PRODUCT REVIEW: NOVEMBER 28, 2006
Samsung SP-H710AE Home Theater Projector
The SP-H710AE has been in development for over three years. Has Samsung missed the boat with this projector?
Samsung decided to get into the projector business about 4 years ago, despite advice from many of us in the AV industry to stay out and concentrate on their strong efforts in LCD, plasma, and microdisplay RPTVs. At the time, the front projector market was crowded with product and prices (and margins) were plummeting.
Samsung’s decision to plow ahead was based on the involvement of Joe Kane, one of the best-known faces of the home theater industry. Over time, Joe, a true video “guru” and connoisseur of picture quality, would put his stamp all over this projector, from its high-quality optics and video processing circuits to its outstanding grayscale and color performance.
Figure 1. Front view of Samsung’s SP-H710AE projector.
I first saw the original SP-H700 at InfoComm in 2003 as part of a private demonstration. At the time, 1280x720 resolution was the benchmark and 720p single-chip DLP projectors for that market were carrying price tags starting at $10,000. Additional demonstrations were seen at Cedia Expo in 2003; and CES, InfoComm, and Cedia again in 2004 and 2005.
As time wore on, the competitive landscape changed for the projector business. By mid-2005, 1920x1080 prototypes were being shown, and at Cedia Expo 2005, the “new” SP-H710AE — basically the older H700 with a different model number — had dropped in price from about $13,000 to $4,000, migrating out of the custom dealer world into mass distribution.
Today, there are full 1920x1080p front projectors for well under $5,000 (see the review Mitsubishi’s HC5000 on this site), with some new LCOS models coming out at $5,000 over the next few months. 1080p single-chip DLP designs are dropping in price as well in response to market shifts.
Just how good is the SP-H710AE? Is it still worth the money, given the growing move to lower-cost 1080p imaging? Just how good is the projector’s grayscale and color performance? And how does it compare to other models I’ve tested recently?
OUT OF THE BOX
The SP-H700 is not a small projector. It does have the streamlined “fastback” styling that is so popular with Sim2 and Optoma projectors, and is finished in an attractive gray/silver hue. The projection lens, a manual zoom/focus type with a 1.3:1 ratio, is recessed completely and can be shifted vertically with a recessed dial atop the housing.
The SP-H710AE uses a 0.8” 1280x720 DMD (HD2+) for imaging, and develops its illumination from a 250W UHP lamp. The lens shift mechanism provides for better than 100% offset above and below the screen centerline, but there is no way to shift the image horizontally.
Figure 2. Here’s a close-up view of the rear connector panel.
The connector complement is thorough, with individual composite and S-video jacks, a pair of RCA-style component YPbPr inputs, a 15-pin VGA jack for PC connections, and a DVI-D interface for DVD players and set-top receivers. There’s also an RS232 jack for remote control, but no 12V screen trigger.
The internal cooling fan and ducting is designed to keep this projector super-quiet, and it works. You won’t notice much when it’s running, except for some light exhaust of warm air. Depending on the mode of lamp operation, fan noise should be in the range of 30 dB, so if you mount the SP-H710 in the ceiling or on a high shelf, you won’t notice any fan noise.
REMOTE AND MENUS
Those of us who are veterans of projector reviews (I did my first way back in 1993) have long been compiling lists of our pet peeves and aggravations when it comes to user interfaces and remote controls.
How refreshing it is, then, to use a properly-designed remote that’s (a) easy to read, (b) has a minimum of buttons — 19, plus the menu navigator, (c) provides tactile feedback for each button push, and (4) offers direct access to any input plus several important menu functions.
Those functions would be aspect ratio, image presets, custom tweaks, still frame mode, image orientation, and vertical digital keystone correction. (OK, so you won’t use the last one very much…) If nothing else, Samsung ought to license this remote to every other projector manufacturer — it’s that easy to use, even in a dark room. (Yes, it’s backlit, too.)
If you like the remote, you’ll love the menus, which are straightforward in presentation and function. Here are some of the highlights: There are eight picture presets, with Dynamic, Standard, Movie 1, Movie 2, Custom, and User 1/2/3. Four factory color temperature settings are available (9300, 8500, 6500, and 5000 degrees K), plus you can set RGB gain and offset in the Custom menu and save your settings.
Three color standard look-up tables are at your fingertips — SMPTE C (REC.601), REC.709, and EBU, to match the source of your video content. There are also three picture gamma modes (1,2, and 3), but no indication is given of their resultant gamma values. (I figured them out after testing.)
Other useful settings include the lamp-operating mode (Bright and Theater, with Theater resulting in a 25% reduction in brightness), 3:2 film mode on and off, and a bunch of test patterns, including crosshatch, SMPTE/HDTV safe areas and aspect ratios, HD color bars, and full white, red, green, and blue.
In short, you have the tools you need to set this projector up much as you’d have them for an older CRT projector. Now let’s see just how well they all work in concert.
ON THE TEST BENCH
Since the SP-H710AE is first and foremost a 720p projector, I connected a variety of 720p signals, including ESPN HD, Fox HD, and ABC HD. A Silicon Optix Whitehorse scaler converted everything else from DVDs and 1080i content to 720p/60, while calibration and test pattern signals came from an AccuPel generator in 720p mode.
Figure 3. Gamma 1 response is shown here.
After calibration for best grayscale image, there was little that needed tweaking in the RGB menu. (After Joe got done with it, I’m not surprised!) Brightness was measured at 484 ANSI lumens in User 2 mode with Gamma 1 selected (about a 2.66 response). That’s a steeper gamma curve than I usually wind up with — mine usually fall in the range of 2.0 to 2.4. (A gamma of 2.6 matches the DCI 1.0 digital cinema specification.)
