1080p Projectors

Posted by: Allan Probin on 20 October 2007

I'm starting to feel the need for a projector upgrade. I'm currently using an Optoma H79 720p DLP which I've had for a couple of years now. It throws a pretty good image and I've always said I wouldn't be interested in changing it until something came along that had twice the pixels, double the contrast ratio, was quieter and displayed more accurate colours. Oh, and it has to be cheaper as well!. Things have moved on tremendously in the last few years and I think that time has now come.

The surprising thing is that the projector that has caught my attention is an LCD unit, the Panasonic PT-AE2000. I had an LCD projector about four years ago and frankly after I'd compared it to DLP I thought there was no going back. LCD at the time generally suffered issues with screen-door, dead pixels, dust blobs in the light path, colour uniformity and mis-convergence. On all these counts DLP had the upper hand and when comparing images from the two - DLP had better clarity, sharpness and image depth. I don't suffer from rainbow effect that some people do with DLP so for me it was no contest really. So it comes as a bit of a shock to be contemplating going back to LCD again.

This projector should be available in the shops in about two or three weeks and I'm arranging to go and have a look at one and compare it to a good 1080p DLP unit, hopefully the Sim2 D80e. The Sim2 costs over twice as much as the Panasonic but I want to see if the difference is worth it or if the gap has narrowed in favour of LCD's better value. A couple of guys over on the AVS forum went to have a look at the Panasonic and had some very positive things to say about it ("Color: Absolutely beautiful. Color1 PERFECTLY renders REC 709 colors. No other device has come close except on a professionally calibrated CRT pro monitor. Gamma: The gamma on the Pearl is also no comparison to the 2000. Even on a unit I saw which had the gamma corrected, the 2000, was way better. Auto Iris: ... is pretty much undetectable. I'm very sensitive to any kinds of resolution pumping, brightness compression, and fluctuating brightness. I saw none of those with the 2000. Uniformity: I saw perfect uniformity. I'm very sensitive to that...On the 2000, there was no banding or differences in color brightness from the center, edges or corners that I noticed or could see.") Link to the full write-up is here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=920561

Style wise - it looks a little reminiscent of a CD555 (and about the same size):

RRP is £1,995 in the UK. Anyone having similar thoughts or have any experiences with up-to-date LCD vs DLP comparisons?

Allan

Posted on: 21 October 2007 by neil w

alan

ill loan you an hd1 to try in your house if you want

neil

Posted on: 21 October 2007 by Allan Probin

Hi Munch,
The place where I'm going for a demo have a pretty good dem room but I'm sure they wouldn't mind lending me one of these to try out at home. There are a couple of things though to watch out for that aren't always apparent when demoing in a shop:

1. Placement
i.e. can the projector be mounted somewhere convenient in the room and project an image that exactly fits your screen? The Panasonic has an amazing amount of lens shift, both horizontally and vertically. It allows for the projector to be mounted a full screen height above or below the screen. For me, that works out at anywhere from the floor to the ceiling. Horizontally the projector can be mounted up to 40% of the screen width either side of the screen. This thing could be placed literally anwhere on my back wall (or even on a sideboard down the side of the room) and still throw a square image that requires no keystone correction. My current projector, like most DLP's, needs to be mounted exactly central between the sides of the screen and at a height which is between the top and bottom of the screen. The throw ratio on the Panasonic is very wide as well so all in all, placement would not be an issue, it would go straight onto my existing shelf on the back wall or the gyro-lock projector bracket I have on the ceiling.

2. Brightness
For a given projector's light output, the brightness of the image will be determined principly by two factors: (i) screen size, and (ii) screen gain. My screen has a gain of 0.8 but before I go I'll find out what the gain is for the screen used in the shop (screen gains are more typically in the range 1.0 to 1.3). I can then work out what size image we need to throw to get the same brightness as I would see in my room.

Neil,

That's a very generous offer. I know though what a pain it is to get these things mounted, aligned and cabled-up so I wouldn't put you to the trouble of taking yours down and putting it back up again. I'd definitely like to pop over to your place though and take a look. I'll drop you an e-mail and we can try and arrange something.

