Sanyo PLV-Z1

REVIEW

SANYO PLV-Z1
HOME THEATRE PROJECTOR

by Peter H. Putman, CTS

Calling Sanyo's PLV-Z1 a "home theater" projector may be a misnomer, for it is clearly not a high-end installation chassis with HDTV resolution. But it's not a low-end wide VGA or SVGA-resolution projector, either.

The PLV-Z1 falls somewhere in the middle of this grouping, thanks to its unusual pixel count. Although this projector uses 16x9 imaging panels, the physical resolution of these panels is 964x544 pixels, or 1/4 HDTV resolution. Sanyo is the first (but not the last) manufacturer to use these unusual panels in what is popularly called a "coffee table" projector.

This concept is of a projector you can quickly and easily set on a table and project movies, camcorder footage or even still photos on your wall or a makeshift screen. You can, of course, use a regular screen with this projector, but the experience of home theater dealers is that customers who prefer a theater-like set up will usually opt for higher-resolution front projectors and go the whole nine yards with dimmed lights, surround sound, etc.

So, where does the PLV-Z1 fit in? The "coffee table" projector category was first defined by people buying professional AV projectors through Internet retailers at tremendously discounted prices. Sony was one of the first companies to notice this oddball sales channel and introduced their Cineza tabletop projector (800x600 resolution), but it was not an overwhelming success.

The Cineza's downfall was low resolution. Why buy a home theater projector with 800x600 resolution when you could just as easily pick up a industrial/corporate projector with XGA resolution for about the same price? As a bonus, just about all of the professional LCD and DLP front projectors support 480p, 720p, and 1080i signals (albeit letterboxed).

To keep costs down while offer customers a bit more pixel density, the PLV-Z1 was born. And it is an interesting design, to say the least.

OUT OF THE BOX

The PLV-Z1 is a compact chassis measuring about 13" x 10" x 4", and it weighs just 7.5 pounds. The front cover flips down to reveal the lens and a pair of manual lens shift controls - one for vertical alignment, and one for horizontal alignment. I have never seen these types of controls on small projectors before, and they are much preferred to the digital image keystone correction circuits used in other projectors.

The supplied lens is a short throw zoom with a focal length ratio of 1.35 - 1.6:1. That's not really "short" in my book; CRT projectors used a standard lens ratio of 1.5:1 for years. And 1.3:1 is a very common varifocal lens array for ultraportable projectors. Still, you will be able to get pretty close to the screen (or wall).

The flip-down front cover also has a unique interlock. If you happen to close it most of the way (as I did by accident), it douses the projection lamp and the projector enters a shut down cycle. You'll have to wait several minutes until this cycle is complete to re-start the lamp and use the projector again, so watch that door!

The connector complement is also basic. You'll find a composite video jack (RCA), S-video connector (DIN), and three more RCA jacks marked "YPbPr" for component DVD and HDTV inputs. Of course, there's the requisite 15-pin d-sub VGA jack for hooking up your PC, and you can also feed HDTV signals to the PLV-Z1 through this connector.

Unlike some other "coffee table" projectors I have tested, the PLV-Z1 has no onboard audio support. Not that it's a bad thing, as many of these tiny projectors have equally tiny audio amplifiers and speakers rated in the .5 to 1 watt range - and they're usually monoraul. Plan to have some sort of outboard audio system if you want to play DVDs or HDTV programs (heck, even VHS tapes or MiniDV home movies) through the projector.

The supplied projection lamp is rated at 130 watts and Sanyo claims 700 ANSI lumens of image brightness. That's not a lot of light output in today's world of 1500, 2000, and 3000 lumen portables, but in a darkened room it should be adequate for viewing movies and TV programs.

MENUS AND OPERATION

The supplied remote control has good range and a very simple layout, with direct access to each input. The adjustment menu is quite different from what I am used to seeing on Sanyo projectors and is much faster to navigate than the traditional Sanyo design. You can also place the menu on different parts of the screen to make image adjustments, although it is not transparent.

The internal fan is very, very quiet. Sanyo claims 28dB of fan noise when in Theater Black mode, which has the lamp running at reduced brightness. However, there is no specific menu selection for "Theater Black", only a lamp high/low selection. In normal (lamp high) mode, the lamp is much more noticeable.

The horizontal and vertical image shift controls work, but they are a bit sloppy and the image wiggles a little on the screen as you are moving it to its desired position. The maximum vertical image shift is expressed in ratios - 10:0 up or down, and 7:3 left or right. This means you can pull the image considerably in all directions, as much as half an 80" wide screen in my case. This will allow you to ceiling mount the PLV-Z1 and not have to use much digital keystone correction if any when aligning to your screen.

