In Use

For viewing, I placed the Z4 on a coffee table in front of our Stewart Grayhawk screen. Using the lens shifts, I centered the image and adjusted the height, then zoomed in to fill the screen. Lens shift is a feature I consider invaluable on a projector. Only one of our senior editors felt it was not important, while all the other editors said that lens shift was needed for their installation. On the Z4, the lens shift controls are on the side, while on the Z3, they were on the front.

Although I performed the bench tests using the Normal mode, I ended up using the Powerful mode for viewing, fine tuning the brightness, contrast, color, and gamma, then saving all the settings in User Image 2 memory bank.

All viewing and bench tests were done using the HDMI input on the Z4. Sources included a Denon DVD-5900 DVD player and Zenith HD satellite box.

The image quality is excellent with the Z4, with good brightness and contrast. Both with DVD and our satellite box, using DVI out from the sources to a Gefen 4x2 HDMI switcher (DVI to HDMI cables), and from there to the HDMI input on the Z4, I found that the "L" settings in the Progressive option under the Image Adj. menu made a huge difference in the amount of combing that I saw. Since different sources will give different results, you would need to just switch back and forth between the L settings to see what works best for you. For me, it was L1 rather than L2.

I also found the Overscan control useful, as some of the satellite programs have an artifact at the right edge that I found annoying, so I simply activated that option and adjusted it one step at a time until the artifact was not visible anymore. Overscan options on some other projectors only offer "On" and "Off", with maximum overscan in the On position, so the several step adjustable Overscan on the Z4 let me get rid of the artifact without losing much of the main image.

The Z4 has quite a bit of Screen Door Effect (SDE), as shown in the close-up photo below. However, this is partly due to the very excellent lens that the Z4 has. The pixel structure was sharp even at the edges and corners. Frankly, SDE is a non-issue with me, even as close as I like to sit to the screen. I can barely make it out at that distance, if I look for it, but when I watch movies or TV programming, I just don't notice it. The Rainbow Effect, seen with some single-chip DLP projectors, on the other hand, is something I find very irritating, while many consumers are not bothered at all by this artifact. So, to each, his own.

The lens also showed no obvious pincushion distortion that is noticeable with some projector lenses. At the $2,000 price for the Z4, I consider the lens one of its outstanding features.

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