Reprinted from the Jan/Feb 2004 issue of Church Production Magazine
Canon’s LV-7555 is the latest entry from a company who is well-known for its superior optics and still/video cameras, yet suffers from the ‘Rodney Dangerfield syndrome’ in that its projectors don’t get much respect.
Yet, Canon does offer a good range of products that cover most projector categories, and the difference for their line has always been the razor-sharp and crisp images these projectors put up on the screen. After all, a projector is only as good as its lens, and there are a lot of mediocre lenses out there right now!
The LV-7555 is best described as a classis desktop/installation front projector. Although it does come with a handle, it’s not too portable at 20.3 pounds. But you’d probably want to hang or stack it anyway as this is a very bright box with a lot of useful functions and connections. The light engine is a three-panel polysilicon array with 1024x768 pixel resolution, illuminated by a potent 300W short-arc lamp.
The supplied 1.3:1-ratio lens assembly is set up for power zoom and focus, and you’ll also be able to shift the image vertically to correct for off-axis projection and keystoned images. If that 1.3:1 ratio isn’t to your liking, there are four other choices including an ultra wide angle (less than 1:1 ratio), wide angle zoom, long focus zoom (over 2:1 ratio), and ultra long focus zoom (Over 4:1 ratio).
Canon is also getting into the IP network control game with an optional Network Imager add-on card. With it, you can connect the LV-7555 to an Ethernet network and control a variety of projector functions from your PC, including power on/off, input switching, and picture adjustments.
As you shop around for a projector, you’ll surely notice the direct relationship between the size of a given projector and the number of inputs it provides. The LV- 7555 doesn’t disappoint here; you’ll have access to analog BNC and DB-15 jacks, composite, S-video, and separate YPbPr component video inputs using RCA connectors. You’ll also find a DVI-D jack that is compatible with the consumer High Definition Copy protection (HDCP) format.
Although it probably won’t get much use, Canon has also provided an on-board speaker system that’s rated at about two watts per channel. That’s really more appropriate in a small portable projector. There’s also a ‘quiet’ mode, which reduces light output and cuts fan noise down to a claimed 35 dB level, perhaps so you can better hear the speakers!
If you think you’ve seen this projector somewhere before, keep in mind that the LV7555 shares a common manufacturing heritage with Sanyo (both projectors come from the same factory in Japan). That statement also applies to the standard Sanyo remote control, which features what has to be one of the most frustrating mousedisk navigation systems ever designed.
This particular mousedisk is required to navigate through the LV-7555 menus to make adjustments, tweak the pixel clock, balance color, set screen aspect ratios, and other fun chores. But you’ve got to be real deliberate and careful where you press the disk. Otherwise, you may suddenly find yourself adjusting a totally different menu item from where you started.
While the Canon menu system isn’t as comprehensive as other installation projectors, it does let you tweak all kinds of signal parameters. And you can combine your picture and sync settings into one of several user memories that are automatically recalled, or selected from the remote. One of particular interest is a full-spectrum color correction system that provides access to red, green, and blue drive as well as cyan, magenta, and yellow.
It should be mentioned that the LV-7555 supports sRGB settings and also provides multiple gamma steps for best reproduction of video or filmed material. If you have an accurate color temperature meter (such as Minolta’s CL-200) and some patience, you can tune up this projector to make some really nice images. Another thing that the LV-7555 shares with its Sanyo cousins is a top-notch autosync circuit. This processor determines the incoming horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates for a given signal, references it to a look-up table, and (most of the time) puts up a properly centered and scaled image from your PC or video source. (Now and then, an oddball signal will fool the projector and trip up the pixel clock, such as a high-resolution image with lots of fine text.)
In tests with Extron’s new VT300 test pattern generator and an nVideo GeForce4 TI 200 display card, the LV-7555 was able to correctly lock up 19 out of 26 test signals on it own. Those signals spanned the range from basic VGA (640x480, 60 Hz) to UXGA (1600x1200, 75 Hz), and the projector also liked 480p/60, 576p/50, 720p/60, and 1080i/30.
For bench performance tests, the projector was operated with its lamp in “Standard” mode with the zoom lens set to its midpoint and the projector calibrated for the widest and smoothest grayscale. An attempt to set the projector’s white balance to D6500 or close to it resulted in a magenta color shift, so a white balance setting that produced the most neutral color of gray was chosen instead.
After set-up and calibration, light output on the LV-7555 measured 3,701-ANSI-lumens (nine point scale) with ANSI (average) contrast at 295:1 and peak contrast at 530:1. These are really good numbers for an LCD projector, in particular the average contrast reading of just under 300:1. Credit those great Canon optics and a well-designed prism system for superior brightness uniformity readings of 82% average and 80% to the worst corner.
These numbers mean you won’t see any hot spots or vignetting in the corners. You won’t observe any green or red color shifts across the image, either - the maximum color temperature shift across the image with a full white screen is just 326 degrees Kelvin, which is outstanding for an LCD projector.
It goes without saying that still images and graphics from my PC had crisp, detailed text and excellent contrast. None of the PC-generated test images exhibited focus uniformity problems or other distortion as the lens was zoomed in and out, and were also largely free from pincushioning and lens flare.
Composite video quality was pretty impressive, too, thanks to a nice decoder circuit that preserved plenty of 480i image detail. Tests with a composite Zone Plate test pattern from Video Essentials revealed clean 300 and 400 line patterns and little to no noise or color moiré. Color quality and saturation looked quite good for an LCD projector.
Performance picks up even more with component video sources, particularly those from a Faroudja FLI2200-equipped Panasonic RP56 DVD player. In this mode, all of the video decoding is handled before the signal even gets to the LV-7555 and all it has to do is scale from 704x480 to 1024x768.
You will see some small amount of pixel scaling artifacts resulting from this process, in which case you could employ an inexpensive outboard video scaler to clean up all of your video sources.
HDTV signals were a much harder trial for this projector. Test luminance multiburst patterns from an AccuPel HDG-2000 projector revealed high-frequency roll-off above 30 MHz but usable information at 18- 20 MHz. That doesn’t mean HDTV signal sources will be significantly degraded, but you won’t see as much image detail as you could, particularly with 1080i programs.
There’s no question that today’s desktop/ installation projectors can really “crank it out” when it comes to delivering bright images. In that regard, Canon’s LV-7555 gives you a lot of value for the money. Its performance in all modes of operation is right up there with the best LCD projectors, and you won’t lack for connector options.
The big difference is, of course, the Canon lens and the superior edge-to-edge text sharpness and color uniformity it provides. Couple that with a smart autosync circuit, high brightness uniformity and contrast, and you’ve got a real workhorse LCD projector for fixed installations or road shows.
Best of all, you may be able to get a lot of mileage out of the LV-7555. Its brightness measurements are near the top for this class of projectors and 3,700 lumens is a lot of horsepower in nearly any installation.
