1080p Home Theater Projector Comparison Report - Image Quality9

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Art Feierman

LG CF181D

Skin tones and overall color are a key reason the LG picked up one of our top awards: Great skin tones. I am extremely pleased. I've watched tons of hours of Olympics with the LG, as well as at least 20 hours of movies. The LG has some of the best skin tones I've seen. Not the very best, but up there. I still give my own JVC the advantage, after calibration, but, I found the LG has no problem taking on projectors like the Epson (which exhibits just a touch of yellow green in skin tones), or the Sony HW15, with its just a touch too strong reds. It's probably comparable to the PT-AE4000, but the LG is just so much brighter...

Mitsubishi HC6800

Not quite as perfect as I would have liked. I had Mike take two shots at calibrating the projector. After the first pass, the skin tones were pleasant, but almost a slightly gold tinge to them. It was still there but at a more acceptable level, after Mike's second attempt.

Mitsubishi HC7000

My key statement in the review: "Post calibration, flesh (skin) tones are excellent. I found the HC7000 to really look good on all types of skin tones, in a wide variety of movies and other content." What more could you ask for?

Optoma HD8200

While the HD8200 didn't pick up any major awards, skin tone handling wasn't the problem: I wrote: Once the HD8200 has been calibrated, the balance between red and blue, becomes excellent, and skin tones now look extremely good. They look good enough, that once or twice, (since I change projectors frequently when reviewing), I could occasionally forget that I had the HD8200 up, and not my reference JVC RS20, at least in terms of accurate skin tones.

Sanyo PLV-Z3000

Right from last year's comments: The PLV-Z3000 managed to still have a very slight color shift to yellow green after calibration, and it can be noticed in skin tones. I suspect a more in-depth calibration can solve that, however. In the review I stated: "Post calibration, skin tones are very good, given the slight yellow-green emphasis. I find that in Pure Cinema mode, however, (perhaps, in part due to limited brightness), that faces tend to look a little dark and flat".

Remember, we tend to quibble over fine points, for the hard core enthusiast that cares about every minor flaw. In other words, don't get me wrong, this one looks pretty good too.

Sony VPL-HW15

In the VPL-HW15 projector's review the comments included: After calibration, skin tones were excellent, and, while not the very best I've seen, certainly better than most, including almost all other home theater projectors selling for under $3000.