Mitsubishi LVP-SD105U Projector; VLT-SD105LP Projector Lamp

There seem to be very few companies that can provide a nice balance between contrast and brightness; however Mitsubishi is one of the leaders when it comes to building a well balanced machine. A great example of this is the Mitsubishi LVP-SD105U , which is a superb DLP projector that is selling at an attractive price. The Mitsubishi SD105U came out at the very end of 2006 at the shockingly low price of $700 USD, and yet was able to provide more to the consumer than most models in price ranges much higher than that. I have spoken about this in the past, and many of you will have noticed the inverse ratio between contrast and brightness when it comes to your own projectors, but it is very hard to find a projector that offers a nice high level of brightness, while maintaining a high level of contrast. Most projector manufacturers will choose brightness over contrast in the hope that people on average will appreciate this more. However, if people are at all like me, and I am highly demanding, they would love to see more vibrant colors on their screen in order to fully enjoy the experience.

Once again to explain this relationship in detail, we must understand that in order to get more brightness, the amount of light must increase, and the only way to do this is to increase the aperture on the lens. As you increase the aperture, the contrast level goes down. The only way to get around this issue is to use a higher quality lens and therefore increase the price of the projector. Mitsubishi has somehow got around this when it introduced the SD105U, because it provides 1600 ANSI lumens while at the same time offers an 1800:1 contrast ratio.

The lamp that powers this machine is a 160W UHP bulb that can last up to 3000 hours. The lamp part number is known as the VLT-SD105LP and is also quite reasonably priced compared to many other models.

The SD105U is relatively quiet at 34.0dB and weighs only 5.5 pounds. The only thing that disappoints is the resolution which is merely 800x600p and cannot allow you to take full advantage of HD programming, however it can compress the image up to 1024x768 and might fool some people into thinking they are watching HD.

There are not too many features on the SD105U, however at this price it really does not matter. What matters is that you are getting a nice well balanced picture.