The event organizers picked the competitors. I did see the AWOL 3500 Pro at CEDIA Expo and I have to say it looked pretty good with 3D content (“Avatar”).

Thomas,

That’s a question for the organizers. Chris Boylan was there as a participant. I’ve seen the AWOL once in person and thought it was pretty good but not the best UST I’ve viewed so far.

IW

Deciding between epson ls 800 and awol 3500 for living room ( day light) replacement. Why wasnt awol 3500 included in showdown? How would it do in comparison to ls800?

Phillip,

You make a fair point. Resolution is usually lowest on the list of importance for overall picture quality. Joel Silver (ISF) rated it last behind contrast, color accuracy and color saturation. But as this is supposed to be about the *best* UST projector available today, 4K resolution is kind of “table stakes” at this point.

Also, 1080p HD projectors don’t generally support 4K content nor HDR. More than resolution, HDR and the wider color gamut of Ultra HD/4K content allows these projectors to create more lifelike images with better color accuracy and better color saturation than 1080p projectors.

The Epson in this competition is not a “true” 4K projector – it accepts 4k content and HDR. But it can only reproduce half the resolution of HDR (twice the resolution of 1080p HD). But that didn’t stop it from performing well in the Showdown. Its high brightness, excellent contrast, color accuracy and color saturation allowed it to perform better than several of the true 4K projectors.