Samsung SP-A600 DLP Home Theater Projector First Look

[admin]

Samsung showed up at the 2009 CEDIA Expo with it's new SP-A600 DLP home theater projector - a product that aims at taking its higher end SP-A800 home theater projector and bringing some of that functionality to the masses. It's a good move, considering the company's last two home theater projectors left a price gap of $8000 between the two models. With an expected retail price of just $1,795, the new SP-A600 might just take Samsung into the "mass-market" playing field.


Discuss "Samsung SP-A600 DLP Home Theater Projector First Look" here. Read the article.

[BMXTRIX]

That's nice to read about, but they definitely do have some significant work cut out if they are going up against the other players in that range. InFocus, Optoma, Sharp, Epson, Sanyo, Panasonic, BenQ, and others are all already playing in that field and I'm not sure if Samsung is up to date on the manual to play in the low figures.

1. What is the actual throw distance ratio range.
2. What is the lens offset percentage?
3. 1,000 lumens? That's pretty low considering some of the alternatives.
4. What's the refresh rate? (60hz? 120hz? 72hz? Fluxuates?)

I would consider HDMI 1.3 standard and it's good to see 1080p/24 acceptance in there, but the playback specification is lacking.

Hopefully Samsung will get this out to the major review sites and not just hope for some magazine coverage as it definitely hits a price point which makes it interesting. But, if it doesn't outperform the HD20, which is $1,000, with similar specs, then it isn't something I would recommend.

[Biggiesized]

Joe Kane really needs to do a projector in collaboration with Samsung using the DarkChip4. I read the reasons he shyed away from DarkChip3 (versus 2 which is used here), but it only seems logical to start progessing to what's already old technology.

[FirstReflection]

The new SP-A900B uses the Darkchip 4, Biggiesized. MSRP is $12,000 so it's WAY more expensive than this "entry-level" A600 unit. But the black levels and contrast are supposedly much improved.

The real advantage of these Joe Kane approved Samsung projectors is their colour accuracy - always has been. These are the only displays I know of that actually switch decoders and gamut to match the program signal. As in: NTSC programming uses the NTSC colour decoder and rec.601 colour gamut, while ATSC HDTV programming uses the ATSC colour decoder and the rec.709 colour gamut.

Most displays only allow you to calibrate for one colour gamut (so the wider rec.709 standard is typically used). And some do not properly detect and switch colour decoders.

Correct gamma and being able to set the colour temperature to the "warmer" 5500K for black & white films are other advantages.

All of that said, JVC's D-iLA projectors are no slouch when it comes to colour accuracy, gamma and colour temperature and they basically destroy the Samsung DLP projectors when it comes to pure black level and contrast. The fact that the JVC projectors can also be had for a lower price makes them even more attractive!

But this SP-A600 is very interesting because if it can deliver the same standard of colour accuracy as the previous Samsung DLP projectors, but do so for under $2000, that would really be something! Black level and contrast are super important, but they are not the ONLY considerations and they are not the last word on image quality. I praise Samsung for their efforts in delivering a truly colour accurate image. And hey, if you have the money, black levels and contrast on the A900B should be highly competitive with the best black level champs out there!