Photos by John Wilkes
What do you think of when you hear the words “movie theater”? For me, it’s stale, greasy popcorn, loud people talking back to the screen, and $10.50-a-pop tickets. But if you’re one of the lucky ones who can look past that stuff, it’s also cool surround sound and a huge, engrossing image. I love to watch movies, but I usually wait until they’re on DVD so I can see them at home. Fortunately, video front projectors let me recreate the big-screen theater experience in my own living room, where the popcorn tastes good and the only one allowed to talk during the show is me.
Front projectors used to be a pain to deal with — hard to set up and hard to maintain. But that was back when the only serious option was a bulky cathode-ray tube (CRT) model. New digital projectors that use Digital Light Processing (DLP) and LCD technology have changed things for the better. Not only do many new models deliver great images, but they’re small and lightweight, easy to set up, require almost no maintenance, and come in a wide range of prices.
To survey the situation on the DLP side (we tested three LCD front projectors in the July/August issue - see LCD for Less), we called in three models: the Sharp XV-Z90U ($2,800), the NEC HT1000 ($4,995), and the InFocus ScreenPlay 7200 ($8,000). Outside of features and price, what sets these projectors apart is the native resolution of their Texas Instruments Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) display chips. Otherwise, they’re pretty similar in that they all bring the movie theater experience home.
To get the most out of a front projector, you need to pair it with a screen designed for video use. Here, we went a step further and used a screen designed specifically for DLP projection: Stewart Filmscreen’s contrast-enhancing GrayHawk ($1,300). The projectors were set up and evaluated at 14 to 17 feet from the screen, which measures 92 inches (diagonally) and has a wide 16:9 aspect ratio. While you can put a DLP projector on a coffee table, you’ll get a brighter image by mounting it on the ceiling. For this test, we simulated that type of installation by placing the projector on a high shelf directly below the ceiling.
Sharp XV-Z90U
They may be found in home theaters, but the main markets for front projectors are the corporate boardrooms and training facilities where evil men in dark suits dispense propaganda. This industrial connection could explain why so many projectors are boring beige boxes with a lens jutting out of one end. But Sharp’s XV-Z90U doesn’t just look good — it’s a stone fox. Its curvilinear, two-tone gray case will blend in easily with your room décor whether the projector is mounted on the ceiling or a table. And if you do decide to put it on a table, its swivel stand makes it easy to rotate the lens into proper alignment.
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Sharp XV-Z90U
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DIMENSIONS 14 1/2 inches wide, 4 5/8 inches high, 12 7/8 inches deep |
The Z90U’s 4:3 aspect ratio DMD has a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. However, since I was using a 16:9 screen for testing, I switched to the 16:9 mode during setup and rotated the zoom lens so a widescreen image would fill the screen. You don’t get to use the display chip’s full resolution with this arrangement, only a 16:9 subset, which works out to 800 x 450 pixels — just shy of the full 480-line vertical resolution of standard NTSC video. You also get “light spray,” a common problem where reflections from unused portions of the chip can be seen above and below the screen. But generally this won’t be visible when you’re watching movies, especially if the wall behind the screen is a dark color like charcoal gray or black.
With my setup, the minimum projection distance of the Sharp’s zoom lens was 16 feet, 10 inches. That’s quite a throw — so if you plan to use a 92-inch or larger screen, make sure your room is long enough to accommodate it. Setup features include a vertical lens-adjustment ring and both horizontal and vertical keystone adjustments.
The Z90U has a reasonably complete set of inputs on its back panel, including wideband component-video and a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connection with HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) for hooking up a computer, a high-def satellite receiver, or one of the few DVD players that have a DVI output. There’s also an RS-232 port for connecting it to advanced home theater control systems from companies such as Xantech.
You can tell that the Z90U’s remote control was designed for home theaters, not boardrooms. The large, generously spaced buttons and fully backlit keypad make it easy to use in the light-challenged environments that projectors require. Five input buttons let you quickly switch between sources. There are also buttons for toggling through five custom picture presets and three display modes, which include Normal and Border for standard 4:3 images and Stretch for anamorphic widescreen DVDs. All that’s missing is a zoom mode for enlarging letterboxed 4:3 programs.
Tweaking the Z90U’s picture was easy thanks to its clear, well-organized onscreen menus. After selecting the 6,500-K color-temperature and Standard gamma settings (two other choices, Black Detail and White Detail, give more weight to the dark or light portions of images), I made adjustments using the Sound & Vision Home Theater Tune-Up DVD. The picture looked good, but more fine-tuning was required in the Advanced Picture Adjustment menu to get the projector’s grayscale to more closely track the NTSC-standard color temperature.
