Panasonic PT-L300u LCD Projector - Information

[SayersWeb]

The L300 is a brand new 16:9 LCD budget front projector. Price comes in under $2,000 and often includes a free Panny DVD player.

What makes this projector special?

To overcome the "Screen Door" effect (where pixels are spaced far apart and have black lines in between them) which is common to LCD projectors, Panasonic has developed a new technology called "Smooth Screen". Here is a graphic that demonstrates the result, Smooth Screen technology is represented in the graphic to the right:


Panasonic has also managed to get excellent contrast and black levels never before seen in an LCD projector anywhere near it's price. Projector Central gives it rave reviews:
In depth L300u review

The full specs for the L300 can also be found at Projector Central:
L300 Specs at Projector Central

My experience so far with the L300u has been excellent. Last weekend I ceiling mounted it and now throw a 92" diagonal screen that is awesome from an 11' viewing distance. I have a 92" High Contrast Cinema Vision screen on order which should arrive in about a week.

The fan is very quiet, bulb life is excellent at approx. 5,000 hours in low lamp mode (which is always recommended for movie viewing). Calibration using the S&V Tune-up DVD is a snap.

Here are some screenshots of my of the PT-L300u.

First, let me say that these don't convey anywhere near the image quality the projector actually shows. The digital camera did not do very well in the dark environment and you will see noise in the images. This noise is from the camera, not from the projector.

I also had a hard time focusing the digital camera. Auto mode was used without a tripod (which made it even harder to get a good focus). You will see on the first image of the projector settings how off the camera focus is. The text on the screen was razor sharp, but came through blurry on the picture.

My Home Theater rooom is rather small. The pictures were taken prior to when I ceiling mounted the projector. I was standing about 10 feet away of a 72" screen image projected on a beige wall. The DVD player is connected by Python component video cables and is sending 480P, Playstaion 2 is connected with component cables sending 480I.

The only editing I did on these images is to crop and resize them so that they will display properly.

So, on to the pictures.... They may take some time to load on slower connections:

Projector Settings:


Yoda:


R2D2:


Council:


Gandalf:


Borimir:


Playstation 2 - Ratchet & Clank:


Playstation 2 - GT 3:



The Smooth Screen example listed earlier is taken from the RitzAV website which is where I bought the L300.

Well, that's about all I can think to share about the L300.... Hope this is useful.




Sayer - Musical Creations and Home Page

[George Bellefontaine]

Nice post Sayer. The 300 seems to have a green push(noticable in the beard, hair and darker areas) or is that the digital camera ? Regardless, screenshots are nice but they shouldn't be used to judge the PQ of any given projector. The Panny looks like excellent value for the price and I expect it will give the Sony HS 10 a run for its money.




My Homepage!

[Brandon B]

I'm not totally clear on the smoothscreen thing. It looks like they are saying their inter-pixel grid is smaller than conventional LCD, but the squares they show are not pixels, as they are not of a uniform color.

Do they explain how they achieved this? Did they improve basic LCD fill factor, or use something like Epson's MLA panels?

BB

[SayersWeb]

The 300 seems to have a green push(noticable in the beard, hair and darker areas) or is that the digital camera?

I'm pretty sure that was the camera. I have not noticed a green push in the L300. I'll play that scene again and make sure.

I'm not totally clear on the smoothscreen thing. It looks like they are saying their inter-pixel grid is smaller than conventional LCD, but the squares they show are not pixels, as they are not of a uniform color.

Do they explain how they achieved this? Did they improve basic LCD fill factor, or use something like Epson's MLA panels?

Yes, the example is bad in that it shows multiple colors in each pixel (bet some marketing person did that!). They should have used a solid color with the black spacing in between in the example.

As I understand it, the Smooth Screen technology takes each pixel and splits it into four pixels that are overlapped to fill the space.




Sayer - Musical Creations and Home Page

[George Bellefontaine]

That sounds similar to the delta pixel array I have on my Sony VPL 400, where pixels slightly overlap one another. It certainly works on the 400. You have to be about 3 or 4 feet from the screen to see pixels. Everybody who bought 400s raved about the delta pixel array, but Sony dropped it when they brought out the 10 HT. One of the drawbacks of the delta pixel array was a soft image. But that never bothered me.




My Homepage!

[Chris D]

Thanks, Sayers. Biggest thing I'm not sure of is whether the L300 includes a scaler to upconvert images less than 720p.




