Projector Reviews

Another Glorious DLP Picture
Once again, the DMD engine didn't disappoint. (I didn't run a computer through the VP-12S1, so I can't tell you how it worked through that input.) The pictures from DVD and HD sources were sensational, offering rich, saturated, differentiated color, high contrast and brightness, outstanding clarity and stability, and satisfactory black levels. It still wasn't as good as a CRT, and I occasionally saw minor color-wheel trails—rainbows—but only when I rolled my eyes, as I do when CRT diehards remind me of less-than-black blacks.

Out of the box, the Marantz delivered accurate colors; it had clearly been factory-set close to 6500K and with reasonably accurate gray-scale tracking from bright to dim. As I remembered, it took an ISF calibration for the SharpVision to exhibit the same rightness of color.

The Minolta lens system produced a more transparent, less opaque picture, with greater apparent clarity and focus—not that I'd noticed a problem with the SharpVision, but, given something to compare it with, I noticed this difference. The Marantz's higher contrast ratio (1200:1 vs. 1100:1) provided better contrast and richer blacks on both Dark City (via DVD) and PBS's Piano Grand (via D-VHS). The picture didn't seem as bright overall (700 ANSI lumens vs. the SharpVision's 800), but it was certainly bright enough from the one-third-shorter throw distance I had to use.

I viewed 1080i via D-VHS and live HDTV (mostly HDNet), and both were spectacular—especially the Winter Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies on D-VHS, which both NBC and HDNet had originally broadcast. The section of the opening festivities starring Robbie Robertson, during which Native Americans displayed their spectacular beaded and feathered getups, ranks as one of the most impressive demonstrations of HDTV I've seen. The Marantz's presentation on the big screen was positively breathtaking, with spectacularly detailed and differentiated color against jet-black night backgrounds. There were numerous glitches and pixelizations caused by MPEG compression artifacts, especially when red feathers moved rapidly, but that's not a projector fault—nor were the usual interlace artifacts, minor though they were.

However, when I switched to a 720p (the DLP chip's native resolution) D-VHS tape of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which ABC had broadcast in its entirety a few months before, I was disturbed to see jaggies on bright, distant objects—for instance, when Harrison Ford is viewing the gold idol in the opening sequence.

There were also jaggies on the diagonal yard lines during the 720p Monday Night Football demo that ABC distributed a few years ago. And I noticed the Marantz's difficulty with text with both movie-credit crawls and the Panasonic D-VHS player's onscreen graphics.

I then ran the interlaced output of the Arcam DVD player (which offers both interlaced and deinterlaced component-video outputs) into the projector's component video input and switched to 480i DVD. I noticed more jaggies on Toy Story. The overall picture quality was spectacularly detailed, rich, and transparent, but there were jaggies on Buzz Lightyear's face where his flesh tone met his purple helmet. Later on, when I watched The Godfather Trilogy, I was struck by how evenly lit the screen was, how filmlike the presentation was overall, made more convincing by how the Marantz delivered the film's grain structure—something I hadn't recalled seeing quite as clearly and cleanly through the SharpVision. But I also kept noticing jaggies whenever there were high-contrast shots and diagonal lines. In one shot of Michael Corleone against a white wall, his face and body did a noticeable "stairstep" on the screen rather than follow his natural contour.

These video artifacts seemed to be present with 480i, 480p (I tried both the Arcam's and the Camelot Technology Round Table's progressive outputs), and 720p signals. Since I couldn't recall seeing any of them on the SharpVision, I began to wonder if perhaps the Marantz's superior lens was simply defining borders with greater precision, thus showing video artifacts with greater clarity.

There was only one thing to do: get a new sample of the SharpVision XV-Z9000U. With SharpVision just up the road from me and staffed by helpful public relations people, that proved easy.

My new sample had logged only 48 hours and had not been ISF-calibrated. Compared with the Marantz's, its color palette looked positively cartoonish—even on cartoons—though I knew the set calibrated well. I auditioned all of the same material I'd viewed through the Marantz, and two things were clear: The Marantz delivered a more highly resolved picture overall, with greater transparency, less opacity, and more even light distribution. The SharpVision seemed somewhat cloudy, but only by direct comparison.

Out of the box, the Marantz was a somewhat more accomplished performer, with one exception: The SharpVision's CV-IC scaler-processor easily and clearly outperformed the name-brand Faroudja scaler found in the Marantz. That was a big surprise. The yard lines, graphics, and film credits looked much cleaner and free of artifacts through the SharpVision than they did through the Marantz. I had remembered correctly.

Conclusions
Spending a month with the VP-12S1 only reinforced my enthusiasm for Texas Instruments' 1280x720, 16:9 DLP technology. Perhaps I sounded more excited in my review of the SharpVision XV-Z9000U, but that's because it was my first time. For most home-theater enthusiasts, the CRT technology is now "old school," even if it can still outperform the current DMD chip in certain ways. For most observers in low-light conditions, a DLP's resolution and black levels will be more than adequate, and future iterations promise even better performance. Given its many advantages over the CRT, the DLP appears to be the future of home theater for most consumers wanting a large projected image with minimal hassle.

The only reservation I had about the Marantz involves those scaling artifacts. Perhaps TJN can shed further light on this problem in his measurements (see sidebar). Apart from that, the Marantz VP-12S1's implementation of DLP technology offers somewhat greater overall clarity, focus, apparent brightness uniformity, and, especially, a greater sense of transparency than the SharpVision. Whether that translates into something meaningful to you, or whether you'd notice it in anything other than a direct comparison, only you can answer. There was a difference and I did appreciate it, but to my eyes, it wasn't fundamental, and I'm not sure it's worth $1500. Again, that's a value judgment you must make for yourself. Try to audition as many different projectors as you can before buying, and be sure to play with their remotes—you're the one who's going to have to live with one of them and use it in the dark.

In short, if you're in the market for a projector with a 1280x720p, 16:9 DLP engine under its hood, you'll need to take a few test drives to determine which best fits your pocketbook and lifestyle.