Panasonic has offered its Cinema Color Management system in its earlier
projectors. Basically, it allows you to adjust Color, Tint, and (color) Brightness at
up to eight points, then save those settings in one of three available Profile
memories that can be recalled at any time. In general, I recommend that this
feature, or any similar feature from other manufacturers designed to shift colors
by eye, particularly an untrained eye, be used sparingly, if at all.
There are two lamp settings, Normal and Eco-Mode. The projector's fan is quiet,
though it's clearly audible, unlike the virtually silent lamp in, say, the
Sony Pearl
.
The fan noise did not change when I switched between the two settings. Lamp
life is claimed to be approximately 2,000 hours.
Tech
The optical system of the PT-AE1000U is completely new, and includes a 16
element, aspherical glass lens. For a 100" diagonal (87" wide), 16:9 screen the
throw distance of this 2:1 zoom lens ranges from 9'10" to 19'4".
The projector's video circuitry, dubbed "Cinema Works Pro" by Panasonic,
incorporates 14-bit processing, a new LSI chip for scaling and deinterlacing, and
Dynamic Sharpness Control. The latter is said to sharpen "only the pixels in the
image areas where there is a small change in brightness level." I haven't made
much use of this feature, as test patterns indicated that Sharpness settings of
zero or minus one produce the most accurate results.
Panasonic's contrast optimizing Dynamic Iris does more than merely adjust the
iris alone; it adjusts the lamp power, iris, and gamma curve 60 times a second. In
my time so far with the projector (just over 100 hours), the Dynamic Iris was
never intrusive, either mechanically or optically. It did not "pump" the brightness
in any clearly visible way, was completely silent in operation, and did not result in
obvious brightness compression.
Panasonic carries its Smooth Screen technology forward from its earlier
projectors, which is now optimized for 1080p operation. Smooth Screen is
designed to reduce the LCD screen door effect, and appears to do this very
effectively, without softening the image in any clearly visible way. It is not
defeatable.
Summary of Contents for PT-AE1000U - LCD Projector - HD 1080p
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