Panasonic PT-AE8000 Projector - Image Quality 4

Panasonic PT-AE8000 Projector: Performance, HDTV and Sports, including 3D

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Great football!  I got in a day and an evening of NLF football on this Panasonic PT-AE8000.  I had friends over for many hours.

We had controlled light coming in from side and rear windows though mostly closed shutters

The room has 7 rear down facing recessed lights on (each  one an LED light with 50 to 65 watt equivalent).   Here's the front/side of the room as used.

That's looking rather good, plenty of pop, for a room that isn't blacked out.  Dark surfaces, of course is the key, but the point is this projector cranks out more than 2000 lumens when needed, about double the typical projector, and it lets us enjoy a bright image.

Check out some images from football, and other HDTV content: All the sports content was shot with those rear lights on. Most of the other HDTV content was shot with the lights off, unless noted otherwise.

To give you a better idea as to how much ambient light I was allowing in the room to get these sports images, here I've set exposure to give you an idea how the room looked.  Then below it, less exposed.

Of course not all HDTV viewing is football and the olympics. I spent plenty of time with music videos etc. from Paladia, and watched a variety of programming, even part of one Presidential debate.

Panasonic PT-AE8000 Projector: Bottom Line on HDTV Sports, and also 3D HDTV content

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Nothing better for HDTV and sports than a really bright projector with good color.  CFI is there for sports viewing.  I turned it on low, and I forget about it.

If there's one aspect of HDTV and sports viewing, that the Panasonic could be better at, it would be sharpness.  Digital content, rather than film is where you can appreciate every last bit of sharpness.  No LCD projector, or LCoS one, with 3 chips is going to be perfectly converged, giving single chip projectors an inherent sharpness advantage.  This Panasonic does fine, but there are some really sharp DLP projectors out there, and a couple of other 3 chip type projectors with exceptional detail enhancment.

For perspective, if you really want to know what a "night and day" difference is, in terms of sharpness, it's when we have Quad-HD, true 4K, or whatever the next generation is called, and next gen projectors that are 4K.  I have worked with a true 4K projector with true 4K content, and it reminds me that we are talking smaller differences here, between these various projectors sharpness abilities.

So, I'll stop pointing out minor details. I have not a single serious complaint after watching a couple of dozen hours of assorted content, plus all that sports.