If you’re going to have a decent home theatre set-up, or just a dang good display for watching whatever it is that one watches on said screen, the humble projector is getting harder and harder to walk past.
If you’re going to have a decent home theatre set-up, or just a dang good display for watching whatever it is that one watches on said screen, the humble projector is getting harder and harder to walk past. With growing throw sizes, brighter colours and higher contrasts, they’re just getting too damn good. Last month featured a neat collection of these projectors and in the true Atomic fashion, we went out and grabbed us the most expensive one we could get our greasy little hands on. So here it is – and that extra digit on the price tag is testament to this beast’s beefiness. Having a significant quality improvement on LCD-based projectors, the current and only real problem with affordable, entry-level DLP projectors is their measurably low resolutions. This is bad for both high-definition data and overall display on the wall, as their awesomely high contrast ratio makes the individual pixels stand out like golf-ball sized pimples in their bloom. That’s why when looking for a high-end projector DLP is in its domain. And this is nothing short of beastly, sporting practically every input available, with two components, a D-Sub, M1DA (similar to DVI), HD15 VESA, a composite and two S-Videos, all sitting on top of a 2800:1 contrast ratio. Pushing 1100 ‘video-optimised’ ANSI lumens, we could swear it was brighter, as we found out when handing it back (more on that later). Whisper-quiet cooling and packing a native resolution of 1280 x 720 (720p), even when shooting photons on our taco-stained stucco wall, it continued to beam us with crisp, clean imagery one could die for. Our unit didn’t come with any cables – bar power – and the DVI input used is not a readily available plug, coming in the flavour of M1DA. Getting an M1DA to DVI cable will set you back about $80 or so, but is entirely worth it for a proper digital signal. Playing PC games on this is an absolute riot, though some games need a little hacking of configuration files in order to get 1280 x 720. Once in however, it provides some of the crispest non-CRT imagery we’ve ever seen. That said, going via D-Sub proved a tad problematic. A bandwidth issue seemed to arise, as a vertical bar of slight blurriness scampered up through the middle of the right half of the screen. This was only vaguely irritating when reading text back in Windows, however, as it went slightly bolder, otherwise there was no problem. A digital signal would have fixed this. With deep blacks, bright whites and everything in-between highly saturated with great colour intensity, we found no errors aside from the bizarre cropping one pixel off either side of the screen while using the PC. Phase control was spot on, colour gradients were spic and span and this was merely on D-Sub. On the console, using component adapters, both the PS2 and Xbox look marvellously good in comparison to their original composite/Svideo state. Having said that, with PAL consoles you’ll have to wait for the upcoming next-gen units to truly fulfil your dirty HD console desires, no thanks to the removal of high-def from the PAL Xbox and the early discontinuation of HD games on the PAL PS2. Some people have serious issues with looking at DLP projectors such as this, because of the way in which the thousands of tiny mirrors reflect the light, giving off a somewhat irritating ‘rainbow effect’ when moving your eyes around. Most people’s eyes can grow accustomed to this, but be sure to test one out before buying.
To be sure projectors like this can be so good that it becomes an addiction. Movies and games will never be the same, and going back to TV seems like a punishment. The suppliers nearly had to pry it from our tired, sleepy hands, but instead tricked us into looking at a ‘shiny object’ (unfortunately this turned out to be the projector’s barrel) and made their escape. If you have the cash to both purchase it in the first place and continue supporting its hunger for new bulbs, by all means you should have this. Despite the possibility of doubling the value of your car when riding it home, it will not fail to impress. Deliciously deluxe.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012