Thomas J. Norton

Price: $5,999 At A Glance: Good black level • Excellent detail • Vibrant color • Uneven screen illumination

LEDs on the Edge

You might not be familiar with the NuVision brand. You won’t find it at Best Buy. Costco has never heard of it. And a Wal-Mart associate would likely scratch his or her head and send you to the on-site optometrist.

Price: $2,295 At A Glance: Excellent video processing • Stunning resolution • Poor shadow detail

While Mitsubishi might have a larger footprint in your memory with its big-screen TVs and flat panels, the company is focused on front projection. In fact, its Website shows 26 projector models, including four home theater designs.

Mitsubishi projectors are not your father’s Mitsubishi, and by that I mean video displays, not cars. Its projectors are marketed by the company’s Presentation Products division, which is separate from the division that sells flat-panel and rear-projection TVs.

Price: $3,699 At A Glance: Excellent video processing • Superior adjustability • Blacks to die for

Epson’s broad lineup of PowerLite home theater projectors can be a bit confusing, but the important point is that it splits into two parallel lines. At the top are the Pro Cinema models, and just below them are the Home Cinema designs. They track each other closely in performance, but the Pro Cinema versions offer a few extra features. These include an aspect-ratio setting for anamorphic projection on a 2.35:1 screen (the anamorphic lens required to use this is not included, and I didn’t test this feature). They also include ISFccc Day and Night modes, a spare lamp, a longer warranty, and a black case (the Home Cinema versions are white). At the top of the line, and our subject here, is the Pro Cinema 9500 UB.

Description
In appearance, the PowerLite Pro Cinema 9500 UB—one of the few projectors that is currently THX certified—closely resembles last year’s Epson flagship, the Pro Cinema 7500 UB. Its Fujinon zoom lens has a throw-distance range of 9.8 to 20.9 feet for a 100-inch (diagonal) 16:9 screen. The horizontal and vertical lens-shift controls, located at the top front of the case, have convenient mid-setting detents that make it easy to find the neutral settings. Lens shift, zoom, and focus are all manual.

Panasonic's traveling road show for its new 2010 product line came to Los Angeles this week, and we were there. Most of the products shown or described at the event were first announced at last January's CES, where the featured attraction was 3D, with other new products taking second billing—if not in Panasonic's eyes, then in the eyes of most attendees. It was not that the new products were uninteresting; far from it. But 3D was king of the video mountain at CES 2010.