Sony VPL-VW60

Features

The VPL-VW60 has a large number of features, most of which are designed to help fine-tune the picture. Zoom, Focus, and Lens shift features are all electronic, which is a pleasant surprise given the price of the projector--there are only selected projectors in this price range that has those electronic adjustments. However, I do wish there was a little more range on the vertical lens shift.

The Cinema Black Pro menu contains the settings for the Iris: Auto 1, Auto 2, Manual and Off. We don't recommend ever using either of the Auto modes as they shift blacks up and down, depending on whether the content in the picture is bright or dark. We used the Manual mode and dropped the value down to 45 for slightly darker blacks. Settings below that dropped the light output down too low on our 80 inch-wide Stewart Grayhawk RS screen.

As expected, Sony offers the usual picture modes and color temperature presets. Modes comprise Dynamic, Standard, Cinema, User 1, User 2, and User 3. Color temperature selections include: High, Middle, Low, Custom 1, Custom 2, and Custom 3. We used Custom 3 as it came closest to the broadcast standard color temperature of 6,500K.

Among the new features are the Wide Anamorphic aspect ratio, which has been added for systems that integrate an outboard anamorphic lens for constant height 2.35:1 (CinemaScope) aspect ratio screens, and the Panel Adjust feature, which lets you converge to the center of the screen if there are any panel alignment issues. The latter is restricted to the center of the screen, much like the static convergence controls in older CRT TVs. Far more comprehensive is Panel Adjust on the more expensive VPL-VW200, which gives you the ability to tweak the panels in zones all over the screen.

In the Expert Setting menu, both Black Level Adjust and Gamma Correction should be set to off, as should Real Color Processing, while the Color Space should be put on Normal. We tried correcting the inaccurate primary colors with the RCP feature and found that it still basically doesn't work. It does change the color, but it negatively impacts the color decoding, making it unusable.

Connectivity on the VPL-VW60 is decent, with two HDMI inputs heading up the list. There is also one component-video input, one S-video and one composite-video for older analog video sources like VHS tape. A PC, an RS-232 control port, and a 12-volt trigger for electric drop-down screens round out the connections on the projector.

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