Photo gallery: ViewSonic PJD6381 3D projector3D is here. Yip! Yip! Yipppppppeeeeee! As overheard at an Avatar screening: "I wish I could see in 3D all the time!".
We are now experiencing the second age of 3D, after the first wave came and went in the 50's. As you'd expect, the technology is so much more advanced these days even if there's only one movie to show for it. In fact, cinemas in Korea are showing Avatar in 4D which, if we know anything about physics, means you actually do get three hours of your life back!
So manufacturers are now jumping on the 3D bandwagon, only some are doing it more successfully than others.
Design and features
Our first impressions of the PJD6381 weren't very good, and unfortunately this was a pattern that the ViewSonic followed during our testing period. You see, as soon as we got the projector out of the box the adjustable foot on the front of the projector snapped clean off. To continue with testing we had to make do with what we, and we suspect most people would have available — DVD covers.
The ViewSonic PJD6381 is a 3D projector, yes, but it comes with a couple of caveats. Firstly, you need to own a recent Nvidia graphics card, and secondly you need to buy a set of Nvidia 3D glasses, which will set you back a cool AU$300. We heaped the first 3D monitor to cross our desks, the Zalman ZM-M220W, with faint praise back in 2008, but in hindsight it was a pretty dreadful product: you had to sit a specific distance from the computer otherwise you ended up puking. Zalman used a passive technology in its product whereas the ViewSonic method uses active glasses, which works so much better.
Unfortunately, for users interested in hooking this projector up to a Blu-ray player and watching Avatar when it comes out then you just can't. There are no digital inputs of any kind on the projector, and as far as we can fathom 3D Blu-ray will only work via HDMI.
Connectivity is heavily PC-centric with two separate VGA inputs and one output. Accompanying this are an S-Video and a composite input. On the audio side there are two stereo 3.5mm inputs and an output. According to the Quick Setup guide it is possible to use a component-to-VGA converter to connect set-top boxes, but there isn't one included in the box.
The ViewSonic's biggest selling point — apart from 3D, of course — is its short throw capability, which means it projects a large image from a very short distance. However, this is also the projector's greatest weakness, but more on that shortly.
If you want general specs then the PJD6381 sports a 1024x768 XGA resolution, has a brightness of 2500 ANSI lumens and a 2500:1 contrast ratio. The monitor also supports a refresh rate of 120Hz, which is important as this will need to be broken in two to provide a stereo image — leading to an effective 60Hz refresh rate during 3D scenes.
If you're interested in using this projector in a business or educational environment — and we suspect that most purchasers of this product will be — then you may find the LAN and USB control features useful. Not much use in a lounge-room environment, though.
Performance
Despite the focus on 3D this is undeniably a 2D projector gussied up to appeal to the public's curiosity about movies like Avatar. Don't misunderstand us, the ViewSonic can do 3D and do it surprisingly well, but it feels tacked on.
At the moment the only real use for a 3D projector — irrespective of whether it has digital inputs — is to use it for gaming. We hooked up a beefy Alienware ALX PC with a GeForce GTX275 and played a variety of games and some 3D promotional videos. As not all games are set up for 3D, we had more success with a game like Team Fortress 2 than in the already-mind bending Portal with weird 3D effects randomly occurring. Some people feel ill playing third-person shooters, and if this is you then playing a game on a 3D projector like this will only amplify the effect. One other thing we'll mention is that the projector doesn't work with the latest Nvidia 3D software, you need to use the older version from last year and even then we had to put the glasses on upside down to work!
Watching the few 3D movies available online we found that the movies had a good sense of depth and believability. However, the success of the effect is dependent on the material: we did find that there was some cross-talk or "break-up" in some of the images and they required quite a bit of concentration to bring into focus.
After trying out the 3D, the regular two dimensions was a little bit of a letdown, but at least the projector performed well. Trying out King Kong on DVD we found that the film looked quite natural, though the poor black levels meant there wasn't a sense of depth to them. Colours and detail were as reasonable as you could expect from a standard-definition source fed by a composite cable.
Hooking up a Blu-ray player such as the PlayStation 3 was faintly ridiculous given the provision of only a composite input, but we tried it anyway. After popping Mission Imposssible III in the console we were surprised at the lack of judder during the bridge scene, but this was its only plus. The scene was overblown with unnatural colours and plenty of artefacts including moire on parallel surfaces and mosquito noise.
As we mentioned earlier, the ViewSonic has a "short throw" and it was able to fill a space several metres across while still very close to the screen. The problem is that if you want to move it at all you will end up with poor image quality. While there is a keystone adjustment on the projector it's next to useless — introducing jagged lines on edges and black triangular sections where the rest of the image used to be. And the menu doesn't keystone, meaning you'll end up with a trapezoidal picture menu or other strange shape. Not only that, but text was blurry and the picture would default back to the original shape when you turn it off. We found the only way to overcome these fairly serious problems was to plonk the projector dead in front of the projector screen roughly a metre away.
