. This is why Barco Residential invented the 5.2k chip for 4k with TI. The Barco factory is in Belgium and they have an amazing showroom there btw...if you are ever that way...

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@@shaolin95 which one is better?thanks

Michael Slocumb Sr. Hello Micheal. There is quite a lot that would go into this decision. This is a once in a lifetime decision.... be good to get it right. What is your screen size, aspect ratio seating distance etc etc. can you contact us directly via our website? www.hometheatreengineering.com or via our Facebook page.

@@HomeTheatreEngineering Yes sir, I forgot to add that critical... Seymour Screen Excellence RFV220WS 4K Vista Curve... 238in Diagonal... It's 220in wide image wise... Cinema...43x25x14.....

Michael Slocumb Sr. Thanks for that. Can see why you are chasing light output. Please get in touch personally. I’m andrew@hometheatreengineering dot com

@@HomeTheatreEngineering Understood Andrew... I'll reach out to you soon....