[Jude]

AE owners or knowledgables: (from somewhat of a newbie)


If a person owns a native XGA projector with similar lumen output as an AE100, what do you get out of this AE100 projector picture-wise that might be superior? (Other than built in 16:9?)


I have yet to purchase a projector, but have been eying the hand-me-downs on ebay in order to find a deal. I've always assumed I should be looking for a native XGA projector, yet the AE seems to be getting incredible fanfare I thought I'd better investigate. At it's native 858x484 does it have some other kind of superior internal scaling or some such thing to make it equal/superior to another projector with a higher native resolution?


Assuming a person was going to use an HTPC to send their DVD image via video adapter & an RGB/VGA connector into the projector, isn't an XGA projector going to (in general) put a better looking image on the screen?


I read a different thread in this forum where someone was driving their AE100 at 1024x768, but since this is not native isn't this asking for trouble int he way of artifacts/compressed picture side-effects?


Thank you for any help & advice to an eventual projector owner--

 

[JPinTO]

The AE100 is a WVGA -wide VGA 16:9 panel running at 856x480. DVD resolution is 720x480 16:9. So for DVD viewing the AE100 matches very closely in resolutions... the vertical resolution being equal. No scaling is required vertically for DVD's on a AE100.


A XGA panel playing DVD's runs 75% of the panel in 16:9 resulting in a 1024x576 matrix. Scaling is required to get DVD's 480 line vertical resolution up to 576. Because the XGA panel is only running 75% of it's resolution, lumen also drops to 75%. In other words, a 1000 lumen XGA FP running 16:9 DVD will output 750 lumen. An AE100 will look bad downscaling 1024x768... it is fine for 640x480.


So, if you do lots of 4:3 viewing (PC, cable TV, VCR...) then an AE100 is not a good fit. If you are like myself that does DVD viewing and some video gaming, and want a 16:9 panel, then the AE100 is the cheapest 16:9 solution currently available. Depends on what you view.

 

[Halcy]

Jude,


you can only confirm this by having a look yourself. I compared AE100 to my LT-150 and wasn't impressed by AE100 at all. For the price it's good yes, but if you remove the price equation...


And I don't think that highly of LT150 to begin with.


YMMV. Caveat emptor, etc.


cheers,

Halcy