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May 20th, 2008 Art Feierman
OK, heads up, things are changing, although only slightly. With the goal in mind of cranking out a few more projector reviews a year, I’ve decided to job out, a bit of the work. Starting with the next review, the Optoma HD65, I’ve got help with calibration and measurements. Actually, I’ll be doing my usual watching of the projectors before any measurements to get a feel for their “out of the box” performance. At that point, however, I’ll be calling Mike Rollett, who will take charge of all measurements and calibration. Mike’s an old hand, and is also writing articles for my site. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 20th, 2008 Art Feierman
Ahh, where to begin?
As many of you have read, I was really impressed with the Optoma HD71. It’s a really bright 720p home theater projector, who’s review posted earlier this month. Being a big fan of having some lumens to spare, I really looked forward to the HD71 review, and considered the less expensive, physically tiny, and less bright HD65, to be of secondary interest, compared to the HD71.
Having said all that, I’ve been working with the HD65 for more than a week now (interrupted by a nice weekend out to the desert for the Joshua Tree Music Festival), and find it to be a rather formidable projector in its own right.
I’m already starting to write up the review and hope to post Wed. night, (May 21), but probably you’ll have to settle for Thursday evening. Projector reviews rarely manage to get finished right on schedule.
Here’s some tasty tidbits about the HD65 that hopefully will hold you over until the full review posts:
It really is tiny for a home theater projector!
The HD65 actually has very good “out of the box” performance, I was most impressed with the color balance. This is one of the few projectors Read the rest of this entry »
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May 13th, 2008 Art Feierman
Greetings all,
As all of you who read my W5000 review, I found the projector to be overall, one of the best affordable 1080p projectors out there, in terms of picture quality, except for one significant failing.
That issue is high levels of image noise. I’ve been keeping in touch with the folks at BenQ, with the hopes that a new version will solve the problem sufficiently. Here’s where things stand:
The W5000 I reviewed was one of the first to have firmware version 1.08. Since then, BenQ has released 1.12.
I asked the nice people at BenQ if 1.12 solved the problem. They report a small improvement in noise levels, but are hoping to have an even better version (in the not too distant future – we hope). In fact, here’s what one of my contacts sent to me specifically:
“What’s shipping from BenQ are 1.12, and we are working on the next version which I thought will be a more significant improvement.
The one you tested it was 1.08. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 9th, 2008 Art Feierman
OK, time to pick up where I left off. We’ve already discussed a bit about 3LCD’s strengths in terms of more color per lumen, and in color accuracy at full power. There are, however other issues which came up in our discussions. One of those was the cost of maintenance.The guys on the other side of the isle – those DLP proponents at Texas Instruments, claim a big advantage in terms of cost of maintenance. So, let’s investigate. This isn’t about reliability, but about routine maintenance. The DLP folks point out that that most DLP projectors do not require dust filters, because DLP projectors use a sealed light path. 3LCD projectors require filters, and therefore, frequent changing of them, because dust can be a problem, and can even mar the image with what are called (aptly) dust blobs.
The 3LCD folks counter, that many of today’s 3LCD projectors don’t need filters cleaned any more frequently than they need lamp changing. If that were the case, they would have a strong case. As I said to the 3LCD folks, hey, you don’t have to be better at everything. I said that, because I do think DLP has the advantage here.There are basically two scenarios. Projectors that are placed on a table top, and those that are permanently mounted. Since cleaning or replacing a filter is a very quick thing, if you have easy access to the projector, using your projector on a table top, negates any real advantage of projectors that don’t need filters changed frequently. Ceiling mounting is a whole different story. Often, accessing a ceiling mounting projector requires at least a ladder. And it can be a real challenge if you have really high ceilings. In some commercial applications, reaching the projector can be daunting, consider many church sanctuaries, where the projector could be 50 feet up in the air, or perhaps a small auditorium, large multipurpose room, or hotel ballroom. not only a pain, but expensive timewise, especially if you contract out, or have a support department run as a profit center. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 6th, 2008 Art Feierman
What a whirlwind trip. Japan and back in four days (from San Clemente California). Overall, the trip was a bit brutal, a lot of fun, and, actually rather enlightening. I’ll give you a taste of the travel schedule, and then get into the substance of the trip.
The brutal aspect of the trip started with a 10.5 hour flight from LAX to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. I’ve got to thank the 3LCD group for dropping the big bucks on Business Class. Those seats are the size of a small car, and really do open up into a flat bed. Amazing. Of course I had to leave the house 3+ hours before the flight, and once landing, there was the almost hour to get luggage, and take transport (90 minutes) from the airport to the hotel in Tokyo. Ok, that doesn’t sound so bad (if a 10.5 hour flight can ever be good – the food was).
The killer, though, was we left LA on Monday, and arrived Tuesday (crossed the international date line), around dinner time at our hotel, only to have to (after some catch up sleep Tuesday evening), meet in the hotel lobby at 7am on Wed morning, for a ride to another airport and a “short” two hour flight to northern Japan.
Once arriving on the island of Hokkaido (near Sapporo), it was a short ride to Epson’s automated 3LCD plant, located right off the airport grounds. Read the rest of this entry »
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