Front Projectors

The top chart shows the PT-AE500U's gray scale relative to its color temperature at various levels of intensity, or brightness (20 IRE is dark gray; 100 IRE is bright white). The gray scale as set by the factory, in the 0 color-temperature mode and the cinema1 picture preset, measures just slightly cool with dark and bright images. After making adjustments using the Photo Research PR-650, the gray scale measures slightly more accurate, within 175 kelvin of D6500, the accurate color temperature, across the entire range and within 297 K at the lowest IRE. It seems that either bright and dark images can be accurate or mid-level images can be accurate, but not both. The bottom chart shows the gray scale (or color temperature) relative to the color points of the display's red, green, and blue liquid crystal panels. Red (x=0.348, y=0.338), green (x=0.286, y=0.661), and blue (x=0.148, y=0.048) are slightly off of those specified by SMPTE. Green is oversaturated, as is red (but just slightly). Blue is slightly purple. The light output was approximately 19.8 foot-lamberts on a 6-foot-wide Stewart Studiotek 130 (1.3-gain) screen in the low lamp setting and 22.4 ft-L in the high lamp setting on the same screen. The display has excellent DC restoration and an extremely accurate color decoder. The PT-AE500U displays approximately 480 lines (per picture height) with NTSC sources. HD resolution was slight harder to determine, due to apparent scaling artifacts. Regardless, using our Leader LT-446 HD generator, the projector seems to be capable of resolving 720p and 1080i signals out to the limits of its 1,280-by-720 chips, although it may be slightly less.—GM