CHRIS
Luke: "Hey, I'm not such a bad pilot myself, you know"

[George Bellefontaine]

Specs on the 300 say it has lcd panels in 960 x 540 resolution. This is a new so called 1/4 HD format. The native 1080 HDTV signal is compressed exactl;y 50%, thus the normal 1920 x1080 HDTV at 50% compression gives a resolution of 960 x 540. Nothing much is said about the 300's scaling abilities, but it would appear due to the panel size that maximum scaled res would be 540p.




My Homepage!

[SayersWeb]

Specs on the 300 say it has lcd panels in 960 x 540 resolution. This is a new so called 1/4 HD format. The native 1080 HDTV signal is compressed exactl;y 50%, thus the normal 1920 x1080 HDTV at 50% compression gives a resolution of 960 x 540. Nothing much is said about the 300's scaling abilities, but it would appear due to the panel size that maximum scaled res would be 540p.

I believe you are correct George! :-)

In the settings screen above it shows 525P for DVD. I have not had the chance to try out an HD source yet. Hopefully this weekend.




Sayer - Musical Creations and Home Page

[George Bellefontaine]

525p for dvd ? Now that is interesting.




My Homepage!

[SayersWeb]

525p for dvd ? Now that is interesting.

That was my reaction also.... I guess it is scaling it up to that? When I set the DVD to send interlaced the L300 says 525I.




Sayer - Musical Creations and Home Page

[Kevin P]

That was my reaction also.... I guess it is scaling it up to that? When I set the DVD to send interlaced the L300 says 525I.

525I/P is the same as 480I/P, it's also counting the 45 lines "reserved" for the blanking interval between frames.

540p on the other hand is essentially equivalent to 1080i from a display device's perspective.

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[George Bellefontaine]

Thanks for clearing that up for us, Kevin.




My Homepage!

[SayersWeb]

I'm pretty sure that was the camera. I have not noticed a green push in the L300. I'll play that scene again and make sure.

I looked at the scene again for green push. The problem is mostly due to the camera. but I did notice a little bit in Gandalf's beard. I bought an FL-D filter and this seems to have helped.




Sayer - Musical Creations and Home Page

[George Bellefontaine]

Sayer, if you added a filter better check out your grayscale, You may have to make a few increases in the white balance settings. I thought I read somewhere that you can't adjust Green on the 300, but you can get around this by increasing the red and blue slightly to get rid of any excessive green. Be sure to mark down yoiur factory settings. That way you can always go back if the tweaks don't look good to you.




My Homepage!

[SayersWeb]

Sayer, if you added a filter better check out your grayscale, You may have to make a few increases in the white balance settings. I thought I read somewhere that you can't adjust Green on the 300, but you can get around this by increasing the red and blue slightly to get rid of any excessive green. Be sure to mark down yoiur factory settings. That way you can always go back if the tweaks don't look good to you.

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't really know the best way to properly adjust white balance settings. There are adjustments for both white and black levels called Gamma.

After installing the filter I did use the S&V Tune-up DVD. I had to bump up brightness a bit.




Sayer - Musical Creations and Home Page

[Kevin P]

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't really know the best way to properly adjust white balance settings. There are adjustments for both white and black levels called Gamma.

The preferred way to adjust white balance (gray scale) is with a colorimeter, a device that measures color temperature. The preferred color temperature for HT applications is 6500K. You can eyeball it to get it close if you feel the picture is too green or something, but an ISF technician can adjust it to 6500K.

Gamma is a black/white level adjustment, which affects the linearity of the brightness, and also affects brightness and contrast overall. It has nothing to do with grey scale (white balance). There are patterns on Avia (and likely VE) for adjusting gamma.




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[George Bellefontaine]

Sayer, the white balance settings would come under Gains and Bias settings, if these are available via the user menu. Some makers hide these controls because they don't want you messing with things. As long as you write down the factory settings you can't hurt anything because you can always go back to factory if things get mussed up. Since I am unfamiliar with the 300, I don't know if the Gains and Bias settings are available to the user.

Although Kevin is correct if you want to set the WB properly, to be honest I have been setting WBs on both CRT and LCD Pjs by eye from the start. I just go for a neutral grey in a greyscale pattern. I have many of the older black and white movies in my collection so a good B&W picture is important to me.




My Homepage!