Buying a Projector With an ANSI Lumen Count of 14300 Lumens
Many people object to the ANSI lumen spec because it doesn’t take color brightness or color accuracy into account. For example, a projector may be rated at 3000 lumens of white light in its maximum brightness mode, but the colors will have an objectionable blue or green tint.
For home theater applications, 2000 lumens is a practical brightness level. This brightness easily projects 80″+ screen sizes at a value price point in dark or moderately lit rooms.
Brightness
When buying a projector for home use, you’ll want to consider the brightness of the unit. This is important because ambient light can affect the brightness of your image. In general, you’ll need less brightness if the room is dark than if it is lit. This means that a projector with a higher brightness rating may be better for home use.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how many lumens you should get for a projector. Many factors must be taken into account, including the amount of ambient lighting, screen size and content type. Each of these factors has a different set of requirements in terms of brightness and contrast.
Aside from ambient light, other factors that determine the brightness of a projector include its color balance and the quality of its light conversion and optical system. Unfortunately, the ANSI lumen spec does not take into consideration these factors and, as such, is inaccurate.
Nevertheless, a good rule of thumb is to choose a projector with a brightness rating that is at least double the amount of the maximum screen size you plan on using it for. This way, you’ll be able to see the picture clearly and easily. Also, a brighter projector will be able to handle ambient light and still provide good contrast without sacrificing picture quality.
Color Accuracy
In the projector world, when you try to maximize light output, you often have to trade off picture quality in order to do so. Highlight detail can go out the window, colors are not as saturated as they should be, movie projector for outside and the image may look washed-out. Unfortunately, ANSI lumen and CLO specs often focus on maximizing light output regardless of what the picture looks like in order to get the biggest numbers possible for marketing purposes.
The traditional ANSI lumen spec does not take color brightness or image tint into account, and it is easy for a projector to produce bright but unattractive pictures at its rated ANSI lumen output. The new CLO spec does not address color saturation or image tint, but it at least takes white light as a percentage of total light into account and therefore might give buyers a better apples-to-apples comparison of how bright a projector is when it is displaying full-color images.
In the first test image, both the DLP and LCD projectors show problems with their ability to render accurate flesh tones. The weakness in the red channel on the DLP shifts the young woman’s skin tone toward a gray-green hue and reduces saturation, while the blue-green bias on the LCD throws off the natural warmth of her facial features and interferes with color interpretation. Reducing the ‘Brilliant Color’ control on the DLP improved this image, but it also reduced overall image brightness.
Contrast
While a high contrast ratio is nice, it’s not necessarily the most important attribute of a projector. It’s much more important to have a high peak brightness, good color accuracy and low noise in video. Contrast specs are often misleading, as they are based on measuring the blackest black and brightest white, which never happens simultaneously in any video image. Also, a high contrast ratio doesn’t necessarily mean a better image in well lit rooms. This is because ambient and reflected light pollute the contrast, requiring a higher peak brightness to achieve acceptable levels of contrast.
To combat this issue, many manufacturers adjust their video display’s lumen output on the fly to boost their contrast rating. They do this by adding a bias light behind the screen that uses LED strips of differing colors to trick your eyes into seeing a higher contrast and darker image.
The problem with this is that it degrades the image quality. It distorts the colors and can reduce details in highlights and shadows. In addition, it can create a greenish tint to whites and blues that can make skin tones look sickly. This is why it’s critical to read knowledgeable customer and equipment reviews and watch YouTube videos from respected influencers so that you can see how a particular projector looks in real world applications.
Noise Reduction
In a well-lit room, even a high lumen count can be insufficient to overcome the ambient light that can dim the projected image. That’s why projector manufacturers typically include a range of functions that reduce the need for manual screen adjustment in these environments.
Among these are enhanced color performance and dynamic contrast control that improve the appearance of bright images. These features are important for large venues that must accommodate a variety of content, including fast-paced movies, sports broadcasts and presentations.
With the help of calibration adjustments we reduced the overdriven contrast and blue-green bias to produce an image that is much more compelling, though not quite as bright. The overdriven highlights still reduce saturation and the blue-green bias interferes with color interpretation, but reducing the white light output significantly improved the image.
The ANSI lumen spec is based Smart Projector on measuring the total brightness of a projector’s white, red, and blue colors using a test pattern that produces these shades of light. The CLO spec takes advantage of this to measure the projector’s maximum brightness in full color by separately metering each of these colors and then adding them together.
Using this method the DLP projector measured 1300 lumens for its color brightness, or about 22% of its ANSI white light output. The ANSI lumen measurement is closer to what it will measure in its maximum brightness operating mode, but the CLO spec still provides buyers with a more apples-to-apples comparison of how bright different projectors are when displaying full-color images.