Projector Reviews

While plasma and LCD flat-panel TVs get all of the media attention these days as "must-have" products, they're still rather high on the dollars-per-square-foot scale. Mitsubishi's HC900 blows the glass guys out of the water in terms of visual area capability per dollar spent and shows that the transition from the boardroom-presentation-projector market to the home theater venue can have significant benefits for the savvy home-cinema shopper.

Take a minute to look at the measurement box. Keep in mind that this is an LCD-based product. At 0.003 foot-lamberts, the VPL-HS51 is only 0.001 ft-L higher than the Yamaha DLP projector that's also in this issue. Not bad for a projector that's less than a third of the Yamaha's price. And did I mention it's an LCD? Impressive.

Panasonic's PT-AE500U made waves in fall 2003 with its low price and improved color rendering over previous Panasonic LCD projectors. Plenty of them were sold, and the model made many reviewers' "Best Of" lists for the year.

There's an old saying: "Good things come in small packages." In our industry, however, there's often a perceived correlation between the size of an AV component (speakers, amplifiers, plasma TVs) and its level of performance. Here, the working mentality seems to be "the bigger (or pricier), the better."

Hitachi's PJTX100 UltraVision front LCD projector replaces the short-lived Home 1, a low-cost, 964x544-pixel design that made a brief appearance earlier this year. I liked many things about the Home 1, but it suffered from very low light output—too low to be practical for most home-theater applications.

As faithful readers with good memories will recall, I reported that after checking out various DLP and LCD projectors, I settled on the Marantz VP-12S2 as providing the best overall performance, and bought one to serve as a reference in my home theater system. (See my "Take 2" of the VP-12S2 in the November 2003 issue, and the sidebar in my review of the Primare SP31.7 and A30.5 Mk.II in January 2004; see also Peter Putman's original review of the VP-12S2 in May 2003.) For the past year I've been enjoying the VP-12S2 a great deal, and whenever I saw demos of DLP or LCD projectors at shows and dealers, I felt ever so slightly smug that the picture quality I was getting at home was better.

It's quite impressive what $1,300 will get you nowadays. In many ways, the Home 10+ looks the most like a home theater projector of those in our Face Off. The smooth, pearlescent case looks a lot like a Chiclet on steroids, and this was the only projector with a dedicated component video input, in addition to RGB.