Projector Reviews

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Thomas J. Norton  |  May 30, 2004  | 

When Sony announced the development of a new home video projector last spring, the buzz began. Would it be the fabled Grating Light Valve technology, which the company is known to be working on? Would it be LCD, DLP, or LCoS? Would it be something completely new?

Geoffrey Morrison  |  May 28, 2004  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2004  | 
Why buy an enhanced-def plasma when you can get a high-def projector?

By more than $1,000, this projector is less expensive than the average price of the RPTVs in our February 2004 HDTV Face Off. Granted, you need to buy a screen (there goes that $1,000), but you'd then have the same resolution as half of the TVs in the Face Off and be able to put that image on a screen that could be up to twice as large diagonally. Boy, I love projectors.

Gary Merson  |  May 01, 2004  | 
SIM2's new HD2+ DLP projector delivers the goods.

Digital Light Processing front projection has a short but interesting history. It began in the late '90s when the first consumer DLP projector was marketed. This new type of display—which uses a tiny, reflective chip called a DMD (digital micromirror device) that contains hundreds of thousands of hinged mirrors (instead of miniature LCD panels)—provided consumers with an early look at all-digital imaging. This primitive effort made big pictures, but it had many picture-quality issues.

Steven Stone  |  Apr 11, 2004  | 

Every time I go to a party and people find out I write about home theater, they ask me about flat-screen plasma TVs. No one asks me about DLP projectors. Perhaps folks don't realize that, for the same money they'd spend on a 40-inch plasma display, they could have a DLP projector capable of producing a 90-inch picture. If they compared the ease of installing a 10-pound projector on their ceiling with the drudgery of attaching a 150-pound plasma set to their wall, I think more folks would be excited by projectors.

Joel Brinkley  |  Jan 25, 2004  | 

Survey a panel of true video experts and ask them which of the many competing technologies, old and new, is capable of producing the very best picture, and the majority—perhaps even all of them—will still answer: "A top-of-the-line, data-grade CRT projector with 9-inch tubes." If asked who makes the best such CRT projector, many of those experts will cite Runco and its DTV-1200 model, though some also will praise Sony's VPH-G90U, the projector I own. The differences between two top-of-the-line 9-inch CRT projectors are modest at best.

Peter Putman  |  Nov 16, 2003  | 

During a panel discussion at the recent Home Entertainment 2003 show in San Francisco, a few of the panelists (including me) indicated that, despite all the new flat-screen imaging technologies found in front projectors, rear-projection TVs, and plasma and LCD monitors, our preference was still for images created by CRTs. A manufacturer's representative on the panel retorted that CRTs were fine in their day, but that his company was in the business of providing the nearest thing to a theater experience in the home—and CRTs just don't cut the mustard anymore.

Mark Fleischmann  |  Nov 10, 2003  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2003  | 
The PT-L300U is the little projector that could.

Some of the most affordable front projectors are coming from the pro divisions of well-known companies. Want to pay around $2,000 for an LCD projector? Consider the Panasonic PT-L300U. It hails from the Presentation Systems Group of the Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems Company, but don't let that deter you. This projector is fully home-theater-worthy. Judging from the happy-android family pictured on the cover of the instruction manual (as opposed to happy-android executives), that must be intentional.

Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 03, 2003  | 

It's easy to visualize the operation of a CRT projector: three tubes, each operating much as the picture tube in the TV on your kitchen counter, flashing overlapping red, green, and blue analog images onto the screen. If you have a good model in top operating condition, and if you or your installer have slaved over its setup, you'll see an incredible picture—one that, on a home-size screen (not so large as to accentuate a CRT's main limitation of light output), is still as good as home video gets.

Peter Putman  |  Oct 13, 2003  | 

Reviewing Optoma's H56 DLP front projector has been an issue of karma for me. The H56 has crossed my path several times in the past two months, the first time at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show, where news of its debut was lost in a sea of PR from other companies. At the time, I paid it little attention.

Geoffrey Morrison  |  Sep 09, 2003  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2003  | 
This projector's so bright, you've gotta wear shades.

18.1 foot-lamberts. This light output would be impressive for any front projector. What makes it amazing is that I measured 18.1 ft-L on a 7.5-foot-wide (100-inch-diagonal) Grayhawk screen with a 0.9 gain. If you were to use this projector on a 6-foot-wide (82.5-inch-diagonal) Studiotek 130 screen (which has a gain of +1.3), you'd get an almost-blinding 48.6 ft-L. With that kind of light output, you'd be able to use a screen larger than 12 feet wide (165 inches diagonally) and still have a bright, watchable image. And that's in the low-power mode.

Kevin Miller  |  Jul 14, 2003  |  First Published: Jul 15, 2003  | 
One giant leap closer to CRT.

Marantz's VP-12S2, the company's top-of-the-line one-chip DLP projector, has a native resolution of 1,280:720 and utilizes the latest Texas Instruments HD2 Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) chip. This new chip offers a significant increase in contrast ratio and black-level performance over last year's VP-12S1 model. The VP-12S2's video processing also incorporates Faroudja's proprietary DCDi deinterlacing for video-based sources and 3:2 pulldown for film-based material. In fact, Marantz uses the full Faroudja chipset, which includes the video decoder, the video enhancer, the 2D comb filter, and DCDi. The latest Marantz DLP offering is definitely one of the top performers in its category.

Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 12, 2003  | 

To a videophile who cut his or her teeth on CRT units, a 7-pound video projector that is no larger than a fat dictionary and can be mounted inconspicuously on a ceiling or table is hard to believe. It can even be stored out of sight and set up again, when needed, in minutes. How good can it be?

Steven Stone  |  Jun 29, 2003  | 

A year ago, Texas Instruments' new HD2 chip for DLP projectors, with a native resolution of 1280x720, was little more than a promise. Today you can hardly walk into a home-theater dealer without being hit in the eye by a DLP projector based on the HD2. It's just too bad that most HD2-equipped projectors cost more than $12,000.

Thomas J. Norton  |  May 17, 2003  | 

The CRT is a relatively stable, mature technology, but the new digital projection systems, particularly Texas Instruments' Digital Light Processing (DLP), are moving targets. Last year, DLP really came into its own for home theater with the introduction of TI's HD1 Digital Micromirror Device (DMD). Not only did the HD1 have a true 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio with 1280x720 resolution, but DLP projectors based upon it were significantly better than earlier designs, particularly in the depth of their blacks.

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