Panasonic PT-AT6000E 3D LCD Projector Review & Comments

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Reviewed by Phil Hinton, 15th November 2012. This is by far the best 2D picture performance we have seen from a Panasonic projector in a long time. It produces a very decent black level with good shadow details and an accurate calibrated colour performance. We would have liked more accurate out of the box picture modes but the PT-AT6000 is capable of being calibrated to offer a very respectable performance when compared with the competition at this price point. 3D performance is also very respectable with little in the way of crosstalk or other image issues. As an all-round home cinema performer it certainly demands your demo attention.
Read the full review...
 
Great review as always - how does it compare to a JVC X30 for 2D performance?
 
Really great review, thanks. I'm a bit amazed by the price though when you look at the US price. I know there's VAT to add etc but that's a big difference and to not even include the glasses seems a real shame.
 
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Interesting review, but the historical perspective doesn't seem quite right...:lesson:

In late 1999, Sony introduced the VPL-VW10HT, a LCD projector which could display 720p and 1080i signals (using a 1366x768 tri-LCD panels). This was the first 'HD' projector for the home enthusiast (it followed the VPL-W400Q, which was also a 16:9 projector but with a lower resolution).

I remember owning one and playing with it when the first experimental OTA HD (720p and 1080i) became available in parts of the US... in mid 2000... Wonderful memories... DVDs were also well established by then, but there was an enthusiast community looking for ways to record HD signals on computers... which was quite iffy, but not without a high cool factor :D
 
the historical perspective doesn't seem quite right...

I wanted to cover the history of the Panasonic line of home cinema projectors and how far we have come in a decade generally. We are now spoilt for choice when it comes to HD/3D projectors at reasonable prices. That was the point.
My history in terms of mass market penetration is accurate I believe.

Great review as always - how does it compare to a JVC X30 for 2D performance?

The Panasonic is very good for an LCD projector. The X30 pips it in terms of dynamic range and black levels in my opinion. However, if you are making a purchasing decision I would get a demo of both, side by side if possible.
 
Great review - as always!

Would it be possible to get your calibrated settings? I am struggling a bit with calibration myself - I plan on getting a professional ISF calibration after 200 hours, but I still have 180 hours to go... I agree that the REC 709 is not perfect by any means.

Thanks,
Ulrik
 
Phil Hinton/ said:
The Panasonic is very good for an LCD projector. The X30 pips it in terms of dynamic range and black levels in my opinion. However, if you are making a purchasing decision I would get a demo of both, side by side if possible.

Thanks for that. I was undecided but got a good deal on the X30, looks like I made the right choice.
 
Hi Phil

May I congratulate you on such a comprehensive review and cracking review.

We spoke at the recent JVC event, and its nice to see in your review mention of some of the "reference" scenes from different movies you use to help judge picture performance and adjustments. Still more than happy with my X-30.
 
I congratulate the reviewer on an extremely comprehensive and accurate review. Simply faultless. Thank you.

I am nevertheless, once again speechless how ignorant Far Eastern TV manufacturers when it comes to understanding colour. Rec709 is a standard, it's not a fancy name. It defines colour values precisely. If you put a preset named Rec709 you bloody well read the effing standard document and make sure that the projector uses those levels to project images to screen!

They have used the help of some Hollywood cinematographers and colourists to produce a preset based on the standard Rec709 colour gamut, but enhanced, as they put it, for the bigger projected image.

What a load of crap! (On Panasonic's part not the reviewer's.) Those "Hollywood cinematographers and colourists" have no knowledge whatsoever on how an image is displayed on a screen. They go to projection rooms, which are properly calibrated by video engineers against published standards. There is nothing subjective about an image preset. The words "Cinema 1" are meaningless and the PanasonicÂ’s claim that Rec709 standards are only good for 50 inch TVs and not large projected images is not technically inaccurate, it is preposterous.

All video projectors that are used domestically will be connected to either a Broadcast TV tuner, a Blue-Ray player or a video streaming service. All of those sources are encoded to Rec709. There are no exceptions!

So why play around with so many presets, hire Hollywood people, etc? I'll tell you why; Panasonic, like all other manufacturers feel obliged to feed us marketing bull, make us buy into their PR crap so that we cannot see the dead tree in the woods.

