PRODUCT REVIEW: SEPTEMBER 2008
Sanyo PLV-Z700 LCD Projector
If anyone told me five years ago I could buy a 1080p home theater projector with mechanical lens shift and a dynamic iris for $1,995, I’d have said they were dreaming. Guess what? Sometimes dreams come true…
Sanyo continues to surprise the home theater world with improved LCD projector designs like clockwork every September. In 2007, the PLV-Z2000 was the first model to deliver full 1080p resolution for well under $3,000. Now, there are two new models in the line — the value-priced PLV-Z700, and the some-to-be-released PLV-Z3000, coming in October.
What’s new on the Z700? HDMI 1.3 compatibility with expanded support for xvYCC Deep Color (a color space in search of supporters at this point in time), a slightly wider range of lens adjustments, and a new auto-iris system with a 1/60/second response time.
Figure 1. Say, haven’t I seen that white box before?
OUT OF THE BOX
Outside, it looks just like the Z2000, retaining the same white finish, sliding lens cover, and horizontal and mechanical lens shift. The supplied lens (22.6mm–45.3mm) retains the same 2:1 zoom ratio of its predecessor, and is equipped with both horizontal and mechanical lens shift controls that can be locked.
Incidentally, a longer focal length is always better with zoom lenses. Assuming the lens is well designed, you’ll avoid the trapezoidal image distortion that is so common to short-throw lenses, such as the ever-popular 1.3:1 varifocal models used on lower-cost projectors. Couple that with mechanical lens shifting, and your projector placement options are increased by several magnitudes.
Of course, longer lenses have smaller apertures, so the projector must use a brighter lamp to overcome the attenuation in light output that follows. Sanyo equipped the PLV-Z700 with a 165 watt short-arc lamp, which is more than adequate for lighting up screens in the 80-inch to 100-inch range with projection throws of 10 to 15 feet.
The input connections are also unchanged from last year, with one each composite and S-video jacks, a pair of analog RCA component video jacks, a 15-pin VGA connector for PCs, and two HDMI 1.3 inputs. Sorry, there’s still no 12V screen trigger! (I guess you can’t have everything for $1,995…)
Figure 2. Here’s the rear panel input board; same as the PLV-Z2000.
Figure 3. And this remote control looks familiar, too.
REMOTE AND MENUS
The supplied remote is also the same as last year’s model. It has a nicely designed layout with large, backlit buttons and direct access to every input, plus many commonly used menu functions including brightness, contrast, color saturation, sharpness, and color temperature adjustments.
Additional keys let you select between the four lamp modes, activate the shutter, freeze an image, or cycle through one of the five different User image preset memories. Those are in addition to five factory image presets, known as Brilliant Cinema, Creative Cinema, Natural, Living, and Dynamic.
Although Sanyo doesn’t give you the depth of image tweaks that you’d see on more expensive models, you can still fiddle with enough settings to get a closely calibrated picture. There are five color temperature presets, ranging from High 1 or 2 to Default and Low 1 or 2. If you have a color temperature meter, you’ll want to select User CT mode and proceed to the next sub-menu, where you can set red, green, and blue drive independently.
There are no “low” or “bias” settings on the PLV-Z700. (Hey, what do you want for $1,995?) As a result, you’ll want to use a medium-gray test pattern to do a color temperature calibration. I usually pick a 50 or 60 IRE window, and take it from there.
If you’d like to tweak Gamma settings, you can adjust them high or low independently of any presets. Be careful, though — a change of just one increment makes a big change in gamma! The four lamp modes I mentioned earlier are also available here, ranging from Normal (I recommend using this all the time), Auto 1 (varies brightness according to input signal levels, like an auto iris circuit), Auto 2 (a dimmer version of Auto 1 with lower fan noise), and Eco (a “green” mode that cuts brightness about 20%).
The Progressive menu setting should normally be left in Auto mode, is it will detect video (2:2) and film (3:2) cadences. You can also shut it off, although you’ll see plenty of interlaced scan line artifacts as a result. There’s also an analog noise reduction circuit that you should leave Off when using digital sources.
Sanyo has also provided an Advanced menu, which you need to turn on in the Settings menu to access. Here’s where you can disable or enable the automatic iris, and select between the two iris modes. Mode 1 sets iris levels to favor brightness, while Mode 2 favors contrast. You’ll generally see dimmer images in Mode 2, so I left Mode 1 on for my subjective image evaluation tests. Finally, there’s a setting for the upper limit of the iris.
The advanced menu also includes tweaks for Automatic black stretch, which lightens low-level shadow detail in three steps (and also plays havoc with Gamma!). Sanyo has also included an automatic contrast enhancement in three steps. I’d leave both of these options set to “off” when calibrating. A three-step transient improvement is included for improving analog video image detail, and again, I’d leave it off with digital video sources.
If you really have a hankering to fiddle with image quality and can measure what you’re doing accurately, Sanyo’s color management system is also on-board. This menu lets you fine-tune specific values of colors but adjusting both hue and saturation, and whenever those colors appear, they will be rendered the way you specify. Up to 8 sets of color management settings can be saved into memory.
The final advanced tweaks pertain to Gamma — specifically, Dynamic Gamma and Custom Gamma. The first menu option consists of three settings (High, Medium, Low), plus off. If you really want to see an S-curve gamma from the PLV-Z700, this is the place to do it. Crush those whites, stomp those black levels! Otherwise, leave this set to “off” and move on to a more useful control.
