Smaller houses of worship are often caught in a technological bind between getting large expensive projectors and smaller ones that aren't powerful enough to light up a pulpit. Christie is putting an end to this predicament with its superb DHD600-G. It's not only economical but hits every hot button for small to mid-sized sanctuaries.
The DHD600-G is small at 8.2- by 17.1- by 15.3-inches and weighs-in at 34-pounds. There's no handle, but one person can easily carry it around. On the other hand, it's best to have a second person on hand when hauling it up a ladder.
Inside its white case is a single 0.65-inch Digital Light Processing (DLP) image engine that uses a six-segment color wheel. Unlike the BenQ PX9600 you can't change the color wheel to a four-segment one, but the projector has a mode that simulates having a four-color wheel. It creates a 1,920 by 1,080 resolution HD image, although Christie also sells other members of the G projector family that are capable of delivering WXGA and WUXGA resolution.
Unlike other projectors in its class, the DHD600-G relies on a single high-output lamp to create its image. It can be fed with 110- or 240-volt electricity and comes with four power cords for use in different parts of the world.
The projector has a pair of adjustable legs up front for setting it up on a tabletop, shelf or nook as well as four threaded screw holes underneath for ceiling mounting. Its sophisticated cooling allows the projector to be set up at any angle including aimed straight down. If you hate seeing an upside-down logo, this is the projector for you because the DHD600-G's emblem is magnetically held in place and can easily be flipped.
It comes with a 1.22 to 1.52:1 zoom lens that has powered focus and zoom. Christie has two optional lenses that sell for $1,850 and $2,000. This pales in comparison to others like NEC, Epson and BenQ that have a selection of six or seven lenses for their large venue projectors, including ones for short-throw situations.
Changing the projector's lens takes less than a minute and doesn't require any tools. The lens has a cowling around it that snaps on and off to ease the installation process. While there's no locking button, when you twist the lens clockwise it snaps firmly into place.
Rather than on top, the DHD600-G's control panel is conveniently located on the side so that it's easier to work with while hanging from a ladder. Its buttons are backlit and color coded by function making its use intuitive once you learn the color coding.
The projector's matching white remote control is on the large side, but incredibly useful. In addition to the expected ability to control the focus and zoom as well as a button to project a dark image while keeping the projector on and ready, it can change the input selection and project the image's information. There are also controls for fine tuning the brightness, contrast and size as well as calling up any of the projector's six preset test patterns that can help streamline setting it up.
GOOD IN THE DARK
With backlit keys, the remote control is good in the dark; it comes with a pair of AAA batteries. The remote's 30-foot range can be ignored if you connect the remote to the projector with an audio jumper cable.
On top of the expected horizontal and vertical keystone correction, the DHD600-G can shift the image right or left by up to 20-percent and move it up or down 120-percent. This lets you put the projector where it has to go while getting the image rectangular and exactly where it needs to be.
It has a mode for working with a whiteboard, blackboard and even an institutional beige wall, but unlike other high-end projectors, like NEC's PH 1400U, the DHD600-G can't project onto circular or triangular specialty screens. The projector has projection modes for video, bright, real, presentation, Dicom Sim and a user-specified combination of settings to suit a particular space. The projector is very flexible and the ability to optimize just about anything from the gain for each color to edge enhancement can be tweaked.
Along the back is one of the best-designed connection panels for a large-venue projector. It can project from sources that range from HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA to DVI-D, component, composite and S-video. It has VGA-out for connecting it to another display and USB ports for adding Christie's optional Wi-Fi adapter to its wired networking capabilities; it costs $199.
A big bonus is Christie's Presenter software, which allows you to connect up to four computers at a time via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. The projector can also be controlled via an RS-232 cable. Christie sells an optional snap-on $127 cable cover that can help hide the DHD600-G's unsightly wires.
The DHD600-G has a built-in 10-bit video processor that helps it deliver a picture-perfect image and resize different resolutions so that everything can appear full-screen. It does have an optional $1,326 dual-processor board for warping or blending an image; it is able to curve, pincushion, barrel, rotate or do a four-corner warp of the image. You'll need to take the projector's lid off to install the processing board.
While the projector can show two feeds at once in picture-in-picture or picture-by-picture formats, it doesn't work with all pairs of inputs. For example, if you want to use HDMI as the main input, you can't use VGA, component or S-Video as the secondary input.
REAL WORLD TESTS
I used the DHD600-G with Christie's 0.95 – 1.22 lens and was able to work with a variety of different sources, including computers, Blu-ray players and an HDMI switcher. It was able to consistently put 6,150 lumens of light onto the screen, which is slightly off its 6,600-lumen spec, but impressive for a single-lamp projector. On the downside, the lower right corner was significantly brighter than the rest of the screen.
In presentation and video modes the images were well balanced with realistic flesh tones. Although the projector had very accurate grays, at times it produced mustardy yellows and greens that were too dark. Overall, in bright mode, the screen took on a bluish green cast.
Its focus was outstandingly sharp, corner-to-corner and its video was very smooth. The DHD600-G was able to start up in a reasonable 29 seconds and took about a minute to get to full brightness. It was slow in shutting down, though, taking nearly two minutes and went through three different fan levels before finally shutting itself off. While idle, the projector used 1.3 watts of power and the projector consumed 572 watts in Bright mode.
Factoring in its $595 replacement lamp, which is rated to last 2,000 hours, the DHD600-G has estimated annual expenses of $323, assuming it is used for 15 hours a week and the national average electricity cost of 12 cents per kilowatt hour. That's between the more economical Epson PowerLite 4650 but much less than the much brighter NEC PH1400U.
It's one of the easiest projectors to do a lamp swap on. Just open the access door on the side of the projector, loosen three Philips screws and pull the old lamp out. It was reasonably quiet at 46 dBA and an exhaust temperature of 148 degrees Fahrenheit. The projector comes with a three-year warranty and it can be connected to either AMX or Crestron AV control systems without any extra hardware.
While the projector lists for $11,995, if you shop around, you can find it for closer to $6,500, making it a bargain for mid-sized houses of worship. Christie has seemingly done the impossible by squeezing a large-format projector into a small and economical case.