The irony is that their tree is not dead at all...
 
Probably controversial, but all rec 709 is is a standard defined by some video geeks in a room a long time ago. To suggest that other settings can not look excellent in a particular room/on a particular screen/with certain source material is equally preposterous imho.

Sometimes there is an obvious error when watching a projector - the green push in the JVC 350 for example.

However I much much prefer the picture of my uncalibrated x3 versus calibrated 750, so go figure.

I would actually love to see a blind test of home cinema enthusiasts and see what picture they preferred versus what the underlying colour gamut was. I think a lot of peeps would fail to pick out rec709 or other standard.

Horses for courses imho.
 
You can read about the standard here but please allow me to outline the fallacy of your argument.

all rec 709 is is a standard defined by some video geeks in a room a long time ago.

Rec 709 is the HD video standard defined by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) who is responsible for radio communication all over the world. It has nothing to do with Hollywood, nor they are "some video geeks in a room".

Rec 709 is not an old standard. It is the only standard that defines HD video. You may be confusing it with Rec 601, which is the old SD video standard.

To suggest that other settings can not look excellent in a particular room/on a particular screen/with certain source material is equally preposterous imho.

I would actually love to see a blind test of home cinema enthusiasts and see what picture they preferred versus what the underlying colour gamut was. I think a lot of peeps would fail to pick out rec709 or other standard.

We are talking about calibration. You can chose to adjust the colour setting to suit to your taste. Whether a picture looks good or not is taste. It is not calibration. May be I should remind you what calibration means?

Calibration is a comparison between measurements – one of known magnitude or correctness made or set with one device and another measurement made in as similar a way as possible with a second device. more...

AV Forums, very rightly make a big fuss of calibration-ability of TVs and projectors. If everyone is going to chose the colour standards as they please, what is the point of all this?
 
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I don't want to get into semantics with you. The fact remains that some people, no matter how important they are, decided what the standard is. It was not handed down from heaven, nor is it a basic tenet of physical science. It is a man made construct only. So yes in a sense you are right. Calibration is an attempt to recreate what looked good years ago on different technology in a different environment.

I think the point of it is that as a baseline, it probably gives a good starting point to what will look pretty decent in most environments and with most tech. However to say that slight variations are "wrong" is just pedantic IMHO. Was the director of "The Matrix" wrong to green tinge the film? How do we know that slightly more red doesn't look better to most people than it does to the ITU?

Obviously Panasonic and their "Hollywood colourists" think slight variations with their tech can give a pleasing picture. Perhaps they shouldn't call this setting rec 709. But for you to say that their "Cinema 1" preset is meaningless because it isn't rec709 is an error too I believe. It is a preset that Panasonic, and a lot of others will like and use.

Of course the alternative is that manufacturers release projectors with only rec 709 to keep the purists happy. Of course even this won't be accurate dependent on screen size, throw, room, screen material, so everyone will need calibration. And won't that suit the home cinema industry plenty?

On a personal level based upon my x3/750 experience I will never spend hundreds on a calibration again if the picture out of the box is pleasing to the mark 1 eyeball. Mind you, I will never purchase a JVC new again whilst they persist in not honouring a transferred warranty on items that cost the same as a family car, and are sold into a niche market and then transferred between hobbyists. If one portion of the industry can be so, imho, cynical in its attempts to control a second hand market, why should the consumer not believe that other portions of the industry not represent a cash grab?

Anyway I digress, a typically thorough review from Mr. Hinton, the godfather of such matters. I shall be sticking to the non-warrantied preloved JVC market on the basis of it!
 
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The fact remains that some people, no matter how important they are, decided what the standard is. It was not handed down from heaven, nor is it a basic tenet of physical science. It is a man made construct only. So yes in a sense you are right. Calibration is an attempt to recreate what looked good years ago on different technology in a different environment.

I'm glad that you agree on me on what calibration is. I do however disagree with you that Rec709 calibration is not "a basic tenet of physical science". It is exactly that. A tenet is one of the principles on which a belief or theory is based, but I'm not going into a discussion on how science works in the modern world.

