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Nine new LCD and DLP projectors endure grueling tests of brightness, signal compatibility, image quality, and more. As always, Pete Putman pulls no punches unearthing the truth about 2001 's new class.
Welcome to the second annual Video Systems January projector review. Traditionally, the fourth quarter has always been a busy time for manufacturers of projectors and monitors. Sometimes that's due to shortages of imaging devices, such as DMD chips.
More often than not, though, it's the result of lastminute tweaking and finetuning of products rolled out at Infocomm, often in response to the published specifications of competing manufacturers. This serves as a follow-up to my annual post-Infocomm review in October because too many products were shipping late or had been replaced by last-minute upgrades.
For this edition I selected nine brand-new boxes. Four of them fall into the small desktop/portable category and range from 6.7 pounds to slightly less than nine pounds, while two more are definitely desktop models. To make things interesting, I also picked two desktop/installation projectors, and a third desktop/ installation projector made a surprise entry late into the review.
Among the portables, In Focus sent along a Lite Pro 350, a souped-up version of its popular LP330/335 series projectors and the only DLP projector in this review. Proxima forwarded a DP6150 portable, while Sanyo and Canon entered their PLC-XU22N and LV7325 small desktops, respectively.
Sharp dropped off the PG-C30XU, a newer, renumbered version of its popular NoteVision LCD projectors; and NEC Technologies shipped a MultiSync MT1050, its all-new desktop projector. The desktop/ installation category was represented by Epson's PowerLite 8100i LCD projector, JVC's DLA-M20U D-ILA projector, and a preproduction version of Sony's VPL-FX50U LCD chassis.
This is the first time I didn't review any SVGA (800x600) resolution projectors as part of a round-up. Indeed, all of the projectors had native resolutions of 1024x768 pixels (XGA) with the exception of the DLAM20U, which has SXGA (1365x1024) pixel resolution. Seven of the nine entries use 3X transmissive LCD panel imaging, the exceptions being In Focus and JVC.
For testing purposes, I put each projector through a gauntlet of signal sources. Computer images and test patterns ranged in resolution from 640x480 (VGA) to 1600x1200 (UXGA) and included a fme-text pattern, PLUGE,...