Aha! Just when you thought you wouldn’t be seeing any more reviews of this excellent projector, here comes another one. This time Home Theater Magazine takes a gander and reports on what they found.

You remember this projector, right? It’s the cost-effective LCD projector with lens shift and a motorized zoom lens. And don’t forget that dynamic iris to produce a great contrast ratio. Then there’s the good remote, HDMI input, blah blah blah. You’ve read it all before. What does Home Theater think of the picture quality, though?

Indeed, with the lights off, the image has excellent depth and richness, be it through the component video or HDMI input. The black level is just a hair higher than some other LCD projectors we’ve reviewed recently, and I occasionally noticed a lack of precise detail in dark areas

and

Color and detail are also excellent. HDTV material looked sharp and vivid on my 60-inch screen. The PT-AE900U has excellent color decoders and a gray scale that tracks pretty closely to the 6500 Kelvin standard before calibration. After calibration, the numbers get a little better, but you don’t have to calibrate this one if you don’t want to.

Conclusion?

Yep, there’s a lot to like about the PT-AE900U, but versatility is undoubtedly its greatest asset. We’ve looked at several HD LCD projectors over the past year, some of which carry lower MSRPs than this one. However, all of those projectors came with some caveats, while the PT-AE900U is wonderfully caveat free. It’s simply a great choice for someone looking for a well-rounded, midpriced projector.

Home Theater: Panasonic PT-AE900U LCD Projector

If you like old fashioned knobs, then McIntosh Labs is the company for you. They make products that look dated by several decades. But the guts are all as current as they can make it.

McIntosh Labs’ latest offering is a video processor (the VP1000) that can upscale your sources to up to 1080p. It actually has two scalers, so if you have a multiroom setup this is the scaler to get. It has four HDMI, six component, six s-video, and six composite inputs. It has composite, s-video, component, and HDMI outputs. No price is mentioned.

Marketnews.ca - McIntosh Labs Launches Processor

I get my HD from my Rogers SA8300HD PVR set top box. Plug the cable in the back and voila! Done!

But for those of you who are interested in digital over the air digital television, then you need an antenna. And whether you should buy a VHF antenna or a UHF antenna is a tricky dilemma. The anonymous owner of High Definition BLOG writes:

In order to try to reduce the confusion during the transition to DTV, the Program System Information Protocol (PSIP) was adopted. Under the FCC rules for DTV all stations broadcasting a digital signal must also embed a reference to their analog station.

…

Why do you need to know about this? In choosing an OTA antenna you must know what station the receiver is tuned to, not what the displayed channel is. In the prior example, if I was thinking I needed to receive channel 2, I’d get a VHF antenna, when in fact for channel 35 I need a UHF antenna.

So keep that in mind when someone tells you how much free HDTV is over the air in your area!

High Definition BLOG - PSIP

I don’t care what other people say, but I think Sony’s BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc (BD) looks snazzy. I don’t like stealing people’s thunder too much (especially when they had it first), so check out the link below for a picture.

Did I mention that it puts out HD 1080p imagery from BD discs? Oh. Well, it does. And it also upconverts DVD’s to 1080p as well, should you wish.

Fosfor Gadgets - Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray home player

If you’d like to see some great close-up pics of the BD case, or other Blu-ray and HD DVD related materials from CES, then The Digital Bits has a great galler for you!

Digital Bits - Blu-ray Disc & HD-DVD at CES 2006

Crutchfield is in the business of selling you these things, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have worthwhile things to say. I’ve you’ve been reading this space for any length of time, you’ll know that the Sony KDS-R50XBR1 is a highly regarded set, and I wish I had one in my home. (Or maybe its larger 60″ brother. There’s also a 55″ version coming.) Well, Crutchfield got to take a look, and reported on what they found.

The Good

Of course the picture quality was very good:

The KDS-R50XBR1’s picture was addictive. Detail and clarity seemed about equal to that of the Samsung 50″ 1080p model, but after watching for a week or two, I felt the Sony’s picture was consistently a bit smoother and more solid. Some people might consider the Sony’s image slightly soft, but sometimes digital displays actually look too sharp to my eye, while the Sony appeared more natural.

