Manufacturers at tradeshows like ISE 2025 sure like to impress attendees with loud, hi-fidelity sound systems and sleek-looking control interfaces, but it’s the video products like OLED TVs, high-lumen projectors, video walls, and other displays that really make these booths pop. Huge screens were frankly hard to miss at the Fira de Barcelona Gran Via, so here’s a rundown of some of the more impressive installations CE Pro saw at the European AV and custom home installation tradeshow.
Barco projectors and screens were everywhere, including a few different installations and demos in Hall 2, the main residential exhibit area.
We saw the company’s impressive Nerthus projector in a demo at the Reference Home Theater booth, which featured high-end home theater products from a handful of other manufacturers.
However, Barco’s Nerthus Architectural Edition projector—the same one used in the demo room—was proudly on display in a window at the booth, with a red LED illuminating the inside of the projector like a high-end gaming PC.
This native 4K projector RGB Laser projector displayed DCI content in the demo beautifully. The projector offers up to 32,000 ANSI lumens of brightness and 100% REC.2020 color gamut coverage while its ICMP-X (Integrated Cinema Media Processor) enables full DCI compatibility as well as playback of 4K HDR consumer content.
Lightapalooza took place in late February, and the growth of the event has mirrored the rapid ascension lighting fixtures and controls.
Chris Deutsch, a business development manager for Barco’s residential division, says hiding the actual hardware of the projector in a home theater is disappointing, especially when it’s a premium model like the Nerthus.
“If someone has a projector like this, they probably have a Ferrari in the garage,” Deutsch quipped. “They don’t hide that. They want their friends to see it. Why not a design a theater where you can also see that wonderful technology?”
Barco’s other projectors and video wall products were on display all around ISE 2025’s exhibit hall, including in at least one other demo featuring Steinway-Lyngdorf audio and other manufacturers. This home theater demo featured company’s Heimdall+ CS projector. Part of the Heimdall series, both the Heimdall and Heimdall CS models are rated at 4,500 lumens, while the Heimdall+ and Heimdall+ CS offer an increased brightness of 6,000 lumens.
The 6,000-lumen projector operates at just 29dB, making it a quiet yet powerful solution for dedicated home theaters.
Outside of that demo was a 165-inch Barco DVLED Vali NT 1.2 that uses the same video processor that is incorporated into Barco Residential’s premium DVLED Wall offerings. This was part of a living room-like setup that likely helped draw attention to the demo room built by Portugal-based Primetheater.
The common residential display and TV companies that we all know like LG and Samsung were largely focused on their commercial products at ISE 2025, but there were still quite a few impressive displays that span both markets, including the LG SIGNATURE OLED T, a first-of-its-kind transparent OLED TV.
This thing is straight up cool to see in person.
You might be thinking what I originally thought: What good is a transparent display in a high brightness setting? What if some content just doesn’t work on a transparent TV? Well, LG thought of that, and built in a retractable black shade that is designed to transform the TV into a regular OLED TV.
LG’s commercial microLED wall, the MAGNIT, was also featured heavily in the company’s booth.
However, tucked away in its “VIP Lounge” section—which I’m told was the most residential part of the company’s ISE 2025 appearance—was a 136-inch AM microLED display that seems like it’s tailor made for a home theater or high-end living room. Talk about immersive visuals, bright colors, and some of the deepest blacks you’ll ever see.
Speaking of impressive projectors, let’s talk about Digital Projection’s new E-Vision RGB 4K+, which the company says represents a significant step forward in 1-chip projection technology. With 10,000 lumens of brightness, HDR support, and dynamic contrast ratios of up to 10,000:1, it’s a more-than-solid home theater projector.
According to Mark Wadsworth, vice president of global marketing at the projection company, the new projector represents an advancement in 1-chip projection technology, achieving the full REC 2020 color space at 4K+ resolution, for cinematic-grade visuals without the artifacts associated with traditional 1-chip DLP projectors with color wheels.
