Projector News and Industry Commentary

Bulletins about upcoming product reviews and releases, tradeshows, new technology and advanced product features as well as our thoughts and observations on all things related to projectors.

It is hard to believe I am writing the last Projector News update for the year 2004. We hope you are enjoying the holidays, and wish you a happy and safe New Year's celebration tomorrow night.more

For those looking for a great hybrid solution for data presentation, video games, and high quality video in a native 4:3 format, the Mitsubishi XD450U is an excellent solution. The review is now posted.more

We are in the midst of several reviews at the moment that we plan to post over the next two weeks. But two issues warrant some focus. First, projector prices have dropped considerably, but the cost of replacement lamps has not. Many first time projector users are getting blind-sided by the cost of lamps. I hope this article on lamps will help to make buyers aware of the issue and put the cost into perspective. If you know of someone who is shopping for a projector, you may do them a big favor by alerting them to the costs associated with replacement lamps.more

By far the most common email request we receive is for help to decide between Projector A and Projector B. With all of the new 1280x720 LCD products out lately, these questions are completely understandable. I have compiled a lot of our notes and just posted comments on the newest high contrast LCD projectors. I am sure this won't answer all of the questions, but I hope it will help with a lot of them.

We will be taking next week off for the Thanksgiving break. During the first week back we will fire up the BenQ 7800 and the Mitsubishi HC900 and shoot them out against the Panny AE700, in order to add more comparative comments to today's posting.more

Thanks for all of the email feedback on the Sony HS51 review. As far as the lumen rating on this projector goes, the initial rating reported to us was 800 ANSI lumens. Sony just informed us that the official lumen rating as per ANSI standard has been changed to 1200. So we have updated our records on this accordingly. This change does not affect the measurements we took in the lab for the review.more

Thanks for all of the email feedback on the Sony HS51 review. Many of you have asked for comments on screendoor effect and vertical banding, which I had not touched on. The reason that I didn't was because neither one was a problem, so they weren't on the radar screen of problems to discuss. There was no evidence of any vertical banding on the HS51, and pixelation was entirely invisible at 1.4 times the screen width or more. But I should have said so explicitly. Thus the review has been updated to include these observations. Also, as one astute reader pointed out, I misstated the range of lens shift in the initial posting. So that paragraph has been reworded more accurately. (Thanks,...more

The Sony HS51 has gotten a lot of buzz since its announcement with the astounding contrast rating of 6000:1. We have just posted the HS51 review to put it all into perspective. It is a great projector, but it needs some help with standard definition video processing. We find the DVDO iScan HD+ to be the perfect front end for this unit, and the combination is a great home theater solution. (See review for more details.)more

Las night we posted an update to the recent reviews of the Panny AE700 andSanyo Z3 which includes a comparative evaluation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully this will answer many of the questions on the minds of our readers regarding these two units. However, since they are getting a lot of attention these days, further questions will no doubt crop up.more

We have just posted the review of the Sanyo PLV-Z3. These are exciting times in the home theater projector business, with all of these hot new models showing up. The Sanyo Z3 is an improvement in many ways over the Z2, and it is being offered at a more aggressive $2,495 MSRP to boot ($500 less than the Z2). I was hoping also to post a companion article with this latest review comparing the Sanyo Z3 with the Panasonic AE700, but we've still got some final side by side evaluation to do. So that piece will be done and posted by this coming Tuesday at the latest. But reading the two reviews, you can get a lot of what that article will cover.more

At this juncture we are seeing several new low-cost home theater projectors in various stages of release, all of which feature 1280x720 resolution LCD panels. These include the Sony VPL-HS51, the Sanyo PLV-Z3, the InFocus Screenplay 5000, as well as the Panasonic AE700 already reviewed. Each of these products has a configuration of features, capabilities, and price points that represent attractive value propositions for the consumer. Ideally, we would have review samples in place on all units and perform a comparative evaluation in shoot-out type format. Unfortunately, review units do not come available from all manufacturers at the same time.more