Projectors that seem to do miracles

[admin_exported]

As I have already said in a post on one of the other forums, I hugely enjoyed the show, and was mightily impressed by the What Hifi 'Transformers' demo. In fact I was so impressed by the picture quality, even from a standard-def (but upscaled) DVD, that I reckon they must of been secretly using some sort of magical trickery round the back! How else could a DVD provide enough pixels to create such a good image that was so huge? TVs that are much, much smaller struggle to make (upscaled) standard-def content look anywhere near as good. And I was on the front row in the demo! Can anyone explain how a projector can produce images that are so much better than a television, and much bigger, with the same number of pixels?

 

[Anonymous]

For me there were too many of the tv 'big guns' missing from the show, but I have to admit the WHF demo made it almost worth the £15 admission. The sound in the second half was truly awesome, although I have to agree with Thirman in the show forum when he said he prefered the visual look of the SD first half. It really had that Cinema presentation. Made me want to find a Pearl & Dean advert dvd - if they exist!

Choc ice, anyone? Kia-Ora?

 

[Clare Newsome]

[quote user="BenjaminHart"]
As I have already said in a post on one of the other forums, I hugely enjoyed the show, and was mightily impressed by the What Hifi 'Transformers' demo. In fact I was so impressed by the picture quality, even from a standard-def (but upscaled) DVD, that I reckon they must of been secretly using some sort of magical trickery round the back! How else could a DVD provide enough pixels to create such a good image that was so huge? TVs that are much, much smaller struggle to make (upscaled) standard-def content look anywhere near as good. And I was on the front row in the demo! Can anyone explain how a projector can produce images that are so much better than a television, and much bigger, with the same number of pixels?

[/quote]

No trickery, just a damn fine upscaling DVD player - that's one of the many reasons we gave the Marantz DV7001 a Product of the Year Award!

 

[Anonymous]

Thankyou Claire. Which projector were you using? That must surely take some credit for the picture quality? The thing is though, even with the damn fine upscaling Marantz DV7001 (and the Toshiba HD DVD player), the resolution wasn't any more than 1920 by 1080 pixels, and with the projected image being metres wide (and with me sat in the front row), I still can't believe that I couldn't see any evidence of the pixels that made up the image (and the fact that the image was made up of pixels!)

Also, could you tell me if the projector was running at 24fps?

Nice one.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Well yes, it has to be said that a three-chip DLP projector that costs a cool £18,000 is going to make a difference (that'll be the sublime SIM2 C3X 1080), but the players in both cases were handling all the upscaling, not the projector. And yes, 24fps was in action.

I run a (far more modest!) projector at home, using an 80in screen we sit far too close to, and I have to say that apart from shocking SD TV sources (ITV, you know who you are), scaling/quality issues are surprisingly rare. But that's why we haven't owned a TV for four years!