If you want more light, Normal mode will give you a much brighter image. Normal mode
measured well over 900 ANSI lumens on our sample. Color balance is not quite as good as it is in
the Cinema modes, but it was surprisingly satisfying—somewhat cooler, yes, but not ice cold or
disturbingly green as it is on most projectors. Typically, boosting light output to the super bright
settings causes a bad shift toward blue green that makes the picture not nearly as pleasant.
Once you are in Normal mode with the default color temperature, you can reduce color
temperature to compensate for the cooler image. With the color temperature control alone, you
can warm up the image in incremental steps while dropping lumen output in incremental steps. At
the warmest setting you still end up with a very substantial 600 lumens. The bottom line is that
the AE2000 gives you a wide range of usable options for lumen output, and you can select the
one that fits your lumen needs, taste preferences, screen size,
ambient light situation, and so on.
While the purist videophile will want to opt for the Cinema modes, we
are certain that many home theater enthusiasts will find the Normal
mode a very appealing alternative. The gain of a lot more lumen
output at the cost of a little bit of color accuracy will be a trade-off well
worth making. In Normal mode, with a few adjustments, you can get
a bright, high contrast picture with rich color saturation, and realistic
looking color that has no distracting bias toward blue/green.
Finally, for those interested in setting up a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen
with an anamorphic lens, the AE2000 comes with the appropriate
anamorphic vertical stretch mode needed to accommodate the lens.
Limitations
We are having a hard time finding much to complain about on this
model. Certainly, for those who want to ceiling mount their projector,
it would be nice to have an option to get it in a white case. As it is, the
dark gray casework may not be aesthetically pleasing when mounted
against a white ceiling in a living room or some other multi-purpose
room. However, in a dedicated theater room it won't usually make
much difference.
On-board deinterlacing of 480i signals is not bad, but not great either.
On the HQV test patterns, the rotating bar looked clean, but there
were quite a few deinterlacing artifacts in the rippling flag. It locked
reasonably well into the racetrack scene without any moiré patterns
in the stands. But in the film/video cadence clip the rolling credits
showed too much jitter and instability. Overall, a mixed bag.
The other limitation worth considering is that if you are going to use
the Cinema modes, the light output is such that your screen size
must be limited. In a dark room with no ambient light, Cinema 1 looks
its very best at a screen size of 100" to 106" when displayed on our
Stewart Grayhawk, with a gain of 0.95. Once we pushed it 120", we
lost enough saturation and snap that we wanted to either reduce the
image size or opt for the Normal operating mode. And this was all
with the lens at its widest angle (shortest throw) position. Moving the
projector back, and using the longer portion of the lens will dim the
picture considerably. At the longest throw position, light output is curtailed by about 40% from
whatever it was at the wide angle setting. So for videophiles who intend to use the AE2000 in