Custom Gamma can help you with difficult white balance and color temperature adjustments by fine-tuning values of red, green, and blue at nine different levels of luminance. By raising or lowering a given color luminance step, you can clean up a messy gamma curve and stabilize grayscale tracking of a given color temperature. This process absolutely requires a color temperature meter that also measures luminosity. If you don’t have one, stay away!
ON THE TEST BENCH
I gave the Z700 a good workout, using a variety of test patterns from my AccuPel test generator, the red laser and blue laser Realta HQV test discs, and Blu-ray clips from No Country For Old Men (great shadow detail) and Mission Impossible III (several scenes have nice stress tests for deinterlacers).
After setting the zoom lens to its midpoint, squaring up the projector to my 82-inch Stewart matte white screen, and calibration for best grayscale and dynamic range, I measured image brightness at 426 ANSI lumens. That reading varied as high as 840 lumens in Dynamic mode and as low as 335 lumens in Creative Cinema mode.
Brightness uniformity was very good, measuring 82% to the average corner and 74% to the worst corner. White balance uniformity was also respectable, varying by a total of 627 Kelvin across a full white image. (I generally like to see a swing of no more than 500 Kelvin in home theater projectors.)
Contrast measurements were taken with the iris disabled and all contrast enhancement modes shut down. Average (ANSI) contrast readings, using a 16-block checkerboard, were logged at 221:1, while peak contrast from that same pattern measured 334:1. Not spectacular readings, but good performance.
Figure 4. The PLV-Z700’s gamma response could be a bit tighter.
Figure 5. It does, however, track a clean grayscale above 20 IRE.
Turning Enhanced Contrast to the Mid setting resulted in a peak measurement of 546:1, but distorted the relatively consistent gamma curve. Other peak contrast readings will give you an idea of how effective the iris is: With it disabled and operating in Natural mode, peak contrast measured 615:1. Iris Mode 1 raised that reading to 979:1, and Iris 2 pushed it even higher to 1072:1.
Gamma performance was best with all the “bells and whistles” shut down. Figure 4 shows the best gamma, taken with the iris disabled and Gamma adjustments set to –1. The measure curve isn’t completely linear, but works out to 2.46 — about midway between what you’d want for video and for film playback. If there is a flaw with this projector, it’s in how gamma tracks above 60% white — not clipping, but essentially straightening out. Some tweaks in the Custom Gamma menu should fix that.
As for color reproduction, the PLV-Z700 has a wide color gamut that is noticeably shifted towards yellow. Figure 5 shows the projector gamut plotted against the BT.709 color space. This is covered 100%, but the projector’s yellow shift pulls cyan and magenta coordinates off quite a bit. Blue and red are slightly oversaturated, too.
Figure 6. The PLV-Z700 covers 100% of the BT.709 color space and then some.
VIDEO QUALITY
The next step was to check out how well the Z700 processed interlaced video content, both 480i and 1080i. The results? This projector hardly slowed down as it breezed through the suite of deinterlacing and film mode tests on the standard Realta HQV DVD. It picked up on 3:2 cadences immediately and also handled a few oddball cadences nicely. The mixed video title crawl over film test also came out clean.
480i isn’t too hard to handle, but 1080i content requires a bit more processing power. Even so, the PLV-Z700 handled the HQV Blu-ray video resolution and film resolution test charts just fine with no evidence of “bobbing” frames together — something I honestly expected to see happen in this projector, given its low cost. The 1080i “jaggies” tests also came through cleanly.
My final task was to spin up a couple of movies and sit back to evaluate detail, grayscale rendering, and shadow detail. No Country is an excellent Blu-ray pressing and perfect for testing grayscale performance, particularly chapter 5 through 7 as Josh Brolin frantically tries to stay one step ahead of the malevolent Javier Bardem.
The scenes at the two hotels and the escape through the city and to Mexico are shot in a very high-contrast style with deep shadows. You can barely see Bardem’s character coming around the building after shooting Brolin in the leg and approaching the truck behind which Brolin is hiding. This was a real torture test for the Z700: Dynamic iris or not, it worked hard to show as much detail as it did, which was more than I expected.
Mission Impossible III also has a compelling nighttime scene (Chapter 2) as the Force members try to escape a pursuing helicopter through a windmill farm. Colors were bright and popped, and shadow detail was most of the way there. Chapter 8 features thee long trucking shot of Vatican stairs that drive deinterlacing circuits crazy (no sweat for Sanyo, though) and the kidnapping of bad guy Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Camera shots alternate between the well-lit reception with colorfully dressed women and the underground where Ving Rhames and Tom Cruise pull off the identity switch. Again, shadow detail was not as rich as I’d like to see, but better than I would expect from an LCD projector in this price range. And color quality was excellent throughout both clips, particularly at low luminance levels.
CONCLUSION
Sanyo’s PLV-Z700 isn’t going to blow you away on picture quality alone, like some very expensive high-end HT projectors can. But it is a strong performer nonetheless, with very good contrast, good dynamic range, accurate color rendering, and a top-notch 1080i/1080p processor.
That combination of features (particularly the deinterlacing) is a big surprise at this price point and makes the PLV-Z700 an exceptional deal, one which will inevitably lead to more aggressive price cuts among competing 3LCD and single-chip DLP 1080p projectors. (Pair it with a Blu-ray player and stop dreaming, already!)
