Just discovered this forum - must have not read the memo
This collects a number of fora and much of the discussion is around gray-scale tracking when the issue of color fidelity comes up. The gurus certainly are as knowledgeable and skilled in tweaking their projectors as our digital printmakers are at their skills. Thus, it is possible to anticipate good colors and image quality from a well set-up PJ. Then one would build a profile and be off to the races.
The prices are really coming down so there are several 1920x1080 PJ's under $4k that have good enough brightness (500-900 lumens - AFTER calibration) to more than compete with your average slide projector. They are not particularly lightweight compared to some of the portable business units, but they are certainly transportable (Sony VPL-VW50, "Pearl" is 24 lb or so) for giving lectures etc. (No way you'd think of moving a 62" box rear projector around, but they use similar technology)
The individual pixels are not visible until one approaches a couple of feet, depending on the technology, but they resolve each one. Movies are typically viewed from ~ 1.5x - 2x screen width. I'm seriously planning to buy a
Sony Pearl for my new home theater and fully expect my images to jump off the screen!
Here is an example of a comparison of two new projectors, one LCoS (Sony calls it SXRD) and one DLP, and the kind of discussions . There are obvious parallels in the parameters discussed to those in printing images where IQ is under close scrutiny : brightness, contrast, shadow detail, black level, smoothness (tonality) color banding, gamut etc etc.
Digital
projectors have had a bad rap coming rom the early crummy business units. They deserve pretty serious consideration now the price has come within reach as digital image viewing systems (and you get a free 1920x1080 monitor and home cinema projector with them).
One last comment about resolution. The pixels on the projectors are like Foveon sensor sites - yes they are x3 or RGB pixels. If we, as a reasonable approximation, take a Bayer array to have half the resolution of a "true" RGB array, then these projectors are putting up 4.1 MP using the term MP as it is used in digital cameras. (Or 6.2 MP if a pixel is a dot of light )
Can't wait for the new home theater...
Andy