1080p Home Theater Projector Comparison Report - Image Quality-4

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Art Feierman

1080p Home Theater Projectors: Natural Skin Tones

$2000 and under 1080p Home Theater Projectors

More quotes from the reviews, plus some additional comments

BenQ W1000

The review states: Skin tones are very good. There is a very slight, touch too much red to faces For a "home entertainment projector" - a really bright projector suitable for family rooms, bonus rooms, and other non-dedicated theaters, the skin tones prove to be very good.

Epson Home Cinema 8100

The Epson Home Cinema 8100 calibrated very nicely. Skin tones ended up looking very good, but could be a touch better. Mike's calibration tends to leave the skin tones with just the slightest green tint. We don't calibrate the individual colors, where one would work to remove that slight tinge, due to oversaturated greens.

Mitsubishi HC3800

skin tones proved to be excellent. While not the best we've seen, definitely better than most similarly priced 3LCD and DLP projectors. Skin tones are rich, accurate, and... I think that about covers it.

Optoma HD20

The HD20, post calibration, does extremely well in terms of skin tones. In that regard I would put it on par with the recently reviewed and more expensive new Samsung SP-A600. Actually the skin tones were most impressive, considering this is (tied) the lowest priced 1080p projector on the market.

Panasonic PT-AE4000

In the PT-AE4000 review I wrote: After Mike's calibration, skin tones were really very good, but there remained a touch of red push. I'm talking very minor, but it looks that, perhaps due to their new warmer color lamp design. Mike indicated that to remove that last bit, would require calibrating the individual colors, which we normally don't do. Believe me, the picture and skin tones look just fine. I'm just nitpicking a bit. Panasonic projectors have typically offered nicely accurate skin tones, that look very natural.

Samsung SP-A600

Samsung has done well on skin tones in the past, and again with the A600: As I noted above, color accuracy was pretty good even before calibration. Post calibration, skin tones are very impressive!

That said, after Mike calibrated the grayscale, there was still a bit of red emphasis in the skin tones...All considered, I was most pleased with the skin tones although there was still room for slight improvement if viewed critically.

Sanyo PLV-Z700

I was generally very pleased with the PLV-Z700's skin tones. In the review, I commented: "Skin tones turned out to be extremely good overall, although in low lit scenes, it seemed they shifted just a little bit too much to red."

Sharp XV-Z15000

I certainly liked the Sharp: Movie 2 mode on the XV-Z15000 does a very good job on skin tones once you input our calibration changes. In fact, "very good" is most likely an understatement. I've watched a lot of movies with this Sharp, and find little fault with its handling of a wide range of skin tones.

Viewsonic Pro8100

Definitely off a bit, before any adjustments, and made worse by the oversaturation, but once the projector gets even a basic grayscale calibration and the saturation is toned down, it starts looking really good on skin tones.