Home Theatre/TV: Panasonic PT-AE1000 LCD Projector – 57

If you think projectors for home theatre, you’ll probably be thinking Panasonic. The company has an iron grip on the market and rightly so – it was the first major to introduce a genuine widescreen projector at a reasonable price, the venerable PT-AE100, and from those beginnings we have seen successive excellence at lower and lower price points. Not so long ago the PT-AE500 was considered a bargain at $5000; three generations later the vastly improved PT-AX100 can illuminate your big screen for just under $3500. Of course, all other manufacturers have done their bit to improve Joe Public’s big screen experience at a lower dollar, but Panasonic deserves kudos for leading the charge of the big screen brigade.

Which brings us to Panasonic’s very latest, top of the range, genuine 1080p projector statement, the PT-AE1000. It’s a vastly different-looking device from the PT-AX100, clad in very purposeful black casework and sporting no fewer than two HDMI inputs for more flexibility. And that’s just the start, for the PT-AE1000 has nothing in common with any Panasonic projector before it – from the giant lens assembly, motorised zoom and built-in wave-form monitor, to the newly improved inorganic LCD panels.

I was keen to see how it compared with last month’s excellent Mitsubishi HC-5000, so armed with a 100-inch screen, Panasonic’s DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player and a bunch of movies, it was action stations.

I slotted the first disc into the DMP-BD10, closed the tray and sat back to watch SWAT, a bubble-gum action flick starring Colin Farrell and Samuel L Jackson – the coolest man in Hollywood. The first aspect of the Blu-ray/PT-AE1000 duo that struck me was just how clean and sharp the picture was. No motion blurring, blocking or digital artefacts were evident at all, and the image was very natural and non-digital. Blacks were reproduced tremendously well, and the projector seemed more like a top-line DLP design in this regard. Shadow details were easy to pick out of darker backgrounds, while I saw no evidence of colour fringing or bleeding.

I decided on a normal DVD for the next disc, and although not hi-def, The World’s Fastest Indian seemed to benefit from the 1080p upscaling on the DMP-BD10 and superior colour gamut of the PT-AE1000. This very familiar disc showed a definite improvement compared with my PT-AE900, with far more natural colour (especially flesh tones) and better detail overall. Just as a comparison, I played the same disc through my Pioneer DV989AVI and I pretty much saw the same result.

Take a bow, PT-AE1000. I changed back to the DMP-BD10 and in went a Panasonic music promo disc. This provided the eye-popping ‘window on reality’ hi-res experience I was looking for, with razor sharp clarity but minus the harshness one would expect from a digital display. It was just gorgeous, and I was actually reluctant to turn the PT-AE1000 off, even though there were only three tracks on the disc.

Now there are two sub-$10k projectors that will resolve all 1080 x 1920 pixels of both the HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats, and impressive as the Mitsi HC5000 is, I feel it’s just shaded by the PT-AE1000 for overall performance. However, the HC5000 is cheaper by $500, which may be a determining factor for some buyers. The choice then, ladles and jellyspoons, is yours.

GARY PEARCE

Panasonic PT-AE1000 LCD Projector $8499

CONTACT
www.panasonic.co.nz

SPECIFICATIONS

- 1,920 x 1,080 full-HD panels with perpendicularly aligned liquid crystals
- 11,000:1 contrast ratio
- Pure Colour Filter adjusted to professional specifications
- 14-bit gamma processing original LSI
- HD-optimized dynamic iris lens
- HD-optimized smooth screen
- Cinema colour management
- Progressive cinema scan (3/2 pull-down)
- Scene-adaptive MPEG noise reduction
- 2x powered optical zoom and powered focus
- H/V lens shift (horizontal ± 40%, vertical ± 100%)
- Learning remote control
- Two HDMI inputs

PLUS

Superb image quality, ease of placement

MINUS

The fact that I don’t own one (yet)

VERDICT

The culmination of the last five years’ experience in the domestic projector market, it’s a great achievement by the masters of HT projection

Aesthetics: 90%
Performance: 94%
Features: 92%
Functionality: 94%
Price Value: 89%

Overall: 92%