As if Europe didn’t have enough to brag about with the World Cup being in Germany, but now they get three new DLP projectors from Acer today as well! The PH730 Home Cinema Projector wins the trophy here; sporting a WXGA (1280 x 768) native resolution, 1200 ANSI Lumens brightness, and a 2500:1 contrast ratio. This 16:9 widescreen projector can display an entire soccer field as it projects up to a 300 in. diagonal image.

The other two projectors, the PD525PW and the PD527D will make for an even match. With both being seeded in the XGA (1024 x 768) bracket, the PD527D is shining bright at 3000 ANSI Lumens and a 2000:1 contrast ratio having to square off against the PD525PW’s 2700 ANSI Lumens brightness and 2000:1 contrast ratio. While the PD525PW isn’t as bright, is does have a home-field advantage with it’s 802.11g wireless functionality.

[via Engadget]

Marantz has officially begun shipping their VP-11S1 1080p home cinema projector recently. The VP-11S1 is the newest High Definition 1080p projector to be released in an ever-growing number of powerhouse widescreen 1080p projectors. This single chip DLP projector offers a home cinema-friendly 700 ANSI Lumens and an amazingly high 6500:1 contrast ratio. Marantz, known for manufacturing high quality home cinema is releasing the VP-11S1 for the first time since development five years ago in Japan and eventually elsewhere.

[via Marantz]

Benq has just released the PB8263 office projector to certain markets in the world. Though, with specifications like these, it’s hard to believe that the BenQ PB8263 can be considered an office projector; still, there is plenty of functionality in the PB8263 that you could use it for just about any purpose. With a native XGA (1024 x 768) resolution and its birghtness of 4000 ANSI Lumens, a 2000:1 contrast ratio and 16.7 million colors, this is going to be a very popular projector for a long time. A wide range of connectivity allows you to hook multiple input sources into the projector including DVI and Component RCA for viewing High Definition content. While not the most portable projector weighing in at 7.9 lbs, it’s not too particularly heavy on the office budget either with an MSRP of $3399 USD.

[via mobilewhack.com]

One of the more interesting projectors announced recently comes from the other side of the world. Computeractive is running a story about the Israeli based company Explay who has announced the creation of a tiny nano-projector that plugs into your cell phone, digital camcorder, or other mobile media devices to display images stored on the device. While still only in development, they have had enough success that they intend to introduce these nano-projectors into the marketplace in the first half of 2007. This nano-projector uses lasers to produce an eye-safe image with a 7 ~ 35 in. diagonal, while the projector itself is much smaller, measuring the size of a matchbox. Projectors are getting smaller and smaller by the day.

You can’t always put your projector in the perfect spot, or maybe you can, but the perfect spot doesn’t create a perfect image. Instead of a rectangular and uniform image, you see your image as a bizarre trapezoid, distorting your projection. These trapezoids are shaped like the central stone in a wedge stone arch, called keystones. Those keystones are actually the “key” to holding the arch together, but with projectors, they can make a presentation fall apart.

As long as you place your projector at an angle to the projection screen, you’ll always end up with a keystone. There are two different types of keystones: Horizontal and Vertical. Depending on where you place your projector you may only get one or possibly both keystones. Most projectors today can easily fix these skewed images with a feature called keystone correction. It is important to know how each of these keystone images are created so as to place your projector in an optimal position.

Vertical Keystones

When a projector is mounted or placed either above or below the center of a projection screen, the projector will create an image that is wider on the top than on the bottom, or vice versa. This is actually the most common keystone encountered because of the popularity of ceiling mounting a projector. If we were to mount a projector on the ceiling without adjusting the keystone and project a regular 4:3 image, it would look like this:

As you can see, the picture is skewed. If it were a spreadsheet or PowerPoint, it would most likely be somewhat illegible. By adjusting the vertical keystone, you can easily return the image to its proper look. After a 15 degree correction, the above image returns to its proper perspective:

Horizontal Keystones

Less common than vertical keystones are horizontal keystones. Horizontal keystones occur when a projector is placed at an angle either to the right or left of the projection screen. Since most projectors are mounted directly in front of a screen, this is often a lesser used feature. Still, you can’t always predict your projection environments, and may need to adjust the horizontal keystone. An example of a horizontal keystone would be to take the projected picture above and project it from the left of a projection screen to get this resulting image:

Again, with a simple adjustment of 15 degrees, the image would return to its proper perspective.

