Vivitek H1180HD cinema projector: new tricks of American illusionists

TEST LIKBASE REVIEW: Gamma Curve

Not so long ago the cinema projector

3D

One could buy Full HD by selling a used foreign car. And now the market is changing rapidly. Almost every manufacturer has a budget-friendly model for your home cinema. And the competition is growing, like an Olympic hockey tournament. Proof of this is the Vivitek H1180HD cinema projector, which replaces the best-selling H1080 that grossed excellent box office, numerous press awards and appreciative comments from users. Will the replacement be as successful as the market?

Consultants: Yury Sergeev, PULT online store and Natalia Laguta, Digital Systems

Let’s get to know it: The Vivitek H1189HD cinema projector with new technology inside

First Date

You usually recognize your soul mate at a glance. I even got the impression that the projector winked its smart, thoughtful eye-lens right out of the box. It’s so white and fluffy, the lines on the plastic are smooth and soft and when you pick it up it feels like a white swan..

The outer appearance of the novelty is quite designer, elegant, without extravagant excesses, “tailored” with fine taste and, I would say, with love. I felt it right away.

As you can easily see, the projector starts with the light source. In the Vivitek H1180HD model it is a traditional HSP lamp, which is quite bright and gives maximum luminous flux of 2000 ANSI Lm in Vivitek H1185HD – 2500 ANSI Lm .

Lamp can shine at full 4500 hours or in economy mode 6000 hours. Compared to LED models, lifespan is almost five times less, but brightness is higher and colors are noticeably closer to life.

Trouble-free operation of the projector is promised for five years. Then you quickly unscrew the two screws on the top panel and put in a new lamp for another five years. Unscrewed, checked – it takes longer to change the light bulb in the toilet.

On the sides of the projector there are stylish and functional grills, increased compared to the previous modification H1180. Through these “lungs” is exhaled warm air blown from the lamp power of 160-190 watts. The cooling system is obviously overdesigned to be less demanding in light bulb operating conditions.

So, have a winter bonus – during the movie, the model also works as a heat fan.

The package: nothing too much

In the kit, once removed, we found a brief instruction, a disc with a detailed manual, remote control with batteries, VGA D-sub – D-sub cable, power cord and a soft pouch for comfortable transfer of the projector. No HDMI cable or “red-white-yellow” three-core cable was found.

As you can see, it’s quite spartan. But the price of a cinema projector is less than a thousand dollars – this nuance removes all questions.

Interface: connect any way you want

All the jacks are on the back. A set of connectors allows the projector to fit into a home system of any cost and to connect it with equipment of any kind and generation.

Six is zero in favor of connectivity in all ways

The same as everyone else

The unit has the standard connectors: two HDMI inputs, – as there is support for 3D, – of course, version 1.4.

There is the obligatory composite video input, 2xRCA audio inputs, VGA computer socket and 3.5 mm audio output for headphones.

Like many, the projector has RS-232 interface, which allows you to control the projector from your computer via cable, but very few people use it.

There is a forgotten slot S-Video, through which, nevertheless, it is convenient to connect old video cameras with video archive.

Yellow, red, blue – take your pick!

Not like everyone else

First of all the component video input inspires respect. Of course, digital HDMI solves almost all switching issues. But we can easily assume that someone recently invested in a Full HD projector, and movies are started with samples left from the past life along with a vast collection of DVDs.

But the most curious interface is the 3D SYNC connector. The IR emitter is connected to it, synchronizing the signals for the 3D glasses. Admittedly, this trick seemed superfluous at first. Why? Every DLP-projector already has a 3D signal synchronization by DLP Link technology. But when we saw the 3D glasses, light and handy, our questions disappeared. It’s a pity the 3D glasses aren’t included.

DC 12V TRIGGER connector is intended for the screen – if you connect a projector to it with a special wire not included , the screen will unfold for public display by itself.

Another nice bonus – the presence of two USB-connectors – type A and type B mini USB, only for technical purposes . Of course, there is no point in “plugging” the hard drive into the USB – there is no built-in media player anyway. And for connecting a fiber-optic HDMI cable, which needs extra power on both sides, the USB connector comes in handy.

Innovation and Technology: We’ve been fooled, and we’re happy to be fooled?

Beauty is deceptive and mysterious. I had no idea that I was looking at just such a beautiful picture, radiating from the projector. The Windows splash screen still fluttered on the screen, but I couldn’t believe my eyes anymore. Because I realized what kind of deception DLP technology was based on..

History is long: while we were raging Gorbachev perestroika, the Americans in 1989, completed another revolution – in digital image processing. By 1995, the DMD-chip is on the market and launched a new class of multimedia projectors, based on Digital Light Processing DLP .

