The Short Form

Price $4,999 / sonystyle.com / 877-865-7669

Snapshot

Sony's new 1080p SXRD projector has an impressive picture, but it's not without its problems.

Plus

•Crisp picture with excellent detail •Vivid yet natural color •Deep blacks and strong contrast •Clean upconversion of standard-def •Affordable price

Minus

•Requires special calibration to correct picture uniformity •Some deinterlacing artifacts with 1080i

Key Features

•1,920 x 1,080-resolution SXRD projector •Auto and manual iris modes •Accepts native 1080p signals via HDMI •Video inputs: 2 HDMI; component-, composite-, and S-video; VGA •15.6 x 6.9 x 18.6 in; 24.3 lb

Test Bench

After calibrating the VPL-VW50's User preset, grayscale measured ±117K from 20 to 100 IRE - excellent performance. Color decoder error on both HDMI and component-video was 0%, while color points showed mild oversaturation on red and blue and heavier saturation on green. Both 1080i/p and 720p test patterns revealed full picture resolution for all high-def inputs. Calibrated light output (100 IRE, 93-inch screen) was a very bright 20.3 ftL. Some red fringing on crosshatch patterns indicated slight misalignment of the projector's three display chips. Picture uniformity was poor, with pink and green tinting visible on both gray full-field patterns and program material, although the amounts varied on my two test samples. Full Lab Results

Two things I immediately liked about Sony's spartan remote control for the VPL-VW50 were its backlit keypad and its large, easily accessible buttons for brightness and contrast - settings I tend to tweak obsessively. I also appreciated the six buttons for directly selecting Picture Modes and the ADJ PIC button, which let me toggle through the projector's basic and advanced picture-setup options without entering menus.

SETUP I positioned the VPL-VW50 about 14 feet from a 93-inch wide Da-Lite High Contrast Da-Mat "gray" screen with negative gain and an 87-inch Stewart/Sony Firehawk SST 1.1-gain screen designed specifically for this projector. The Firehawk SST helps the projector deliver a better picture in higher ambient-light conditions, as well as a wide viewing angle with no hotspotting. But in my pitch-black theater, there wasn't much difference between its picture and that of my regular Da-Lite.

For a budget model, the Sony packs a surprising number of setup features, including motorized focus, zoom, and lens shift (though the latter was so coarse I was better off using the manual adjustment). Horizontal and vertical keystone controls are provided but noticeably reduced picture sharpness.

The six picture presets include three User modes, all of which can be custom-tweaked for each input. You get custom and preset color-temperature controls and, among other settings, adjustments for Gamma, Black Level, Noise Reduction, Color Space, and Cinema Black Pro (iris).

Of the projector's presets, Cinema mode delivered the most natural and film-like picture on movies, but tweaking the User presets delivered much better results. I found that the Low lamp mode delivered a plenty bright picture in a dark room, while turning both Gamma and Black Level off and selecting Wide Color Space delivered a picture with more than sufficient brightness and color saturation. I left the iris on a mid-level manual setting for most viewing. Sony's Low color temperature preset also displayed mostly accurate color balance, but additional tweaks in the Custom mode allowed me to improve it further by removing a greenish bias that was most visible on skin tones.