Although Planar has a significant presence in the video-display business, it's relatively new to the home-theater market. The company first popped up a couple of years ago at a major trade show with some intriguing prototypes. Since then, it has expanded its home-theater resume by acquiring Runco and Vidikron, and all three brands maintain their separate identities under the Planar umbrella.
Planar is a relatively new name in the home theater market, but it is by no means a new company. The Oregon-based manufacturer has been around for over 20 years and has deep roots in the imaging industry, with a long history of flat panels and commercial displays. Last May, Planar made a big investment in the home theater industry in acquiring Runco International, one of the leaders in high-end home theater displays.
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.
You'd think there would've been a flood of entry-level DLP projectors since PLUS came out with their HE-3100 last year (see our review in the December 2001 issue). PLUS has even dropped the original Piano's price to $2,700. Usually, this would entice or force others to do likewise. There have been some new entries in the sub-$10,000 price range, but few projectors have reached below $5,000 (except for projectors aimed at the business market). This makes PLUS's step-up model, the $3,299 Piano Avanti HE-3200, even more interesting.
The Piano HE-3100 DLP projector is such a bargain, you can add fries and a Coke.
Let's face it. Cheeseburgers, at least to low-income-bracket electronics reviewers, are one of three perfect foods (pizza and beer being the other two). So, I greatly anticipated tasting southwest-U.S.-based fast-food chain Carl's Jr.'s Six-Dollar Burger . . . for $3.95. Supposedly, we can now have the same-quality burger normally found at Chili's or T.G.I. Friday's or wherever, but for less money. It was with much the same anticipation that I looked upon PLUS Corporation's announcement that they would market a $3,000 DLP projector, dubbed the Piano. Since most home-theater-based DLP projectors, like the ones in our recent Face Off (October 2001), cost around $10,000, $3,000 seemed like a pretty tasty deal.
There's an old saying: "Good things come in small packages." In our industry, however, there's often a perceived correlation between the size of an AV component (speakers, amplifiers, plasma TVs) and its level of performance. Here, the working mentality seems to be "the bigger (or pricier), the better."
With prices falling faster than confidence in Greece's economy, is there a better big-screen deal these days than a front projector? Back in 2008 even bargain-basement-priced 1080p models cost about $3,000 - about half what they cost just a year earlier, but still a sizable chunk of change.
With the warm spring beckoning us Northerners to the outdoors, thoughts of week-long beach vacations or camping trips bring on a serious dilemma: How in the world are we going to watch movies? OK, maybe, maybe not. But if you happen to be a millennial or a teenager with a smartphone, you know that its screen handily doubles these days for your old pappy’s big-screen TV. Except, it’s really not so big, is it? You can crowd in only so close when you’re trying to share your latest photos or a download of American Horror Story with a group of friends.
When a video product is arguably the best of its kind, it's hard to find the right words to describe it without blubbering. "The Next Best Thing to Being There" sounds vaguely familiar. "The Real Thing" might perk up your thirst, but doesn't quite gel. And "Must See TV" is only two-thirds right. With the Reference Imaging CinePro 9x Elite CRT projector and Teranex HDX Cinema MX video processor, we're definitely not in TV-land anymore.
Let’s go over some of the numbers here: 1080p, 3D, $1,000. Pretty solid specs and pricing for flat-panel TV, except ... this is no flat-panel. BenQ’s W1070 is, as you have probably deduced, a projector. I’ve reviewed a few projectors in this price range as exclusives for soundandvision.com and all came up rather lacking.
Seriously. This thing has a laser. A blue laser that makes. . . green light? Color me confused, and intrigued.
Sporting Casio's unique "Hybrid" light source firing at a 1,024x768 DLP, the slim $1,399 XJ-A146 is intriguing on many levels. But can it work in a home theater?
There’s a coffee cup on the remote, an icon unmistakably a cup and saucer. Maybe it’s tea. It’s the largest button. It’s backlit. It might be taunting me.
So begins my time with the Epson MegaPlex MG-850HD Projector, a plucky little PJ that makes me question the logic of every flat panel in existence.
Let’s cut right to it: this projector is staggeringly, amazingly, blindingly bright. It’s brighter than any projector I can remember measuring. It’s brighter than any plasma. It’s brighter than most LCD TVs I’ve reviewed. Uncalibrated, on a 102-inch, 1.0-gain screen, I got 87 footlamberts. That means, with a slightly smaller screen, or a screen with even a little gain, you could have an over 100-footlambert image from a projector.