January 4, 2006

Hi folks,

We are getting back into gear after the holiday break. The first posting for the new year is Bill's six-model shootout of very low cost SVGA projectors. I must say, I am amazed at what these things can deliver for only $700. We are getting to the point where the lamp is half the cost of the projector.

A while back we stopped recommending SVGA resolution (800x600) format projectors for home theater. The reason was simple: the widescreen 480p models with the 854x480 DLP chip were so inexpensive, and so good, that it made no sense to go down to an SVGA model and give up so much image quality just to save a couple hundred bucks. But we may have to revisit that finding. The video quality on some of the models reviewed in Bill's shootout was surprisingly good. While the 480p models are still better solutions for dedicated home theater use, there are plenty of reasons why folks on low budgets might opt for one of these SVGA models instead. They are definitely worth a very close look.

As is always the case right after the New Year, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is getting into swing this week in Las Vegas. The show goes through the weekend, and we will write it up next week. It is hard to predict how many new home theater projectors may be debuted at this show--sometimes there are quite a few, and sometimes not so many. But whatever happens, we will report it here as soon as the show wraps up and we can get the product release data together.

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