Video Projectors

. . .from very close to the screen, I could sometimes see what I can only describe as pure red or green noise that looked like sparkling pixels along sharp edges. On very dark scenes, this sometimes included the left edge of the picture. They were rare, and essentially invisible from my viewing chair. Whether or not this was a design quirk or a sample defect I do not know, but I was only slightly bothered by it once in over two months of serious watching.

Wouldn't you know it? A couple of weeks after we posted the review, and just days before I had to return the projector to Fujitsu, those stray red pixels (but not green) grew worse—much worse.

As I continued to use the projector after the review period, only a few of these rogue dots appeared when it was first turned on, and they were generally invisible from my 12-foot viewing distance (1.8x the screen width). But they gradually became more numerous, and after an hour or so of operating time they were all over the place—dozens of them scattered around the screen. They were most evident in very dark areas, but not in totally black sections (for example, there were none in letterbox bars). And they were no longer restricted to appearing on sharp edges. They were also much more visible on a paused frame, but once I learned how to spot them, I could see them in full-motion video as well. And while they were much more visible from close to the screen than from a distance, there was still clearly something very wrong here.

I suspect a maintenance problem in our review sample, rather than an inherent defect. But until we can confirm this, possibly by spending time with another sample (or, even better, this same sample after it's repaired), my recommendation of this projector must be tempered, at least a little, by caution. I still find it to be a spectacularly good video display, with far more pluses than minuses.

Fujitsu Responds:
Fujitsu General America, Inc. would like to thank Tom Norton and Ultimate AV for reviewing the company's LPF-D711 HD LCD front projector. We are obviously very concerned about the image problems reported by Mr. Norton, however we would like to assure Ultimate AV readers that this problem is by no means inherent with any of our projectors. In fact, we have not encountered an incident of this type from any of our satisfied customers.

While we have no way of knowing what caused the problem noted by Mr. Norton, we strongly suspect that it must be either a slight miscalibration of the review unit, or some other isolated maintenance error. Fujitsu stands firmly behind the quality of all its products. We will of course test the LPF-D711 unit reviewed by Mr. Norton and report our findings to Ultimate AV.