Sanyo PLV-Z3000

The front projection category continues to grow and become more affordable to the masses. These days you can get a decent 1080p front projector for cheaper than most 60-inch plasma TVs. Of course, you do have the additional cost of a screen to factor in, but that screen can be much bigger than 60 inches. Enter Sanyo's PLV-Z3000 1080p resolution projector. It has a nice feature package for fine-tuning picture quality, good connectivity options, and is quite inexpensive. It should be mated with a relatively small screen, no larger than 92 inches depending on the material, as it is not very bright after it has been properly setup. Otherwise, it offers commendable picture quality for the money.

Design
As far as design goes, the PLV-Z3000 is quite basic and won't win any industrial design awards. However, at its price, you shouldn't expect Ferrari design flare. Our review sample was a square black box--and that is that. All the video connections are on the rear panel, and the lens shift wheels are on one side of the chassis and the air intake and outtake vents are on the other side.

The remote control is a smart design with a backlight. It is well laid out and makes one-handed operation easy and fluid. There are direct access keys for all the inputs, image modes, and picture controls. The onscreen menu has seven pages of options vertically arrayed, and we found it simple and intuitive to navigate.

Features
The PLV-Z3000 has a nice feature package. To help with installation issues, it has horizontal and vertical lens shift, which makes centering the picture a snap if it is placed reasonably accurately on the ceiling in relation to the screen. We were pleased that Sanyo does not include keystone correction, which wreaks havoc on picture quality by reducing resolution and introducing unwanted artifacts.

There are six selectable picture modes in the Image menu: Brilliant Cinema, Creative Cinema, Pure Cinema, Natural, Living, Dynamic, and x.v.Color. We chose Natural instead of one of the Cinema modes, because the Cinema modes were far too dim. Five selectable color temperatures are also onboard: Default, Low 1, Low 2, High 1, and High 2. We chose Low 2 as it came closest to the broadcast standard color temperature of D65, and when we were done calibrating the grayscale, it changed to User.

All of the Iris adjustments are in the Advanced Menu. We kept the Iris fixed and set it at -20 for the best compromise between adequate light output and compelling blacks. The rest of the items in the Advanced menu should be turned off for the best performance: Auto Black Stretch, Transient Improvement, Color Management, Smooth Motion, and Dynamic Gamma.

The PLV-Z3000 is one of the few projectors on the market with a 120Hz refresh rate. According to Sanyo, the refresh rate lets the unit properly reproduce the frame rate of film-based material from 60Hz sources, such as high-definition TV shows broadcast in 1080i that originated on film, in a process known as 5:5 pull-down. For 1080p/24 sources, the projector refreshes at 96Hz, which should again allow preservation of the proper 24p frame rate.

It's important to note that the Sanyo lacks the kind of dejudder processing found on most 120Hz flat-panel LCDs, for example. If you're looking for that extra-smooth, video-like effect, you'll have to look elsewhere. There is a "Smooth" setting available in the menu, but as far as we could see, it had no effect. That's a good thing in our opinion; we always turn off dejudder processing.

Connectivity options are quite generous enough for a front projector in this category. Two HDMI inputs head the list as the most important connections followed by two component video inputs, an S-Video input, a composite video input, and a VGA style RGB input for computer hookup. There is no RS-232 interface for control via a touch-panel remote system.

Performance
Overall performance is reasonably good for a projector in this price range. However, for about $600 more, the Sony VPL-HW10 we reviewed last November outperforms the 3000 in most areas of picture quality.

Our biggest complaints with the Sanyo involve the inaccurate primary and secondary colors, especially red and green, and the lack of light output. Our recommendation to address the latter would be to use a 1.3 gain screen material, and not go any larger than 92-inches diagonal (80-inches wide by 45-inches high). This will give you enough light output for a high contrast, snappy picture. Grayscale tracking in the Low 2 color temperature is fairly close to the specification of D65, and there are red, green, and blue global gain controls that can be used by a qualified technician with the right equipment to fine-tune the grayscale. Check out the bottom of this blog post for picture settings.

Color decoding looked accurate for Rec. 709 HD sources, although it is difficult to be certain without a color isolation feature, which very few projectors at any price have as of yet. As stated above, the primary colors are way off, especially red and green, and by extension, the secondary colors are off as well. The green especially showed up in regular program material as looking quite limey or neony. While Sanyo does have a Color Management System onboard, it doesn't work well at all.

Video processing isn't bad for an entry-level projector such as this. It does roll off some of the high-frequency video, which means you lose a little resolution; however, it passed all the HQV Benchmark tests on that Blu-ray Disc. The full-time onboard 120Hz processing works well compared with other solutions we have seen from Sony and Epson, and it appears to preserve the frame rate of film as advertised.

The opening scene of The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, filmed in IMAX and presented in the 16:9 format, looked pretty crisp with good color saturation. However, the outdoor sections of this scene were not quite bright enough on our Stewart Filmscreen Grayhawk RS screen that measures 80-inches wide by 45-inches high. Later in Chapter 5 of the disc, in a conference room at Wayne Enterprises with about a dozen people, we could see that skin tones looked reasonably natural.

For a black level torture test we choose Planet Earth, specifically the Caves section at the beginning of disc one. A few minutes in, the picture goes pitch black for a second or two before a rock face with water cascading down it seems to pop out of nowhere and is suspended in blackness. This scene was rendered very well by the 3000, with little or no low-level noise or contouring artifacts.

Green was so far off that it became painfully obvious in certain program material. A perfect example of this is at 26:05 in the Caves section of Planet Earth where there are large beds of green seaweed. On the PLV-Z3000, they look positively neon lime. Unfortunately, if Sanyo were to get the primary colors right, light output would be further reduced because a wider-gamut green is a big contributor to overall light output.

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