Projector Reviews

The top chart shows the gray scale of the Sharp LCD projector relative to its color temperature at various levels of intensity, or brightness (20 IRE is dark gray; 95 IRE is bright white). As you can see, the gray scale in the standard setting measures really blue with really dark images and more red with less-dark images, and it goes back to blue with brighter images. The Gamma 3 setting measures within 300 degrees of D6500 Kelvin, the accurate setting, across most of the range, and it only creeps up to 7,500 K with the darkest images. The bottom chart shows the gray scale relative to the color points of the display's red, green, and blue CRTs. The color points exceed those specified by SMPTE, which means the display will reproduce all the colors available in the system. Greens may seem brighter than normal. The gray scale before calibration is measured within the projector's standard gamma. We found that the Gamma 3 setting was closer to the industry reference of D6500 K. In the standard mode, the light output was no more than 65 foot-lamberts. The Gamma 3 mode allowed roughly 25 ft-L.—MW