Toshiba's latest entry into the low-budget digital projector market is astonishingly good. Read our impressions and Australian review.
Digital projector prices have begun smoothly sliding down into a bracket where even the most thrifty home-owners would consider buying them. In the past projectors cost as much as a second-hand family car. To add insult to injury, they also looked evilly unattractive and weighed more than a wheelbarrow full of cement. Thankfully, things are changing. Toshiba's TLP-MT4 is slightly larger than a household toaster. Add in a few slices of dark grain bread, and you'd have a similar weight to this remarkable projector. It's an attractive sort of off-white, with a lens rim in a grey metallic finish.
Setting up the Toshiba TLP-MT4 is a snap. A little rubber foot at the front easily adjusts the tilt angle of the unit by winding, as it is on a threaded spindle. Not that you often need to fiddle with the angle of projection. The TLP-MT4 boasts groovy vertical adjustments you can easily project imagery at very steep angles high and low, and everything in between. This is easily accomplished by twisting the lens housing by hand. The image always remains in focus and seems to simply "roll" up and down the wall. With these simple and fast controls, we had the unit set up in no time.
The TLP-MT4 features a diagonal image display of two and a half metres, at a throw distance of just two metres. Of course when you angle the projection up or down at this range, the display will be quite a lot wider at the top or bottom than the opposite edge. Thankfully, the unit has truly excellent keystone adjustments which allow you to change the width at the top and bottom of the screen to cope with differing angles of projection relative to your projection surface.
The Toshiba TLP-MT4 creates an extremely bright, extremely clear projection. Individual pixels very neatly projected and visible on a standard, matte painted white interior wall. At a throw distance of 2 metres, the picture is incredibly sharp and bright. And it can be scaled up to a giant image, on the magnitude of 3x2 metres square, even at that short distance. This makes it ideal for use in small rooms or offices where space is at a premium.
The remote control allows you to easily adjust all aspects of image presentation. Settings used can then be saved for your next session. The layout is logical and suited to the likely needs of the user. For example you can quickly snap between three projection sizes, largest, smallest and medium. Of course you can also make adjustments in tiny increments as well, if you so choose. The IR receiver on the rear of the machine limits the range of positions an operator can take in relation to it, but this was rarely an issue in our informal testing. You have a choice of 3 different image modes for display in 4:3 format. Aside from Normal projection, you can utilise Cinema mode, which optimises black and grey shades. The third choice, Sports mode, according to the manual, "ensures clear and saturated colour display". Sports mode was somewhat disappointing in our tests; we were hard put to notice any difference. The controls also allow you to display the lamp life in hours used.
One of the best features of the TLP-MT4 is its near-universal support of various video inputs. Composite video, S-Video, VGA, NTSC, PAL and SECAM are supported. This makes the unit truly international, and useful world-wide. We found the reproduction of DVD video excellent and computer displays excellent.
The TLP-MT4 has a warm up time of around 40 seconds. When it is live the display changes to display the last video mode used. When powering down the unit, the fan runs for a few minutes afterwards, for up to 5 minutes to cool down the internals. The so-called 'Silent' fan is not completely inaudible but certainly silent enough when you have any kind of sound playing.
If projectors like this keep coming down in price, it will soon be a common sight to see projectors discreetly seated on small surfaces like bookcases or mantelpieces, projecting enormous cinematic displays at a very affordable cost. In fact, we'd be surprised if they didn't become the dominant choice for loungeroom displays.
Toshiba TLP-MT4 Projector
Company: Toshiba Australia
Price: AU$5,299 inc. GST
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 30 70
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