That’s when Intel, the American company Texas Instruments, entered the video chip market and sent its 0.65-inch DMD micro-mirror chip for the new Vivitek projector. This tiny crystal is what gives that mysterious “don’t believe your eyes” kind of picture.

A very beautiful invention indeed, based on a formidable deception of vision. The DMD chip is a Digital Micromirror Device or a matrix of microscopic mirrors. The matrix is made of aluminum alloy, which reflects light better than a regular mirror.

Each micro-mirror is responsible for the quality of only one pixel on the screen. All in Full HD matrix, as it is easy to calculate, 1920 * 1080 = 2 073 600 – about two million. And how do you manage such a mirror armada?

Two pairs of mini-electrodes are connected to the mirrors. The current is alternating between one side and the other. The mirror takes one position and then another, rotating 20 degrees. There is no need for a third.

From the first position mirrors send rays of light exactly to the lens and the screen fills with white. From the second position all mirrors hit by the lens and the rays go to a special absorber, which also reliably removes unnecessary heat. In this case, the screen becomes completely black.

So millions of micromirrors at any moment take one of two positions and form either black or white on the screen. So what’s the hoax?? At speed. The mirrors “wobble” thousands of times a second. The screen flickers with black and white dots, merging at breakneck speed into shades of gray in our eyes. This is the illusion of vision: in fact, there’s only black and white, and we can’t see the extremes, we only see gray.

And that’s not all. Next, the deception will be even more colorful.

If the matrix only produces a black and white image, how will it suddenly become a color image??

Simple and ingenious! You quickly spin the thumb wheel with the three colored segments and send the red, green, and blue light beams one at a time to the sensor. The projector will of course display three separate monochrome frames in the same order, in red, green and blue.

Now the optical illusion is completely revealed: the frames flicker so fast that our eyes see not three monochromes, but the whole color image.

This is a major trick of DLP technology that hasn’t changed in almost 20 years. Further development of “illusionist” technology comes from new materials and designs.

DLP “illusionist” technology involves easy control of suggested focal points

The DarkChip3™ chip – everyone was fooled before us?

Today’s DMD chips are a far cry from the first specimens. The Vivitek H1180HD uses the next generation DarkChip3™ chip which gives projectors a more advanced color image and by the way, at a fairly low cost.

No cheating this time.

The new DarkChip3 has the same physical resolution as the previous generation Mustang HD+. But the matrix is much cooler: it’s FTP-matrix Fast Track Pixel , which has a faster response time.

The designers have managed to reduce not only the size of the hinges that hold the micro-mirrors on the foot, but also the gaps between the mirrors, which increased the reflective area of the matrix, while remaining within the same limits.

And on mirrors there is a new covering absorbing light as if a “black hole”. The depth of black fell to a real “Egyptian darkness,” which increased the contrast, and without noticeable damage to the luminous flux.

As a consequence of all these innovations, the effect of “pixel jitter” decreased noticeably, the image on the screen became clearer, clearer and more natural. And cheaper.

Sometimes the ideas are not only marketing, but also brilliant

Another innovative technology used in the Vivitek H1180HD is called BrilliantColor™. Actually this term already freely walks the market. It would be desirable to understand what is behind it? I’m ready to continue the creative discussion, but I found the diamond idea beautiful and elegant in its simplicity.

The thing is that the DLP-technology has its own “generic injury”: a projector with one chip makes the image not bright enough, on the screen many colors are lost which you can’t get by combining with the “holy trinity”: red, blue and green.

Try, for example, emerald yellow or cyan by mixing only three base colors. You’ll just get dirty. So the living nature in the beams of many DLP-projectors does not seem so alive.

It’s not hard to guess what the “diamond” idea is. Not enough three colors on the color wheel? Let’s add three more – yellow, cyan turquoise and purple magenta . All at once or at least some of them.

The first noticeable effect will be an increase in brightness. At 580 nm wavelength corresponding to the yellow color, the transmission ratio of regular RGB system obviously did not pull up to the respectable values.

As soon as a yellow segment was added to the wheel, tuned to the same frequency, the brightness immediately “turned on”. Similarly, the brightness is “turned on” in cyan and other shades.

Bottom line: Even a 5-sector filter plus yellow and cyan increases brightness by up to 50 percent compared to standard RGB.

Of course, diamond technology has expanded the gamut, adding vital colors such as yellow and cyan, without which there is no truly living nature.

And the BrilliantColor™ has done its bit for contrast, keeping black level unchanged while brightness has increased markedly. Which, by the way, almost completely saves DLP-technology from another “generic spot” hardly noticeable, but still… – the rainbow effect along the color borders.

It remains to say that the Vivitek H1180HD budget projector uses a simpler color wheel, consisting of four segments: three basic plus transparent.

