Image Quality: Data (computer): Clarity and Color Handling
Clarity is excellent, with the lens having no problem providing a sharp image from edge to edge. Everything is nice and crisp looking, without the far more visible pixels of an LCD projector, score one for the NEC.
Presentation Mode vs laptop
Better Color in Video mode
Color definitely improves and is far better The NEC can now handle almost all presentations.
Color Handling
I better start by saying this is a DLP projector, and accurate color is a problem for most 1 chip DLP models in their brightest modes (probably all DLP projectors under 30 pounds and $20K), or at least those with a clear slice on their color wheels, which is most DLPs. If accurate colors are important – you need bright reds, and bright yellows and you don’t want those reds to be dark wine colored, or those bright yellows to appear a muted, mustardy greenish yellow, then the NEC LT170, out of the box, isn’t the projector for you at least when putting out brightness around the projector's claimed output in lumens.
That is because the LT170, in its normal Presentation mode, gives you muddy greenish yellows and dark wine colored “bright reds”. The image to the left, should have a bright red background and a bright yellow pie slice in the front left, and should look like the laptop in the two photos showing projector in the back and above, and laptop below, in the front. You can see the much improved color, but noe that the projector's image is darker than the laptop's It would compare better if at the same brightness.
Editor's note: In 2013 we converted more than 100 reviews from Dreamweaver to WordPress. A number of images were lost. For that reason we only have thumbnails left of these. Unfortunately that means very soft, blurry images but the colors reflect what we observed at the time. Also we use a photo player in the updated reviews, so some text commentary does not accurately describe where images are on the page. Also in this case, the two Image Quality pages here were a single page originally. -art
Above in the image player you can see shots of the projected image, with the screen of my Dell laptop, below, in the foreground. The color difference is dramatic on the first photo, Presentation mode, which is the brightest. In the next photo,above, we switched to one of the middle bright modes. By the time we worked with the best mode for videos, brightness was roughly cut in half, but color was now very good, and suitable for essentially all presentations.
