[DEANO-B]

Hello all Had a visit to 'Roy Jowetts' aka 'Bens place' on Friday to view the Z4 and the TX200 with 'Fallwood' and 'Just Wondering' and met 'UKRoadster' there, with the intention of 'Fallwood' and 'Just Wondering' buying a new PJ (and they did!).

First of all many thanks (again) to Bens usual patience and profesional manner throughout of demo, and I can highly recommend his place for peace of mind and competitive rates on all things electrical.

First of all let me just state that both of these PJs are better than my Panny 700 as they offer a more vibrant and vivid picure - by how much better ?? well not a huge amount, but enough to make them clearly better !

The TX200 was the first PJ to be demoed and Ben had his favourite HD demo 'Lingerie Superbowl' on when we arrived. It looked good, very good. There was a definate improvement over my 700 I could see straight away, it has a very punchy, and vibrant picture, which seemed very even across to the edges, the colours were also excellent and strong without being overally saturated. We then tried 'Weavers Island' an Imax demo and 'Paying Mantis'. I did notice on the 'Praying Matis' demo (A HD film I had seen recenlty on my 700) the image did look only as sharp (maybe a little softer) than on my PJ at home. We discussed that fact it may be down to my PC at home VS Bens PC in the shop and carried on. We put on 'Star Wars 5' and we impressed again with the overall PQ but I was concerned it may not be as sharp as my 700. The Hitachi really was good and excelled in its ability to create a warm, vibrant PQ without loosing any depth or detail.

The Sanyo Z4 was next to be viewed with the same demos (except Bens fav 'Lingerie Superbowl' ). So after 5 minutes worth of setting the PJ to 'Rones' standards (without which the PQ would have been miles off) we put 'Weavers Island' on. 'Wow - thats a hell of a lot shaper' were the comments, so much so that we had to turn down the shapness. The colours looked spot on, and it seemed to provide a very similar picture to the TX200, so much so it is very, very hard to differentiate to two. We did notice though that the Hitacthi did seem to offer a better response to the lighter end of the picture range. The best way I can explain this is that on one of the demos there is a shot of the ocean with the sun glistening off it. The TX200 seemed to sparkle a bit more and the PQ did look better on the scences with more light in them - it just appeared a little more was coming back from the picture on the TX200 on these scenes. I don't know whether Z4 can be tweaked to get a similar performance, (god knows theres enough settings to play around with) but it seems that this is the TX200s strong point.

Both have negligable visable pixel structure/screendoor or VB.

Both PJs are very similar in performance, and both competitivley priced, but I do think each one has its strong point:-

The Z4 has a super sharp image and a million config options.
The TX200 has a natural ability to recreate scences with light better.

Overall though both are winners (which if you know me I never say). It is hard to choose between them as they are very similar in performance. I usually view PJs and say one is the clear winner - but not today!

Myself personally for what it's worth (which isn't much ) I'd go for the sharpness of the Z4 but would be happy with either.

Just a quick note to end with though as I've been down to 'Fallwoods' to check out the Z4 in action. The scaler in the Z4 is pretty bad - it makes things a little soft. The Gamecube is shaper on my 700 than his Z4. The blacks I would say are a little better maybe on the Z4 (although I've never complained about the 700s blacks).

The End
Deano

[foghorn]

Interesting comment and one that seem to concur with other peoples views that there is only subtle differences between the D5 LCD projectors.

I wonder if the Sony HS60 would provide the necessary increase in picture quality for people like yourself to consider an upgrade from the last generation of LCD'S.

Foghorn

[DEANO-B]

Both have great PQ but I think my next upgrade will be a 1080 PJ. I think that they will be the next real jump in PQ performane. Hopefully this time next year

[fallwood]

Basically what deano said, I have found that rhones settings are a bit dark for me and after turning up the brightness considerably the shadow detail became a lot better. I think one of the main points in favour of the Z4 is that its so damn configurable , you can tweak it to suit your personal taste right down to altering individual skin tones through the colour management tool .

