[Editor's note: this review is excerpted from John's write-up of the 2004 Projector Expo.]

Once again, this piece has been hashed to death on the AVS forum so I'll just hit the highlights.

As always, the 5700 projected an incredibly bright and vibrant image, with spot on colors. Again, as always, there was a lot of "wow" factor to the image, mainly due to its high brightness, IMO. It was interesting to see the crowd perk up after the extensive 2HD/4805 comparisons.

As you can gather from reading my previous comments, the 5700 had clearly more detail with HD material than the 4805 but not quite as much as the 7205 (as the specs would indicate). HD looks pretty stunning on the 5700 - without a side by side comparison with an HD2, I don't think most people would feel that any picture detail is lacking.

Interestingly, in the side by side comparison with the 4805 and the 7205, the 4805 actually had better contrast than the 5700, if only slightly. This was only noticeable when we fired up the same dark SPIDERMAN scene mentioned above. The 5700 had the edge in smoothness and detail, however.


The 5700 was probably the brightest projector at the show, other than the 777. We had it on the 123" Greyhawk and it STILL looked bright. No problem with ambient light here, especially when paired with a grey screen.

Negatives on the 5700 - my demo unit had a pronounced color wheel whine, and the contrast performance was not on a par with the 7205 or even the 4805. For someone desiring the brightest and punchiest of images, though, the 5700 will not disappoint.