Horizontal and Vertical Keystones

If the projector is placed in an awkward place, both a horizontal and vertical keystone may occur at the same time. The resulting image is skewed to a terrible picture:

Still, as with before, we can easily adjust the keystone corrections for both the horizontal keystone and vertical keystone and return the image to its proper perspective.

Conclusion

As demonstrated above, it is very important to choose a projector that has keystone correction functionality. While not all projectors have horizontal keystone correction, most decent ones do at least have vertical keystone correction. When reading the specifications for a projector, be sure to weigh its features into your final decision on which one to choose.

Every image a projector creates consists of thousands of little dots called picture elements, or pixels. Like your digital camera, a projector’s resolution refers to the number of pixels in its display and it’s these pixels that display a wide range of colors to create the image. While digital cameras are classified by 5, 6, 7 or more megapixels, projectors are classified as SVGA, XGA, UXGA and several others. Also like with digital cameras, the more pixels you have, the more clear your images are and the more you can see. Resolution is generally the most important factor in buying a projector, and it’s important to thoroughly understand why.

4:3 Projector Resolutions

Defining resolution is very easy. A resolution is the number of horizontal pixels and vertical pixels in a display, often preceded by an acronym. Today’s entry level resolution is the SVGA (800 x 600) resolution; SVGA is a good resolution for presenting PowerPoint slides that do not have very detailed images or small font text. SVGA is also very good at projecting low quality video or SDTV. SVGA projectors also tend to be the cheapest, with some priced as low as $500 USD. Depending on what you are going to be using a projector for, you might only need an SVGA projector, and from there, you can decide on what other features you need in a projector.

While SVGA is the entry level resolution for a projector, it is quickly being replaced by the XGA (1024 x 768) resolution. Because it is becoming cheaper to manufacture XGA projectors, XGA will quickly phase out SVGA as the new entry level projector resolution. Coincidentally, most personal computer desktops also use XGA by default, making it easier to match up a projector’s native resolution with the desktop resolution. Matching resolutions is very important when using a projector for reasons we will look at. Because of the widespread use of XGA as a format in applications and on webpages, it is an excellent choice for a resolution. Ever wonder what it meant when a webpage had a footnote of “Best Viewed at (1024 x 768) or Higher” at the bottom of the page? That’s the resolution that the webpage was built around and at what resolution it is properly navigable. For example, aboutprojectors is best viewed at (1024 x 768) or higher. As stated before, higher resolutions can display more information in the same area; XGA appeals to people who use spreadsheets and small text in their presentations because it allows for more of a picture to be seen clearly.

Above XGA are the SXGA+ (1400 x 1050) and UXGA (1600 x 1200) resolutions. These resolutions are not in as widespread use as the SVGA and XGA resolutions, but they are slowly becoming less rare and are not restricted to just corporate environments anymore. The high amount of displayable pixels on these two resolutions allow for more data to be displayed on a projected image, much more. UXGA displays almost 250% more data than a XGA projector. While SXGA+ and UXGA offer high resolution images, they come at a very high cost, with the least expensive SXGA+ projectors starting at around $5,000 USD.

16:9 Projector Resolutions

For home theaters and other entertainment purposes, there is completely different aspect ratio than that of office projectors. Since films are displayed on a screen that is wider than it is tall, a special kind of projector is needed to display a widescreen image. For every 16 horizontal pixels, there are 9 vertical pixels, giving the ratio of the screen 16:9. There are several 16:9 formats, ranging from WXGA to HD, available on the market right now. WXGA (1280 x 720) is the most common widescreen format and is considered to be a HDTV standard. WXGA is very popular for projecting DVD movies and video games.

Above WXGA is the HD (1920 x 1080) resolution used for projecting High-Definition content such as the new Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs, as well as some television broadcasts. While relatively new and somewhat expensive, this is probably the best quality resolution for displaying native widescreen content.

But what are native and maximum resolutions?

