Thomas J. Norton

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

Projection lamps: Can’t live without ’em, can’t shoot ’em. Until recently, that is.

Projection lamps are slow to turn on and off, hot, often unstable, and have a nasty habit of getting dimmer with age, while their color balance deteriorates. If you’re fussy about your video—and if you’re reading this review you should be—the 2,000-hour useful lifetime that’s usually specified (to half brightness) for projection lamps will likely be closer to 1,000 hours or less. With a replacement averaging around $400, that’s about $0.40 per hour of use, not including the bottom line on your electric bill.

Samsung has announced that the first production run of its BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player, which includes all players now in use and in stores, has an error in the programming of a Genesis chip used in the design. A noise reduction feature in that chip which cannot be user defeated has apparently been set to a level high enough to noticeably soften the image—an error that could account for the mixed reports on the player and the Blu-ray Disc format that have been published to date, here and elsewhere.