I think the tx200 will appeal more to people who want a plug and play unit that needs minimal setup to acheive a good picture, Z4 on the other hand looks quite poor out of the box and requires a good half hour using rhones settings as a starting point to get it something like, once youve eventually got it tweaked to your liking I think it surpasses the tx in all areas.

The scaler is not actually as bad as I expected it to be , it is quite soft but doesnt seem to introduce any noise to the image and no interlace comb effect that I could see , gamecube over progressive component looks excellent but games that need to run in interlaced mode do look a touch soft for my liking. As most things I view are either over HDMI or proggressive component the scaler is not of importance to me , people using sky feeds etc over an interlaced input may be dissapointed with the picture.

Come on justwondering, add you opinions.

[jumpt_upmunky]

just been watchin some hi-def videos using my xbox 360 and the picture is fantastic .

I'd be interested to know any settings you guys choose.

[fallwood]

Here are my current settings , these are based on a htpc with ati 9600xt connected via hdmi, If you are using any other connection then you will probably get different results. My settings are basically the same as RHones with just a few tweaks to my personal taste , therefore all credit goes to Rhone as he took the time to supply these settings.

First start in living preset

Brightness +10
Contrast +6
Color -4
Tint 0
Color temp low 1
Red +10
Green -1
Blue -8
sharpness +4
Lamp control economy/low
Gamma -1
Lens iris -30
Lamp iris Auto
auto black stretch off
contrast enhancement off
transient improvement off
Gain R +2
Gain G +3
Gain B -5
Offset R -15
Offset G -13
Offset B -6
Gamma R 0
Gamma G 0
Gamma B 0
Hdmi setup L2

You will then need to adjust skin tones using the color management.

Once finished dont forget to store your settings.

On my setup these settings look pretty close to perfect .

[Anim]

Glad you like the Z4 guys, It's a tweakers paradise the Z4. It's one of the problems tho, once you start tweaking you cant stop as you will suddenly (mid dvd) say "just one sec" as you pause then delve into the menu's and adjust something while the other half just stares at you!

Deano, I know what you mean about waiting for 1080p, myself..im waiting for a DLP without rainbows for under 2K then I will jump ship faster than you can say "3D" lol. Damn that 4805!

[PJTX100]

Good review Deano.

[cyberheater]

Excellent review Deano. It's funny. My natural reaction is to think that i'll aim for the Tx200 as my next PJ but to be honest. I'm quite happy with my TX100 (this has never ever happened before) so I can see me sticking to it for quite some time which is great so i'll be able to pickup a TX200 quite cheap second hand in a year or twos time.

I would also say that's it's worth getting a colour correction filter for your PJ's. Mine made a huge difference to my image.
PJTX100: Have you not got yours yet

[PJTX100]

Originally Posted by cyberheater

PJTX100: Have you not got yours yet

OK, go on, you've convinced me. But can you please PM me with details of what & where? I've forgotten yet again! Thx.

[Anim]

oooh new toy? coloour filllllter...hmmmmm donuts

More info for me to pls

[jumpt_upmunky]

thanks for all the valuable info guys, this Z4 tweeking malarkey makes my head spin!

It seems as if a lot of you guys use the Radeon 9600 for your HTPC's, is there a specific version to go for? (I'm using a Shuttle PC)

I won't be playing games (that's what consoles are for!) but mainly watching lovely HD movies! It's just after watching a few hi-def demos via my xbox360 the difference is immense to normal DVD's

[fallwood]

I find the sapphire cards to be pretty good on both price and performance , I originaly had a sapphire 9600se 128mb but found that some high rate HD material suffered from the occasional judder, upgraded to a sapphire 9600xt 256mb and everything runs fine now. One thing to consider is that the se is fanless so therefore quieter , xt version has a fan so will make your shuttle slightly more noisy.

