panasonic pt-ae700e lcd panel factory

The PANASONIC PT-AE700E original bulb inside includes a bulb from one of the OEM manufacturers (Osram P-VIP, Philips UHP, Ushio, Matsushita, Iwasaki HSCR) and has plastic housing from a generic manufacturer. This is a very reliable solution and is cheaper than the original manufacturer option. We recommend it thanks to its reliability and affordable price.

The PANASONIC PT-AE700E generic lamp with housing includes generic plastic housing and a generic bulb from an authorised manufacturer of generic lamps. It is a cheaper solution recommended for in-home use, where projection quality and reliability are not as crucial. Even though generic lamps are not necessarily of the same quality as original manufacturer lamps, their price is nevertheless very attractive.

The PANASONIC PT-AE700E generic lamp with housing includes generic plastic housing and a generic bulb from an authorised manufacturer of generic lamps. It is a cheaper solution recommended for in-home use, where projection quality and reliability are not as crucial. Even though generic lamps are not necessarily of the same quality as original manufacturer lamps, their price is nevertheless very attractive.

The original PANASONIC PT-AE700E lamp is a bare bulb from one of the OEM manufacturers (Osram P-VIP, Philips UHP, Ushio, Matsushita, Iwasaki HSCR) and is designed to replace the lamp in your existing lamp housing. This solution is cheaper than a lamp with housing, although it requires a certain amount of manual skills. This option is recommended for customers who already have some experience with bare bulb replacement.

The original PANASONIC PT-AE700E lamp is a bare bulb from one of the OEM manufacturers (Osram P-VIP, Philips UHP, Ushio, Matsushita, Iwasaki HSCR) and is designed to replace the lamp in your existing lamp housing. This solution is cheaper than a lamp with housing, although it requires a certain amount of manual skills. This option is recommended for customers who already have some experience with bare bulb replacement.

The PANASONIC PT-AE700E generic lamp is a bare bulb without plastic housing and is produced by an authorised manufacturer of generic bulbs. Keep in mind that replacing the bulb in the housing requires manual skills and tools. It is the cheapest option recommended for in-home use, where projection quality and reliability are not as crucial. Even though generic bulbs are not necessarily of the same quality as original manufacturer bulbs, their price nevertheless is very attractive.

*1 The projector uses a type of liquid crystal panel that typically consists of millions of pixels. This panel is built with very high-precision technology to provide the finest possible image. Occasionally, a few pixels may remain turned on (bright) or turned off (dark). Please note that this is an intrinsic characteristic of the manufacturing technology that affects all products using LCD technology.

The Panasonic PT-AE700E doesn"t really stand out in the style sweepstakes, but it"s not hideous either. It"s a no-nonsense, clean looking silver box, with its only apparent design element the vertical air output grilles on the left side of the front face. These nicely balance the lens, the tiny remote control signal receptor and a small joystick lens control on the right side. The front facing exhaust fan also means that the projector can be placed on a narrower site than those with side vents. The unit is quite light, weighing only 3.6kg so it"s quite easy to move around if you so desire. Note that there"s no included carrying case, however.

The PT-AE700E is easy to set up and operate, so you won"t have to spend hours reading the manual before you"re up and running. Its 2x optical zoom lens lets you adjust the image size to match the room layout and screen dimensions. It has a wide range of throw distances so that even in a fairly large room, you can get an extremely good quality image whether you"re setting it up on a coffee table in front of your viewing position, or above and behind it.

Setting up a projector can be difficult in odd shaped rooms (such as the one this was test in), but the PT-AE700E simplifies that complication with the inclusion of a joystick vertical and horizontal lens shift control. So if you have to set up the projector on a bookshelf that isn"t quite square on to your screen, you can move the image, without moving the projector. Horizontally, the lens can be shifted a maximum of 25 per cent of the width of the screen and vertically up to 63 per cent of the height of the screen. If you"re adjusting both positions of the projected image, the percentage of movement is roughly halved. Since the lens moves within the projector housing, there is no distorion of the on-screen image, unlike adjustmenst with digital keystone correction -- although the projector does have a vertical keystone distortion which can be corrected to ±30° of the angle of tilt.

