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
. 
oh well damage already done 
Linear Mode
