Home Cinema Projector - £500

[EFA]

Native 16:9, here's what they said:

 

Sanyo recently commenced shipments of their new PLV-Z1 widescreen LCD projector. It features a completely new physical resolution of 964x544. This format is designed specifically to deliver the best HDTV 1080i picture quality for the money. As such it is getting a LOT of attention and buyer interest.

 

The 960x540 resolution format has been designated "1/4 HD" both in other industry literature and on our site. The "1/4 HD" format was created because a native 1080i HDTV signal which is 1920x1080 can be scaled quite efficiently into a matrix that requires a compression of precisely 50% in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions. Notice that 960 is one-half of 1920, and 540 is one-half of 1080.

 

Predictably, the term "1/4 HD" has produced more confusion than excitement in the minds of consumers. The typical buyer would quite understandably object, saying, "Hey, why would I want a projector that does only 1/4 of an HDTV signal? I want one that will do all of it." The reality is that there are no digital projectors on the market capable of producing a good looking, high contrast HDTV image in native 1920x1080 physical resolution. So they ALL compress HDTV 1080i into their reduced native formats. Picture detail is always lost in the process, no matter which resolution you are dealing with.

 

To put it into perspective, a WXGA format projector (1365x768), compresses 1080 lines of HDTV information into 768 physical lines. A WVGA projector (848x480) squeezes 1080 lines into 480 physical lines. Now, the results end up looking amazingly good, and quite a bit better than DVD. But in no instance are you ever seeing 100% native HDTV.

 

The advantage of the 960x540 format is that scaling down precisely 50% in both dimensions generates a comparatively clean compression. The result is that the HDTV 1080i image on a product like the PLV-Z1 can look equal to or better than that which you'd get on a higher resolution WXGA projector. And you get it for a fraction of the cost.

 

 

Product Overview

 

The Sanyo PLV-Z1 is a native 16:9 widescreen LCD projector (964x544), rated at 700 ANSI lumens and 800:1 contrast. It is a small 7.5 lb unit, but it is not designed to be portable. There is no handle or carrying case provided.

 

This product will accept 1080i, 1035i, 720p, 575p, 575i, 480p and 480i, and is compatible with NTSC, NTSC 4.43, PAL, PAL-N, PAL-M, and SECAM. It accepts computer resolutions from VGA up to SXGA.

 

The PLV-Z1 has a manual zoom and focus lens with a 1.2x zoom factor. It also has vertical and horizontal lens shift, which gives you some flexibility to place the unit off axis from the screen and still produce a square image without keystone adjustments.

 

The lens is relatively wide-angle, and produces a big picture from a short distance. A 100" diagonal 16:9 image can be achieved with a throw distance in the range of 9.8 to 11.8 feet.

 

The connector panel offers one 15-pin VGA port, one set of 3-RCAs for component video, one S-video, and one composite RCA jack. There are no speakers on board this unit, and thus no audio inputs.

 

The PLV-Z1 comes in a dark, charcoal gray case. There is a hinged front panel that acts as a protective cover for the lens. It folds down when the projector is in use in a tabletop position, or conversely lifts up when the unit is inverted for ceiling mount.

 

The PLV-Z1 offers a variety of menu driven picture controls. Color temperature can be adjusted through four settings, which are high, mid, low, and extra low. The factory default is "mid" but for color film/video, low is the best setting, and for B/W classic films, extra low is better.

 

For video sources, you can adjust contrast, brightness, color, tint, white balance (with independent adjustments for red, green, and blue), sharpness, and gamma. There are four user-programmable memories that can be recalled for specific calibrations.

 

The PLV-Z1 offers vertical digital keystone adjustment, which lets you square up the image if you are projecting at an angle. We suggest you avoid the use of this feature, as it softens an otherwise beautifully sharp HDTV image.

 

 

Performance

 

Despite what you might be led to believe by the 700 ANSI lumen brightness rating, the PLV-Z1 delivers a bright, high-contrast image that packs a lot of punch. Colors are extremely rich and saturated. Contrast and black levels are comparable to the much more expensive high performance PLV-70.

 

The leading strength of the PLV-Z1 is the sharp rendering of HDTV 1080i. The demonstration that cleaner scaling can be achieved by the precise 50% compression of the signal in both H and V dimensions is evident on the screen. The image depth and clarity is equal to that of many more expensive higher resolution products. Given street prices are at levels well below £1500, this is superb HDTV performance value.

 

The PLV-Z1 has a low power mode that reduces image brightness, and substantially reduces the fan noise. On both of the units we tested, we found a problem that has been reported back to Sanyo. The fan speed was cut so much in low power mode that it allowed a slow heat build-up in the unit. This caused the unit to periodically kick into high fan mode to cool it down. The high fan cycle lasted about 2.5 minutes on both units. The cycle occurred every 20 minutes on one unit, and every 35 minutes on the other. The high fan cycle is loud, and we found this to be quite distracting. It rendered the low power mode an unacceptable option for ongoing use.

 

18 months old, mint condition, recent new bulb, and demo available before I take it off the ceiling!

Its a bargain at £500.