A key IT player, Hewlett-Packard has been ramping up its presence in the projector market in a major way. HP customers are more likely to be showing PowerPoints than Harry Potter movies, so data projectors have always been their first concern.

Nevertheless, HP has decided to make a parallel range of data and home theatre projectors. The obvious question is this: what law says that you cannot use a data projector for home cinema, especially as they both use similar technologies, and have similar facilities under the skin?

Let's look at the vp6321, which is first and foremost a data projector, and see. It is just about everything you expect of a good, but relatively affordable, home cinema projector, even though it is not billed as one, plus it has some extra advantages that come from its data heritage. It is very compact, and includes a carrying handle. It is impressively, almost unfeasibly bright at 2,000 Lumens.

The DMD that HP has chosen, however, definitely shows its data heritage. Its native resolution is identical to most Windows computers at their normal desktop resolution without requiring scaling - 1024 x 768 pixels. This is a respectable resolution for home cinema too, but it is natively 4:3, and to achieve 16:9 requires grey guard bands above and below the picture.

But even 16:9 displays share the same problems when they're asked to reproduce more extreme cinema-like aspect ratios, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 (Cinemascope), for example, which still need to be letterboxed in a 16:9 display area. Actually the grey above and below the screen is not too grey in this case, as the vp6321 has a very respectable 2500:1 contrast ratio, and impressively inky blacks. It remains a disadvantage, but it may not be a deal breaker in practice.

And so it continues. The vp6321 has a decent range of socketry, including an encrypted DVI-HDCP input, which is the basic requirement for accepting a digital feed from a DVD player with a DVI or HDMI output. And it does have the wherewithal through the menu system to change its spots to suit the application, though there's neither the subtlety nor depth of adjustment available to rival more practiced home cinema operators.