Sony VPL-VW11HT Projector

Once fodder for rich guys with custom installers on speed dial, or loner videophiles with bedspreads covering every orifice in the house, the home theater projector is finally making waves in the mainstream. Newer models eliminate many of the hassles of projector ownership, particularly remodeling your home to accommodate one or living like a vampire just to watch it. In fact, if you love movies and are considering the purchase of a high-end HDTV set, I highly recommend Sony's model VPL-VW11HT LCD projector as an alternative.

The 11HT is the upgrade to Sony's groundbreaking VPL-VW10HT. Before the 10, LCD projectors were built based on a data presentation “spec”, meaning they worked great in the board room watching a PowerPoint demonstration but not so great in the living room watching Grosse Point Blank. To create these new LCD projectors Sony developed the ONLY native 16 x 9 LCD chips on the market. These chips are optimized for home theater and can handle any signal you can throw at it. Be it Digital TV (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i), progressive component, 15k component 50/60 Hz and composite video, V/C video or RGB.

The trick to these new panels is they activate every pixel in a widescreen. The projector projects native 16:9 movies without displaying black bars or compromising video quality by stretching the picture.

Watching the Super Bowl, Olympics and dozens of wide screen DVD movies with the 11HT was incredible. I'm amazed at how well the single lens projector with its three LCD panels could light up my less than suitable home theater environment. For me, one of the biggest drawbacks to every projector I've tested is its inability to deal with ambient light. Ideally you can build a cave in your home and get great pictures from almost any projector, and unbelievable pictures from the 11HT, but in reality people have kids and spouses who would move out if you duct taped grandma's quilt to the windowsills.

With the 11HT you can keep your Levelors and still get great pictures. Rated at 1000 ANSI lumens, the 11HT is remarkably bright and its contrast ratio is phenomenal. Its screen size is adjustable from 40- to a whopping 300-inches (diagonal). When watching a movie in darkness you can switch on its Cinema Black Mode circuitry that optimizes the light output creating deeper blacks and brighter whites without washing out the picture. The circuitry actually lowers the bulb from 1000 to 700 Lumens, which, as a bonus, also increases the lamp’s life. While the first generation 10HT delivered over the top whites and OK blacks, the 11HT has been tweaked to perfection rivaling the best cinema experience.

Besides picture quality, the beauty of the 11HT is its plug and play operation. Home theater projectors, especially CRT behemoths, are notorious for requiring endless tweaking/calibration performed by professional installers who WILL become a new member of the family. Not only can the Sony 11HT replace the repairman, at only 17 –pounds you don’t need to reframe your room to hang it from the ceiling or simply place it on a tabletop. For smaller spaces, the 11HT has a short throw distance allowing you to mount it much closer to the screen than other projectors.

The 11HT’s controls are top mounted and well lit. Its onscreen menu keeps the techno speak to a minimum (sorry Kelvin) so you can navigate through its various video settings controls (Full (16x9), Normal (4x3), Zoom, Full Through, Normal Through, Wide Zoom, Subtitle). All inputs are also conveniently placed on the side of the 11HT for easy install and include: S-Video, Composite, Component, Component progressive and RCA jacks.

I wouldn’t recommend the projector for someone who watches a lot of TV, but its 4:3 standard mode is more than passable for Tom Brokaw and its zoom functionality does bring a whole new element to Fox’s Blind Date. I can't say its the quietest machine on the market, but it certainly doesn’t grunt like a big CRT projector or even as much as my DELL computer.

The price: $7999. Now before you start dog cussing' me for making you read all the way to here before you found out this projector cost more than a Hyundai, keep in mind that a true widescreen high definition television set cost between four to six grand, takes up 10 times the space and will never deliver edge to edge widescreen movies as well as the 11HT.

When it comes to projectors, The VPL-VW11HT is easily capable of outperforming overheads three times its price and size. Plus, you’ll never have to break bread with your custom install guy again.

www.avstore.com