I had the opportunity to audition a Sanyo PLV-Z2 today at length and thought that I would share my impressions/opinions:
The viewing room was one of the dedicated HT rooms at the dealer's which had a 103" VuTec Vu-Easy screen. Viewing conditions in terms of ambient light were nearly ideal.
The projector is equipped with a short zoom lens and was placed at about 10' (as recommended by the User's Guide) from the screen in order to project an 92" image (as we are planning on getting a screen that size). We kept the zooming at minimum. Our seating distance was about 16' from the screen.
The first and the foremost thing that caught my and my wife's attention was the dreaded screen door effect. This was rather disappointing as lot of people claim that the SDE has become a non-issue with the latest LCD projectors that sport WXGA resolution. We watched movies with varying levels of darkness/brightness (Gladiator, Finding Nemo, Jurassic Park) and the effect was clearly visible most of the time to the extent of being annoying. In several scenes where there was large patches of bright/dark patches, this was manifesting itself in the form of significant vertical bands. I did not play with any of the picture adjustments or settings. The projector was used in the standard mode out of the box. But, I doubt if there is anything in the settings to minimize or get rid of this problem.
There was also an Infocus 110 (DLP) in the same room. So, we swapped the two projectors back and forth and the image from the Infocus (which is 800x600) was so much cleaner from the standpoint of pixelation. We felt that the picture from the Z2 was a lot punchier with better colors than the Infocus 110. Black levels and brightness of the picture from the Z2 both looked good to us and was also just as good as the Infocus.
Unfortunately, the visible pixelation on the Z2 was a big disappointment. I am wondering if I did something wrong in the way things were set up. I am curious to what reviewers like Projector Central have to say about this piece.
Viji
The viewing room was one of the dedicated HT rooms at the dealer's which had a 103" VuTec Vu-Easy screen. Viewing conditions in terms of ambient light were nearly ideal.
The projector is equipped with a short zoom lens and was placed at about 10' (as recommended by the User's Guide) from the screen in order to project an 92" image (as we are planning on getting a screen that size). We kept the zooming at minimum. Our seating distance was about 16' from the screen.
The first and the foremost thing that caught my and my wife's attention was the dreaded screen door effect. This was rather disappointing as lot of people claim that the SDE has become a non-issue with the latest LCD projectors that sport WXGA resolution. We watched movies with varying levels of darkness/brightness (Gladiator, Finding Nemo, Jurassic Park) and the effect was clearly visible most of the time to the extent of being annoying. In several scenes where there was large patches of bright/dark patches, this was manifesting itself in the form of significant vertical bands. I did not play with any of the picture adjustments or settings. The projector was used in the standard mode out of the box. But, I doubt if there is anything in the settings to minimize or get rid of this problem.
There was also an Infocus 110 (DLP) in the same room. So, we swapped the two projectors back and forth and the image from the Infocus (which is 800x600) was so much cleaner from the standpoint of pixelation. We felt that the picture from the Z2 was a lot punchier with better colors than the Infocus 110. Black levels and brightness of the picture from the Z2 both looked good to us and was also just as good as the Infocus.
Unfortunately, the visible pixelation on the Z2 was a big disappointment. I am wondering if I did something wrong in the way things were set up. I am curious to what reviewers like Projector Central have to say about this piece.
Viji
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