I mentioned earlier that you can connect 480p, 720p, and 1080i signals in the RGB format. The projector will auto-sense 720p and 1080i and select a widescreen display, while you can choose to enable 480p as 4x3 or 16x9. (By the way, there is no DVI input connector.) The reason for 480p confusion is that its horizontal scanning frequency of 31.5 kHz is identical to that of a 640x480 computer signal, so the projector 'assumes' the incoming RGB signal must be from a 4x3 computer video source.

You'll have some degree of control over fine image parameters, including a 15-step gamma mode, three different selectable color temperature settings, and full red, green, and blue drive adjustments (but no bias). Sanyo has also provided auto grayscale and auto flesh tone adjustments, but I couldn't see if they were making any substantial difference.

ON THE TEST BENCH

Using a variety of RGB and component video sources, I set up the PLV-Z1 for the closest match I could get to D6500 using my CA-1 color analyzer and Minolta CL-200 color temperature meter. The best I could do without introducing a magenta color shift was right around 7150 degrees with a maximum color shift of ±880 degrees across the image. Not great, but acceptable for LCDs.

Once adjusted for best-looking grayscale, the PLV-Z1 put out 500 ANSI lumens in "lamp high" mode, and 407 ANSI lumens in "lamp low" mode. These numbers don't come close to what Sanyo claims, but that's still plenty of light for a darkened room. ANSI (average) contrast was measured at 274:1 in RGB mode and 284:1 in video mode, with a peak contrast reading of 451:1. These are excellent numbers for an LCD projector, but you will see contrast drop a bit in "lamp low" mode.

The supplied lens had a brightness uniformity score of 75%. This is average for today's LCD projectors and means you won't see any hot-spotting on the screen. The lens had very good text sharpness, no evident optical distortion or pincushioning while zooming and a little bit of lens flare. There's no doubt that small text would have been sharper if the LCD panels had a standard pixel resolution, but neither 800x600 or 1024x768 really looked as sharp as they should have.

Using several calibration DVDs and HDTV sources from D-VHS, I found the PLV-Z1's video performance to vary depending on the source. The composite video input uses either a poor comb filter or a notch filter as there was plenty of color moire seen on the Video Essentials Zone Plate test pattern. A lot of picture detail was lost at 300 and 400 lines in this mode, so stay away from composite sources and use the S-video input if you can.

The deinterlacing circuit in the PLV-Z1 works pretty well and the flag-waving sequence from VE is moderately free of scan line artifacts, as are the bridge pans and zooms. For best quality, use the YPbPr or RGB inputs and you will see a big difference in picture sharpness. There is a catch here, though - the PLV-Z1's circuitry clips some high-frequency information with HD sources.

Using a 720p test pattern generator, I was able to see all the detail in a 18.5 MHz luminance burst pattern, but a 37.5 MHz burst was solid gray. Things weren't any better with 1080i sources. In fact, the 18.5 MHz burst was smoothed over in this mode and 37.5 MHz was a clutter of coarse lines.

What this means is that the PLV-Z1 doesn't quite have enough bandwidth to pass all of the detail in HDTV programs, although it does quite well with DVDs and 480i video sources. Given that HDTV programs will also have to undergo a rather tricky mathematical interpolation to match the 964x544 native resolution, image sharpness may not matter anyway.

In the Theater Black mode, black levels are dropped about 15% while overall brightness is clipped by 18%. If you use a gray screen like Stewart's Grayhawk, you'll be happier with the low gray levels of this projector. Dim the lights, enable the "lamp low" mode and the viewing experience isn't bad as a whole. The only other drawback is the screen-door effect common to LCD projectors and of course it is more pronounced with lower-resolution panels such as these.

CONCLUSIONS

The PLV-Z1 is certainly worth investigating. Its oddball native resolution is higher than that of wide VGA or wide SVGA "coffee table" projectors and the horizontal and vertical lens offset is a bonus. It is easy to set up and operate, but don't expect the same level of image quality you'd see in a full-bore home theater front projector using DLP or LCD technology. Complete the package with either a matte finish projection screen, or for best results go with a gray-tint version like Stewart's Grayhawk material.

Suggestion: An outboard video processor with de-interlacing and motion compensation will do wonders with this projector. Consider one of the Silicon Image iScan Pro boxes for about $600 and let it do the tricky video processing.

SCORES (Out of Ten)
Look and Feel: 8
Connectivity: 8
Menus and Operation: 9
Bench Performance: 7
SD Image Quality: 6
HD Image Quality: 8

Sanyo PLV-Z1
1/4 HD Multimedia Projector
Price: $2,495

Sanyo Presentation Technologies
21605 Plummer Street
Chatsworth, CA 91311
(818) 998-7322 x 288

www.sanyolcd.com

Copyright ©2003 Peter H. Putman / Roam Consulting Inc. All Rights Reserved.