The transparent segment obviously increases the total brightness of the projector even more, which allows you to use it in not very bright daylight.

And developers can configure the BrilliantColor technology in low-cost models so that the increase in brightness will be up to 50 percent compared to standard RGB. The colors are given by the regular wheel with three RGB segments.

Here’s how it works: a ray of light, passing through a filter, at the border of, for example, blue and red, turns purple and thus adds the missing color..

So, behind the budget price of Full HD there is really high technology. I wish they were American, not ours..

Attention, motor: any cook can do it

As soon as we plugged in the power cord, the green dot on the case flashed. Ready to go. The first thing I did was to roll the optical zoom wheel – it’s easy to roll, the picture is one and a half times bigger. Not much for a drastic change of projection, but just enough for fine tuning. The more so that the digital zoom comes to the rescue with three machine clicks on the menu – that’s another 1.5 times.

The picture is sharp at half a turn. The focal hood is located on the lens and, like a baseball cap, protects the lens from “playing tag”. It’s good that the focus and zoom are separated from each other.

If the projector is on the table or, like a bat, hangs upside down, the main control buttons and three light signals will be available on the case: plugged in, change the lamp, I overheated.

The buttons on the panel are in the form of a double ring, one inside the other with a round button in the center. There are four buttons on each: left-right and up-down.

External ring allows you to turn on the projector, activate the menu, enter the signal selector and activate the position control.

The internal ring allows you to move through the called up menu like a joystick – everything is logical and understandable. The up and down keys are also used to adjust the keystone when the projector is tilted.

Anyway, manual control will hardly be needed with a live remote control. IR-receiver is located on the front panel, but this does not mean that with the remote control it is necessary to run “ahead of the locomotive” all the time.

Firstly, there is an opinion that the projector is designed for advanced fans of cinematography, watching movies on the oh-so-large screen. Most likely, the device will be behind them.

Secondly, in this case you don’t have to shoot back with the remote control. The IR beam on this model ricochets off the screen and hits the exact target. While testing we kept on aiming for the rear bumper, but it didn’t seem to mind. So the projector can hang wherever it wants, the control is not affected by the location.

Projection, sir

The easiest way to operate the menu is with the remote control. The menu is convenient, quick to learn, in about ten minutes you can paddle through it like a fish in water.

There are three main blocks in the screen structure: projection control, image adjustment and advanced settings. Moreover, the main settings for the connection – the signal selection, auto-tuning, auto start, the choice of brightness of the video triggered automatically.

All projection settings are gathered in the Settings 1 menu, allowing you to find the right item on the fly.

Like a seasoned cowboy, the Vivitek H1180HD projector can “shoot” from any position except from the hip , desktop, ceiling or wall mount. Projection can be forward and backward, can be switched with the remote control without looking, if you managed to hang on the remote control for at least five minutes before.

Of course, size counts when it comes to new action. To go to the maximum screen, we had to move with a projector in a huge hall: the wall took 9 meters, the movie came out with a diagonal of 200 inches – this is more than 5 meters. Barely a wall was enough! The picture looks brighter in the average darkness than on TV.

You can choose any aspect ratio: 4:3 – for fans of TV series and classics of world cinema 16:9 – for large-scale video libraries of wide-screen DVD and Blu-ray discs 2.35:1 for today’s super wide DVD and Blu-ray movies. You can also switch to Full Screen mode, which lets you stretch 4:3 onto a 16:9 wide format, and to Conversion mode, which more gently converts the classic format to widescreen.

Trapezoidal distortion is corrected plus or minus 40 degrees – you can do it with the remote, you can do it with quick buttons on the body. Adjustment will go equally unnoticed. If the projection misses a bit the image can be easily “moved” to any side or aligned by height. Very useful service if the projector is under the ceiling.

In the point Test table there are reference values of brightness, white and black colors, as well as three basic colors – red, green and blue, which allows you to quickly adjust the color rendering. However, I note that professionals will only come with their external drive to set up. The internal test table is unlikely to go wide in the masses: no matter how bent, the built-in reference will not make allowance for the source and connecting cable, sometimes of unknown origin.

Nevertheless, the menu is well thought out, including auxiliary services: you can choose what color a blank screen will reflect, what it will be at the beginning of the display, and you can also use the button lock and security features.

The Oscar-winning film Avatar can be viewed in good 3D, with a perfectly adjusted surround picture

There are three menu items for setting the 3D. True, with a normal video signal all 3D menus will be inactive. The 3D settings come to life automatically when the surround movie starts up.

