Sanyo PLV-Z3000

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Features

The PLV-Z3000 has a nice feature set. 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 did 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 D65 broadcast color temperature standard. When we were done calibrating grayscale, the setting 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 in the market with a 100Hz refresh rate. According to Sanyo, this lets the unit properly reproduce the frame rate of film-based material from 50Hz sources, such as high-definition TV shows broadcast in 1080i that originated on film, in a process known as 5:5 pull-down. For 1080p24 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 100Hz 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-videos, an S-video, a composite-video and a VGA port for computer hookup. There is no serial interface for control via a touch-panel remote system.

Tags: Sanyo Electric Co., Ferrari, industrial design, video

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