{"id":803,"date":"2007-05-18T22:34:16","date_gmt":"2007-05-18T11:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=803"},"modified":"2010-02-14T13:24:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T02:24:26","slug":"do-you-call-that-a-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"Do you call that<\/em> a review?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I embarked upon a begging mission. I wrote to eight different purveyors of projectors and asked if they’d like to lend me one for at least several months. Odd behaviour? Here’s why.<\/p>\n

I shall henceforth be writing four HD DVD or Blu-ray disc reviews for each edition of ‘Sound and Image<\/a>‘ magazine. The focus will be on the technical quality of the titles, rather than the attractiveness of the content. But there’s a problem.<\/p>\n

To do a really good job I need a HD DVD player, a Blu-ray disc player and a true high definition (1,920 by 1,080) projector. None of which I can afford to purchase. I have already successfully prevailed upon Pioneer to lend me its new BDP-LX70 BD player (1080p24 output, networking capability) as soon as it comes in. I am working on a HD DVD player. And today I started working on a projector. Thus the eight emails. I have reviewed all but one of the projectors I enquired about, and the other one I will be reviewing within the fortnight.<\/p>\n

To be honest, I wasn’t all that hopeful. But within a couple of hours Epson had come back to me offering to lend me the EMP-TW1000 projector<\/a> for four months. Brilliant!<\/p>\n

But I did have one concern to settle before I said ‘yes’. While I reviewed it several months ago, at the time I did not have access to a 1080p24 source device, so I couldn’t be certain it could handle that preferred signal standard. So I decided to google up a few reviews.<\/p>\n

I eventually found a decent review at Projector Central<\/a> (apparently they use a different model name in the US). And this confirmed that the projector does, indeed, handle 1080p24 signals. So I said ‘yes’ to Epson, and that’s the projector I’ll be using for these movie reviews.<\/p>\n

But along the way I found a wonderful example of how not to review product<\/a>. I commend it to your attention. We have here a home theatre projector, full high definition, for review, and the reviewer plugs it into a … laptop! The opinion is expressed that ‘[a]ny white wall is fine for projection’ (oh yeah, a high gloss one?) and that Screen Goo ‘is highly reflective’, as though that’s some kind of virtue. A mirror is highly reflective, but doesn’t make much of a projection screen because it burns holes in your retinas. A projection screen reflects nearly all (preferably all) the incident light, but in a diffuse manner. I imagine Screen Goo does this as well.<\/p>\n

And the real killer:<\/p>\n

Obviously, for maximum clarity it is best not to set up the projector in an extremely bright room. For testing purposes, however, I did, and though the colours weren’t as vivid it still looked fine. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Huh? One of the selling points of this projector is a claimed contrast ratio of 12,000:1 thanks to the dynamic iris. That’s totally wasted with any<\/em> ambient light in the room at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I embarked upon a begging mission. I wrote to eight different purveyors of projectors and asked if they’d like to lend me one for at least several months. Odd behaviour? Here’s why. I shall henceforth be writing four HD … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804,"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}