[squibbly]

Thanks for that Deano. Good review. I also found ROne's settings too dark for my taste, so opened the iris to -20. Might give Fallwood's tweaked version a spin tonight.

A question. Given the quality level of the new D5 LCD crop, what price do you think 720p DLP would have to have come down to before you would have considered it as an alternative to LCD?

Personally, I couldn't have one if they gave them away cos they give me bad eyestrain, but I'd be interested to hear what you folks think. I just can't believe DLP is still dominating the HC market.

[Kopite4Ever]

good stuff fella's thanks for taking the time out to post your findings.

from what im hearing about the TX200 i think i will upgrade in the next month or so it sounds awesome and a bigger upgrade from the TX100 than i expected. should be able to get a decent 2nd hand price on my TX100 and then add a few hundred to get it.

i knew reading up on the TX200 would be my downfall i promised myself i wasnt going to do it oh well damage already done

[PJTX100]

Originally Posted by Kopite4Ever

good stuff fella's thanks for taking the time out to post your findings.

from what im hearing about the TX200 i think i will upgrade in the next month or so it sounds awesome and a bigger upgrade from the TX100 than i expected. should be able to get a decent 2nd hand price on my TX100 and then add a few hundred to get it.

i knew reading up on the TX200 would be my downfall i promised myself i wasnt going to do it oh well damage already done

It's not a radical upgrade from the TX100. Better yes, but enough to warrant changing. I might be interested in a TX300 if it's the same sort of improvement again.

[DEANO-B]

Originally Posted by PJTX100

It's not a radical upgrade from the TX100. Better yes, but enough to warrant changing. I might be interested in a TX300 if it's the same sort of improvement again.

100% agree !! The universal thing everyone seems to be saying is that the new D5 panel PJs are better but not by a great amount. There was definatley a few good reasons to jump from the Panny AE500 to the AE700 generation of PJs, but this time it is more of a step forward rather than a leap.

[cyberheater]

Originally Posted by DEANO-B

100% agree !! The universal thing everyone seems to be saying is that the new D5 panel PJs are better but not by a great amount. There was definatley a few good reasons to jump from the Panny AE500 to the AE700 generation of PJs, but this time it is more of a step forward rather than a leap.

Incremental upgrades is all we will get from now one I believe.
Basically, in terms of performance from these devices, we are there. I dare say that the next gen of projectors will have a higher panel resolution (1080p) and slightly better contrast and colour but I don't see anything radical coming for a while. Especially in the LCD space.

If DLP manage to sort out it's rainbow problems (Sequential Color Recapture wheels?) then they could really take over.

[Lrrr]

Originally Posted by cyberheater

Incremental upgrades is all we will get from now one I believe.
Basically, in terms of performance from these devices, we are there. I dare say that the next gen of projectors will have a higher panel resolution (1080p) and slightly better contrast and colour but I don't see anything radical coming for a while. Especially in the LCD space.

If DLP manage to sort out it's rainbow problems (Sequential Color Recapture wheels?) then they could really take over.

Epson (who make most of the LCD panels used in these projectors) have something cooking called "C2Fine" which apparently is going to be a big step forward. Sony have something similar called Bi:NA. Apparently the idea is to decrease the inter-pixel gaps and increase contrast.

There's not much info available at the moment (try google) but it's being touted as a DLP-killer at least at the low end.

For myself, I decided not to wait and just ordered a Z4 today (first projector!) because I think 720p should look great, and it will be several years before 1080p becomes affordable.

[bumpa-K]

Originally Posted by Anim

Deano, I know what you mean about waiting for 1080p, myself..im waiting for a DLP without rainbows for under 2K then I will jump ship faster than you can say "3D" lol. Damn that 4805!

Some people might think I'm overly optimistic, and I know I am saying this at the risk of looking really stupid, but I predict that a 3 chipper DLP with very decent resolution will be available for around £1 500 in about 5 years.

