Screeneo Innovation SA, the Philips licensee that manufactures and markets portable projectors under the Philips Screeneo brand, along with the U.S.-based Philips North America LLC, have announced they have reached agreement with Epson North America to use an industry-standard ANSI-lumen equivalent for specifiying and marketing future projector models.

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According to Epson, the agreement, announced by Philips earlier this year, calls for all current and future Philips branded projectors sold in the U.S. to specify ISO21118 lumens in product packaging and advertising. The ISO21118 brightness measurement calls for the same 9-point averaged technique used for the predecessor ANSI-lumen specification that is still cited by most projector brands for marketing purposes and allows fair comparisons among products from different manufacturers. ISO21118 standards are defined in the Information Display Measurement Standards (IDMS), a comprehensive 563-page document and widely respected source published by the International Committee for Display Metrology (ICDM).

To date, Philips Screeneo and Philips NeoPix projector specs have mostly cited LED Lumens or "Color Lumens." LED lumens, as described here, attempt to account for the belief that the eye perceives saturated LED colors as having higher brightness that is not reflected in ANSI measurements from traditional luminance meters. LED lumens usually reflect what the manufacturer claims is an ANSI equivalent that would be measured if the projector used a lamp. However, there is no accepted industry standard for making this conversion, and few manufacturers cite either the real ANSI measurement or the calculation used to arrive at the LED lumen spec.

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Most LED projector manufacturers cite "LED lumens" or similarly named specifications that claim to reflect the higher perceived brightness of LED light that is not reflected in traditional ANSI measurements. Under the agreement with Epson, a projector like the Philips NeoPix Easy (NPX440) would not be able to claim "Up to 2600 LED Lumens" as cited in its original spec sheet. It is now listed as having 50 ANSI lumens at major online retailers.

This latest announcement follows a series of actions taken by Epson to reign in the practices of projector marketers accused of either directly claiming inflated ANSI brightness specifications or citing deliberately confusing and meaningless units of measurement such as "Lux" to make their projectors appear to be brighter than ANSI-rated models. Furthermore, Epson's ongoing promotion of CLO Color Brightness measurements alongside ANSI/ISO white brightness as an advantage of its three-chip 3LCD approach over single-chip DLP technology may have made the company particularly sensitive to Philip's use of the Color Lumens terminology.

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Comments (2) Post a Comment
Sylvain Posted Mar 9, 2021 1:22 AM PST
Morning people! Could somebody tell me what is the difference between ISO and ANSI lumen? I still don't understand how it is possible, when using the same measurement procedure (9 point), to have different result (roughly +11%, sometime +16% (Barco G100-W22)). How projectors that have the same ANSI brightness, could have different ISO Brightness? Is it good for manufacturer to promote with ISO Lumen? Every human that will measure the unit will see a clear difference between what would be measured and what is in the specs. This is not serious... but maybe i'm missing something. Also, if somebody could explain the difference in the measuring method, i would be really greatful. Regards
Rob Sabin, Editor Posted Mar 9, 2021 12:05 PM PST
Great question, Sylvain. I actually haven't fully read the ISO spec, which is available in the document at the link in the article. But as it's been explained to me, the ISO spec is based not just on one sample or a small number of preproduction samples but on measurements taken with a larger number of production line samples. So if a manufacturer finds that their design consistently over-delivers on the ANSI spec across a large enough production run, they get to use some function of that average for a higher ISO lumen rating. When we measure a projector for a review, we are measuring one sample and therefore our result can only be referred to as ANSI lumens. The ANSI lumen specification, as I understand it, preceded and was absorbed into the newer ISO spec, which more and more manufacturers are slowly adopting. For now, though, ANSI remains the only truly universal spec among respected manufacturers and even manufacturers that say they use ISO in the small print will often cite ANSI in their specs, which I presume is associated with the smaller number of samples traditionally used to determine the ANSI spec.

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