Sanyo PLV-Z3000 Projector – Image Quality

Posted on December 7, 2008 By Art Feierman

PLV-Z3000 Out of the Box Picture Quality

The Sanyo PLV-Z3000, out of the box provides a watchable image, but not a great one. This is a projector for which you will need to have calibrated, either yourself, with a consumer calibration disc, or by a professional calibrator. Pure Cinema mode, is cool, needing more red. That is even more true of Brilliant Cinema (Sanyo’s brightest movie mode). Out of the box settings are a bit cool (shift away from red, to blue), and have a bit too much yellow green in the images. Calibration eliminates most of that yellow-green tendency, but not all, and also gets the red-blue balance, and overall color temperature measurements, much closer to the ideal 6500K color temperature.

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Flesh Tones

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, resulting in my wanting to get a bit more pop and wow out of the Z3000. In that regard, switching to the brighter Brilliant Cinema mode, satisfied me more than Pure Cinema mode. Creative Cinema mode, using all those dynamic features also improved the pop of the images especially in dark scenes. You will notice the slightly strong yellow-green in these images, although the end result of the images being captured, exaggerates this color shift, far more than you see when watching the Sanyo PLV-Z3000 on the projection screen.

Here, first are a pair of images from my favorite movie not available yet on Blu-ray: Lord of the Rings, played from standard DVD.

Here are next three images of Daniel Craig, as Bond, in Casino Royale, under different lighting conditions. The point here, is that correct skin tones vary, depending on the lighting. You can expect significantly different looking skin tones, when switching from bright sunlight, to nighttime, fluorescent lighting, incandescent lighting, or even lighting in the shade, or a cloudy day. Consider these three images, the first, in direct sunlight, the second is a scene with fluorescent lighting, and the third, a sunny day, but Bond is sitting in the shade – indirect lighting.

Next are images from the sci-fi flick, Aeon Flux and next from Men In Black