OK, hi-def diehards, stop reading right now and move on to the next post. Cause if you won't even give a second
glance to any set that's not 1080p, then RCA's Scenium HD50LPW175 50-inch DLP at 720p ain't gonna rock your world.
Those of us who are looking for a little bit of a bargain, however, will be interested in the solid review that Sound
and Vision gives this new $2300 Scenium with "wobulation" technology. RCA employed Texas Instruments'
"Smooth Picture" DLP chip, which
displays overlapping images to trick the eye into perceiving 1920 x 1080 pixels, when only 960 x 1080 micromirrors
actually reside on the chip itself. S&V is mostly down with wobulation (which we first spotted in some
HP projectors last year), although they claim the RCA
take is less smooth and grid-free than others they've seen, and they also notice some detail loss in darker scenes and
a "modest" amount of video noise. Despite the less-than-perfect picture quality however, the HD50LPW175 offers a lot of
bang for the buck, sporting a CableCARD slot
and HDMI input, all packed into a pretty sleek design.
[Via HD Beat]