As we noted, the DLP projector is capable of transmitting 3D content directly through the HDMI connector with high definition. All you need is a Blu-ray player and a 3D movie. Next, the DLP Link signal synchronization technology will do everything itself: the signals for 3D is sent directly to the screen and, reflected in special glasses, give a three-dimensional image. But there are nuances. This 3D signal can’t stream around columns and other obstacles, which in a sports bar environment is a very real ambush. In addition, 3D glasses for DLP Link technology is not cheap, quite massive and leave you wanting more comfort. By the way, we often wear these glasses in cinemas at rental premieres.

So, the 3D menu item, in fact, not only allows you to choose the 3D option, but also bypasses any columns and choose more convenient – proprietary. They will work on the same principle of fast shutters, but with a different signal.

To ensure a perfect 3D picture, an IR emitter is inserted in the rear panel, synchronized with the projector and, moving through the film “foot in foot out”, triggers two different IR frames – for the left and right eye. Receiving an unambiguous signal, the shutters built into the glasses alternately close the left and right eyes. Each eye sees only its own frame. Of course, what we see in both eyes merges into a single stream of consciousness and we get a very even whole 3D image. And the IR beamer will outrun any column “on a crooked goat”. So fast shutter technology is considered one of the most convenient and high-quality on the market.

In the 3D Format menu item you can select different options for surround: single frame through the line , horizontal stereo pair, vertical stereo pair, frame packing. That means the H1180HD is capable of displaying any kind of 3D – and you don’t even have to change your glasses.

Adjusting the image: I want all the colors of life

To take or not to take – that is the question. In the end, it all depends on the quality of the image and your ability to adjust it. In the menu, the first place is the display modes. You can choose preset settings for almost any occasion: Presentation, Bright, Game, Movie, TV, sRGB, Board, Personal. Adjustments are enough, but you can not get confused, if you clearly understand what you want to adjust: color balance, tones or something else.

The projector can be paired with a computer by manual and automatic adjustment of the compatible frequency of the source and projection device.

In the menu item, we found a diamond setting and six more subtle image adjustments

In all modes except Personal, Brightness and Contrast are fixed, but the user can adjust and remember a lot of other settings: sharpness, gamma correction 6 profiles , color temperature 6500 K – standard, warm and cold , saturation, hue. The Brilliant Color parameter is responsible for the brightness of the white point and, ultimately, the level of contrast. By the way, the projector has a built-in light sensor, which allows you to turn on AGC video – automatic brightness adjustment, which responds to the illumination of the room.

Color manager dreams of becoming a real artist with a colorful easel,

The color manager in the menu is the highlight of the program. Except for the basic colors, which are a pain in the ass with their reds. green and blue, added three more: turquoise cyan , magenta purple and yellow. Thanks to the innovative BrilliantColor technology, the new settings allow for more detailed color shades, and thus bring the projection picture closer to the colors of life.

The first and all subsequent dates with the projector Vivitek H1180HD left pleasant memories: graceful, so native and quite bright – in any case, the black velvet window is not necessary to cancel,

Certainly, hardened cinephiles, who are starting to get acquainted with projection equipment from 100 thousand roubles, will hardly be compelled to buy a budget novelty. But the fast-growing niche of low-cost Full HD projectors is obvious. They even coined the term entry level projector. There are still plenty of unsophisticated housemates who still like their own TV from five years ago. For them, this entry level will be a breakthrough into space.

The Vivitek H1180HD will fit in any apartment, vacation home or even a small sports bar – over a noisy campaign. It really made a home in our editorial office and it doesn’t seem to want to go back at all. But you’ll have to. Hopefully this won’t be a long parting of the ways…

TEST LIKBEZ OVERVIEW: Gamma Curve

Main characteristics

Brightness: 2000 ANSI Lm

Real resolution: 1080p 1920 x 1080

Contrast: 10.000:1

Lamp runtime: &asymp 4500/6000 hours, 190/160W Normal/Economic mode

Image size: 66.5 – 833.1cm 26.2″ – 328″

Projection distance: 1.2 – 10 m

Zoom, focus: 1.5:1, manual zoom/focus

Image Format: 16:9 Standard, 16:10 and 4:3 compatible

3D: Supports Direct 3D over HDMI

Audio system: 10W

Projection type: desktop or ceiling mount front or back

Video standards: SDTV 480i, 576i , EDTV 480p, 576p , HDTV 720p, 1080i/p , NTSC M, 3.58/4.43 MHz , PAL B, D, G, H, I, M, N , SECAM B, D, G, K, K1, L

Connectors: HDMI v1.4b x2 , Component YPbPr RCA (x3 , VGA-In, S-Video, Composite Video, Audio-In RCA L/R , Audio-In Mini-Jack , Audio-Out Mini-Jack , 12V Trigger, RS-232, 3D Sync-Out, Std-USB Power 5V,1.5A , Mini-USB Service

Dimensions: WxHxD : 285 x 261 x 121.8mm

Warranty: 3 years, 1 year or 1,000 hours per lamp