Panasonic PT-AE900u Projector Image Quality

Posted on September 20, 2005 by Art Feierman

Out of the box color is excellent, but with a slight shift toward yellow. This seemed to be true in most of the preset modes (cinema1,2,3,video,natural), but to varying degrees. The color shift is easily offset with calibration. Without tweaking the color, the shift is most noticeable in fleshtones, but also in sunsets, and dusk shots when compared to other projectors. Blue skys manage to look good despite it, so it is more prevelent in the darker color ranges, rather than bright scenes.

The Panasonic projector produces a clean image - and here lies the primary improvement over the older PT-AE700u, which until the more recent releases, seemed to be plagued with some vertical banding. For an LCD based home theater projector, Panasonic's PT-AE900u projector seems to be as artifact free as I have seen. The image above, shows the Panasonic projector on the left, and BenQ's PE7700 on the right. You can see the slight shift to yellow on the PT-AE900u.

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Ultimately the LCD panels cannot produce contrast ratio's anywhere near that high, with this much output from the lamp. So, Panasonic continues the trend of LCD based home theater projectors, and relies on technology. In this case, the use of a variable Iris, which adjusts to each frame, and also "AI" technology. Still, the minimum black level on most scenes is not quite as good as a DLP projector with 2500:1, despite the overall edge this projector has in the final look of dark scenes. In the image above (Panasonic on the left, BenQ PE7700 on the right - the lower right of the planet washes out a bit on the BenQ because of the limits of my digital camera - the whites are brighter, on the BenQ.