+1 on sean's suggestion for the Black Diamond from Screen Innovations. Even with a fair amount of ambient light, it looks like a flat panel.
+1 on jamaal's suggestion that, for 5" extra, why bother? Go to 90" or 100" or more, and you have a workable and useful upgrade. For 70", it's like trading in a perfectly good 25 cubic foot refrigerator for a 26 cubic foot one.
The only reason I could see going for a projector when the image is that little is because the picture looks more, well, real.
Actually, I'd bet ugly HD DOES equal increased adoption, as long as there is more of it, so that they can put in their marketing "We have more HD than competitor XXX". The masses look at the number of HD channels, not whether they're HD or HD-lite. Only a few of us can actually discern, and even fewer care about, the relatively minor PQ differences.
Since when does "more efficient MPEG-4 compression" necessarily equate to "worse PQ"? I realize that this is SOMETIMES, and perhaps USUALLY, the case, but it's not NECESSARILY so.
For instance, 10 years ago, when there was no lossless codec for audio, the idea of compressing the audio meant that the sound quality would suffer. Now you can compress the audio substantially without any degradation whatsoever in sound quality.
Perhaps the technologies they're looking at "in the labs" is further compression without resultant loss in PQ.
I'm not saying that this is the case one way or the other (and quite frankly, if I were a betting man, I would say that the next round of compression WILL degrade PQ slightly), but I AM saying that just the fact that they will compress the signal further does not GUARANTEE a poorer picture.
I agree. I've seen it in a number of settings, with a number of lighting conditions, and it ALWAYS looks incredible.
Lots of light? No problem: it's almost as though it was a giant, paper-thin flat panel - you can't believe it's not backlit.
Totally light controlled? Still looks WAY better than other screens.
Light-colored walls? This thing makes them disappear. So the WAF is high, since the walls can still be "stylish", but when the movie comes on, it's a total man-cave.
"I have a MacBook Pro and an Xbox 360 and I would like to get a 20- to 24-inch display that will support both devices. The speakers should be inbuilt, or there should be an aux out on the display to hook up external speakers. Help! Please!"
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+1 on jamaal's suggestion that, for 5" extra, why bother? Go to 90" or 100" or more, and you have a workable and useful upgrade. For 70", it's like trading in a perfectly good 25 cubic foot refrigerator for a 26 cubic foot one.
The only reason I could see going for a projector when the image is that little is because the picture looks more, well, real.