Cinema in a Box

IF YOU’RE a home cinema nut like me, there’s always one thing that makes or breaks the experience: screen size. For the last 15 years, I’ve owned a front projection system that beams images well over 100 inches diagonal, and once you have that at home, it’s hard to turn back! Today’s flat panel TVs provide truly extraordinary image quality, and although they keep getting bigger and bigger, models with a screen size above 90 inches remain prohibitively expensive. That creates a dilemma since not everyone can (or wants to) install a system with a projector mounted to the ceiling at the back of their room.

At this year’s CEDIA Expo in Denver, Colorado, I encountered multiple projector manufacturers showing alternative solutions. The most popular of these was the ultra-short-throw (UST) projector, an ingenious device that packs the projection system into a compact cabinet that sits on top of a shelf (or even on your floor!) and beams images at an upward angle. This design allows the projector to sit nearly right against the wall and deliver images that are much larger than what you can expect from a typical flat-panel TV. For this review, I had the chance to look at the latest entry in this segment, LG’s CineBeam HU85LA. Combining a three-laser light engine with DLP 4K XPR projection technology, the HU85LA beams images that range in size from 90-120 inches