HDTV Home Theater DLP projector setup & review - BenQ PB6200

 The fourth article explores the reasons behind my decision to buy this particular DLP projection unit; here's a recap of my main requirements:

-a BIG screen for my money, not just something a foot or two bigger than my 27" TV
-something unobtrusive that wouldn't dominate the room when not in use
-a bright, sharp, high contrast picture without screen door effect (SDE)
-something with a cost that didn't require a second mortgage
-a display that didn't deteriorate significantly over time
-a watchable picture in ambient lighting conditions
-a reasonably wide viewing angle
-XGA (1024x768) resolution
-RGB computer input

I placed it on my coffee table, deployed the screen, and closed the window blinds. This is it, I thought, as I turned the power switch on and removed the lens cap - did I buy a turkey or is this going to work for me? A light started blinking, the dual fan array suddenly revved up to a high speed, then settled down to a quiet level. At first there was nothing on the screen and I thought uh oh, it's DOA ... then a faint blue screen with a large BenQ logo appeared and I thought uh oh, it's not at all bright. My trepidation soon evaporated as I realized it was gradually ramping up the brightness and, in a about 30 seconds, I had a bright, deeply saturated blue picture on my 10 foot screen - wow!

A 'searching for source' icon had also appeared in the lower right corner of the screen so I connected my laptop to the RGB input connector and, there it was ... REALLY BIG EMAIL!

Not only was it big, but it was very bright and very sharp, with no visible pixelation from where I sat. I walked up close to the screen and could see the individual tiny little mirror reflections that form the pixel structure, but from about 3 or 4 feet back they merged into a solid, smooth screen display. 

I tested the viewing angle from all the seats in the room, including the floor cushions, and there was no dimming of the screen from any view angle - unlike the rear projection screens I have seen. Even a very exaggerated viewing angle from outside the room through a door was no problem.

At normal viewing distances, even with a 10 foot screen, there is no visible pixelation that I could detect. I have heard others describing the display as being 'hard edged', and I can understand and see their point, but I found the sharpness to be just great, far surpassing my expectations. Appreciation and interpretation of light is a highly individual thing and I'm sure not everyone will agree with my evaluation. The photo above, taken from about a 15 foot distance from the screen, is an actual picture of this article composition as I write it in Frontpage - you can click on it to get the original, larger picture (in a new browser window). 

Please keep in mind all the screen photos are JPEG compressed images shot with our Kodak CX6230 2 megapixel digital camera, set on AUTO without any aperature adjustments to compensate for low light levels. It only provides an approximation of the experience, and the pictures are not nearly as good as what you would see standing in front of the screen. The object at the bottom of the screen is the top of a chair (plus shadow) that I placed, just to give you some perspective on the screen size.

The picture on the right is a closeup of the screen from about 6 inches. You can see how close the Texas Instruments engineers were able to position the individual micro mirrors - there is very little screen door effect even from that distance. This is the 'G' character in the REALLY BIG EMAIL! phrase above. You can also clearly see the font anti-aliasing at the bottom of the letter, where the micromirrors are partially turned off to create smooth edges.

For around $30, I picked up a 10 foot diagonal bright white roll-up screen (gain of about 1.2) that will cover the end wall in my great room. You can find rolled projector screen material at Ebay. I am converting it to a motorized, remote controlled, retractable unit, using X10 switch modules and a motorized drapery controller (for more info on the incredibly useful x10 technology, see our home page). I bought a chain driven blind fixture from a local hardware store, cut off the vinyl blind, hacksawed the horizontal aluminum roller tube in half, and inserted an 8 ft. piece of anodized aluminum tubing to extend the roller, for a total screen width of 110". I'll be attaching the #3142 motorized drapery controller from Smarthome.com. The projector could be concealed in a light fixture array hung from the ceiling, so that the whole system would be quite unobtrusive when not being used. Here are some pictures of the drop down screen partially unfurled (left) and fully retracted (right):

 
 Now you see it ...                           Now you don't ...

I found the remote control very simple to use, with a user friendly on-screen display of the adjustment parameters. It was also interesting to note that the raster display can be inverted four different ways, to provide for front OR rear projection (mirror image), ceiling OR table mount (ceiling mount is turned upside down so that top mounted controls like zoom and focus are still available). It includes a keystone adjustment for making the screen perfectly rectangular, but I had no problem with this; it worked perfectly right out of the box as long as the projector was centered correctly. The image focus is sharp and intensity is very uniform, from corner to corner, and the picture is almost perfectly rectangular.

I then put the "Two Towers" DVD from the Lord Of The Rings film series into my Dell Latitude laptop and fired up my WinDVD Platinum software DVD player to see what that was like. I particularly like chapter 14, where you have Treebeard the Ent striding through the forest carrying Merry and Pippin, the great full screen closeup of Gollum giving Frodo the advice not to give up the 'precious', and one my most favorite scenes of all time - the trolls opening the gates of Mordor (a great test of the low frequency bass response of my Sony STR-995 1 kilowatt RMS 8 channel Dolby sound system).

Well folks, it was terrific! I know I'm repeating myself, but I'll say it again ... sharp and bright, with a huge picture that absorbs your attention, just as if you were at the movies (except the popcorn is better:). The bright bar across the top of the picture is actually the bright sunlight outside coming through the gap between the top of the screen and my window frame. You can see that even with quite a lot of ambient light in the room (coming through other windows and doors), the screen is still highly watchable. These pictures were not taken in blackout conditions; there were no room lights on but there was enough light filtering in that I could easily see what I was doing.

I looked hard for the infamous 'rainbow effect' characteristic of single chip projectors, but I could only induce it with a very rapid, extreme eye movement when there was a lot of action on the screen. This is something I would never do under normal viewing conditions, so it is a non-issue for me.

We also bought a copy of the Academy Award winning documentary Winged Migration in widescreen DVD format.  In my opinion, this film is a milestone in the progress of film development, and will go down in history as an audio-visual masterpiece. I never thought a documentary could be an emotional experience, but this one is. The included featurette "The Making of " is almost as good as the movie itself. Don't miss this one folks, it will amaze you, your family and your friends when shown on the big screen.

I connected my stand-alone DVD player to the S Video input and got a pretty decent picture too. I later bought a 'break out' VGA cable that allowed me to connect my external DVD player to use the component video input of the projector (it's on the VGA connector port). This gave me a better picture yet, though not as good as playing a DVD directly from my laptop.

I also connected the S-video output from my cable converter, but it gave the worst picture of all. The interlacing artifacts were highly visible and it was very fuzzy. In the next article, I'll discuss the significant improvement I experienced by running it through an analog to digital converter, directly into my laptop via the digital firewire input.

This is where the processing power of an HTPC (Home Theater PC) comes in to play. We still watch a fair amount of plain old NTSC programming, so I'm going to see what I can do to improve the quality of it on a big screen. With good deinterlacing and line doubling techniques, I should be able to produce a more watchable picture. I've ordered an inexpensive re-certified 2 Ghz widescreen WXGA 'multimedia' laptop to use as a dedicated HTPC. The HTPC experience will be the basis for another forthcoming article; stay tuned ...

Author's note May 29/04: The new WXGA laptop has arrived; preliminary results with WinDVD Platinum were excellent, more to come soon. The improvements in the latest version of WinDVD Platinum are quite remarkable, especially the smooth reverse play, screen border blackout, and Trimension anti-aliasing.