Front Projectors: The Thomas Kincades of HDTV (Except Actually Awesome)

Since my old roommate’s first DLP projector arrived in the mail to delighted squeals and week-long marathon of torpidity, I have been a strong proponent of “front projectors.” Heck, even before projectors were molded by the inevitable march of miniaturization into units that can be slipped into a backpack (and soon, your cellphone), I recall fondly watching washed-out movies in my friend’s basement on the hulking, three-lens battle-projector his dad had salvaged from a dumpster and repaired. Even then, in the early ’90s, I was committed to owning a projector of my own.

And now I do. A Panasonic AE900U, an LCD-based unit capable of a full 720p native picture that I project on a 106-inch pull-down screen. If I weren’t impressed enough by the crisp, colorful image it is capable of producing, I’d be won over by its ingenious variable lens shifting apparatus, which allows me to move the actual projecting lens assembly up and down (and side to side!) using a tiny joystick. That means I can put the AE900U on a shelf pointing roughly towards the screen, then make any minute adjustments with the joystick rather than the precarious assembly of shims and telescoping feet I was forced to use to align my last projector.

But it’s not all roses.

The image is nearly unwatchable on bright days, even with my reflection-enhancing screen. Of course, we have positioned the screen in nearly the worst place possible for daytime viewing: right beside two southern-facing windows. In some ways I enjoy the sun-imposed limitation on viewing times; during the summer, when the days are long and the weather warm, we are encouraged to take the dog out for another walk or to enjoy a sidewalk supper, while in the winter the darkness creeps in fortuitously close to twenty past four.

The replacement bulbs, which the Panny is rumored to burn through at a rate of about one every 2,000 hours or so, cost around $350 apiece. There will be much kvetching the day I turn on my light thrower to the pop of a gasping bulb.

Golly, though! It’s really pretty. A screen that large, with proper HD content (or DVD content scaled up to HD), is a real treat, making even interminable programs suitably epic—Oh, Dr. House! Your dour, persimmony joshing can not hide the vulnerable, quivering eyes shining from your rubbery, six-foot face! (When the floating six-foot scruff of Hugh Laurie makes a proclamation to you from just the other side of the living room, you know it’s not lupus.)

Please consider the projector. The images they produce are large, as well as “in charge.” They aren’t the watercolor Powerpoint piddlers of recent memory but legitimate entertainment painters. Painters who use, like, really bright colors. Oil painters, probably. Painters of light.