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Infocus Teams with South Mountain Technologies

Infocus has teamed up with a Chinese company called South Mountain Technologies in an attempt to bring down the front projector, home entertainment competition and they are doing it ahead of schedule. Infocus announced today that they will be launching their much anticipated ScreenPlay 5000, which is slated to be the crème-de-la-crème of home theater projectors.

The specs on this unit close in on ridiculous and knowing Infocus this projector will be affordable, as in cheap, cheap, cheap. Infocus simply doesn’t do it any other way, their projectors are always top notch and they are always priced lower than a majority of their competitors. In a way, Infocus must produce projectors in this fashion. They are not a Sony or Philips with giant investments in a bunch of other consumer electronic markets; they “focus in”, if you will, on projectors and try to master them in a way few other companies can. And so this latest projector, which they have teamed up with South Mountain for, comes as no surprise.

A little background checking on South Mountain also reveals some interesting tidbits. They are a company that manufactures and produces projection engines for projection TV manufacturers and front projector manufacturers, hence their alliance and excitement vis-à-vis Infocus. In fact, South Mountain Technologies just shipped their first front projector engines off with this order of Infocus ScreenPlay projectors, and six months ahead of expectations. If you’re the CEO of Infocus you’re sitting there just giddy with delight.

The new alliance with South Mountain also marks a departure of sorts for Infocus. Previously, the projector specialists teamed with Flextronics in Malaysia (South Mountain is out of China) for all their projector engine needs. Apparently China has one more company to boast about now.

As the months progress and the ScreenPlay 5000 becomes familiar to consumers and critics alike, it will be interesting to see how things play out. Judging by the sounds of booming optimism coming from the Infocus offices in Wilsonville, Oregon this friendship will be one that lasts well into the future, or at least while China remains the best place in the world to get high-quality, cheap consumer electronics.

Until next time – take it easy.