Hi folks,

The big CEDIA trade show is happening next week in Denver. This is the annual show focused on home theater technologies--projectors, screens, audio systems, vibrating seats, popcorn machines, you name it. If it has to do with home theater, it is at CEDIA. This is the show vendors use to announce many of the new products for the fall season.

Normally, we don't have the product announcements happening until the first day of the show, but this week we've seen a number of advance announcements. Mitsubishi, Planar, projectiondesign, and Sanyo have pre-announced new home theater projectors to be unveiled next week. (See NewsWatch for details on them). Many more announcements will be forthcoming in the next week. Since we will be at the show all week, and since it ends Sunday, Sept 7, we plan to be back in the office late Monday, Sept 8. We will get a review of the show compiled once we have assembled all the product release data.

With all of the feedback coming in on the issue of anamorphic lenses and 2.35 screen formats, the awareness of issues related to ideal screen size and viewing distance was definitely lacking. Whether you are going with a standard 16:9 ratio screen or the wider 2.35, it is vital to figure out what is the best overall combination of screen size and viewing distance for your particular theater. For more on this, see this new article just posted yesterday.

We're still waiting on the arrival of a couple more anamorphic lenses so we can complete a lens review. We will try to squeeze it in among all of the new projector reviews we will be tackling after the show. Also to come, more commentary on the pros and cons of 2.35 format home theaters.

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,

Evan Powell
Editor

Friday, August 22

Hi folks,

Well, there's a heck of a lot more interest in 2.35 format rigs than we'd have guessed from prior feedback. My request for comments last week generated a huge influx of email, and I thank all of you that wrote in for your thoughts on the matter.

As you might have anticipated, the single largest complaint about anamorphic lenses was the cost. Nobody wants to spend more on an accessory lens than they do on a good 1080p projector, and price is clearly the big stumbling block for most readers. However, there were plenty of other considerations and questions that were on people's minds. We are compiling the most frequently asked questions and most insightful comments, and will post them along with our comments in response next week.

If you have not yet written and want to give us your ideas, experiences, suggestions, compliants, or praise regarding 2.35 screens and anamorphic lenses, we are anxious to hear from you. Please drop us a note if you have any thoughts on the matter!

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,

Evan Powell
Editor

Friday, August 15

Hi folks,

We've just posted Bill's overview of five hot projectors that you will want to look at if you are into PC gaming. As projectors have gotten cheaper, many gaming enthusiasts are looking for big pictures to enhance the entertainment experience.

I've got a question for you ... how much interest do you have in anamorphic lenses and the 2.35 screen format? We don't get a lot of email asking for information on this subject, and I am wondering why? Is it because the cost of the lenses makes the concept prohibitively expensive? Is the idea confusing? Or is there just not that much interest in the idea of super-widescreen home theater among our readers? Any feedback you have on this subject would be welcome. Please drop me a note if you have any thoughts on the matter!

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,

Evan Powell
Editor

Friday, August 8

Hi folks,

If you are into large screen video gaming, you'll not want to miss the next review. Bill is currently testing five 1280x800 format projectors to see how they stack up as video gaming machines. We should have the results of this work posted next week.

We are also continuing to work on an updated article comparing the relative merits of LCD and DLP. One of the areas we've been examining is the susceptibility of LCD technology to image persistence. At the Infocomm show in June, Texas Instruments demonstrated the tendency of LCD projectors to retain a faint ghost of a static image that had been displayed for an extended period of time. The point of the demo was to highlight the fact that DLP projectors are not susceptible to this particular phenomenon.

In trying to reproduce the demo that was featured in TI's booth, we discovered that not all LCD products behave the same with regard to image persistence. In particular, we tested a total of ten LCD projectors, five of which had inorganic LCD panels, and the other five had organic panels. The unexpected surprise in our testing was that the inorganic units showed very little susceptibility to image persistence. On four of the five, we simply could not get them to retain a ghost image no matter how long we displayed a static image. On one inorganic model, we found an extremely faint residual image which was easily reversed with a few minutes of white screen display.

On the other hand, the five organic units did indeed retain a ghost after at least an hour of displaying a high contrast black and white static image. (We used the ANSI contrast checkerboard test pattern for this evaluation.) In general, the ghost image could be reversed by displaying a full white screen for about half the length of time the original checkerboard image had been displayed. On four out of five of the organic models, the image persistence was fully eliminated using this techique. On the fifth unit, we found that an extremely faint residual ghost could be detected on a 50 IRE gray screen no matter how long we displayed the white screen. The image faded substantially, but never was completely eliminated.

This has been an interesting set of results. We will discuss it more in the upcoming article on the differences between LCD and DLP technologies.

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,

Evan Powell
Editor

Wednesday, July 30

Hi folks,

We've now got five 1080p projectors lined up, and we are taking copious notes on the relative merits of each. My original plan on Monday was to post a comparison between the Mits HC5500 and the BenQ W5000 today. However, as I see now, that piece would be too limited, and would only stimulate more questions about how they compare to others. So I have modified the plan to write a single piece that highlights the advantages and limitation of each of them as compared to the others.

The Epson 1080 UB has been included in the group, so we now have the Epson as well as the Panny AE2000, the Sanyo Z2000, the Benq W5000 and the Mits HC5500. At the moment, that rounds out the top five most popular home theater projectors in the 1080p category. I will make every effort to get this whole thing posted by Friday.

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,

Evan Powell
Editor

Monday, July 28

Hi folks,

We've received a number of emails asking about comparisons between the Mitsubishi HC5500, and other 1080p models in the same price range. In particular, the BenQ W5000 is of interest since it is a DLP-based model selling for street prices below $2,500. We are currently looking at the HC5500 and the W5000 and should have comparative notes posted by about Wednesday or so. Following this we will also do side-by-sides between the HC5500 and the Panasonic AE2000 as well as the Sanyo Z2000. We will try to get notes on them done by the end of the week. As of this writing, these are the four most popular 1080p models on the site, as measured by the total number of database accesses by readers in the past week.

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,

Evan Powell
Editor

Friday, July 18

Hi folks,

Well, as promised we got two reviews up this week. One being the entry level Mitsubishi HC1600, and the other the Canon REALiS SX80. The Mits HC1600 is an outstanding entry level projector for graphics and photography, but the switch to a 2x wheel from its predecessor, the HC1500's 4x wheel means a greater number of users will be bothered by rainbow artifacts when using it for video and film.

We are really enthused by the Canon SX80. It delivers extremely bright, well balanced color in 1400x11050 resolution for under $3,000. If you can live with a couple limitations as itemized in the review, it is a highly competitive model for large scale display of photography, graphics, and highly detailed material of all kinds.

We are currently working on the new Mitsubishi HC5500, the latest 1080p model from Mits selling for $2,495. This is a significant upgrade to the HC4900 which is on its way out of production. The HC5500 is 20% brighter, much higher in contrast, and has more powerful video processing circuitry. The increase in brightness comes from a switch to a new, shorter 1.2x zoom lens.

The HC5500 also features two anamorphic lens modes that enable the user to leave an anamorphic lens permanently deployed without ever having to move it. With this feature, no matter what aspect ratio your subject matter is in, you can see it in proper format with the anamorphic lens in place. This eliminates either the nuisance factor of using a manually mounted anamorphic lens, or the significant cost of the automated track. Either way, the option to go with a 2.35 format screen is simplified with this new feature of the HC5500.

A formal review of the Mitsubishi HC5500 will be posted next week.

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,