Shootout: Three 1080p Front Projectors Page 4

Shootout: Three 1080p Front Projectors

Panasonic PT-AE1000U

the listThe impressive string of 720p front projectors that Panasonic produced over the past few years helped to silence anyone skeptical about LCD's ability to do battle with technologies such as DLP and LCoS. Now, the company's newest projector, the PT-AE1000U, is ready to take on the 1080p competition.

The Short Form
Price $4,000 / panasonic.com / 800-211-7262
Snapshot
Don't be fooled by the business-like exterior: Panasonic's affordable model delivers lush, filmlike pictures.
Plus
•Dynamic Iris feature delivers consistently deep blacks •Rich, natural-looking color •Great value
Minus
•Esoteric features may confuse the average consumer
Key Features
•2x Zoom lens •Powered Zoom and Focus •Manual Vertical/Horizontal lens shift •Auto Iris control •Learning remote control •Inputs: 2 HDMI; 2 component-video; composite- and S-video; VGA; RS-232C •18 x 5 x 12.3 in; 12.3 lb Full Lab Results
At $4,000, Panasonic doesn't waste your money here on superficial stuff; this utilitarian black box looks to be all business. But inside are a number of intriguing features that help to coax pretty pictures, most notably a Dynamic Iris control that optimizes contrast on a shot-by-shot basis. Some others, such as an onscreen waveform monitor for adjusting brightness and contrast of connected sources, are fairly exotic and probably won't prove useful to the average viewer.

Panasonic outfitted the AE1000U with a comprehensive set of inputs: two HDMI jacks, a pair of component-video connections, a VGA port, and an RS-232C serial port. The remote is a home theater-friendly "learning" model with LED screen that can operate other components. The backlit keypad provides buttons for toggling through preset picture modes, stored picture memories, and inputs. An Aspect button cycles through the display modes, which include 4:3 and 16:9 along with a range of stretch and zoom options (most work with both standard- and high-definition signals).

SETUP With my screen configuration, the Panasonic's 2x zoom lens offered a throw-distance of around 10 to 19.5 feet. There are some slick setup features on the projector as well, such as motorized zoom and focus that can be tweaked via the remote and a pair of manual lens-shift dials that provide 100% vertical and 40% horizontal offset from the screen's center point.

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