It has the standard array of terminals for DVD players, PCs and game machines (including Scart), but unlike most low end projectors, the PT-AE700E is somewhat future-proofed in its inclusion of HDMI input. Unfortunately, the HDMI cable is not part of the package, but if you invest in one, you"ll be compatible with all high-definition digital sources. If you have DVI sources, DVI - HDMI adapters are available. It also has a trigger terminal, so you can connect it to devices such as an electric screen. No stand-alone audio capabilities though.

With some advanced technology and the PT-AE700E"s high-definition 1,280x720-pixel resolution, Panasonic has pushed LCD technology to a very high level. The 1000 lumen lamp and its "Dynamic Iris" optical system with AI techology yield brightness and colour variations that are quite subtle, so images seem very realistic

Panasonic says the intended lamp replacement interval is 3000 hours, which is neither at the top nor bottom end of the lamp-life scale, but it does drive down the cost per viewing hour.

All up, we couldn"t find much to complain about with the Panasonic PT-AE700E. There are certainly cheaper home cinema projectors on the market, but for its image quality, ease of set-up and HD widescreen capabilities, this projector leaves many of its more fancied and more expensive competitors for dead.

Panasonic"s PT-AE500U made waves in fall 2003 with its low price and improved color rendering over previous Panasonic LCD projectors. Plenty of them were sold, and the model made many reviewers" "Best Of" lists for the year.

Now Panasonic has followed up with the PT-AE700U, and it"s more than just an upgrade of the PT-AE500U. The "700 has some new bells and whistles of its own, including a longer-throw projection lens, auto iris for deeper blacks, and an optical system that minimizes the "screen-door" effect so common to LCD projectors of all kinds.

For some time, the only way LCD projectors could compete with DLP models was on the basis of price. DLP projectors had the upper hand in contrast, black levels, color rendering, and achieving a "filmlike" look, thanks to the fine structure of DLP micromirrors. Of course, you paid a premium for that level of performance.

Two characteristics of LCD imaging have long befuddled projector manufacturers. The problem with black levels is intrinsic to the small, high-temperature polysilicon (HTPS) LCD panels, which behave like window blinds to pass different amounts of light through each pixel and form gray-scale images. If you use window blinds, you know that they don"t completely cut off all light when drawn. Just as light leaks around the edges and through the slats of blinds, so too does it scatter, reflect, and refract within an LCD panel, even when that panel is switched off.

The second problem—the screen-door effect—is caused by the relatively thick boundaries around each individual pixel in an LCD panel. These edges are significantly larger than those found around DLP micromirrors or around liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCoS) pixels, and they"re easy to spot.

With the PT-AE700U, LCD projection has finally served notice that the technology is not going away any time soon. While the PT-AE700U is no earthshaking advancement in projection technology, it will do much to dispel the feeling of having "settled for second best" experienced by some who have bought LCD projectors.

What you won"t notice (unless you carefully read the specifications or owner"s manual) is the l-o-n-g–throw 2:1 projection lens. Panasonic opted to go with this design to give you more options in projector placement. In general, a long throw distance means the aperture of the lens will be a tad smaller and the projected image a bit dimmer than shorter-throw designs, unless more horsepower is available from the projection lamp and optical system to compensate—which, as we"ll see, it is in the PT-AE700U.

The supplied remote control, though small, has a nice layout of 18 buttons. After using it for a while, I was able to operate the important ones by feel, holding the remote behind my back (my test for a good remote design). My only complaint is that the remote doesn"t give you direct access to video inputs. Panasonic has created three groups (Video, Component, PC/HDMI) within which you can make selections.

For finer tuning of picture quality, Panasonic provides seven factory-preset combinations of brightness, contrast, gamma, and white balance: Natural, Cinema 1, Cinema 2, Cinema 3, Normal, Video, Dynamic. There are also five preset color-temperature selections to choose from.

Sounds like something a professional colorist in a video postproduction house would do, doesn"t it? That was the precise inspiration for the earlier PT-AE500U"s improved color rendering; in the PT-AE700U, Panasonic has simply expanded on that range of adjustment.

When this projector was shown at CEDIA"s Expo 2004, what caught everyone"s attention were its super-low black levels. These are due to its advanced auto-iris function, which acts continuously to adjust the projector"s dynamic range up and down as the picture"s brightness level changes. Panasonic first implemented this technique in their high-brightness, three-chip DLP projectors a few years ago; as you"ll see shortly, it works quite well.