Projectors

ProjectionDesign Action Model Three 1080

DLP's second 'full HD' projector

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Last reviewed: November 1st 2006

The Model Three 1080 isn't small, and that's just the projector

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With Sky HD showing all its HD stuff in 1080i and both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs delivering their first movies in 1080i/p, serious AV enthusiasts - like ourselves! - are being drawn ever more towards display devices with native pixel counts of 1920 x 1080.

So it's fair to say that I was seriously excited by the arrival of the Action Model Three 1080: the second 1080p DLP projector to arrive at our door after the superb SIM2 HT3000.

It's actually a surprise SIM2 got here first, since. For a long time during the two projectors development, ProjectionDesign seemed to be slightly ahead of the opposition. But ultimately the extra complexities of the PD model - it does, after all, cost six grand more than the SIM2 - seems to have lost them the top slot.

Actually, now I've mentioned the Model Three 1080's price - all £15K of it - it probably makes sense to try and explain just why PD thinks its projector is really worth that much.

Actually manufacturing a 1920 x 1080 native DLP chipset is a wee bit tricky - not surprising when you consider that such a device needs to fit over two million independently controllable mirrors onto the back of a single controlling chipset. But of course, SIM2's cheaper 1080 DLP model uses the same chipset, so that alone can't explain the price.

So for more justification, let's turn to the Model Three 1080's second box. For yes, even though it's one of the chunkiest projectors around (the exact opposite of PD's usually strikingly diminutive projectors), it still can't fit in all the processing PD wanted to provide with its single-chip flagship.

This second control/processing/ connections box tellingly comes badged with the words Crystalio II, the name for a box of tricks from Pixel Magic that's respected the world over for its image processing talents, driven by the Gennum VXP video scaling system (or the Faroudja DCDi process, which is also included).

The inclusion of this processor shows how important it is to PD that you get the best out of the Action Model Three 1080. For the Crystalio box can take in any video signal, of any resolution, and upconvert it to 1080p before feeding it via a digital output to the 1080-hungry Model Three's optics.