User Manual
BY ALAN C. BRAWN CTS, ISF-C, DSCE, DSDE, DSNE, DCME
A “TRUE” SOLUTION
IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Like many of you, I get sick and tired of hearing industry “buzzwords” that should have meaning but in AV today is
the word “solution”. By denition a solution is the act of solving a problem or a question, as in “the situation is
approaching solution”. That being said, I have to back pedal a bit with the irritation. The word “solution” is still
overused but I have in my possession the new Canon REALiS WUX400ST Pro AV Short Throw Compact Installation
LCOS Projector that truly is a solution. Because in the end, if the word and the reality match, then using the word is
appropriate - especially in this instance.
As many of you know, we have come a long way
in video projection development over the
years, but today the area that excites many of
us the most is the development of truly high
performance short throw optics and
projectors specifically designed to use those
capabilities. From the beginning we have had
projectors with long throw capabilities and
wide angle lenses, but true short throw close
focus projectors as a high performance
solution has been a development of recent
times. This being the case we must ask
ourselves if this is going to become a trend in
AV design or a nice option as a footnote in a
projector manufacturer’s line-up.
If we look at the latest market research we see
that there are three factors of significant
growth in projection. One is that the sweet spot
of light output is now in the , to ,
lumen range. In terms of resolution, XGA has
ruled the roost for years driven by the relatively
low resolution requirements of the educational
community - but this is now migrating to higher
resolutions since source material at those
higher resolutions is more affordable and more
readily available. Last but not least we are
seeing significant growth in the use of short
throw projectors. The question jumps out at
you. Is there a projector that excels in all of
these growth areas?
The answer is a resounding yes and it is the
Canon REALiS WUX400ST. We will get into all
the individual details and how they perform, but
for a first glance it is a compact installation
projector that uses LCOS technology featuring
the highest fill factor in the digital display
industry, boasts a high resolution of X
, produces 4000 lumens of light output,
and features a .: short throw optic. Sounds
prey good, but in our testing we found it looks
even beer than it sounds - so stay tuned.
Excellent image quality is the price of entry in the
upper echelons of this category but we would be
remiss if we did not speak of the physical nature
of short throw capability in some detail. The
specification states that this is a .: lens and
that tied into Canon quality is quite impressive.
This translates into a projector that can produce
a 100” image from as lile as 4 feet away.
Prey impressive numbers, but I urge you not to
stop there. What is truly unique, and takes this
projector to a completely different level, is the
mechanical lens shi capability that provides
REVIEW CANON - REALiS WUXST PRO PROJECTOR
for the image to be raised vertically from to
and horizontally plus or minus . This
compares with other short throw projectors on
the market that have as lile as W vertical lens
shi. To all the skeptics out there concerned
about how Canon’s extreme lens shi will affect
image quality - as a point of reference, in our
testing with both cross hatch and geometry test
paerns the WUXST performed extremely
well with virtually no distortion!
Impressive as those numbers are, imagine what
you can do with this in terms of a practical solution
to problems you could not address before. You
can now tuck the projector underneath the lip
of a traditional conference table and literally
take the projector out of the environment. Just
try finding a beer way to create a high quality
image of ” or larger for the price and the added
benefit of no visible display device to distract
you from the interior design. Another one of
my favorite applications is to mount a series
of these projectors along the ceiling or hallway
and, thanks to the built in edge blending with an
overlap capability of 0 to 960 pixel horizontal
and 0 to 600 pixel vertical, create a continuous
and seamless series of images as far as you want.
And thanks to the aforementioned short throw
capabilities, the viewers are out of the light
path of the projectors. Even for those of us who
are, shall we say, less imaginative, there are still
benefits. You can now mount the project closer
to the screen in front or rear projection in a more
traditional sense while reducing installation time
and costs (long cable runs). One can then simply
fine tune with manual lens adjustment to fit
perfectly on the screen.
OUTSTANDING SHORT THROW
OPTICS & LENS SHIFT