Projector Reviews

I am a sucker for accurate colors, and the LS-10i measured spot on. Perfect reds, greens, and blues (and everything in between) made a richly colorful movie like Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance on Blu-ray really pop without looking excessively saturated or over-the-top. Skin tones of the characters, and subtle colors and gradations in the settings, of the brilliant Game of Thrones on HBO HD also looked perfect with the LS-10i.

Detail and motion resolution, two strong points of DLP over LCoS and LCD displays, were also very good. I used the Runco LS-10i to review L.A. Noire (you can read my take on it here), and this dark and moody game looked sharp and well defi ned even when the camera was spinning due to my “spirited” driving style. Playing the game at night did make the high black levels noticeable but not overly objectionable, given that they weren’t much higher than on many LCD projectors I’ve tested.

Things all came together when I watched the BBC’s beautifully shot Sherlock, with the LS-10i reproducing the sharp detail in close-ups, the varied color palette of the locations, and the extensive shadow detail of the night scenes, even with the series streamed in HD over Netflix.

Processing is becoming less of a differentiator between displays these days, so the Runco LS-10i’s performance wasn’t much of a surprise. It picked up the 3:2 film sequence with 1080i and 480i material quickly, and exhibited minimal jaggies with both SD and HD sources. Rotating bar tests (both 1080i and 480i) exposed small jaggies in a wider range of rotation than I’ve seen on some displays, but the artifacts themselves were smaller than normal, so I count that as a wash.

Upconverting from DVD resulted in a decent amount of detail and minimal noise — something true of this projector with all signals. Only a few Blu-ray players could do a better job. In all, its processing was very good, though some displays and BD players perform a little better in this regard.

The lack of 3D at this price is noticeable, although your love/hatred of 3D will deem this factor important/unimportant. (Runco’s 3D projection offering, the D-73D, is a dual-projector unit that uses passive glasses and costs around $50,000.)