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

Since so many people wanted to see the InFocus ScreenPlay 4805 and the Studio Experience 2HD (Sanyo Z2 clone) head to head, we spent some extended time with the two pieces right after the 4805 solo presentation.

First, high definition. On brighter scenes, the 2HD clearly had more detail than the 4805, just like we experienced with the 4805 vs the HD DLP units. The 2HD did have quite a few more picture artifacts, however - vertical banding was pretty obvious on brighter scenes, and there was stairstepping and jagged edges on any smooth edged object that moved in a diagonal fashion across the screen (this was very obvious on the speedboat footage coming from the DVHS deck). In terms of contrast and smoothness, the 4805 was a clear winner - the image looked much more 3-D and had a pop that the 2HD lacked.

In defense of the 2HD - on HD material, the 2HD had a "hyper-sharp" quality that was appealing, sometimes even appearing sharper than the HD2 DLPs. I attribute this to the more visible pixel grid on the LCD projector, which gave everything a hard edge that some might find preferable to the smoother look of the DLP.