Allan

Posted on: 21 October 2007 by neil w

alan

mines on a turntable wall shelf , so its no hassle removing it

and its easy to see exactly where its been due to the dust round the feet

mail me tho

neil

Posted on: 22 October 2007 by Blueknowz

I have an Infocus IN76 at the moment will be upgrading to the IN82 soon !
http://www.projectorpoint.co.uk/projectors/InFocus_IN82.html

Posted on: 22 October 2007 by Allan Probin

Blueknowz,

I've read some good things about the IN82 and had considered it as a potential candidate in my upgrade plans. Unfortunately the placement requirements for this projector make it unsuitable for my room. It has quite a long throw and no lens shift but a large amount of fixed offset. To throw an image that would fit my screen I'd need to mount the projector about a foot outside the house and slightly above ceiling height! Looks good though if you have the room to accomodate it.

Allan

Posted on: 03 November 2007 by neil w

any purchases yet alan ? and how did the ds sound

neil

Posted on: 03 November 2007 by Allan Probin

quote:
Originally posted by neil w:
any purchases yet alan ?

Hi Neil,

Thanks for letting me view the HD1 - very impressive black levels and shadow details. The only area I think DLP might still hold sway is in the very brightest of scenes where DLP can look a little richer and more saturated. Still havn't seen any other projectors so far, I'm waiting for the Panasonic to arrive in dealer's hands.

quote:
and how did the ds sound

I heard it with the klimax kontrol and the active floorstanders but the demo was setup in the sales area amongst lots of other speakers, TVs and people generally walking about and chatting. I was expecting it to be better but given the circumstances not by a lot so I was genuinely surprised by just how much better it actually was. I want one! Unfortunately I can't really afford one but I'm now having a serious rethink of my system to see if I can't re-allocate funds a bit.

Posted on: 04 November 2007 by neil w

ill wait till you get the ds before i come over for a listen .
say before xmas then eh !!!!!!!!

Posted on: 04 November 2007 by Allan Probin

Just for fun! here's a shot of my current projector:

When I bought it a couple of years ago it was already end-of-line so could be regarded now as a bit of veritable AV fossil. I love the Star Wars Stormtrooper styling! Saying that, the Panasonic in the first post has rather a Tim Burton Batman'esque style about it I think.

Posted on: 04 November 2007 by Allan Probin

It still throws a pretty good image though. The first image below is from 300, the second is from the opening sequence of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

I photographed these images directly from my screen which is 6ft wide (almost 7ft diagonal!)

Posted on: 04 November 2007 by Allan Probin

Here's another image taken from Fantastic Four. It looks like the contrast ratio from the projector has exceeded the capabilities of my digital camera.

I'm getting solid black areas in the image (look at the clothes worn by the men on the right and compare the black level with the screen border) but the details in the brightest areas are blown out (look at the building above the taxi).

(Apologies to anyone with a dial-up connection!)

Posted on: 06 November 2007 by Margan

AFAIK DLP is still better in terms of contrast within image (related to ANSII-contrast). LCD now offers very good OnOff-contrast via adaptive iris, but the contrast within the image (and thus the "3D"-appeal) is better with DLP.

Posted on: 06 November 2007 by Allan Probin

DLP are still in the lead when it comes to ansi contrast specs but LCOS/SXRD and the latest LCD devices appear to be catching up - but still a way to go yet. The image above shows quite a good rendition of the image depth this DLP projector can produce. Take a look at the worker in the foreground with the pneumatic drill and see how he stands out from the background.

Where DLP has fallen behind now is in on/off contrast ratio. The JVC HD1 that Neil has is capable of something like a 15,000:1 native on/off contrast ratio - way higher than any DLP can manage at this time. Where high on/off contrast devices show their advantage over DLP are in dark scenes which at high contrast ratio levels like these continue to look very glossy and three dimensional whereas DLP begins to look rather flat and grainy. Certainly that's a weakness of my projector, which has an on/off contrast ratio of only around 3,000:1

Posted on: 06 November 2007 by Allan Probin

Munch - this is the third projector I've owned and I havn't had to replace anything on any of them. The bulb normally needs replacing after 2-3,000 hours viewing but with the pace front-projection technology has moved in the last five or six years I always seem to upgrade projectors before I get anywhere near that figure

