Projector Reviews

To make setup easier, Digital Projection includes several internal test patterns and a Blue-only mode, which helps you set the Saturation and Hue controls for the analog inputs. (These controls aren’t available for the HDMI inputs.) Calibrators get two sets of RGB controls, which are sufficient to dial in the gray scale.

User Interface
As with most projectors I’ve reviewed, I love the M-Vision Cine LED’s remote. It’s simple, fully illuminated, and well organized. It includes dedicated input-select buttons and direct-access buttons for the most-used main controls. Even better, the remote’s IR beam is strong enough to reliably operate the projector when you point the remote at the screen. My only gripe is the lack of an Exit button. You must back out of the menu system one level at a time.

The menu system is a model of excellent organization and implementation. When you enter the system, it opens the last page you accessed, and you can see all the parameter values immediately. When you select a picture control, it drops to the bottom of the screen while the rest of the menu disappears. The control’s presence doesn’t affect measurements as it can in some displays.

I only have one problem with the user interface. When I accessed it through the menu, the controls timed out in 30 seconds, which is fine. But when I accessed them with the dedicated buttons on the remote, they timed out in five seconds, which was annoying.

Setup and Testing
The review unit had a 1.56-to-1.86 lens, and the projector was at its maximum throw distance of 142 inches in order to fill the screen height. In order to adjust the man-ual lens shift, you’ll need to use the included Allen wrench. This is somewhat awkward, but I suppose that once it’s set, you won’t need to access the controls, and the case can retain a clean, uncluttered look. Since I didn’t test the anamorphic-lens option, I covered the unused sides of the 2.35:1 screen with black duvetyne cloth.

Contrast and brightness were easy to set thanks to the M-Vision Cine LED’s ability to display above white and below black. I was surprised to discover that I could set the sharpness very high without much ringing, but high settings didn’t seem to improve the sharpness much. Saturation and hue aren’t available with the HDMI inputs, so the Blue-only mode wasn’t as useful as it could have been.

I usually find dynamic-contrast functions to be obvious and distracting, but the M-Vision Cine LED’s Dynamic Black wasn’t. It modulates the LED brightness according to the image’s average picture level (APL), so I set it to its highest value for all of my viewing. On the other hand, the projector’s Adaptive Contrast function changed the colors a bit, and not in a good way, so I left that one off.

With the Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark Blu-ray Edition test disc, the M-Vision Cine LED showed virtually no sign of rolloff at the highest resolution. It showed only slight chromatic aberration evident on crosshatch test patterns at the sides of the image. Both 2:2 and 3:2 deinterlacing were excellent, as was edge-adaptive deinterlacing. Standard-def deinterlacing was also very good—the edges of the safety glass in the hockey shots and the ship’s rigging were essentially jaggie free. However, there were a few jaggies in the support lines of the Brooklyn Bridge as the camera zoomed out.

The HQV Benchmark Blu-ray told a similar story. Jaggies were nonexistent, and the film and video resolution-loss tests looked excellent for the most part. However, the M-Vision Cine LED lost some resolution in the pan across the bleacher seats, which happens with virtually all displays.