According to Wadsworth, Digital Projection’s new projector is seen as a significant advancement due to its ability to reproduce accurate colors and its versatility with different lenses, including ultra-short throw lenses. It is suitable for a variety of applications, such as residential home theaters, museums, and other commercial projects.
“It’s the only single-chip projector in the world that has no color wheel or phosphor wheel, which makes it truly unique,” Wadsworth said.
Like the other big-name display companies, Samsung didn’t have much in the way of residential tech to show off, but we simply need to mention the absolutely massive 462” The Wall media facade at the entrance to its booth.
The Wall, Samsung’s microLED video wall and a competitor to LG’s MAGNIT, has found its way into some residential home theater installations, but it is largely a commercial product, and its presentation at ISE 2025 really drives that point home. The company was also highlighting The Frame as a hotel TV.
In a somewhat different format, Samsung also showcased transparent microLED display technology that was highlighted as a commercial technology for use in a museum. Maybe we’ll get a residential version of this tech from Samsung in the near future.
I know we’ve mentioned this a couple times already, but it’s too cool to not talk about.
If you’re in the custom home installation space, you know Crestron and what the company provides. While not necessarily a display company, Crestron does rely upon touch panel interfaces and integrating its systems with TVs and home theater systems.
Crestron is now making it possible to slap a Crestron Home interface onto any touch interface with its new DGE-1000 engine. In the company’s booth, Crestron was demonstrating this capability in collaboration with Opale, a smart mirror TV from France. Check out their offerings on their website.
Since it’s a Crestron Home interface, users can also leverage the engine to watch their favorite media on a smart mirror or any other touch display. Smart mirror TVs may be a growing trend, with similar brand Séura being a very popular stop at CEDIA Expo 2024.
Hand up, I didn’t know Bang & Olufen made TVs. This was my first ISE experience, and I’ve only been covering the market for a couple years, so let’s chalk that up to me still being somewhat of a newbie in these parts. But oh boy, Band & Olufsen sure can make a TV.
If you like the design and aesthetics of their audio systems and speakers, you’ll definitely like the way these TVs look. Especially the Beovision Harmony, a line of TVs with up to 8K resolution and built-in speakers encased in premium materials that cover the screen when the TV is off and unfold when it’s being used. At ISE 2025, this TV was also paired with the Beolab 90 speakers, which are equally as eye-catching.
According to the company’s website, Bang & Olufsen actually markets and sells four different lines of OLED TVs, all made with the same attention to design and aesthetics as their speakers.
This reminds us of the growing demand for TVs that don’t just look like big blank black screens when they’re off, made popular by Samsung’s The Frame. For a closer comparison, the Beovision Harmony is reminiscent of C-Seed’s unfolding TVs.
Like LG and Samsung, Sony didn’t market much of a residential presence in Barcelona, but we looked around their booth anyway and found some BRAVIA products, including the company’s newest line of projectors.
Notably, the BRAVIA Projector 8 and BRAVIA Projector 9 were on hand in the very limited residential technology section of Sony’s booth. The projectors, released for CEDIA Expo 2024, are the first projectors to join Sony’s comprehensive BRAVIA home cinema line-up, made available alongside the BRAVIA TVs and BRAVIA Theatre home audio products.
For those interested in how these projectors hold up, CE Pro’s Bob Archer got his hands on a BRAVIA Projector 8 last year.
madVR’s video processors also found their way into several installations and demos, including those Barco demos mentioned above. The Reference Home Theater demo featured the company’s Extreme MK2 video processor, which madVR says sets a new standard by delivering best-in-class dynamic HDR tone mapping, advanced MotionAI, seamless instant aspect ratio handling, precision-tuned calibration, and refined image processing.
Outside of the Reference Home Theater demo room, CEO Richard Litofsky and other madVR representatives were showcasing the capabilities of the Envy Core processor in an A/B demo, and the differences were clear as day. Images on the madVR-enhanced display were clearly brighter, crisper, and more vibrant.
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