Acer H9500BD

Despite being Acer's most expensive home theater projector (for now at least), the DLP-based Acer H9500BD ($1,700 street) is notable for its low price. Along with the slightly less expensive Optoma HD33 ($1,500 street, 4 stars) it's one of the least expensive 1080p 3D projectors available. It's also a prime representative of a new generation of consumer projectors, ready to deliver a high-definition, 3D experience at home with a much larger-size image than any competitively priced HDTV.

The H9500BD offers at least two features that the HD33 lacks to help justify the higher price. A 2D to 3D real time conversion mode lets you...well...add a new dimension to 2D content. As with equivalent features in other projectors, the trick enhances some images nicely, but falls flat (pun unavoidable) with others. In addition, the projector offers vertical and horizontal lens shift, making setup easier by letting you adjust the image position without having to move the projector.

The H9500BD's lens shift lets you move the image a total of roughly 14 percent left or right of the midline (about 28 percent total shift), and roughly 12.5 percent up and down from the midline (about 25 percent total shift). This isn't a lot. The 2D Editors' Choice Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8350 ($1,299 direct, 4 stars), for example, lets you shift the image by roughly 200 percent total vertically and 100 percent horizontally. However, any lens shift at all is a welcome touch, since it adds flexibility for where you can put the projector.

Basics and Setup
Setup is standard. The projector measures 5.1 by 15.7 by 12.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 15.9 pounds. Simply find a spot for it, plug in the cables and power cord, and adjust the image. In addition to the lens shift helping make placement a little easier, the 1.5x zoom gives you a fair amount of flexibility in how far you can put the projector from the screen for any given size image.

Connection options include two HDMI ports for computers or video devices and a DVI-I port that supports all the same signals. That effectively makes it the equivalent of a third HDMI port, if you get an HDMI to DVI-I cable. There are also two VGA ports for computers, and connectors for component and composite video.

As with the HD33, the H9500BD supports HDMI 1.4a, which means you can connect it directly to 3D Blu-ray players, cable TV boxes and the like for showing 3D. It also supports nVIDIA 3DTV Play, for computers with appropriate graphics cards and software. To actually use 3D, however, you need DLP-link glasses. The projector comes with one pair. Additional glasses are $79 each direct from Acer, and more generally available for between $70 and $100 each.

Image Brightness and Quality
The H9500BD's 2,000 lumen brightness rating is unusually high for a home theater projector, with the image bright enough to stand up to a fair amount of ambient light. For my tests, I used a 90-inch diagonal image (78 inches wide at the native 16:9 aspect ratio). At the brightest settings, the image was appropriate for the level of lighting typical for a family room at night even with 3D and the loss of brightness from using 3D glasses.

For theater dark lighting, you can switch to other preset modes, including Movie and Dark Cinema, which are visibly dimmer than the brightest mode. In addition, the lamp offers an Eco mode that lowers brightness with any preset, with a rated 1,600 lumens in brightest mode. Using Eco mode also raises the lamp life by 25 percent, from a rated 2,000 hours to 2,500 hours.

Image Quality
With 2D content, using both Blu-ray discs and DVDs upscaled to 1080p, the H9500BD delivered vibrant, suitably realistic color, but the image also showed some minor to moderate flaws. The projector had a minor problem handing shadow detail, for example (details based on shading in dark areas), but only on scenes that are particularly troublesome for many projectors. I also saw some noise in large unbroken areas, like an expanse of sky, but that's fairly typical for projectors in this price range.

Like the HD33 and the more expensive Sony VPL-HW30ES ($3,700 street, 4 stars) that I reviewed recently, the H9500BD can add interpolated frames to reduce judder, the slightly jerky motion caused by the standard 24 frames per second that film uses. For my tastes, however, the feature is better left off. Along with giving you smoother movement, frame interpolation can also add motion artifacts, and Acer's AcuMotion adds more artifacts that I've seen with other projectors. You may feel differently, but I'm more comfortable seeing the judder.

Keep in mind too that smoother motion tends to make film look like live or recorded video, which many people (including me) feel uncomfortable with, simply because it's not what they're used to seeing. So even if you don't mind the motion artifacts with AcuMotion, you may still want to leave the feature off.

3D and Rainbows
For 3D images, I tested both with 3D Blu-ray discs and with 2D content using the 2D to 3D conversion built into the projector. With the Blu-ray disc I saw more crosstalk (with the frame meant for one eye showing to the other eye as well) than with most 3D projectors I've tested. The 2D to 3D conversion worked as well as with any projector I've tested, but it also added a sometimes distracting wipe effect going across the screen every time it changed scenes.

One last issue is a relatively obvious rainbow effect, with light areas breaking up into flashes of red, green, and blue when something moves on screen. Rainbow artifacts are a potential issue for any single-chip DLP projector, but some show them more often than others, and some people, including me, see them more easily than others. You're also more likely to find them annoying when you're watching a full-length movie than when you're sitting through a short business presentation with a data projector.

With the H9500BD I saw the rainbow artifacts often enough to consider them a problem, and it's likely that anyone who sees the rainbows easily would consider them annoying as well. If you're not sensitive to this effect, and no one you watch movies with is, this won't matter much. If you don't know whether it will matter, you should try to see the projector in action before making a buying decision, or make sure you can return it without a restocking fee.

Ultimately, the Acer H9500BD is worth a look, but if you're considering getting it, be sure to take a look at the HD33 as well. Although the Optoma projector doesn't have lens shift or 2D to 3D conversion, it offers better image quality, plus more useful frame interpolation with fewer motion artifacts. It also tends to show far fewer rainbows. That said, if you must have 2D to 3D conversion and aren't concerned with rainbow artifacts, the H9500BD is a perfectly reasonable choice.

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