Video Asylum

Posted by chris e. (A) on January 19, 2003 at 03:16:09

I just bought the new Sharpvision 10000 series dlp projector in Tokyo and something interesting came up when I was auditioning projectors. I went to a great store in Akihabara (Yamigiwa) where they had a room with several dlp's working simultaneously -- the sony 12ht, sharp 10000 and marantz 12s (can't remember the exact model but it is the newest marantz). All are dlp's except the sony (lcd) and all are "newest and greatest". The nice thing about this store is that they were all running the same material in a room together (slightly different sized screens with the sony on a slightly larger one than the other two) on different walls. I had been considering either the sony or the sharp but was happy to see the marantz as well.

To make a long story short, I obviously preferred the sharp since this is what I bought. (guilt time -- I ended up buying from a different store (Dynamic Audio -- great shop and highly recommended) because I got the 10000 store demo with about 200 hours on it for roughly $5K US). However, the saleperson said that Europeans typically prefer the marantz over the sharp (and both are preferred to the sony for most of his customers) -- why? Europeans see the marantz as more film-like while the Americans prefer the detail and sharpness (sorry for the poor pun) of the sharp. I must admit that this is exactly how I felt as well. To me, the marantz was just a bit less vibrant and precise than the sharp but the marantz did have a bit more of a grainy and film-like appearance. To be honest, all three projectors were great but just a bit different in taste.

What is really something is how good the dlp's are now compared with crt's (my home system is a sony 8" crt g70 projector). I really think that the blacks on the new TI chipset are very, very close to what you get with a crt and the convenience of the dlp's is going to put the crt's finally in the grave. I still love the sony projector but for my second system (I commute between the UK and US hence the two systems) the dlp projector seems incredible. Once I have it up and running with my screen and surround system I'll report back -- but the preliminary impression is very positive on the sharp.