Projector Reviews

I guess it's the incredibly good gray scale that makes me long for filtered lenses. As with other projectors, the choice for color correction versus color filtering is clear: Correction should offer a brighter picture, while filtering offers more-accurate colors. TAW offers filters for the green and red lenses, installed at the factory, for no additional charge. These are even available for other makes of projectors, presumably for a fee. The red filter works great. The green filter works better than the lens alone, but it isn't perfect. While the resulting picture does look more vivid, this combination sacrifices approximately 20 percent of the light output, which is a steep price to pay.

This price may be acceptable if a projector has light to spare. In our case, it was difficult to determine. Late in the review, I realized that our demo sample had been around the block, so to speak. With 10,000 hours of use, the projector was the equivalent of a 21-year-old dog. Typically, I advise users that a CRT projector loses some light (20 to 40 percent) in the first 1,000 hours or so and then stays relatively stable for the next 10,000 to 12,000 hours, before it finally gives up the ghost. That places our sample at the end of its useful life. To be honest, the fact that the projector was as bright as it was, particularly for a review sample, was fairly impressive.

In the end, TAW's only real competition at this price comes from the Sèleco SVD-800 (reviewed in March '00). The SVD-800 offers filtered lenses for more-accurate color fidelity with excellent light output. However, while the Sèleco is an outstanding electrostatic projector that has more-than-adequate detail, its resolution doesn't quite match that of the HD-800.

TAW has developed a unique distribution structure that ensures you'll get the same price as everyone else. If you're the type who likes to haggle, this may be a frustration. However, when you consider the HD-800's build quality, ease of setup, and excellent resolution, you're still getting a good value. If the CRT market is going away, it sure doesn't seem like it. TAW has made a worthy entry in the market.

Highlights
• Excellent resolution at an excellent price
• Easy setup for up to 80 different memory settings

HT Labs Measures: TAW HD-800 CRT Front Projector

The top chart shows the gray scale (or color temperature) of the TAW projector relative to the color points of the display's red, green, and blue CRTs. The projector's color spectrum—the area between the blue, orange, and yellowish-green dots—indicates that the color-corrected image falls slightly short of SMPTE's specification, which means the display won't show all the colors available in the system. The area within the blue, darker green, and brighter red dots indicate the color-filtered spectrum, which is much closer to SMPTE specs, although at a 20% loss in light output. The gray scale, measured previously, is reasonably accurate. The bottom chart shows the gray scale relative to its color temperature at various levels of intensity, or brightness (20 IRE is dark gray; 100 IRE is bright white). As you can see, the gray scale measures slightly high (or blue) with dark images and falls (or leans more red) with brighter images. The projector, on a 4:3-shaped screen, is capable of handling a 1,280:1,024 image before overlapping scan lines. Due to the age of the CRTs on our sample, we were unable to take accurate light-output measurements. We will follow up in a future issue with these measurements.—MW