For Blu-ray and Ultra 4K UHD discs - Here's why David Hare recommends the Hisense C3 Ultra triple laser projector

Top screen the new Capelight UHD 4K of the Robert Wise's WEST SIDE STORY.

Below it's my newest toy, a new Hisense C3 Ultra triple laser projector which I’ve now had for a week and will take to my grave.

It’s only been in the last couple of years that projectors, and in particular Laser-based DLP beamers like this and Valerion, XGIMI and others, started making top tier light power bomb tech. Back a couple of years ago when I bought some new Hifi to replace very old and fading gear I became a convert to the emerging Chi-FI world with fabulous products like Shanling and more, which are so good in their tech and design they have as many of you know overtaken the great traditional Brit sound Hifi titans including Arcam and others who themselves retain the spec and design for their amps but go to manufacturers in China.

I have been having the newbie’s kiddie time fiddling with this and that but quite frankly the preset options for the usual parameters have been flawlesssly enabled in the “FilmMaker” mode where presets are minimally adjustable to, well, perfection. I can blow the image from this baby out to 300 inch diagonal but I am happy (for now) to stick with a 130 inch 4:3 screen.

And to wallow in Dolby VIsion which has up until now has been unavailable to me in its full glory.

It certainly gives the 4K of Wise’s 1961 movie a depth and level of detail that really does reflect the 70mm original elements, notwithstanding reported degradation in the neg. Sometimes the DV is overwhelming. Certainly every smear of the dusk makeup on some of the honky boys playing Hispanics is VERY loud and clear. The sheer level of detail in this is unbelievable. If anyone out there is wondering about a keen projection deal I cannot recommend this highly enough. I don’t know if it’s luck but I did not see a skerrick of Rainbow effect/RBE, not even in the 3D setting here.

And in closing, Imprint Australia shipped the Powell/Pressburger box last week and I expect to receive it in the next few days. One of several unique joys of that set is the first time worldwide release of a UHD 4K disc presentation of TALES OF HOFFMANN in Dolby Vision. I can safely admit this single event (of many surprises with that new boxset) was what prompted me to pull the trigger on this gorgeous new projector last month. 

Having just watched new 4K discs like WEST SIDE STORY and the new UHD of AUNTIE MAME with the full gamut on the projector, the next screening of HOFFMANN will, I expect transport me back to an afternoon in June 1982 in NYC at a West Village screening room when a friend and I attended a semi-“private” screening of what must have been Scorsese’s IB print of HOFFMANN. It was my first viewing and it left me speechless on the floor with pleasure, sufficient to stay and sit through the very dull LUNA DE MIEL ( a total stinker) to watch HOFFMANN again. Merci Powell and Pressburger (and Hein Heckroth and Chris Challis and Beecham and the cast, and indeed Offenbach lui-même) who between them all took me to paradise. And will no doubt again.