![]() ![]() If you're building your home theater or living room around a UST projector, you'll ideally want to use a tensioned ALR (ambient light rejection) screen. After tweaking the manual focus wheel a bit, it ended up covering the same area of my screen. ![]() Thankfully, I was able to drop the HU915QE into the exact same spot as the earlier CineBeam. Ultimately, I was able to get the older CineBeam to fill around 98 percent of my 120-inch screen, but I gave up on the dream of having the whole thing covered. ![]() That's when I learned that dropdown screens aren't ideal for UST projectors (Engadget's Steve Dent also found that small creases in dropdown screens could lead to rippled images). Even then, I couldn't quite get the image to fill every corner of my screen properly. That involved buying a small table and stacking a few wide boxes to get everything aligned. When I tested the previous CineBeam HU85L, it took me a few hours to find the proper position to work alongside my dropdown projector screen. That’s hard to do with a traditional projector, but far too easy when it’s just sitting on the floor) (Also, you don't want kids peeking into the projector lens, as it's bright enough to cause serious eye damage. That makes USTs less than ideal for homes with small children or overzealous pets. If it gets nudged by even a millimeter, the image will simply look wrong. But configuring a UST like the CineBeam involves finding the exact height and distance from the screen to make everything look perfect. With a traditional long- or short-throw projector, you're often able to shift the lens around manually. Configuring any projector is a pain, as you'll need to place it in just the right spot to fill your screen. That setup process, by the way, is more annoying than you'd think. It's not exactly heavy, at 26.9 pounds, but you definitely need a wide table or credenza to align it with your screen. (There's also a black model for better nighttime viewing, though that one inexplicably spits out a darker image.) Around back, there are three HDMI ports, 2 USB connections, an optical audio port and Ethernet. Its front speaker is covered in cloth, and the entire unit is encased in a solid light gray plastic. Still, LG gave it enough flair to make it look at home in a classy living room. The HU915QE looks similar to most other UST projectors - it's just a large rectangular box - and its design is practically the same as the previous CineBeam. I just wish it was cheaper than $5,000 - with the Formovie unit coming in at thousands less, it's hard to justify LG's premium. (Unfortunately, it doesn't support Dolby Vision, a rare feature we were surprised to see on the Formovie UST.) The new CineBeam can also be pushed even closer to your wall with the ability to spit out a 90-inch 4K image from 2.2-inches away, or a 120-inch image from 7.2-inches. It's brighter than its predecessor, reaching up to 3,700 lumens with a 2,00,000:1 contrast ratio, which makes it ideal for daytime viewing and HDR content. So, when will we know how close the two home entertainment products stack up? Well, according to LG's website the projector is 'coming soon' so we won't have long to wait.Now after spending a few months with the company's latest UST, the CineBeam HU915QE, I'm even more enamored. We're now at a point where we can compare a 4K projector to a 4K TV. Before we could only compare 4K TVs to projectors that would cost two to three times as much, or compare 4K TVs to HD projectors. What makes this news exciting, however, is that we're finally comparing apples-to-apples in terms of price and performance. Without seeing the LG HU70LA next to the LG C9 OLED it's tough to compare the two, but based on the specs, it seems very likely that the above would hold true here, too. There are some pros and cons about both display technologies, but the most obvious advantage is that TVs are usually brighter and offer better contrast, while projectors offer a larger screen size. How does a 4K projector compare to a 4K TV? If you want an ultra short throw projector and higher brightness you’ll have to step up to the new LG HU85LA that sells for $6,000 (around £4,860, AU$8,750). The drawback here is that the projector only puts out around 1,500 lumens - around 400ish nits of brightness if you compared it to a TV - and will require a bit of space to achieve that maximum screen size. ![]()
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