When looking though aboutprojectors, you’ll see that we list two different resolutions for most projectors, and we’ve also mentioned native and maximum resolutions earlier. These two phrases often cause much confusion as to what they really mean. But they are really simple once explained. The most simple way to define native and maximum resolutions is to say that a native resolution is the resolution that a projector’s display chip has on it physically, and a maximum resolution is the highest resolution that chip can display through scaling and compressing the image. High maximum resolutions are never as good as high native resolutions. If you were to project this digital photo that measured 1600 x 1200 pixels:

Now, on an SVGA (800 x 600) native resolution projector with a maximum resolution of UXGA (1600 x 1200), the projector would scale and compress the image down to something like this:

As a side note, it should be noted that this photo really isn’t 1600 x 1200, but is scaled down to a more manageable size, however, for purposes of this article, the amount of scaling done is the same as what a SVGA projector would do with a full 1600 x 1200 image.

To finish the point, if you were to take that same 1600 x 1200 photo and put it on a UXGA (1600 x 1200) native resolution projector you would see that since there is no scaling, the image would look exactly the same. So while you may use the maximum resolution occasionally, it is not recommended that you rely on it as your primary way of doing presentations, as it can seriously impact the quality of a presentation if not used properly.
Sometimes, you’ll need to scale and image either up or down, and a loss of quality can not be avoided. While you can’t control the size of your presentation content all the time, it is good to plan ahead for what you will be presenting the majority of the time. There are plenty of other less known or obscure resolutions out there as well, but the ones listed here are the common and the ones you’ll likely have used the most.

When talking about projectors and which is the best type of projector, words like DLP, LCD, LCoS, SXRD, and DILA are some of the most confusing terms used to describe a projector. Since there is such a variety of projectors on today’s market, finding the best type is not as easy as it may seem. Each of these terms refers to a chip or multiple chips inside of a projector and each of these chips are different than the other ones in very unique ways. So what are the advantages of these displays and are there any disadvantages as well? To answer that, we’ll have to look at each display type individually, starting with a brief summary of each technology.

LCD

You’re probably familiar with the term “LCD” since you might have an LCD computer monitor on your laptop or desktop, an LCD watch, an LCD television, or an LCD on your MP3 player. Similar to all those other electronics, an LCD projector will create an image by passing light through three panels of liquid crystal, one for each of the primary colors, Red, Green, and Blue (RGB). From these 3 color panels, LCD projectors can produce an image of around 16.7 million colors.

DLP

Developed by Texas Instruments, DLP technology consists of an optical semiconductor chip known as a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD). This DMD consists of up to 2 million tiny mirrors that tilt on microscopic hinges to reflect light either towards or away from the lens. Depending on the tilt of the mirrors, they can be used to control the amount of light passing through the lens and allow for deep shades of color and very rich blacks. A single chip projector can produce over 16.7 million colors and a three chip DLP projector can produce over 35 trillion colors.

LCoS

Liquid Crystal on Silicon is relatively new technology and is used by only a few manufacturers and used mostly for home theater and large venue projection. However, despite not being in widespread use, it has some very powerful characteristics. LCoS and its proprietary variations of SXRD and DILA offer some of the sharpest images and highest contrasts of colors of any projector on the market. LCoS is combination of both LCD and DLP technology. Using a highly reflective metal covered by liquid crystals, images are created by projecting light on to the reflective surface where the crystals open and close to reflect the light through the projection lens.

Each display type has its advantages, and most of these advantages are shared between projectors. There is no “bad” or “worst” type of display since they all serve unique purposes. We can examine the advantages and disadvantages of both.

Advantages and Disadvantages of LCD Projectors

After looking around our website, you’ll see that LCD projectors make up the majority of projectors listed. LCD projectors are a popular choice for several reasons, really. LCD projectors can be outfitted for any projection purpose; from portable projectors weighing only a few pounds to large venue projectors for theaters weighing several hundred pounds. LCD panels can be cheaply manufactured as well, and that keeps the cost of LCD projectors very low, and LCD projectors are some of the brightest projectors on the market.

