Panasonic PT-AE3000

By Philip Wong, CNET Asia
Jan 19, 2009

Now into its third installment, the Panasonic PT-AE3000 is an enticing home theater projector based primarily on its feature-packed predecessor. This time round, the company has even gone one step further by throwing in a motion-enhancement engine to match its new ultra-high contrast 3LCD engine. Let's dive in deeper to check out some of its key propositions in this preview.

Upside: With a new-gen D7 3LCD engine, the PT-AE3000 offers almost a four-fold dynamic contrast over the AE2000. At 60,000:1, this should deliver deeper blacks and livelier colors to go with its high 1,600 ANSI lumens brightness and Blu-ray-optimized 1080p native resolution. Its party piece, however, is the new Frame Creation technology inherited from the company's plasma TVs. This supposedly smoothens motion and eliminates judder through picture frame interpolation. Furthermore, there're two modes to choose from, plus an option to disable the processing altogether.

For an affordable S$4,999 (US$3,599.51) sticker price, the Panasonic projector didn't sport as many cost-cutting measures as we had expected. Users have full motorized control over the 2x zoom, focus and lens shifts. The former two are also adjustable via the remote and projector, while the latter can be tuned only from the chassis. The powerful zoom is capable of outputting a luscious 100-inch image from a short 3m throw distance, and to facilitate placement flexibility, it can be mounted 40 percent horizontally and 100 percent vertically off the projection screen center.

Another plus for this Panasonic is its superb A/V receiver-like connectivity options to hook up a barrage of players. Besides three HDMI 1.3 terminals, you'll have another dual component-video and an analog PC input at your disposal. That's a generous spread of six 1080p-ready inputs, with added 24 frames-per-second playback and Deep Color-compatibility for the HDMIs. This is truly remarkable value for a midrange entry, especially when you compare it with the competition. For example, the S$6,999 (US$5,039.60) Mitsubishi HC7000 offers only two HDMIs and one component-video.

Downside: Honestly speaking, this is an extremely likeable light cannon with very little to nitpick on. Having said that, we felt Panasonic could have included more keys for its bundled remote for quick fine adjustments. The provision for a single input button may be less than ideal, too. Just imagine cycling between seven video sources if you've used up all the available ports. On the bright side, we did narrow down a programmable Function button on the controller which can be assigned to directly switch to any of these sources.

Outlook: The Panasonic PT-AE3000 is your cheap ticket to a big-screen home movie experience. For just S$4,999 (US$3,599.51), you're getting a lot of "firepower" and a strong feature set that will put many pricier models to shame. As a matter of fact, we've already received quite a bit of positive feedback from online forums claiming that blacks are comparable with the high native contrast of JVC offerings.

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