THE FRONT LINE: OCTOBER 24, 2007
LCD: It’s More Than “Good Enough” For Home Theater
It looks like 3LCD technology for home theater projectors has finally caught up to single-chip DLP, perhaps even passing it in several ways.
I’m sitting here preparing a technical paper for SMPTE’s Fall 2007 Engineering Conference. The subject of said paper is how the five mainstream display technologies that are vying to replace the CRT (LCD, plasma, DLP, LCoS, and HTPS LCD) compare and contrast with each other.
I’ve also had some time to digest the results of my tests on Mitsubishi’s new HC6000 LCD projector and Sanyo’s first ever 1080p LCD design, the PLV-Z2000, enjoying movies and live HD sports on both projectors in my cozy home theater.
It’s simply amazing how far along LCD technology has come in the past six years. Not long ago, many writers and analysts — myself included — determined that LCD was basically washed up in the home theater marketplace. 720p DLP projectors were just coming to retail, and no other technology could approach their inky blacks, pure whites, and saturated colors.
Fast forward to September of 2006, when Panasonic, Mitsubishi, and Epson pulled the rug out from under Texas Instruments with 3LCD designs that provided full 1920x1080 resolution for $3,000 to $5,000. Not only that, these projectors had great color, decent contrast, and top-notch image processing.
After seeing the latest 3LCD efforts from Mits and Sanyo, plus JVC’s outstanding DLA-RS1 LCoS projector, and reviewing my brightness, contrast, white balance, and color gamut measurements for all of them, I have to wonder why anyone would ante up all those extra dollars for a single-chip 1080p DLP home theater projector, particularly some of the ultra high-end brands.
As someone who has been (and continues to be) sensitive to the color wheel artifact intrinsic to single-chip light engines, I am happy to embrace 3LCD technology as not only a viable contender for home theater, but suggest it is also a more practical choice, given the remarkably low prices that these products command.
How’s that again? Yep, you heard right. I freely admit the error of my ways in prematurely dismissing LCD from the playing field, a comment that some friends and associates in the industry have reminded me of on more than one occasion.
Now, it is true that DLP projectors still provide the lowest black level measurements. But let’s be realistic here — once black levels drop low enough to produce ANSI (average) contrast measurements in excess of 300:1, does it really matter anymore? Sanyo’s PLV-Z2000 turned in contrast measurements of 364:1 ANSI and 573:1 peak, and is priced at just $2,995. You can’t beat that with a stick.
Figure 1a-b. Can you guess which color gamut was produced by a single-chip $9,000 DLP projector, and which came from a $3,000 3LCD projector? (Yep, Figure 1b is the 3LCD plot.)
How about color? 3LCD models from Mitsubishi, Epson, and Sanyo each cover the REC.709 HDTV color gamut with room to spare, and have enough saturation to take on most of the digital cinema (DCI) color space, too. In fact, I have seen more accurate green coordinates in these 3LCD projectors than I have in a few DLP projectors.
Gamma? Not perfect in LCD, but darned close to CRT. White field uniformity? Better than expected. Perhaps the only weakness with 3LCD imaging right now is its ability to track a consistent color temperature at very low luminance levels (10 to 20 IRE), something DLP has always done well. But there have been tremendous improvements in that area over the past couple of years, too.
Looking over my measurements again, I’d say that it’s high time single-chip DLP projector manufacturers dropped their prices to match those of Panasonic, Epson, Mitsubishi, and Sanyo, not to mention Sony and JVC’s LCoS designs.
To quote Shop-Rite, why pay more?
