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

I won't spend an inordinate time on this piece in this review, as my opinions of it are well documented in this thread on AVS.

Here are some new impressions:

The 7205 and Sharp 12000 were considered the two best projectors of the show (outside of the 777), judging from the comments I both overheard and were shared with me directly. Both threw excellent images, both were extremely detailed, both had great depth and dimensionality. I will get into the 12000 vs. 7205 contest a bit later.

We placed my old demo 7200 up against the 7205 and used a piece of Silverstar material to clearly demonstrate the difference in dithering artifacts (one of the reasons I am not crazy about the Silverstar is its tendency to reveal all kinds of mpeg and dithering artifacts in dark scenes). The advantages of the 7 segment color wheel were revealed in two ways - the "crawling ants" type of artifact was greatly reduced, and there was definitely more contrast and detail in dark areas of the picture. Colors are also more realistically saturated in the dark areas of the picture vs. the projectors without the 7 segment wheel. Otherwise, the 7205 and 7200 looked very similar in regard to color balance and overall image punchiness, with the advantage in contrast causing the 7205 to look a bit more three-dimensional.

As might be expected, the 7205 did the best job handling ambient light of any of the HD2 or 2+ projectors, regardless of screen type. The 7205 combined with a grey screen produced blacks that were on a par with any of the other competing DLP pieces when paired with a white screen. If deep blacks are your desire, a 7205 paired with a grey screen (or ND filter) WILL deliver them. On a white screen, however, the other brands (Sharp, Optoma) have the advantage in the black level department.

All tests were done with the projector on the lower bulb setting. I don't see any reason to switch to the higher setting - you can easily go up to 150" screen sizes and still handle some ambient light even in the lower mode, and why throw away 1000 hours of lamp life?

Colors on the 7205 were the most spot on of any of the DLP projectors in factory default mode, as Chip's calibration info can verify.

Many people felt that the image of the 7205 was very close to that of the 777 when we had them side by side. I would have to agree in some regards - color, black levels - but not in others (contrast, smoothness).