While LCD projectors are very popular, they have some issues that some users can find annoying. The most common problem users have with LCD projectors is small lines that form grids between the individual pixels of an image. This is commonly referred to as the “Screen Door Effect” because it can be like looking at an image through a screen door. While this also creates a sharper image with less blur, and when displaying data or still images, it’s usually not a problem. Usually, this screen door effect is most noticeably seen in video and moving images as well as closely examining an image. The other drawbacks of LCD projectors sometimes are dead pixels. If one of the millions of tiny little pixels dies, it will often project a square that does not change colors on the projection screen. It can be distracting to the projection audience if there are several of these dead pixels spread out over the screen, but it is usually a problem associated with the age of the projector, and most projectors can go for years without a single problem. Historically, there are several other problems with LCD projectors such as “ghosting” also known as “motion blur” where an image will stay on the screen after it had changed and causes a blurry picture momentarily, as well as having poor color saturation and contrasts. However, in recent years, these issues are pretty much non-existent since the technology has evolved and is continuing to evolve. Possibly in the near future, even the screen door effect and dead pixels will be non-existent as well.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Single Chip DLP projectors

Today’s DLP projectors can be used similarly to LCD projectors in nearly every projection environment. Texas Instruments has come a long way to improve DLP technology in recent years and the performance gap between LCD and DLP is very narrow. While they are very similar in capabilities, a single chip DLP projector usually offers two advantages over LCD projectors in today’s market. Current DLP projectors offer higher contrasts and than LCD projectors due to their design, and this usually allows for better viewing of video and images over LCD projectors.

However, while the saturation may be better than LCD, there is still a little bit of a gap between the pixels on the projected image. These gaps are not as noticeable as the screen door effect in LCD projectors, but if you look close enough, you’ll probably be able to see it. The other problem unique to single chip DLP projector is the “Rainbow Effect” when a viewer will sometimes see colors that are out of place on a projected image. Inside of single chip DLP projectors is a color wheel rotating thousands of times a minute to give a projected image color. When the color wheel spins to change colors, some viewers may be able to see the changing of colors. This can be distracting to a viewer and possibly making the projection unwatchable.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Three Chip DLP projectors

Instead of using a color wheel to create color, some large venue and home theater DLP projectors consist of three individual DMD chips and a color filtering prism to create a color image, eliminating the need for the spinning wheel. By producing each of the three colors on separate chips, there are no rainbow artifacts, and some three chip projectors can create up to 35 trillion colors. Most digital films you see today in a cinema are projected using a three chip DLP projector.

However, it does come at quite a cost, with the cheapest three chip projectors costing about $15,000 USD. While that may seem expensive, it may very well be worth it to minimize screen door and eliminate rainbow effects.

Advantages and Disadvantages of LCoS

While having the smallest niche in the projector market, LCoS projectors and its variations SXRD and DILA actually offer the best of both LCD and DLP projectors, with neither of the technical short-comings. There are no screen door or rainbow effects with an LCoS projector. Images are sharp are highly saturated and often tout high contrasts. And while the LCoS projector market is very small at the moment, it will grow expansively in the coming years.

Though, like three chip DLP projectors, LCoS projectors are very expensive. Current LCoS projectors are about as expensive as a three chip DLP projector, coming in at about $15,000 for the cheapest. Still, the picture can justify the expense, because both three chip DLP and LCoS projectors are amazing in areas of Home Cinema.

Conclusion

Depending on your needs in a projector, you should easily be able to decide on what kind of display type would best suit them. While the disadvantages stated can be problematic, screen door and rainbow effects are only a problem for a small percentage of people. The majority of people do not notice either. Still, it is important to note that someone may notice eventually, and if they do, you’ll have an explanation for them. Good Luck and Happy Projecting!

Bringing the cinema experience into your home through home cinema is gaining amazing popularity these days, and why shouldn’t it? By creating a home cinema in your own house, you avoid all the unpleasant experiences of the real movie cinema. Teenagers who talk on their cell phones during a film, children who are loud and won’t behave, expensive candy and soda, and getting a neck-cramping seat in the orchestra section can all be forgotten as you enjoy Hollywood films in the comfort of your own home with your family. Well, almost. Even in your own home, your teenager can still talk on their cell phone, your children probably misbehave, candy and soda are expensive even at the bulk discount warehouse, and if you choose the wrong projector, you can have worse than neck-cramps. While we can’t do anything about cell phones, your children, or the price of candy and soda, we can help you to decide on how to choose a home cinema projector.

