|
By: Richard Del Cazzo
Web site: http://www.hdtv-hdtv.com
Forget plasma and LCD flat TV screens. Forget widescreen
cathode ray beasts and hulking rear-projection sets. The nirvana
of home theatre is in LCD projection.
Sure, you need to draw the curtains and shift a bit of furniture
to accommodate a projector in your lounge, but film is art
and just as you wouldn't stick your favourite Van Gogh print
in some dusty corner, you shouldn't have to peer into a small
box to watch a flick.
Panasonic seems to have had that in mind when it made the
PT-AE500E, a projector aimed at home-theatre enthusiasts.
In designing the projector, the Japanese electronics maker
brought in a Hollywood movie colourist to advise engineers
on the colour fidelity settings that would be programmed into
the projector's memory.
Built into the projector is a high-definition (1280 x 720
pixels) wide screen (16:9) LCD panel with a three layer red-green-blue
make-up giving around 2.76 million pixels.
It produces 850 ANSI lumens of light and has a contrast ratio
of 1300:1. However, lumen and contrast ratings always confuse
me. I've seen projectors with 2000:1 contrast ratio that don't
appear to handle shadow any better than projectors with much
lower contrast ratios.
As a rule, higher brightness often comes at the expense of
contrast and colour sharpness. But AE500E handles contrast
beautifully.
I used the AE500E against the brick wall of a warehouse and
in a couple of lounges of different sizes and found the flexibility
the projector gives to adjust colour and brightness settings
means it can be tweaked for most make-shift movie theatres.
The new DVD remastered widescreen version of Pink Floyd:
live at Pompeii was particularly fetching.
Molten lava and eerily lit amphitheatres look great blasted
against the wall.
There's also flexibility when it comes to brightness with
low and high lamp settings available. For the average-sized
lounge a low lamp setting is fine.
The bulb doesn't glow as brightly, uses less power and means
the fan cooling the whole system hums along a little quieter.
Using the low-lamp setting dramatically increases the life
of the bulb - from about 2000 hours to 5000 hours.
The AE500E comes with standard factory colour settings but
a second menu gives virtually unlimited scope for experimenting.
Contrast, brightness and gamma levels can be altered across
six picture modes.
It's daunting at first, but you can revert to the factory
settings if you get lost.
I was able to fiddle around with the colour settings to give
U2's mainly black and white rockumentary Rattle & Hum
a sharper look.
You tend to become an amateur colour technician after a while.
The AE500E continually adjusts the lamp brightness to match
the characteristics of the picture being projected.
For low-light scenes, the blacks will appear blacker and
contrast will be improved. All that is done in real time like
the iris of the eye opening and closing depending on the light.
The "extra-short-throw" lens allows reasonably
big images to be projected in small spaces. A 100-inch diagonal
16:9 widescreen image can be achieved from a distance to the
wall of 3.1 metres. The image can be increased up to 200 diagonal
inches.
Symptoms of the so-called "screendoor effect" where
a faint grid appears to lie over the projected image are missing
from the AE500E's projected images. Panasonic's "smoothscreen"
technology works, with DVD-based source material the image
is clear and crisp.
The AE500E has connections galore, everything you'll need
is here. The LCD projector features a DVI-I port, a 15-pin
VGA port, composite, S-video and RCA component ports.
The horizontal and vertical keystone can be digitally adjusted
to straighten out the image if the projector has to be positioned
at a weird angle.
Focus is adjusted manually by twisting the ring around the
lense.
A simple remote control gives instant access to all the essential
functions.
All of that and the projector is "high definition",
meaning it is capable of processing signals encoded in high
definition, a more complex format that allows enhanced digital
pictures and sound to be delivered.
You won't hear Panasonic shouting too much about the high-definition
feature of its projector because New Zealand is out of the
high-definition loop.
In places such as the United States and Australia, TV signals
are increasingly broadcast in high-definition, allowing for
superb quality, especially in movies and sports events.
However, I watched high-definition scenes from Terminator
2 and the Coral Reef Adventure over the AE500E and the quality
was impressive.
So, the future for me is the bog-standard 29-inch Sony for
watching regular TV programmes and whichever decent projector
I can get my hands on for a real home cinematic experiences.
I may just paint the walls of a room in my house matt-black
and get some velvety curtains as well.
Quality viewing comes at a premium - $5000 is mid-range for
projectors.
|
