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Sony VPL-CH375 Projector Review - Picture Quality

Posted on November 25, 2014 by Jarrod Buckley
SONY VPL-CH375 PROJECTOR:  Picture Quality, Readability, Video Quality

While most business and classroom projectors offer 6 to 8 different picture, or color, modes, the VPL-CH375 offers only 3.  Also with most projectors, be they business, classroom or home theater models, the mode called "Dynamic" will usually be the brightest but providing the least accurate colors.  However, with the VPL-CH375 that honor goes to its "Presentation" picture mode.

The following observations were made with the factory default settings for each picture mode.

Dynamic Picture Mode produced a somewhat "cool" image with a an overall blue tint to the image.  Also bright blue objects within a projected image seemed too bright, to the point of sometimes appears to glow.   Greens appeared shifted a little toward yellow and magenta was a little too blue.

Standard Picture Mode also produced a somewhat cool image with somewhat excessive blue tint.  While this picture mode was not all that much different from dynamic mode, it generally had just a little better color accuracy.

Presentation Picture Mode is the brightest mode on this projector but also with the least accurate colors.  Unlike the other modes, Presentation mode has excessive green tint that many people will find less pleasing than the less pronounced blue tint of the other picture modes.   Beyond this I found the colors to be somewhat less accurate in this mode as compared to the other two available picture mode.  However, when maximum light output from the projector is need to deal with bright room lighting conditions, this picture mode could prove useful, especially for cases when color accuracy is not critical.

Of the three available picture modes and when using the default factory settings, I would rate Standard Picture mode as the best followed by Dynamic and Presentation picture modes.  See the discussion under Video Quality below for more information.

Readibilty

The above gallery shows the text readability when using a input signal from a PC using the projector's native 1920 x 1200 native resolution.  As can be seen in the close-up photos 2 and 3 of the above gallery, even the 8 point text appears very easy to read.  Some red-blue-green misconvergence was evident on the specific projector reviewed and these photos were taken without attempting to make any corrections using the projector's panel alignment adjustment.

I also checked the performance in upscaling lower resolution images to the projector's higher native resolution.  I connected a PC via HDMI and fed the projector these same text test images at a 1366 x 768 resolution.  The projector then scaled this up and displayed it at its native UWXGA resolution.  The displayed upscaled image (closeup shown below) retained good readability, but as expected it was not a sharp as when the higher resolution text image was input to the projector.  I would rate the upscaling performance as good.

Upscaled Text

Upscaled Text

Video Performance

The above gallery shows screen shots taken from the movie "Casino Royale" being projected by the VPL-CH375.  I used "Standard" picture mode, but changed the default Color Temperature setting to "Low".  This produced a "warmer" image with more natural color balance.  I found the overall performance when operated in this mode to be very good with bright well saturated colors   While not a home theater class of projector for displaying video, the performance shown by this projector is well suited for its intended role for presentations in large venues and/or in environments with significant ambient lighting.

 

Sony VPL-CH375 Bond-6

I must note that this is not a high contrast projector and blacks within the projected image appeared as moderately bright greys.  I found the black level and the contrast ratio of this projector to be no better than average for this class of 3LCD projector and lower than the performance in these areas that is typical for DLP business or classroom projectors.  When used in a moderately lighted conference or classroom, a higher than ideal black level will not make any real difference as dark shades in the image will be obscured by the room lighting regardless of how near to black the projector is capable of projecting.  However, if the environment does have good light control and the application includes the serious viewing of video or displaying high quality photos, then a projector with a lower black level would be a better choice.  I found that when viewing video from the VPL-HC375 in my very dark viewing room, the dark shades and shadow details merged into the murky grey background.  This can be seen in the Casino Royale “night train scene” image shown above (this photo was intentionally over-exposed to make the darker areas of the scene more visible in the photo).  Again this is not unusual performance of 3LCD business and classroom class projectors.

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