October 3, 2003

Hi folks,

I was hoping to have the review on the Mitsubishi HC2 Colorview posted today. I am liking this unit more than I thought I would, and want to spend some more time with it over the weekend before posting the final review. Please look for it later Monday afternoon.

Another unit we've received a lot of inquiries on is the Toshiba MT500. This is spec'd as a native 16:9 DLP unit with 1024x576 resolution. Many folks have presumed that it is using the 16:9 Matterhorn DLP chip. It isn't--it uses a native 4:3 XGA chip with 192 lines deactivated, which is an alternative route to achieve the same physical resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. Regardless, with a retail of $3,999 and a much lower street price, audience interest is not surprising. We have an MT-500 in the lab, and the review will be posted in the next week to ten days.

Just announced earlier today is the NEC LT170. Nobody can accuse NEC product designers of not thinking out of the box--some of the most creative stuff in the industry comes from their labs. The LT170 is a 3.9 lb, 1500 lumen, 1000:1 contrast XGA resolution DLP product in the strangest form factor we've seen in a while. One of its features--you can set it on its side and project in portrait format rather than landscape. As with a number of NEC products, this looks like a unit that could be an economical dual purpose machine for both portable business use and home entertainment. With its eye-catching street price of $1,795, we are sure to get requests for review. Never fear, we are on it.

Thanks for using ProjectorCentral,

Evan Powell