Think how quickly the technology developed and how much more affordable decent PJ's have become to the man on the street.

A Projector, with the features of the PJ-TX200 would have set you back quite a few thousand 5 years ago - now they are just over a grand.

All and all my TX100 which I got just a couple of months ago will be able to keep me busy until such times - but it's all quite exciting...

[just wondering]

Deano you've summmed up the day there and a great review .

My current projector was a Benq 5120 DLP which i have owned since August 2005 , i bought with the intentions of upgrading to new projector in the forth coming months , but the 5120 has been a cracking projector and has served me well for the brand new price of £451.00 delivered but the day had come for me to make a more long term projector purchase.

On the visit to Roy Jowetts I bought the tx200 on the day But took it back 3 days later after 2 hours use and paid the extra and bought the Z4 , with free spare lamp and 3 year warranty and to be honest after having both set up in my own enviroment using my own equipment , the Z4 is Honestlythe better of the two beasts , just playing the xbox on the Z4 is smoother , sharper etc , one game i've been playing recently on the regular old style xbox via component is Need for speed most wanted , on the Tx200 when you hit the turbo button the screen smeared just a little too much as the speed of the game increased , but on the Z4 its looks much better , the p.c side of things is better also , i'm only running vga but the picture is still sharp , my divx movies still look good , although the quality of my divx films is not the best , but they still look quite natural on the Z4, where as on the Tx200 , it seemed to pick out all the bad artifacts and make them look quite bad and showed them up for the poor quality that they are, i'm sure more tweaking would of helped . Dvd movies look great also.

When it comes to build quality the Tx200 is a really heafty excellent build which for the price is pure quality , the lens are big and you feel your really getting something special for the money , The z4 has a excellent electric shutter door , so when you turn the PJ off the door closes and keeps the dust off the len , the build is also great , but the TX200 has the better build, Both Projectors remotes are as good as each other , the menus and options offer more control on the Z4 than the Tx200.

The Z4 is sharper in general as mentioned by all, the Tx200 left me wondering and wanting a Z4 and thankfully it was no hassel to exchange over at Roy Jowetts so a big shout out and thanks to Ben and Fallwood for the 3rd time he's taken us down to Jowetts .

If any of you do go and demo both projectors , just as Deano has rightly said that on the day there looked little difference between the two , but if you had both of them and tested them at home you would pick the Z4 IMHO out of the two.

The tx200 left me feeling a bit disappointed BUT the Z4 has made me a very happy man its a real bargin.

[paul1967]

I think we should start a Z4 fan club

paul1967

[just wondering]

I think where all ready members , all you need to do is make the purchase and your in the club

[ROne]

I am working on some new improved living settings, will add them to the doc and tweaks when I get chance.

[squibbly]

Originally Posted by ROne

I am working on some new improved living settings, will add them to the doc and tweaks when I get chance.

Wa-hay. Welcome back ROne! I've seen you, sorting out all the Yanks on their forum. You tart! S'pose you can get more of a dialogue going on Z4s over there cos of the number of owners. Mind you there does seem to have been a sudden boom in owners over here, as you can see from this thread!

[ROne]

I've not really been in hiding - just over xmas I can't be that bothered with the projector, odd logic I know.

AVS is good for getting lots of people in one place, but here is great also.

Not really done a whole load of tweaking other than improving LIVING which I will put up when I'm happy.

[fallwood]

Originally Posted by ROne

I've not really been in hiding - just over xmas I can't be that bothered with the projector, odd logic I know.

AVS is good for getting lots of people in one place, but here is great also.

Not really done a whole load of tweaking other than improving LIVING which I will put up when I'm happy.

ooooo I want I want, what improvements have you managed to make as I found that it was all a bit too dark for my liking, colours look great at the moment after I used the colour config thingy. Keep up the good work as I wouldnt have had a clue without your settings to work from .