Projector Reviews

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?

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.

The Sony VPL-VW12HT is the latest version of Sony's flagship consumer LCD projector. In appearance it's a twin of its pre-decessor, the VPL-VW11HT (reviewed in the July/August 2002 <I>Guide</I>). Its 16:9 LCD panels have the same specifications. It will accept all of the most common source resolutions&mdash;480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i component or RGB&mdash;and scale them to the panels' 1366x768 native resolution. The user can select any of the most common aspect ratios: widescreen (anamorphic or letterbox), 4:3, and several others, including two that pass the source through without scaling. There are six programmable video memories to store different setups, including picture adjustments, color temperature, and aspect ratio.

For such a tiny projector, the new Plus Piano Avanti HE-3200 has an absurdly long name. The HE-3200 is the next step up the Plus line from the Piano HE-3100, which I reviewed in the December 2001 Guide. For an additional $600, you get more features, greater setup flexibility, and maybe even a better picture.

Epson's entrance into the home-theater projector arena has long been anticipated. For years, Epson has had the best color-management system of any maker of LCD projectors, and their ability to tame the uneven spectral output of short-arc metal-halide lamps has been impressive.

As the Greek mathematician Zeno stated more than 2400 years ago, traveling half the distance toward one's destination, then half of the remaining half, and so on, might mean that one never gets there. The ability to re-create visual reality on a video screen improves with each generation of whichever new technology you choose&mdash;LCD, DLP, D-ILA&mdash;but they seem to be merely continuing to halve the distance remaining from the still-unrivaled performance of the decades-old cathode-ray-tube (CRT) projector. Longtime readers might think that I sound a bit like a skipping CD, but even this late in 2002, the CRT video-projection technology continues to reign as the king of video fidelity.