PRODUCT REVIEW
Dell 5100mp Front DLP Projector
Until last fall, SXGA+ projectors were very expensive, but that's all changed. Dell's 5100MP is the current low-price champ in this resolution category.
A decade ago, SXGA (1280x1024 or 1365x1024) was considered a rarified pixel resolution, but it has been largely abandoned in the past few years as SXGA+ (1400x1050) has become popular in laptop computers.
Figure 1. Dell's 5100MP SXGA+ DLP projector.
OUT OF THE BOX
The 5100MP offers an attractive design with just about any connector option you'd want. In addition to the usual composite and S-video jacks, you'll have five different analog and digital video interfaces at your fingertips, all spread across the rear panel and clearly marked. There's even a LAN (RJ-45) connection.
The supplied lens has a comparatively short zoom ratio at 1.19:1, which does limit installation options. And it's only a manual zoom lens, with no provision for mechanical lens shift — only digital keystone correction.
I liked the remote control with its black-and-silver color scheme (heads up, Oakland Raiders fans!) although the menu navigation buttons with their blue-on-black color scheme are difficult to read in a darkened room.
One thing I didn't like about the remote was the lone SOURCE button for cycling between inputs. If you've selected the AUTO INPUT SCAN feature in the menu, the 5100MP will cycle through all inputs — even inactive ones - looking for the next active input each time you push this button. That's tedious to use, and direct input access would have been a better design choice.
As far as image adjustments go, the 5100MP provides five picture modes (GAME, PC, MOVIE, sRGB, and USER) plus 10 steps of white segment enhancement and a DEGAMMA circuit which adjusts picture gamma. Three different aspect ratio modes (1:1, FULL, and WIDESCREEN) are at your fingertips.
For color calibration, you can adjust red, green, and blue drive (no bias or offset) or choose from three factory color temperature settings. In addition to digital keystone, there is also an automatic keystone correction circuit that will square up the image if you tilt the projector down or up.
The RJ-45 connector lets you remotely monitor and control the 5100MP on a local area network. The projector comes with its own IP address, although I had to enter a new one to be able to ping the projector on my office LAN. The IP address can also be remotely set using DHCP by a host computer.
Figure 2. The 5100MP tracks an exceptionally clean grayscale at high brightness levels.
PERFORMANCE
In my opinion, the 5100MP was one of the most significant products shown at InfoComm 2005, yet it never even made an appearance on the show floor! SXGA+ resolution at this brightness level (over 3000 lumens) in a package costing $3,500 represents a real break-through. So how did it measure up?
After calibration for best grayscale, I measured brightness at 3475 ANSI lumens in USER mode. There was a variance of 60% from the highest lumens measurements to the lowest (MOVIE mode). If anything, the 5100MP has photons to spare, as it easily blew by its 3000-lumens specification.
With an SXGA+ test pattern, I measured contrast ratios of 759:1 ANSI (average) and 1524:1 peak, while a 480i checkerboard produced readings of 532:1 ANSI and 1143:1 peak. Impressive, but there was a downside: Brightness uniformity across the screen measured 57%, which is very low for any projector these days and borders on "hot spot" territory.
The 5100MP tracks a clean grayscale at any temperature setting. After adjustment in the USER menu, I measured a maximum shift of 319 degrees from the D6500 baseline value I measured using a 50% gray pattern. You won't see any color tints or shifts with this projector whether you set the picture to be cool or warm.
As an SXGA+ projector, the 5100MP does its best work with RGB images, particularly at or near its native resolution. Match it to your SXGA+ notebook, and you'll be in hog heaven. But it can also scale a variety of PC resolutions, from VGA (640x480) at the low end to UXGA (1600x1200) at the high end. It will even size up a few widescreen PC rates, like 852x480 and 1365x768 (but not 1280x768).
Video is a different story. If you plan on using the 5100MP to display standard-definition video on a regular basis, buy a quality video scaler and insert it in the signal chain. The 5100MP's performance with composite is inconsistent. De-interlacing leaves plenty of scan line and intraframe motion artifacts. Composite decoding is plagued by cross-luminance and cross-color interference.
Oddly enough, the video processor in the 5100MP does a good job picking up 3:2 video sequences and providing smooth motion. It even handled a few of the oddball film-to-video cadences on the Realta HQV test DVD, including 2:4:4:2 and 2:2:4.
Much better results were obtained when feeding 480p content directly to the projector, although you may find the resulting images somewhat soft for your liking, a common complaint about DLP imaging. 720p and 1080i filmed and taped content was pleasing to the eye, although the measured signal bandwidth through the analog inputs is good only to about 18 MHz. Using the HDMI or M1-DA inputs will improve bandwidth performance.
CONCLUSIONS
If you need a high-resolution desktop/installation projector but don't want to break the bank, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better deal than the 5100MP. The only comparable product would be Canon's Realis SX50, which sells for about $500 more but peaks out at 2500 lumens, struggles even more with low-resolution video processing, and isn't even in the same league as far as contrast.
Now for my pet peeve: Having all of those extra connectors is a boon for any installer, but why not provide direct input selection? Having to autoscan sequentially through all inputs each time you want to change video sources is downright aggravating, and something I might have to put up with on a low-cost projector - not one that has a sticker price over three grand.