With my tweaks completed, I cued up the DVD of The Fast and the Furious, the Vin Diesel vehicle about an FBI guy who infiltrates L.A.’s street-racing underground. Daylight shots of sunny southern California had an eye-popping crispness: the bright hues of the tricked-out green and orange cars looked clean, and shadows came across as a deep shade of black. There was also lots of detail in an overhead shot of custom car parts laid out on a table. In some darker scenes, such as a late-night race in a warehouse district, shadow detail was decent but there was a greenish cast that wasn’t apparent in daylight shots (click to view In the Lab PDF for details). And a strong “red push” from the projector’s color decoder meant I had to reduce the color level, which made animated movies like Toy Story look kind of pale. The Sharp also lacks 2:3 pulldown processing for film-based programs on video. But if you mainly watch DVD movies on the Z90U and pair it with a good progressive-scan player, this won’t be an issue.
At $2,800, Sharp’s XV-Z90U is an attractive, inexpensive projector designed with home theater in mind. Its 800 x 600-pixel resolution makes it better suited for watching DVDs and regular TV, but you can also use it to watch HDTV programs in both the 720p (progressive) and 1080i (interlaced) formats — downconverted, of course. Just remember: if you’re going to use a screen with a wide aspect ratio, make sure your room is long enough for the Sharp to properly do its thing.
PDF: Features ChecklistPDF: In the Lab
NEC HT1000
While Sharp is well known in the consumer world, NEC is more of a behind-the-scenes player with a strong foothold in the industrial market. That’s not to say it can’t bridge both worlds. The HT1000 is NEC’s first serious foray into home theater, and to judge from its wide array of videophile features, the company did its homework. The projector’s formless white case and generally drab design recall its industrial lineage, but with a reasonable $4,995 price tag, who’s complaining?
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NEC HT1000
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DIMENSIONS 10 1/4 inches wide, 4 3/4 inches high, 12 1/2 inches deep |
The HT1000 uses a 4:3 aspect ratio DMD with a resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels — but that gets whittled down to 1,024 x 576 when you use a 16:9 screen. As with Sharp’s projector, you need to set the HT1000 for 16:9 and then adjust its zoom lens to fill the screen with a widescreen image. Another similarity to the Sharp is the light spray generated by unused pixels on the NEC’s 4:3 DMD.
NEC’s owner’s manual specifies a zoom range for a 4:3 screen only, but I found I could place the projector about 12 to 14 feet from my widescreen setup. The HT1000 has adjustable feet for varying its angle, and there are horizontal and vertical keystone adjustments plus a feature called 3D Reform that gives you more options for tweaking geometry. The NEC’s many adjustments make it easy to get a perfect picture even at off-center positions.
You can’t ask for a more complete set of video inputs. Along with standard fare, you get wideband component-video, 15-pin VGA-type RGB, and DVI with HDCP copy protection. This makes it easy to hook up the NEC to a computer, an HDTV tuner, a DVD player, a PlayStation — whatever.
The wedge-shaped remote fits comfortably in the hand. The keypad isn’t backlit, but its buttons are logically grouped, which makes finding the one you want in the dark easier. It has direct input buttons that let you switch quickly between sources and a centrally located joystick for navigating menus. Particularly useful was the Picture button, which calls up a menu for making on-the-fly picture adjustments. And pressing Aspect Ratio gives you choices that include Normal, Full, and Zoom plus one setting called Stadium that stretches the heck out of the picture.
With the HT1000 installed, it took time to adjust its picture because of the number of setup options. You can create a picture setting for each of its inputs as well as for signals at different scan rates — for example, 480i and 480p. Four User Adjust settings let you select from a list of reference presets (like Video, Movie, Graphic, and Game), massage their basic picture settings, and then move onto advanced parameters like gamma and color temperature.
I was able to set up the picture to a point that was close to perfection for each component I hooked up. In a scene from The Fast and the Furious where Johnny Tran and crew muscle Ted at his custom-car shop, both the contrast and shadow detail were excellent. I could easily make out differences in tone between the dark garments and black leather jackets worn by the criminal gang. Details like metal car parts hanging from the garage walls were also exceptionally clear. The actors’ skin tones looked natural, with just the right amount of color saturation.
The HT1000’s great performance with DVDs carried over to HDTV. In the montage section of the new 720p-format Digital Video Essentials D-VHS tape, the thin bars of a Ferris wheel looked impressively solid, and shots of flowers and other colorful objects were clean and crisp. But a few shots did reveal the effects of the HT1000’s less than HDTV-level resolution. In a closeup of a female model in a garden, with fine droplets of water on her face (uh, I guess the garden had just been watered), the droplets blended in with her skin. Viewing this same shot on a full-resolution HDTV projector, I could see each individual drop very clearly.
The NEC has features to spice up the look of standard video programs as well, which often need help when blown up. In addition to a Deinterlace setting that lets you switch off 2:3 pulldown processing, there’s also Faroudja DVDi processing with black expansion, contrast enhancement, and noise reduction. By playing around with various settings, I was able to make programs like news and sports look surprisingly good.
If you’re looking for a full-featured digital projector but aren’t ready to shell out the bucks for a true HDTV model, NEC’s HT1000 makes for a very satisfying compromise. It’s computer-friendly, has excellent image quality, and offers enough video-adjustment options to keep tweaky types (like me) busy for hours.