My comment on the thread was all about calibration. Everyone has the right to watch the images as they like. I'm talking about means to watch the images as they were intended when they were created by the film-maker. Without having a calibrated Rec709 preset, which the Panasonic's was not, you cannot do that. Not to offer the option to show the images as they are intended while going the trouble of creating "pleasing" preset is bad engineering at best.

This is the same in Hi-Fi. You can buy an amplifier with tone control, graphic equaliser, the lot, and change the tonality of the music you listen to as you please. Many do, but that is not Hi-Fi, i.e. High Fidelity to the original, where the acronym is derived from. Even those amplifiers often have a tone-defeat option that allows you to have a flat 20-20kHz bandwidth. That is the Rec709 setting on a HD display device. Correctly calibrated Rec709 preset makes the TV or projector Hi-Fi.

Like boy racers do with their car audio, anyone can mess with their TV settings and watch a distorted image that matches their taste. It is a free world after all.
 
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Promotion started from 1st December - 1st Feb 2013 - Buy the PT-AT6000 and get 2 Pairs of 3D Glasses FREE
 
Has anyone tried the Masking feature on the Pannasonic PT-AT6000E?

The user manual says you can "Mask" portions of the image, so the black bars at the top and bottom, when doing 2.35:1 without an anamorphic lens, is really really black, instead of just dark grey. I'd really like to hear if anyone has tested that, and to know exactly how black those bars become. i.e. Is the "Masking" a feature worth having?

Thanks.:hiya:
 
Can we get the calibration settings from the review? Wish I could get it calibrated, but no such service in my country.
 
Hello Keyser,

I don't have the new Panasonic. I do however have a SANYO PLV-Z3000. I wanted to get it calibrated, but I don't like paying for things I could do myself, and I also couldn't find anyone that does it here in Australia.

I ended up buying a i1 Display 3 Pro, and the Chromapure software, from www.curtpalme.com

They are on sale, slightly reduced price, for another couple of weeks. I would strongly recommend you do the same, and calibrate it yourself. You will learn more about how your projector actually works, and what it's limitations are, as well as getting the best possible picture from it. Also, you'll be able to recalibrate it every 12 months or so.

I had to change the lamp in my projector on the weekend. That threw out the calibration I had just done a couple of days before. It seems to me that each lamp has a different light output spectrum. So, if you get a projector calibrated, then have to change the lamp, the calibration is no longer relevant.

Good luck.:thumbsup:
 
Hi, did anyone manage to the calibration settings for their projector? I've tried doing it myself but it's still off.
 
Hi, like several other members above I would be very grateful if anybody could provide the values found for the modified Rec709, as indicated in the review calibration. I would like to make a comparison with the Panasonic Rec709 provided as I find that some 2d films that I watch with Rec709 are not quite correct when compared to the display on my 42" plasma Pany TV. The problem seems to be associated with the intensity of Green or perhaps colour balance. I sometimes find that the Cine1 and even Cine2 settings give a better match for some of these films. I am guilty of watching the quality of the projected image instead of being absorbed by the story!! Many thanks.
 
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Help!
On my PT AE 6000 it has started to have a intermittent video fault.
The sound keeps going ok.
I have looked at the HDMI connections , all goes through hdmi 1 from Denon avr.
it happens when either xbox one , humax TV or chromecast are on.
All inputs go via a Denon w1200 avr and what ever input i select the fault remains until i turn all off and restart.
I don`t know where to look ,all the PJ settings are as default and have not been touched.
The only thing i have done recently is remove the filter ,clean and replace.
Sometimes there is no fault for hours ,then every 5 minuets or so.
Any help , thanks
 
Help!
On my PT AE 6000 it has started to have a intermittent video fault.
The sound keeps going ok.
I have looked at the HDMI connections , all goes through hdmi 1 from Denon avr.
it happens when either xbox one , humax TV or chromecast are on.
All inputs go via a Denon w1200 avr and what ever input i select the fault remains until i turn all off and restart.
I don`t know where to look ,all the PJ settings are as default and have not been touched.
The only thing i have done recently is remove the filter ,clean and replace.
Sometimes there is no fault for hours ,then every 5 minuets or so.
Any help , thanks
Bump.
For info--
Took off top covers ,blew off all fans/housings/circuit boards / bulb with a airline @60 psi, rebuilt it and every works fine now.
Been on for hours now.
Seems that dust is a problem with projectors!
 

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