Labs

Home cinema projectors

We assess the image quality of each projector both in home cinema and office environments. For office tasks, we put each model through our standard suite of monitor tests, which are designed to show up any problems with colour accuracy, contrast and brightness. Displaying a rapidly bouncing white square on a black background tests the ability of a DLP projector to avoid the rainbow effect, for example. We also display text at a range of font sizes to test for legibility. We run our tests through both analogue and digital connections, where available.

Where possible we use a Pioneer DVD player producing progressive-scan video and connected through a component input to assess a projector's video quality. We also test each device's HD ability using 720p movie clips. Many movies are still in a standard-definition interlaced format, so we test video signal processing with the HQV benchmark suite. This reveals any problems with anti-aliasing - which gives straight lines, such as the edge of a table, a jagged appearance - and image noise, which shows as speckling in areas of uniform colour such as the sea or sky.