In the soon to be debuted FR12 projector, there’s no lamp sitting behind the projector head.  In fact, there’s no lamp at all in the housing that hangs on the ceiling.  The lamp for the FR12, along with most of the hardware that makes it work, resides up to thirty meters away in your A/V rack.

Projectiondesign achieves this feat by using a liquid light guide, which takes light from the base unit and sends it to the projector itself.  It doesn’t look like much more than an audio cable, but instead of carrying sound or signals, it carries light.

This makes the ceiling mounted part of the projector almost maintenance free.  Since the lamp is based in a rack mountable unit, there’s no need to get out a ladder to change it out.  There’s also the benefit of silence.  Since there’s no lamp in the head unit, there’s no fan either, which makes operation absolutely silent.

Projectiondesign will be showing this new technology next week at Integrated Systems Europe.  They’ve talked mainly about commercial applications initially, but have acknowledged that this could be perfect in a home setup.  No pricing or availability has yet been announced.