Canon Xeed SX80 Projector

I must admit that projectors have not received the attention they deserve in our labs, but now that's about to change. As the new year's first review, I'm doing an in-depth projector review for those interested in serious Home Theater visuals. The brand we are looking at is Canon, a well-known name in the market, and the model is one of their higher end pieces from the Xeed line. It's called the Xeed SX80, and is an LCD projector, comprising a special LCOS panel. I can't wait to see the new LCOS technology in action.

Design and Features
A brilliant pearl white finish for the chassis puts this model in the top category of good lookers. With regard to shape, there are no hard edges as the top panel curves into the back panel consistently with centrally located buttons at the curved end. The Canon logo is embossed in silver on the bare top panel. The side and front are dense gray in color; and this model has inputs on the side panel. The lens on the front panel has a plastic cover which detaches completely. I prefer a cover attached by some cord etc., as these do get misplaced sometimes. The tilt-up lever is regularly placed at the center of the front panel, and needs to be pushed in to raise or lower the unit.

The connections offered are an HDMI 1.3 port, a DVI-I, 15-pin VGA, a VGA monitor output, a 3-RCA component input, an s-video, composite and a 9-pin DSub serial port. The display uses LCOS technology, which is a hybrid between DLP and LCD (sort of). It's a newer method, and the full form of LCOS is Liquid Crystal on Silicon. It uses liquid crystals, though they are juxtaposed on a reflective substrate material, thus acting like mirrors just as in DLP. The liquid crystals open and close and the light is either reflected from the mirror below, or blocked. This defines the brightness of each pixel and creates the image. The main advantage of this tech is that the space between pixels is very minimal, and the image looks smooth as silk. Thus, our projector has quite a large chassis, but I'm expecting some really good image quality out of this pricey baby.

The complete specs are in the pic, though the important ones are as follows: Brightness is 3000 ANSI lumens, Contrast is 900:1, Resolution is 1400x1050, native 4:3, and the light engine is a three-panel LCOS with 230W NSH lamp. The lamp life is 2000 hours; 2500 in eco-mode. There is an onboard speaker rated at 1 meager watt of output. I believe these models should come without a speaker, one watt is too less.