HOME / shopping: How to be the best consumer you can be.

The Really Big PictureCan a digital projector turn my living room into a screening room?

By Josh LevinPosted Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007, at 7:01 AM ET

(Continued from page 2)

RSS

Related in Slate

Fred Kaplan explains how LCD and DLP systems work. In 2005, Kaplan exulted that it was finally the right time to buy an HDTV. Paul Boutin hasn't bought a television since 1991—can he find one he wants to buy? Boutin also wrote that a giant monitor is the best computer upgrade ever.

Performance: Big things come in small packages, too: The 110-inch picture was second only to the Epson. The Panasonic probably would have done better in a bigger room, or with an Excel spreadsheet. It was overmatched by high-definition football—the game looked pixelated, the colors oversaturated. A whiteout snowfall in Fargo turned blue around the edges, and Dark City had a greenish hue. The Panasonic's picture controls—brightness, contrast, etc.—don't offer much range for tweaking, either.

Recommended for: Traveling salesmen.

NEC VT695, $999
Specs: LCD; 2,500 ANSI lumens; 1024-by-768 native resolution.
Resembles: George Foreman Grill.
Features: Lightning-fast auto detection ensures that your movie will pop up as soon as you plug in the DVD player. The zoom and focus are very easy to adjust, and there's a loud (if tinny) internal speaker that eliminates the need for an external sound system. The biggest deficiency here is the on-screen menu system. The interface is not intuitive to navigate, and worse, the gigantic, opaque menu boxes sit in the middle of the screen, making it impossible to tweak the picture while you're watching. The NEC comes with a carrying case and handle, but its claims of portability seem far-fetched—it's too beefy to cart around for long periods of time.

Performance: At 2,500 ANSI lumens, this is by far the brightest of the lot. The luminous picture, which topped out at 106 inches diagonally, makes the NEC a joy to watch with the lights on. Consequently, it's an excellent choice for business types who need to light up a large conference room and homebodies who don't want to watch movies in total darkness. The superior brightness did wonders for Fargo—the whites looked their whitest—and for Finding Nemo, in which subtle tonal variations popped out. It didn't do as well with football, which suffered from the LCD projectors' chronic pixelation problem.

Recommended for: Movie watchers who want to give the occasional PowerPoint presentation; adults who are still afraid of the dark.

Optoma HD70, $999
Specs: DLP; 1,000 ANSI lumens: 1280-by-720 native resolution.
Resembles: Ionic air purifier.
Features: The Optoma is almost worth buying for the lovely light-up remote, which has dedicated buttons for each aspect ratio and source (HDMI, component, computer, etc.). It also comes with its own component cable—you can plug in and start watching DVDs right away. Each machine I surveyed includes a "keystone" control to straighten the picture when the projector's pointed at an angle. The Optoma's keystone, however, is one of the few that does a credible job fashioning the onscreen image into a rectangle. The focus dial is a bit sticky, making it hard to make adjustments without jostling the projector.

Performance: The projector's 1280-by-720 resolution did wonders for football—the picture was noticeably sharper than the competition. It was the worst of the pack on flesh tones, though. White faces took on a yellowish cast in television programming and in Fargo. The screen size—a max of 92 inches diagonally at 10.5 feet—was at the bottom end of the range, but I still got a nice big image when plugging in my computer.

Recommended for: Sports fans who watch lots of YouTube videos.

Mitsubishi HD1000, $995
Specs: DLP; 1,500 ANSI lumens; 1280-by-720 native resolution.
Resembles: Bose Wave radio.
Features: The Mitsubishi remote is even better than the Optoma's, with dedicated buttons for each source, aspect ratio, and individual picture controls (contrast, sharpness, etc.). It also has the best keystone controls of any projector; it's possible to get a rectangular picture from even a sharp angle. Handles on the zoom and focus dials make it easy to adjust the picture size.

Performance: The Mitsubishi blew away the competition on the football test—the sharp picture allowed you to pick up subtle details the other projectors missed, like stitching on a white knit cap and the players' jock-strap lines. (Or so I'm told.) Its superior contrast made a big difference on Dark City, revealing shadowy minutiae that were lost on the other machines. Since it's not as bright as the NEC, the whites didn't sparkle as much in Fargo, and I couldn't see as many of Finding Nemo's colors. My biggest disappointment with the Mitsubishi was that, despite having the same maximum screen dimensions as the Optoma (92 inches diagonally), the videos on my computer only showed up at two-thirds the size.

Recommended for: Me, and anyone else who's obsessed with sports. The Mitsubishi doesn't outshine the competition when it comes to DVDs, but since it laps the field on HDTV, this is your best bet if you want a machine for watching both movies and high-definition television.