						REVIEW
					SANYO PLV-Z1 HOME THEATRE PROJECTOR


					by Peter H. Putman, CTS Calling Sanyo's PLV-Z1 a "home theater" projector may be a misnomer, for it is clearly not a high-end installation chassis with HDTV resolution. But it's not a low-end wide VGA or SVGA-resolution projector, either. The PLV-Z1 falls somewhere in the middle of this grouping, thanks to its unusual pixel count. Although this projector uses 16x9 imaging panels, the physical resolution of these panels is 964x544 pixels, or 1/4 HDTV resolution. Sanyo is the first (but not the last) manufacturer to use these unusual panels in what is popularly called a "coffee table" projector. This concept is of a projector you can quickly and easily set on a table and project movies, camcorder footage or even still photos on your wall or a makeshift screen. You can, of course, use a regular screen with this projector, but the experience of home theater dealers is that customers who prefer a theater-like set up will usually opt for higher-resolution front projectors and go the whole nine yards with dimmed lights, surround sound, etc. So, where does the PLV-Z1 fit in? The "coffee table" projector category was first defined by people buying professional AV projectors through Internet retailers at tremendously discounted prices. Sony was one of the first companies to notice this oddball sales channel and introduced their Cineza tabletop projector (800x600 resolution), but it was not an overwhelming success. The Cineza's downfall was low resolution. Why buy a home theater projector with 800x600 resolution when you could just as easily pick up a industrial/corporate projector with XGA resolution for about the same price? As a bonus, just about all of the professional LCD and DLP front projectors support 480p, 720p, and 1080i signals (albeit letterboxed). To keep costs down while offer customers a bit more pixel density, the PLV-Z1 was born. And it is an interesting design, to say the least. OUT OF THE BOX The PLV-Z1 is a compact chassis measuring about 13" x 10" x 4", and it weighs just 7.5 pounds. The front cover flips down to reveal the lens and a pair of manual lens shift controls - one for vertical alignment, and one for horizontal alignment. I have never seen these types of controls on small projectors before, and they are much preferred to the digital image keystone correction circuits used in other projectors. The supplied lens is a short throw zoom with a focal length ratio of 1.35 - 1.6:1. That's not really "short" in my book; CRT projectors used a standard lens ratio of 1.5:1 for years. And 1.3:1 is a very common varifocal lens array for ultraportable projectors. Still, you will be able to get pretty close to the screen (or wall). The flip-down front cover also has a unique interlock. If you happen to close it most of the way (as I did by accident), it douses the projection lamp and the projector enters a shut down cycle. You'll have to wait several minutes until this cycle is complete to re-start the lamp and use the projector again, so watch that door! The connector complement is also basic. You'll find a composite video jack (RCA), S-video connector (DIN), and three more RCA jacks marked "YPbPr" for component DVD and HDTV inputs. Of course, there's the requisite 15-pin d-sub VGA jack for hooking up your PC, and you can also feed HDTV signals to the PLV-Z1 through this connector. Unlike some other "coffee table" projectors I have tested, the PLV-Z1 has no onboard audio support. Not that it's a bad thing, as many of these tiny projectors have equally tiny audio amplifiers and speakers rated in the .5 to 1 watt range - and they're usually monoraul. Plan to have some sort of outboard audio system if you want to play DVDs or HDTV programs (heck, even VHS tapes or MiniDV home movies) through the projector. The supplied projection lamp is rated at 130 watts and Sanyo claims 700 ANSI lumens of image brightness. That's not a lot of light output in today's world of 1500, 2000, and 3000 lumen portables, but in a darkened room it should be adequate for viewing movies and TV programs. MENUS AND OPERATION The supplied remote control has good range and a very simple layout, with direct access to each input. The adjustment menu is quite different from what I am used to seeing on Sanyo projectors and is much faster to navigate than the traditional Sanyo design. You can also place the menu on different parts of the screen to make image adjustments, although it is not transparent. The internal fan is very, very quiet. Sanyo claims 28dB of fan noise when in Theater Black mode, which has the lamp running at reduced brightness. However, there is no specific menu selection for "Theater Black", only a lamp high/low selection. In normal (lamp high) mode, the lamp is much more noticeable. The horizontal and vertical image shift controls work, but they are a bit sloppy and the image wiggles a little on the screen as you are moving it to its desired position. The maximum vertical image shift is expressed in ratios - 10:0 up or down, and 7:3 left or right. This means you can pull the image considerably in all directions, as much as half an 80" wide screen in my case. This will allow you to ceiling mount the PLV-Z1 and not have to use much digital keystone correction