Finally, the projector will accept and display not only 1080p/60 and other
common standard and high definition resolutions, but 1080p/24 as well. It frame-
triples it and displays it at 72Hz.
Performance
What sort of picture does the Panasonic produce? Exceptionally good. Initially,
however, it appeared to have a problem with grayscale tracking. None of the
Picture Modes, in their factory default settings, produced good measured results.
My first attempt at calibration, performed in the Cinema 3 mode (which initially
appeared to be the most promising option) didn't work out too well. It was
reasonably close to 6500K up to mid brightness, then rose slowly to about 7700K
at 100IRE. The 20IRE reading, about 6400K, was also plus green by a significant
amount.
But previous Panasonic projectors we've tested had excellent grayscale tracking,
so shortly before deadline for this report, I attacked the calibration controls again.
With 100+ hours on the lamp, I looked once more at the different Picture Modes
and decided that Cinema 1 might be a better starting point. It was. I was able to
get a result very close to the desired D6500 from 30IRE to 100IRE. The 20IRE
result was a little too red, but acceptable.
The improved grayscale did come at a cost: a loss of about 15% in available
brightness. The peak white reading dropped from just over 15foot-Lamberts to
12.8fL (using a full white field pattern on my 78-inch wide, 16:9, 1.3-gain, Stewart
Studiotek 130 screen). This post calibration light output is comfortable, though far
from exceptional.
In both of the above readings the lamp was set to Eco-Mode. Surprisingly, I
measured almost no peak output difference between the Eco-Mode and Normal
lamp settings. This suggests that the lamp mode switching in our sample might
be defective. But if so, which mode is it stuck in? At this point there's no way to
tell for certain.
The Panasonic's blacks are excellent (but only if you use the Dynamic Iris). With
the Dynamic Iris engaged, at just over 100 hours on the lamp following the final
calibration, I measured an excellent peak contrast ratio of 4267:1 in the Eco-
Mode lamp setting (12.8fL peak white, 0.003fL video black on my screen).
This measured peak contrast is well short of the impressive 11,000:1 Panasonic
claims in its literature (interestingly, there is no contrast ratio in the actual specs
listed in the user manual). But my readings were taken with the projector set up
to produce the best image. The conditions used to determine the specification
are unknown.
The contrast on the Panasonic is not as jaw-droppingly spectacular as the
contrast we've measured recently on several new projectors, notably the Sony
Summary of Contents for PT-AE1000U - LCD Projector - HD 1080p
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