Brightness ranged as high as 597 lumens and as low as 420 lumens, depending on the selected picture preset. That was more than enough to provide bright, contrasty images on my 82” Stewart front screen from a distance of 12 feet. Brightness uniformity is outstanding, measuring 94% on average and 87% to the worst corner.
Contrast measurements were also impressive at 758:1 average (ANSI) and 1047:1 peak. White area/black area contrast using a small window measured 1842:1, and that’s a more useful measurement than “full on” to “full off” in my book.
Color response was also impressive. Figure 4 shows the grayscale track measured from 20 to 100 IRE before and after calibration. It’s pretty steady, except for hiccups at 30, 35, and 40 IRE, which bumped the color temperature measurements up as much as 300 degrees.
Figure 4. Here are the grayscale tracks before and after my tweaking.
Figure 5. The SP-H710AE basically covers the entire REC.709 color space.
The color primary and secondary response is shown in Figure 5, and it’s almost dead-on with green, yellow, and red, just a tad short with blue and cyan, and farthest off with magenta. (A bit more green and blue would do the trick.) That’s very impressive performance for a UHP-lamped projector and the best I’ve seen to date.
One place where the SP-H710AE came up short was in its frequency response. I saw evidence of high-frequency roll-off above 20 MHz using a multiburst pattern from the Accupel generator. With a native 1080i signal, the highest frequency bursts simply turned gray, and lower-frequency bursts around 18 — 20 MHz had noise and banding.
VIDEO IMAGE QUALITY
Everything I had done up to this point was starting to appear anticlimactic as I hooked up several HD signal sources, including Discovery HD, ESPN HD, MTV HD (yes, there is an MTV HD!) and some major network HD sports and news feeds. Given the color and grayscale responses I measured, I was pretty sure I’d be in for some impressive HD.
First (to get it out of the way), the composite video processing is average. Not great, just average. (This may not matter to you if you rely on external video processing.) The color decoder uses something close to a notch filter — there’s little moiré, but detail at 300 and 400 lines suffers considerably.
In component and DVI modes, picture quality is outstanding. Colors are so good that you don’t even notice them — they just appear to be real. No over-saturated reds, no blooming blues, no under-saturated greens, just accurate flesh tones, pastels, and primaries. Films on DVD have a very filmic look than I’ve seen before on microdisplay projectors, probably due to the gamma and grayscale response
HD looks better through the DVI input, probably because there aren’t any bandwidth limitation issues through that interface as there are through the component interfaces. There was plenty of detail, good shadow detail (not great, as black levels are higher than I’d hoped for), and very clean grayscales across all color shades.
Live 720p looks best, but 1080i wasn’t too shabby through the Whitehorse scaler. I had the good luck to watch live 1080i clips from the space station on Discovery HD while testing this projector. It looked as if I was standing at a picture window (high bit rates help a lot!) and the saturated blues of the oceans and greens and browns of the continents were breathtaking.
Tests with the Realta HQV disk showed that the SP-H710AE was multi-lingual, picking up and correcting for almost every one of the oddball interlaced video cadences you’ll find on this disk. The exception? Varispeed, used by TV networks to compress long movies into 2-hour windows. (The actual cadence is 3:2:3:2:2, and it has given more than one projector fits!)
CONCLUSION AND AFTERTHOUGHTS
Samsung’s SP-H710AE delivers the goods, no question about it. The price drop of nearly $10,000 was inevitable, given today’s ultra-competitive market for projectors of all kinds. But this projector is clearly the best in its class when it comes to grayscale and color management.
Now — some additional thoughts. In my recent tests, Mitsubishi’s $4500 HC5000 wasn’t too shabby with grayscale and color, either. And JVC’s DLA-HD10K had outstanding grayscale performance, albeit at nearly four times the price of the SP-H710AE. Both offer much higher resolution and many of the same image tweaks (not all.)
Figure 6. A coarse view of grayscale tracks for Samsung, Mitsubishi, Sanyo, and JVC projectors.
Figure 7. Here’s a detail view of each projector’s grayscale performance.
Figure 6 shows the comparative grayscale tracks from 30 to 100 IRE for all three projectors, plus Sanyo’s $1,600 PLV-Z5 thrown in for good measure. This coarse graph shows there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the four projectors.
Figure 7 shows a more detailed view of each projector’s grayscale response from 30 to 100 IRE. It’s easier to see the difference between each projector, including the zigzag response of the PLV-Z5 and SP-H710AE, the slow, downward drift of the HC5000 and the slow, upward drift of the DLA-HD10K.
The maximum shift in color temperature for each projector is 310 degrees for the SP-H710AE, 247 degrees for the DLA-HD10K, 292 degrees for the HC5000, and 448 degrees for the PLV-Z5. That’s not much of a difference between the first three, which would seem to indicate that more than one projector manufacturer has grayscale tracking and white balance under better control.
Of course, the SP-H710AE covers more of the REC.709 HDTV color gamut than the other three, but it’s a photo finish. The Sanyo and JVC projectors come closer to the blue coordinate, while the Mitsubishi and JVC projectors are “right on” with the red coordinates and closer with magenta. The difference is green — Samsung does a better job with green (and yellow) saturation, which is why this projector can achieve CRT-like color.
Getting back to the question at the start of this review: Did Samsung “miss the boat” by keeping the 700/710 in development for so long? It’s possible, given the performance of other projectors I’ve tested recently. For a little more money, you can have the 1080p HC5000 and be thrilled with its picture quality. And there are some new LCOS 1080p light boxes coming in early 2007 for comparable prices.
Still, if 720p resolution is all you need, then the SP710AE will give you excellent image quality for four grand. One suggestion — drive all your 480i and 1080i content through a quality video scaler to get the best results. (720p material can go straight in!)