if any when aligning to your screen. I mentioned earlier that you can connect 480p, 720p, and 1080i signals in the RGB format. The projector will auto-sense 720p and 1080i and select a widescreen display, while you can choose to enable 480p as 4x3 or 16x9. (By the way, there is no DVI input connector.) The reason for 480p confusion is that its horizontal scanning frequency of 31.5 kHz is identical to that of a 640x480 computer signal, so the projector 'assumes' the incoming RGB signal must be from a 4x3 computer video source. You'll have some degree of control over fine image parameters, including a 15-step gamma mode, three different selectable color temperature settings, and full red, green, and blue drive adjustments (but no bias). Sanyo has also provided auto grayscale and auto flesh tone adjustments, but I couldn't see if they were making any substantial difference. ON THE TEST BENCH Using a variety of RGB and component video sources, I set up the PLV-Z1 for the closest match I could get to D6500 using my CA-1 color analyzer and Minolta CL-200 color temperature meter. The best I could do without introducing a magenta color shift was right around 7150 degrees with a maximum color shift of ±880 degrees across the image. Not great, but acceptable for LCDs. Once adjusted for best-looking grayscale, the PLV-Z1 put out 500 ANSI lumens in "lamp high" mode, and 407 ANSI lumens in "lamp low" mode. These numbers don't come close to what Sanyo claims, but that's still plenty of light for a darkened room. ANSI (average) contrast was measured at 274:1 in RGB mode and 284:1 in video mode, with a peak contrast reading of 451:1. These are excellent numbers for an LCD projector, but you will see contrast drop a bit in "lamp low" mode. The supplied lens had a brightness uniformity score of 75%. This is average for today's LCD projectors and means you won't see any hot-spotting on the screen. The lens had very good text sharpness, no evident optical distortion or pincushioning while zooming and a little bit of lens flare. There's no doubt that small text would have been sharper if the LCD panels had a standard pixel resolution, but neither 800x600 or 1024x768 really looked as sharp as they should have. Using several calibration DVDs and HDTV sources from D-VHS, I found the PLV-Z1's video performance to vary depending on the source. The composite video input uses either a poor comb filter or a notch filter as there was plenty of color moire seen on the Video Essentials Zone Plate test pattern. A lot of picture detail was lost at 300 and 400 lines in this mode, so stay away from composite sources and use the S-video input if you can. The deinterlacing circuit in the PLV-Z1 works pretty well and the flag-waving sequence from VE is moderately free of scan line artifacts, as are the bridge pans and zooms. For best quality, use the YPbPr or RGB inputs and you will see a big difference in picture sharpness. There is a catch here, though - the PLV-Z1's circuitry clips some high-frequency information with HD sources. Using a 720p test pattern generator, I was able to see all the detail in a 18.5 MHz luminance burst pattern, but a 37.5 MHz burst was solid gray. Things weren't any better with 1080i sources. In fact, the 18.5 MHz burst was smoothed over in this mode and 37.5 MHz was a clutter of coarse lines. What this means is that the PLV-Z1 doesn't quite have enough bandwidth to pass all of the detail in HDTV programs, although it does quite well with DVDs and 480i video sources. Given that HDTV programs will also have to undergo a rather tricky mathematical interpolation to match the 964x544 native resolution, image sharpness may not matter anyway. In the Theater Black mode, black levels are dropped about 15% while overall brightness is clipped by 18%. If you use a gray screen like Stewart's Grayhawk, you'll be happier with the low gray levels of this projector. Dim the lights, enable the "lamp low" mode and the viewing experience isn't bad as a whole. The only other drawback is the screen-door effect common to LCD projectors and of course it is more pronounced with lower-resolution panels such as these. CONCLUSIONS The PLV-Z1 is certainly worth investigating. Its oddball native resolution is higher than that of wide VGA or wide SVGA "coffee table" projectors and the horizontal and vertical lens offset is a bonus. It is easy to set up and operate, but don't expect the same level of image quality you'd see in a full-bore home theater front projector using DLP or LCD technology. Complete the package with either a matte finish projection screen, or for best results go with a gray-tint version like Stewart's Grayhawk material. Suggestion: An outboard video processor with de-interlacing and motion compensation will do wonders with this projector. Consider one of the Silicon Image iScan Pro boxes for about $600 and let it do the tricky video processing. SCORES (Out of Ten) Look and Feel: 8 Connectivity: 8 Menus and Operation: 9 Bench Performance: 7 SD Image Quality: 6 HD Image Quality: 8 Sanyo PLV-Z1 1/4 HD Multimedia Projector Price: $2,495 Sanyo Presentation Technologies 21605 Plummer Street Chatsworth, CA 91311 (818) 998-7322 x 288 www.sanyolcd.com Copyright ©2003 Peter H. Putman / Roam Consulting Inc. All Rights Reserved.