Wow, that was the exact word that came out of my mouth when I encountered Planar’s Home Theatre Projector that they have named Viper. Now, it is a projector that fits into all your schemes and expectations. the Oregon, US based manufacturer of home cinema products has really raised the bar with this one.
A product that uses the best in technological advances and meets all the requirements of the demanding viewers, this one is a winner all the way. Take a look, for example, at the display specifications. A native resolution of HD 1280×720 supported with Texas Instruments’ DLP 720p DMD dark chip. Unlike the Planar PD8150, for instance, the Planar Viper uses 3-chip DLP technology in order to produce a better effect. The Viper’s lamp also has power maximum of 2000 ANSI lumens calibrated at D65. The life of the lamp has been claimed to be 2500 hours. To ensure the bright images the typical contrast ratio provided 10,000:1.
One of the most important things with the projector is how well it’ll play your movies. The Planar Viper has employed Gennum GF9450 with 10 bit independent dual channel image processing technology precisely for the purpose. It makes use of the true 1080i deinterlacing and the very latest motion adaptive processing. It also adopts detail enhancement and rich colour processing and noise reduction. The best part it has less than one frame latency.
To make the whole video watching experience more customised it also has controls like full RGB gain/offset control, gamma control, colour temperature control in addition to contrast and brightness control. It also has menu options in all the languages including traditional and simplified Chinese. Ok, that won’t be of use to most of you right but still they are offering it.
As for the connectivity it has 2 HDMI, 1 RGB (HD15), 1 S-video, 1 composite and quite a few of the other popular ones. You have the option of different projection modes like front, rear and ceiling (front/rear). And yes it weighs just less than 20 kg.
Interestingly, to define it the company claims ‘Evidently the Holy Grail does exist.’ I think for the time being we can reserve the judgment on that.
Tags for this article: home theatre, projector
