Sony Cineza HS51A - Image Quality-4

Posted on February 11, 2006 by Art Feierman

Image sharpness

The Sony is sharp! I have a Panasonic 900u inbound again, and I plan to compare the two, for sharpness, and will eventually update this, but my memory usually serves me well, and I would say that the Sony is definitely sharper than the Panasonic when viewing both DVD's and Hi-Def. I would say it is comparable to Sanyo's Z4, an exceptionally sharp projector for its price. The Sony does not come off quite as sharp as my own BenQ 8720, but that is a projector that sells for close to twice the price.

I am starting to use this image pair to observe sharpness, with reviews going forward: The image at the right, shows the full frame. The image below it, is a section of the left side of the screen. I zoomed close, and you can see the sharpness of the text

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Unfortunately, I don't have comparative shots from older reviews of projectors, yet. But, those of you that read other reviews posted after Feb 1 2006, should find this same image in the review for comparison

As indicated elsewhere in this review, the Sony HS51A home theater projector is not one of the brighter ones out there. True, the reveiw unit they sent me had just over 250 hours on the lamp, so the lamp is a bit dimmer than a projector with a new lamp, but the difference should not be dramatic. Yet, on this two images, you see the BenQ PE7700 (a DLP home theater projector) on the left, and the Sony on the right. The difference in brightness is stunning. Both projectors were in their best (and darkest) preset modes for these shots.

It should be noted that the HS51A appears to be a touch sharper than the BenQ PE7700, although you cannot see the difference in these small images.

Hi-Def

Here are a few screen shots from my D-VHS tape player. The source is 1080i output as component video and fed directly into the Sony projector

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Click on the General Performance link below, to continue this projector review. That section has info on the Remote Control, menus, lamp life, screen recommendations and more.