Never Cry Wolf

Wolf Cinema is a new company with a lineup of high-end, 3-chip DLP projectors. The three models (DCX-500, DCX-1000, and DCX-1500—the numbers indicate the lamp wattage) all use Xenon lamps, and the projectors are available either in a black-box, custom form designed to be hidden away, or in a finished case. But you won't find Wolf products (marketed by Sumiko) in your local AV shop; they deal in custom system packages only.

The interesting wrinkle here (apart from a sophisticated cooling system) is how the projector is designed for constant height projector, and the unique fashion in which it does this. At up to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the projector automatically zooms and refocuses the lens to achieve the wider image, without the use of a supplementary anamorphic lens. Above 2.35:1, a specially designed anamorphic lens supplements the 2.35:1 zoom and focus setup, making it the first projector we know of designed specifically for higher aspect ratios than 2.35:1.

None of this is cheap; the smallest Wolf projector is priced at $60,000 for the black-box model (Wolf calls this "integrated") $67,000 for the finished ("FD" for "Full Dress") design. The big DCX-1500 will set you back $117,000 in Full Dress.

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