Posted on: 07 November 2007 by mjamrob

Hi Allan,

I haven't seen the PT-AE2000, but I have the PT-AX100E, the much cheaper model.
Even projected on a white wall the picture quality is impressive. The contrast, saturation and black rendition is impressive but I don't know whether it would be a match for your DLP.
The one area it excels though is for screen door/chicken wire effect - there is none! Or at least you have to stand less than 2ft away to even detect it. I believe Panasonic lead the way for LCD technology in this regard.

regards,

mat

Posted on: 07 November 2007 by Allan Probin

Mat,

That's what I'm reading as well. Some of the initial reports are coming in now from the first PT-AE2000 users and it's described as having a very sharp image but the pixel structure is virtually invisible, even close up.

Quite looking forward to having a look at one myself soon.

Allan

Posted on: 08 November 2007 by Allan Probin

There are some wonderful screenshots of the PT-AE2000 projecting onto a 10ft wide screen here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12158841#post12158841

Scroll up from the post linked to above for some images from '2001:A Space Odyssey' projected from the JVC HD1. I know there are loads of variables in capturing these images in a digital camera and displaying them on a coumputer monitor but they're good fun and give an idea of just how good films can look on a large screen at home.

Posted on: 08 November 2007 by Allan Probin

I thought I'd reproduce one of the screenshots linked to above. I like this one - it's from the JVC HD1 projecting onto a screen 9ft wide:

Posted on: 09 November 2007 by Geoff P

quote:
I have an Infocus IN76 at the moment will be upgrading to the IN82 soon !

Blueknowz....Like you I have an IN76 which is excellent on std DVD scaled to 720p ( I use a Denon 3930 to do the upscaling). I am no expert so may not be completely correct but I saw an IN82 in action about two weeks ago and talked with a guy from InFocus at a HiFi show. Whilst HD DVD looks great at the full 1080p he admitted that scaling std DVD to 1080p was not so great and that it was debatable whether the resulting picture was better than a 720p version from the IN76. The problem is banding which gets worse with lower res images, particularly basic TV, though I guess that is an unfair test.

May need to be a bit carefull to check out how far you can upscale std DVD on the IN82 and get a high quality picture. That is of course if like me you have a lot invested in std DVD software

regards
Geoff

Posted on: 12 November 2007 by Allan Probin

Hi Blueknowz,

Here's one for you - a few nice images of the IN82 and some IN82 screenshots

http://www.highendpalace.com/HEP%20Projectors.htm

Allan

Posted on: 12 November 2007 by Allan Probin

Hi Munch,

I've spent untold hours reading and researching pretty much everything out there and not really come to any firm conclusions so far. I havn't seen the panasonic yet but I'm beginning to think it probably won't be sufficient an upgrade over what I've got now to make it worthwhile. I think to get a significant upgrade it would have to be something more along the lines of the JVC HD1 that neil has and, despite saying I was thinking of getting out of video processors, maybe adding the Lumagen Radiance for it's colour calibration facilities. Or instead of the HD1, substitute the new JVC HD100 that's just around the corner which manages to double the contrast ratio of the HD1. However, we've now wandered into the realms of the super expensive so being realistic I start considering just sticking with what I have for now.

I havn't got the SL2's anymore. I've switched from Naim to Linn - Linn CD player, Linn pre and Linn aktiv speakers. Nothing against Naim, I still regularly get to hear a good Naim system at a friends house and it always blows me away but I just never seemed to get there with it at home. The Linn sound is very clear, crisp and precise which seems to suit my problem room better than Naim did.

Posted on: 15 November 2007 by Allan Probin

Careful munch, it's a slippery slope. Once you get sucked in....

Posted on: 16 November 2007 by neil w

quote:
Originally posted by Allan Probin:
Careful munch, it's a slippery slope. Once you get sucked in....

too right

Posted on: 29 November 2007 by Allan Probin

The tectonic plates are beginning to move! It's taken much longer and required a great deal more effort and agonising than I've ever spent selecting an audio component but finally something is happening. I've narrowed the field down and I now have a projector being sent out to me on a sale-or-return basis. Should be here middle of next week. More then.

Posted on: 29 November 2007 by Frank Abela

The stories I'm hearing about the Panasonic are that it is scary good.