Choosing a home cinema projector is much more difficult than choosing a data projector or a portable projector because there isn’t as much flexibility with home cinema projectors. Chances are, you’re going to place your home cinema projector in a fixed location and run some cables to it from your DVD player or other video source, turn it on and watch a movie or sports game. While it sounds easy, there are some technical aspects that you’ll have to consider.

In truth, creating a home cinema requires quite a bit of planning on your part. There are lots of hidden aspects of home cinemas that you might not have thought about. Depending on how immersive of a home cinema experience you wish to have, a projector might be the least of your worries. Though it’s beyond the scope of this article, we should mention that projection screens, sound systems, seating, and many other aspects of a home cinema should also be given priority for yours. Since those individual concerns require there own articles, we will concentrate strictly on the projector.

As with portable and office projectors, features are what differentiate one home cinema projector from another. Brightness, resolution, aspect ratio, and everything other specification should help you decide on which projector to choose. You’ll obviously need certain features while you may not use others, but it will be easy to decide on what features you do need, or at least the core features.

Choosing the Best Resolution

Resolution is the single most important specification of a home cinema projector. The resolution of a projector determines how sharp a picture is as well as the aspect ratio of the picture, and whether or not a projector is HDTV compatible. Most home cinema projectors today sport a WXGA (1280 x 720) resolution, also known as 720p in HDTV specifications. 720p is provides widescreen viewing at a 16:9 aspect ratio, allowing for you to see more than your traditional 4:3 aspect ratio SDTV. Most widescreen DVDs today will provide a 720p picture, as well as some HDTV programming. One of the other benefits of a 720p projector is that most of them will also display the 1080i HDTV format through some scaling. This allows for some flexibility in what you watch, though scaling does cause for some image degradation, whether you scale up or down from the original image.

The new widescreen home cinema resolution is the HD (1920 x 1080p), or simply 1080p. 1080p provides the best image quality for High Definition programming currently. While it is still not widely used, it will become the new standard format in the future. If you intend on buying a future-proof projector that will not go obsolete any time soon, then 1080p is the way to go. Both the new HD-DVD and Blu-Ray media devices will be supporting 1080p and using relying on it heavily. However, while 1080p is the best of widescreen home cinema, it does come at a heavy cost, with most 1080p projectors being several thousand dollars.

While there are other resolutions out there, they are either obsolete or special circumstance use. For home cinemas, there really are only the two options mentioned above that are considered for use in today’s home cinemas.

Choosing the Correct Brightness

After you choose the best resolution for your projector, brightness will be your next consideration. While it’s thought that brighter is better, it’s not exactly true. Bright projectors are good in home cinemas where there is a lot of ambient light, but bright projectors in dark environments can cause eyestrain or just be unwatchable. Luckily, even if you overcompensate for your home cinema, most projectors have brightness adjustment so that you can adjust it to a proper level. For long projection distances, a brighter projector is also necessary, though, this is only a consideration for a small amount of home cinemas since most projectors are placed about 15 ~ 20 ft. away from the screen at most.

Looking at a Lens

While there are hundreds of minor features in a home cinema projector, there are still some more prominent features to consider such as the throw distance of the projector. Since most home cinema projectors will be in a fixed location, and that location is probably already determined even before the projector is bought, it is important to measure how large the projected image will be at a given distance. Usually, throw ratios are given in a screen size to distance format.

Lens shift goes hand-in-hand with throw ratio as being a necessity. Depending on where you mount your projector, you may need to move the picture up or down to accommodate for the mount. To move a picture without moving the projector requires a lens shift, either horizontal or vertical depending on the mounting. So be sure to look closely if at a projector’s lens and if there are multiple lenses available to allow for it.

Still, even after you consider all the other features of a home cinema projector, it is highly recommended that if you are building a serious home cinema, that you hire a professional to do the construction and installation. When you consider wiring and mountings, it may be a bigger job than you can handle by yourself.

You can find a complete list of Home Cinema Projectors by manufacturer listed here.

