Optoma H79 v Panasonic PTAE900 (1 Viewer)

[ChrisMcCann]

Hi, I was going to buy an Optoma H79, but due to problems with eyestrain and headaches from my girlfriend when viewing DLP, i have to rule it out.

Im now looking at the Panasonic PTAE900 which has just been released. It boosts the same level of Contrast, granted that it achieves this with the Iris control and the brightening and darkening of the overall image. However, has anyone any opinions on this?

Does the Panasonic have a good built in scaler? I heard the one in the Optoma was a better performing scaler than the £800 DVDO Iscan HD+ scaler.

It will be combined with my DV7600 from Marantz and run through a HDMI cable.

Thanks
Chris

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Funny you should ask this, I just looked at both of these last night. BIG big disclaimer is that the panny was not calibrated yet so the greyscale was too blue, and the colors looked all off. I am going to try to leave that out the the equation.

I was *really* impressed with the lack of SDE on the AE900, something that bothers me on 720DLP and especially LCD machines, but the panny has their smoothing system in there that blurrs the pixels which makes for a superb video viewing experience. On really sharp things such as a computer desktop, it still looks darn sharp, but it won't be as cleanly defined as a pj without the blurring. IMO unless you're doing computer work, this is a big big plus. It won't have the CR of the H79, but IMO both are quite good, and if you are bothered with DLP headaches, I think you'll be very happy with this LCD. Pay attention when you get the machine for VB, it was very very minimal on the unit I just saw, but you will want to check yours carefully if that will bother you. The one I saw also had a stuck pixel.

Don't know about the scaling.

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

Chris, how did the 900 do for color uniformity? I've found that the previous LCD units all had discoloration that bothered the heck out of me ...

Pink gray on the left and green gray on the right ... on a neutral gray plate ...

Regards

 

[ChrisWiggles]

I can't really say, because we didn't throw up full-gray patterns, or measure them. We were limited to a couple hours of playing with it, and it's not something we looked at. If I get the chance to spend more time with it I could say, but based on the video I saw I didn't see any uniformity problems on skies and such. But if this is something you are very picky about, I wouldn't be comfortable advising you based on what I've seen, coupled with the fact that I use a CRT projector so I'm used to accepting some uniformity issues.

Overall I was very impressed, this would definitely be my choice over an LCD like the sony HS51.

 

[Gregg Loewen]

Great to hear!

Doesnt the 700 have field specific gray scale adjustibility (or what ever you call it?)

 

[RomanWB]

Would really love to hear more about the strengths and differences with the viewing of the Optoma and the Panasonic AE900.

You don't often hear too many first person accounts of someone who has seen both of these so it's really interesting and valuable.

Understand some have rainbow issues, but if now, how would you compare the H79 and the AE900? Could you live with either happily or would one haunt you as being much better?

 

[Shane Martin]

Review of the Panasonic AE900 by Proj. Reviews

Looks like the major thing he found was some yellow issues but he said it is easy to fix.