PDF: Features Checklist
PDF: In the Lab
InFocus ScreenPlay 7200
Like NEC, InFocus is better known in the corporate than the consumer world, but the company has come out with a line of home theater projectors that’s competitive in both image quality and price. The top-of-the-line ScreenPlay 7200 is an HDTV-grade projector decked out with extras like Faroudja DCDi video processing and a few custom install-friendly features. While not as slick as the Sharp, it has a nice streamlined look and, at only 4 1/4 inches deep, won’t protrude too far from your ceiling. Did I mention it costs only $8,000? — that’s a lot of coin, but for an HDTV-resolution video projector, a reasonable price.
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InFocus ScreenPlay 7200
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DIMENSIONS 13 3/4 inches wide, 4 1/4 inches high, 12 3/4 inches deep |
The ScreenPlay uses TI’s Mustang HD2 DMD, which has a native resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels. Since the chip’s aspect ratio is 16:9, you won’t have to worry about light spray from unused pixels: this model was specifically designed for projecting widescreen material.
The ScreenPlay’s zoom lens let me position it within a 10 to 14-foot range, which was perfect for the room. There are elevation and leveling feet to manually adjust image position on tabletops. Other setup features include horizontal and vertical position adjustments and vertical keystone adjustments.
The ScreenPlay has a wide range of input connections. Along with two sets of wideband component-video connections and a 15-pin VGA jack for RGB signals, there’s something called an M1-DA jack that connects to the DVI output on an HDTV tuner, a DVD player, or a PC — but only when you use an optional 10-meter cable with a DVI connector on one end and an M1-DA jack on the other ($59). For custom installs, you also get an RS-232 port, a minijack for an infrared (IR) repeater, and two 12-volt outputs for triggering motorized screens and curtains.
The small remote control has a backlit keypad and a simple button layout. There are four input keys for quickly switching sources and — something I found very useful — controls to adjust brightness and contrast without having to root through onscreen menus. The Preset button lets you cycle through the three custom picture presets, and the Resize button lets you switch aspect ratios. Along with standard 4:3 and 16:9, these include a Letterbox mode that fills the screen by zooming in on letterboxed 4:3 programs and a Natural Wide mode that stretches the edges of nonwidescreen material.
The setup menu offers plenty of options for adjusting the picture. In addition to three color-temperature and five gamma presets, you get Color Control for grayscale adjustments and Color Space for selecting the correct color gamut for high-definition TV, enhanced-definition TV (EDTV), and computer video sources — the default Auto setting selects the appropriate one for you. You can store custom picture settings for each input, and the Preset menu’s three custom settings can be recalled instantly via remote control.
After making some needed tweaks to the grayscale, I settled in for another round with The Fast and the Furious. In a scene where Dominic and Brian open a garage door and stroll inside, I was impressed by how much detail was visible in the shadowy interior as bright sunlight streamed in behind them. Tools, engine parts, and old license plates hanging on the walls all came through clearly. In a later scene where the pair drives along the Pacific Ocean, the bright-orange car looked vivid against paler blue-green tones of the sea and brown hills beyond — a testament to the ScreenPlay’s extraordinary color accuracy.
The projector’s high-def display chip got a chance to strut its stuff with the image montage from the 720p tape of Digital Video Essentials. A shot of delicate lace curtains blowing in the breeze looked remarkably solid, with no trace of “line twitter” or flicker. And in the closeup of the female model, I could clearly see the fine drops of moisture on her skin — a detail that wasn’t as apparent on the lower-res Sharp and NEC projectors. But what was most startling about the image was its brightness. The ScreenPlay is probably the brightest DLP front projector in its price category, delivering more than twice the light output of some others I’ve tested.
It’s also packed with features for improving the look of standard interlaced programs. Faroudja processing with two user-selectable modes ensures that programs shot on film and video look equally clean. Another Faroudja feature lets you adjust the level of detail in both the color and brightness portions of the image. With a cable box connected to the ScreenPlay via its composite-video input, a 1970s film clip on ESPN of Evel Knievel making his historic (if insane) leap over Idaho’s Snake River Canyon looked passably good. However, a moderately high level of video noise appeared when the projector was fed interlaced signals.
With its bright image, high-def resolution, and true-to-life colors, the InFocus ScreenPlay 7200 is a serious contender for your DLP dollar. In fact, with most similar models costing 10 to 12 grand, it’s a steal. The InFocus name might be best known in the corporate world, but if the company keeps releasing projectors like the ScreenPlay 7200, that will soon change.
Let’s face it: going to the movies isn’t what it used to be. Movie palaces have been carved up into multiplexes, tickets and snacks are way too expensive, and now you even have to sit through commercials before the film starts. I’d say you’re better off staying away. And with DLP projectors starting at less than three grand, there’s more reason than ever to bring the theater home.
PDF: Features Checklist
PDF: In the Lab