Among other issues, I saw posterization in faces (with shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually) and a loss of detail in dark areas. Video played from a DVD was watchable, but well short of impressive. Video quality was not in the same league, however. The CP-A100 sailed though our standard DisplayMate tests ( with vibrant colors and no problems worth mention. Image quality for computer-based images was excellent. The contrast ratio of 100:1 is relatively low, even for an LCD projector, but that's really only a problem for video, not for the computer-based images the CP-A100 is meant for. I measured the CP-A100 at 2,135 lumens, comparable with the Sanyo and NEC projectors and bright enough for a reasonably large image in most ambient lighting conditions. In addition, there's a USB port to connect to your computer for mouse control, connectors for both audio input and output, and a LAN connector for controlling and monitoring the projector as well as for sending relatively simple presentations to it over a network. Choices for video include RCA phono plug jacks for composite and component video and an S-Video connector. Like many projectors, the CP-A100 comes with only a VGA cable, but offers lots of connectors, including two VGA connectors for computer input and one pass-through monitor connector. The rest of the setup is standard, consisting of little more than plugging in the appropriate cables. (The zoom is strictly digital, but works like an optical zoom to adjust overall image size rather than zooming in on a portion of the screen, which is what most digital zoom features do.) You can control both zoom and focus from the remote, which means you can stand far enough back to see the whole screen at once. Once it's positioned properly, however, it's easy to adjust the zoom and focus. Like any short-throw projector, it is hard to position correctly, since it's so close to the screen that even a slight variation in position or angle will affect the image. The CP-A100 is much easier to set up than, for example, the PLC-XL50. It will also, technically speaking, work with any standard projector, except that shadows would be a problem for a projector that was more than a few inches from the whiteboard.) Either version will work with any short-throw projector, since the touch-screen feature is wholly dependent on the board itself. (The whiteboard is in beta testing at this writing, according to Hitachi, although a 77-inch version is currently available. In this second setup, the bottom (or front) of the projector was an inch lower than the surface of the whiteboard, and the image was a respectable 43 inches measured diagonally, falling just short of filling up the entire board. In this case, I put the whiteboard flat on a table, added the plastic feet to the projector, and set it to project down onto the whiteboard. In addition, I set up the CP-A100 to use Hitachi's StarBoard-a 50-inch (diagonal) touch-screen whiteboard-which Hitachi sent along with the projector. (The mirror that reflects the image onto the screen is near the back). To get the full-size image, I had to place the CP-A100 all of 15 inches from the screen, as measured from the front of the projector. I started with our preferred 98-inch diagonal (2-meter-wide) size for our standard test suite. (The CP-A100's maximum recommended image size is 120 inches.)įor my tests, I set the CP-A100 up in two ways. But like the WT610E, the CP-A100 isn't limited to the PLC-XL50's maximum image size of 80 inches diagonal. Like the PLC-XL50, the CP-A100 is built around an LCD engine, so there's no possibility of seeing a rainbow effect even if you're sensitive to it-a potential issue with the DLP-based WT610E. The CP-A100 offers an important advantage over the NEC WT610E and another over the Sanyo PLC-XL50. The CP-A100 even comes with plastic feet you can attach (using one screw for each foot) so you can sit the projector on a table top vertically, with the front facing down, to project an image down onto the table. You can, for example, project large images in a small room mount the projector behind the screen for rear projection even where there isn't much room behind the screen or mount the projector under a table to use the table top as a screen. The main reason for considering an ultra-short-throw projector is that you can use it in situations where you can't use standard projectors. And it adds some impressive functional design touches as well, like the mirror cover automatically opening when you turn the projector on, and closing to protect the optics when you turn the projector off. It's both smaller and lighter than its competition, at 5.2 by 15.6 by 14 inches (HWD) and 12.8 pounds. On the contrary, the CP-A100 packs its optics into as sleek a design as I've ever seen for a projector.
#Hitachi starboard how to setup software