Panasonic PT-AE7000U Sneak Preview

I recently had the opportunity to get a first hand, sneak preview of Panasonic's newest Home Theater Projector, the PT-AE7000U. Panasonic feels very excited about their new product which begins shipping in September. So excited in fact that instead of simply debuting the projector at CEDIA as is standard, they invited us and handful of other industry dealers and press to their Panasonic Hollywood Laboratories Facility to see the product in action.

So, on a cloudy morning in the outskirts of Universal Studios in CA I got to see the the world's first Full HD (meaning 1080p 480hz) 3D Projector. The information I gathered from the event along with my thoughts and impressions are included below.

Specs:

Full 1080p Resolution
2,000 ANSI Lumens of Brightness
300,000:1 Contrast Ratio
Full Active 3D

New Features:

New 200w red rich lamp, different from the previous model PT-AE4000U
Improved air circulation around the lamp, which results in a longer lamp life of 4k-5k hours
New .74" D9 LCD panels (PT-AE4000U used D7 panels)
New pure color filter pro which contains a sub iris that helps cuts back on light leakage and thus results in the 300,000:1 Contrast Ratio
Improved color space performance which specifically helps cyan (and to my eyes produced richer reds)
3d projection uses 480hz for less eye fatigue
3d picture balance allows users to match the picture settings in the right and left image to reduce eye fatigue (this is used for broadcast 3D since 3D BD discs should, in theory, already have matching images)
3d detail clarity processor uses dual core processor which only sharpens areas of the image that need sharpening
2d to 3d conversion built in (more on this in My Thoughts section)
Paralax setting which allows users to tweak and reduce crosstalk, juttering (more on this in the My Thoughts section)
Built in IR transmitter (also has jack for stronger IR transmitter if needed)

Notable Features Carried Over from Previous Model:

Lens memory
Viera link compatible
2x zoom lens, althought horizontial lens shift has been decreased from 40% to 26%, same verrtical lens shift
Cinema 1, Cinema 2, Normal, Dyanmic, Game, REC709 and D-Cinema picture modes
Smoothscreen Technology
Still made in Japan

My Thoughts:

2D Performance
Panasonic made it very clear the time and energy spent adding 3D features to this projector was not done at the expense of the 2D image, and I agree. Upon first look the improvements in brightness and black levels stick out the most. Viewing the AE7000U side by side against the previous AE4000U clearly shows the smokier, gray look to the black areas of the AE4000U. By comparisson the AE7000U produced blacks that were inkier. In real world terms, to my eyes I would say the AE7000U looked about 15% brighter than the AE4000U. This of course yielded a picture with a bit more pop and vibrancy. One seconday thing I noticed was the difference in color saturation. After a while I really felt the reds on the AE4000 looked a bit dull while the reds on the AE7000U looked rich and vibrant. Not flourescent, electric red but a very rich, deep, accurate red.

3D Performance
Last year at Cedia I was able to see lots of 3D displays including a few projectors. My impressions were that most 3D displays, especially the projectors looked well...crappy. I came away thinking Active 3D Technology with shutter glasses needed A LOT of work. Specifically I was bothered by the constant crosstalk, jittering, shaking and lack of detail in backgrounds. After viewing the new Panasonic PT-AE7000U I can easily say this is the best looking active 3D projector I've seen. We saw several clips from the 3D blu-ray Avatar which I had the pleasure of seeing in the theater when it came out. Overall I noticed far less crosstalk, jittering and shaking (yeah!). So, how did Panasonic accomplish this? What's changed? The main reason is Panasonic's addition of parallax adjustment technology. I don't want to create a white paper on this topic so I'll sum it up this way: creating active 3D on a solid screen like a plasma or LCD flat panel is easier because the image size is constant. When active 3D is projected it can become promblematic because as the projected image size increases the parallax (difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight) increases and the result is a crappy 3D picture and increased eye fatigue. Panasonic has addressed this by first allowing end users tell the projector what size image they are projecting and then allowing them to adjust the parallax using something similar to their wave form monitor. The result is as I said a more pleasing 3D image with less eye strain.

Built into the projector is also a 2D to 3D feature for non-native 3D content. The moment I heard this my eyes began to roll into the back of my head. I've seen this "trick" before and I'd rather watch a VHS tape. To my suprise, the clip I saw looked pretty darn good. Now, I only saw a very short (maybe 3 min) clip and it was animated content (I think Astro Boy??). Judging by that short clip I would say this feature isn't going to magically turn all of your 2D content into beautiful 3D but it would be worth a more in depth look. I would say for those invested in 3D components but disappointed in lack of 3D content this might be a fun feature to view some dynamic 2D content to see how well it does in pseudo 3D.

Overall
Panasonic has worked hard to improve upon a very successful previous model and has accomplished that by not only squeezing out better 2D performance but also providing the best looking active 3D projector I've seen to date.

FAQ's:

How big were the images you looked at? 100" images in the side by side comparison and 120" in another part of the demo

What was the screen material? Straight up 1.0 Matte White material

Does it ship with a transmitter? Yes, built in

Does it ship with glasses? No

Questions, comments about this post please Email me at derekburns@tierneybrothers.com