With so many portable projectors on the market today, buying the right one can seem just as difficult as something like buying a new car. Like a new car, you have to choose the one that best suits your needs; and also like a new car, there are several different sizes, features, manufacturers, and prices. So should you look for the same qualities in a projector as in a car?

Absolutely. You’ll want a high quality projector with all the right features and for the right price; the exact same things you would want in a car. But what are the features you should be looking for in a portable projector?

There are actually five general characteristics of a portable projector that can narrow down your choices to the right projector. If you can decide on how bright your portable projector should be, its size and weight, its resolution, any miscellaneous features you may want, and finally its cost, then you can easily find a smaller range of projectors that would be suitable for you.

Brightness

Deciding on how bright your portable projector should be requires you to predict your projection environments. Ambient light and audience size are the two determinant factors in projector brightness. Large audiences require larger images which can only be provided by a brighter projector, and well lit rooms also require a bright projector to clearly display images.

A projector’s brightness is measured in ANSI lumens. While most of today’s projectors are now starting at 1000 or more lumens, the absolute minimum a road warrior needs would be a 1500 lumens projector to accommodate for the varying environments they’ll be presenting in. 1500 ANSI lumens should be adequate for an audience of up to 8 to 10 people in a small conference room with low to medium ambient lighting. Above that, you’re probably going to need an 1800 to 2500 lumens projector for larger meeting rooms or lecture halls. For larger venues such as auditoriums, 3000 lumens might be a minimum to start at.

Weight and Size

Another neccessity with choosing a portable projector is finding the smallest and lightest one available. While it is possible to carry around a 7 lb. or heavier projector, every extra pound that you add can be felt, especially since you won’t be carrying around just the projector. When you add in the weight of your laptop, luggage, and all the other accessories and miscellaneous things you bring when you travel, 7 lbs. becomes much heavier than you may think. The target weight for an ultra portable projector is roughly 2 ~ 5 lbs, anything heavier than that might become cumbersome and bulky. Remember to factor in the projector’s accessories when choosing, since there may be an extra pound or two between the remote, power cord, cables, and any other accessories.

Weight is generally proportional to the size of a projector, so when a projector is light, it is also small. Small projectors can sometimes fit into laptop bags for extra convenience or into other small compartments. Unfortunately, size is also generally proportional to how powerful a projector is. If you require an ultra bright projector with lots of features, chances are, it’s going to be much bigger and bulkier than a lower lumens portable projector.

Resolution

When you need to provide clear and sharp presentation, a high resolution projector should be a top consideration. There will be some situations that require you have at least a native XGA (1024 x 768) resolution minimum, such as spreadsheets, high resolution photographs, and most detail intensive applications. While most projectors today have at least a native XGA resolution, it is possible to do certain presentations with a lower SVGA (800 x 600) resolution, however, PowerPoint presentations tend to have larger graphics and words that are not distorted by a low resolution display. A higher native resolution projector can display both high and low resolution graphics, whereas a low native resolution projector can only display low resolution graphics and will scale and distort high resolution content. Unfortunately, higher resolution projectors also tend to cost more, though today, even the native XGA resolution projectors have fallen in price to the point where XGA can almost be considered the entry level resolution.

Other Features

After deciding on all the major specifications for the projector, you can then decide on all the other smaller features of the projector. There are hundreds of small features on projectors, so finding one with everything you need may not be easy. Some of the most popular features to look for are DLP or LCD display types, HDTV compatibility, international voltage compatibility, multiple input and output connections, noise level, keystone correction and a wide range of accessories. But those are just some of the most popular features; there are plenty of other features that are useful in their own way. It’s best to look around at a wide variety of projectors and their features to see which each has to offer, because some of these features may be vital for your presentations.

Cost

The very last factor that determines what portable projector you decide on should be the cost of it. While it is important that you do not break the bank on a projector, portable projectors only vary a few hundred dollars between low-end and very high-end projectors. A few hundred dollars isn’t that big of a deal when the range of portable projectors already varies from $1,000 ~ $2,000 USD for some of the best quality portables. Depending on what features you have decided on from the above specifications, the projector you are looking for could cost very little or very much, but the important thing is that you don’t give up the things you need just because of a price tag.