BenQ W7000 Full-HD 3D Home Cinema Projector Preview

While many people are looking for 3D solutions that include the cheaper polarized glasses, active glasses are still the norm. The problem is often not the fact that they are active, but that there are crosstalk issues.  If you don't know what crosstalk looks like with 3D glasses, take them off. The dual image you see on the screen without the glasses? If you see that (or some version of it) while wearing the glasses, that is crosstalk. It means that the glasses aren't synced correctly and some of the image meant for the other eye is getting through.

BenQ has a solution for crosstalk with their new W7000. Billed as BenQ's first Full-HD 3D home cinema projector, the W7000 utilizes DLP Link to sync the glasses. From the DLP site:

Because the DLP imaging chip is so fast, it is able to project two images on the screen at one time to create the 3D image viewed through the active glasses. But, in addition to the two images on the screen, the DLP chip also sends additional data to the glasses in-between each frame of video. This is how the projector communicates with the DLP link enabled active glasses. This ingenious transmission technique makes data emitters obsolete and eliminates the need to install and position emitters. This saves you time and money and makes setup of a 3D Ready DLP projector quick and easy.

This solution is cool in that you don't have to worry about emitters. We've experienced problems with active glasses syncing and it can absolutely kill your enjoyment of a movie. Even a little bit of crosstalk-generated ghosting can be distracting. Like all active 3D solutions, we've read both good and bad about them though, generally, DLP Link is considered one of the better solutions. You can find new glasses for as little as $50 (though the BenQ and Optima branded ones will run you closer to $100).

The new BenQ W7000 isn't all about 3D, however; it does have a few other features. First, it sports two HDMI v1.4  and one each 15pin D-sub, component, composite, and S-Video input. This should be more than enough for almost any installation. It also brags 125 percent vertical and 40 percent horizontal lens shift adjustment with zero vertical offset which should make non-optimal placements a breeze. This is really good at this price point. The 2000 ANSI lumen output is certainly respectable as is the 50,000:1 contrast ratio. The W7000 has a dynamic iris and supports all the current 3D formats.

For the more technical in the crowd, the BenQ W7000 has ICFccc certification which will give you or your calibrator all the control you need to zero in on the perfect picture. There are, of course, two ISF specific modes (Day and Night). The BenQ is compliant to the native Rec. 709 color gamut, has TI's BrilliantColor technology to boost midtone colors, and VIDI lighting technology to increase the brightness of your lamp by up to 15 percent. All this should add up to a color correct image that is well saturated and bright.

The BenQ W700 has a 1.5:1 zoom range and 1.62 to 2.43 throw ratio. Combined with the lens shift, setting up the W7000 should be fairly forgiving allowing it to work in a large variety of rooms and setups. If you are a real videophile, you can buy a Panamorph lens to view 2.35:1 aspect ratio movies without losing brightness or suffering through black bars.

Conclusion

The BenQ W7000 sports a lot of the technology in the bigger, more expensive BenQ projectors. But that doesn't mean it is cheap. With a MSRP of just under $4k, it could be a wallet-buster for an Audioholic on a budget. We've already seen the projector's street price $1500 less than that, so make sure you shop around. Incorporating many of the latest technologies, including DLP Link for syncing the active glasses, tons of features for making placement easy, REC 709 True Color, and ICFccc certification, the BenQ W7000 certainly looks to be a lot of features for the money. The only thing it is missing, in our opinion, is information on the upconverting chipset. Perhaps, though, anyone on the market for a $2500 projector already has a decent chipset in their receiver and/or Blu-ray player. Either way, we'd love to see what this projector can do. We're betting it will be impressive.

For more information, please visit www.benq.us.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.