Viewsonic PJD6221 3D Ready Projector

A movie buff is often confronted with a precarious situation at least once in his early life of collecting audiovideo gear, and that is when the largest, most expensive LCD screen is just not enough. It wont cut it, no sir we need more inches, darker rooms, heavier bass, a softer couch and so on. Well, for the larger screen part of things, enter the versatile projector: a device that is not as popular in India as a piece of Home theater equipment as it is for business use, but that trend is changing. Viewsonic fills up a good slot in the market with their diverse range of projector models, and the new PJD6221 s one of them. Let’s see what it offers.

Form and Features
First and foremost, its 3D ready, supporting 120 Hz frame rates. Thus that makes it automatically a cut above the mediocre; besides the 3D we have a host of regular, but impressive features found in DLP models today, the main one being BrilliantColor technology.

The form of the product has nothing stark or loud in design, rather is quite a simple, functional piece of work. The arrangement of the buttons on top is pleasant, laying on a glossy finish, which itself is neighbored by a matte finish, thus the top panel avoids looking bland. The tactile feel of the buttons are impressive, no complaints there.

Another great feature is network connectivity, wherein an admin or IT head can use it from a remote location, controlling via PC.  The options available for this are quite a handful, including Power on Scheduling, Keystone correction and more. Come to think of it, Keystone correction does not make sense from a remote location, does it now? Another iffy one will find when he/she reads through the connector list below is lack of HDMI input. Not good.

Performance
We straightway placed the unit about 9 feet from the screen, and plugged it in via VGA to the HTPC, which contained the Nvidia 3D Vision boomba, latest drivers et al. I just wanted to see whether the feature worked mainly, which it did, and secondly whether it runs smoothly through time, meaning there were no hiccups in frames. This too was not an issue. The overall screen size we tuned was about 100 inches, which adjusted itself geometrically quite well,  due to the auto keystone adjust feature.

Moving on from 3D specific moves, I initiated the Display Mate test regime, to see accuracy of color and most importantly, the GREYSCALE. The conclusion after these tests was simply that the projector has decent lumen output, but not so much to be used in broad light. Presentation will need slightly dim ambience. Also the colors are warmer, meaning reds tint slightly out of balance.

Finally the 3rd stage, for watching a movie to gauge it all at once. We chose Planet Earth DVD, a brilliantly colorful and well shot documentary, with some super fast cuts interspersed with slow pans, providing video content apt for squeezing a display. The experience was fun, especially in a darker room, curtains drawn etc, one gets good levels of Brightness and Contrast.

Conclusion
At a price of Rs. 49,000 I think this unit gets a lot of benefit of doubt, as the flaws are not major. The brightness could have been more, but it’s still enough to impress. The features are useful and nice to play around with, setup is easy and looks are decent. It does get a little hot in temperature, but statistically not too far from mean levels we have gauged before.

Specs
Type - 0.55" Digital Micromirror Device (DLP)
Resolution - 1024x768, 1600x1200 compressed
Lens - 1.2× Manual optical zoom / Manual optical focus
Display Size - 30 - 300 inch (measured diagonally)
Throw Distance - 1.2 - 10.0m
Lamp - 180watt (RLC-050) / 3500 hour rating
Brightness - 2700 Lumens
Contrast Ratio - 2800:1
Speakers - 2W

Connectors
Audio Input - 2 × 3.5mm mini jack
Audio Out - 1 × 3.5mm mini jack
RGB Input - 2 × 15-pin mini D-sub
Composite Input - 1 × RCA jack
S-Video Input - 1 × 4-pin mini-DIN
RGB Output - 1 × 15-pin mini D-sub
Control - 1×RS-232 (9 Pin D-sub) / RJ45
USB - Type B (mouse control)