And:

Colors were absolutely gorgeous, and scenes had a seamless 3-D look that made them seem more filmlike.

The Bad

While this set’s OTA tuner can pull in a lot of channels, it lost its lock pretty easily. (While the manual suggests not using an indoor antenna, as the user did, I don’t think many people will want to set up an outdoor one.) Also, some people don’t like the set’s design, with its prominent side-mounted speakers.

Crutchfield Advisor - Sony KDS-R50XBR1 50″ Grand Wega SXRD TV

ProjectorReviews.com has an updated review of the BenQ PE8720 projector. This is a DLP projector using TI’s DarkChip 3 DLP. Its 1000 lumens and 10,000:1 contrast ratio will set you back $7999 (plus applicable taxes!). But for that cash, they also throw in a lens shift feature, which is a must for any front projector.

The reviewer liked it so much, he decided to buy it, which is always a good endorsement. He notes that the high contrast ratio of this projector is the “real thing” and not done with a dynamic iris. I haven’t seen the difference, myself, so I wouldn’t know if that really matters, but this reviewer obviously does. He compares this projector to the Panasonic AE900U, pointing out how the BenQ does better. Personally, I think this is a kudo to the Panasonic, because it costs less than half the BenQ.

But I guess that’s because he truly likes this projector:

Most importantly, the BenQ provided the best image I have yet had in my house from any single chip DLP or 3 chip LCD, with the possible exception of the Marantz, and there I found that the BenQ produced a slightly higher contrast but more dynamic looking image (which I prefer), with the BenQ projector looking better on most scenery, but the Marantz having a slight edge on flesh tones.

Projector Reviews - BenQ PE8720 DLP Home Theater Projector

Stop bugging me already! I know, I know! It’s not an HD device! But it does upconvert to HD resolutions over its HDMI outputs, so I thought that Lexicon’s RT-20 Universal Disc Player was worth a mention.

Of particular note to me was this remark by the reviewer, Steven Stone:

The Lexicon via HDMI 720p revealed that many DVDs that I had assumed were only fair-to middling transfers were much better than I realized. Not only do the Lexicon’s HDMI connections contain far lower amounts of video noise than I’ve seen before, but also have more complex and accurate colors. Most of the highlight and edge halos and noise that were so bothersome through the Optoma H-79’s component connections vanished with an HDMI connection! After seeing how much better every title can look through HDMI outputs, I can’t see why anyone would ever use component connections if they had a choice.

But at $4495 MSRP, is it really worth it with HD DVD and BD players coming to market this year?

I have to wonder.

Ultimate AV: Lexicon RT-20 Universal Disc Player

While, not exaclty an ubiased source, Toshiba HD DVD expert Mark Knox gives Blu-ray Disc the knocks.

First, he complains that Blu-ray’s small numerical aperture, which will make discs harder to manufacture and have more defects. Then he says that Blu-ray Java BD-J system will make it harder for developers, not easier. Because HD DVD’s iHD is DHTML based, it can be validated. (Though from my experience, just because something validates doesn’t mean that it’ll run.)

Then Mr. Knox tries to get around the fact that more studios support Blu-ray than HD DVD. Nice try on that one!

But the real kicker is the extra copy protection that Fox wanted:

Another problem plaguing Blu-ray development is a requirement placed on the organization when it signed a deal with Fox Studios. Fox had demanded that high-definition DVDs utilize a stricter copy-protection format than AACS, which is employed by both Blu-ray and HD DVD. While HD DVD rejected the demand, Blu-ray conceded.

Knox said Fox was unhappy with the decision to let consumers watch movies where they please using Mandatory Managed Copy. Managed Copy has become a contentious point in the next-generation DVD battle, with HP demanding that Blu-ray require the technology on all discs. However, as Fox’s proprietary DRM will run after AACS, the studio could theoretically restrict such portability.

Hmmm. Maybe it’s not such a big kicker for me. I currently rent DVD’s from a by-mail rental service. So the kicker for me would be the fact that BD discs would be more susceptible to scratches etc than HD DVD’s, the new dura-great coating notwithstanding.

What upsets you more?

BetaNews - HD DVD: Blu-ray Has Problems