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The Short Form

Price $3,000 / planar.com / 866-752-6271

Snapshot

Planar's debut home theater projector shows promise but misses the mark on both performance and price.

Plus

•Crisp 720p picture •Very good black depth •Good looks

Minus

•Below-average picture contrast •No color and tint adjustments for HDMI and DVI inputs •Noisy overall picture •Limited setup features •Expensive compared to competition

Key Features

•1,280 x 720-pixel DLP display •Texas Instruments DarkChip3 DMD •1.16x zoom lens •Manual zoom and focus •12-volt trigger output •Inputs: HDMI, DVI, VGA, component-, composite-, and S-video; RS-232C •13.5 x 5.8 x 12.5 in / 9 lbs Full Lab Results

SETUP Screen-door is always less of an issue with DLP than LCD, so I had no problem sitting closer to the screen with the Planar than the other two projectors in this test - about 10 feet seemed to work best. After choosing the reasonably quiet Eco Lamp mode (fan noise was much louder with its other two lamp options), I selected Video Gamma (the two other gamma settings, Film and Cinema, actually delivered less satisfactory black levels than this one), 7,500-K color temperature (a more accurate option than the 6,500-K preset!), and Auto color space. After adjusting the Planar's standard picture settings for its HDMI and component-video inputs, I then stored all my adjustments using the projector's four Custom picture memories.

One thing that I quickly found wanting when setting up the PD7060 was its lack of color and tint controls for the HDMI and DVI inputs. Ideally, you shouldn't have to muck with color/tint settings on a projector's high-def inputs, but having access to those controls usually turns out to be a useful, if not absolutely necessary, option. And I experienced frequent HDMI hiccups where the picture dropped out completely and was replaced by a noise-filled screen - a non-issue with the Sony and Sanyo projectors when connected to the same HDMI sources. The Planar's 7,500-K color-temperature preset delivered fairly accurate color, but I got better results after making adjustments to the RGB gain and offset controls.

PICTURE QUALITY With most programs that I watched on the Planar, I was impressed by the projector's crisp picture and deep, satisfying blacks. Watching 720p-format World Cup soccer from ESPN-HD, the green turf covering the field looked crisp and detailed, and the colors of the players' uniforms as well as the signage surrounding the field had a natural look. High-def programs in 1080i format also looked fairly crisp, although they lacked the solidity of native 720p programs. When I watched the Adam Sandler flick Happy Gilmore on HD DVD, the projector's lack of color controls became something of a problem - Sandler and the other actors' skin tones looked too reddish, and there was no easy way to adjust for it. Another issue with the Planar that I noted while watching this particular disc was a noisy, pixilated appearance on flat patches of color, such as the blue sky over a golf course. And with no noise-reduction processing to speak of in the projector, I had no choice but to suffer through the noise.