Seleco SIM2 Multimedia HT 200 DLP Projector
A single-chip DLP display device, the HT-200 is specified at 800 X 600 pixels, or 480,000 overall, about half the normally agreed threshold for high definition performance. The more expensive HT-250 claims 1024 X 768 for 786,432 total pixels, getting closer to HD resolution. Both are single-chip DLP (Digital Light Processing)
projectors, and this means that the primary colours are separated by a colour wheel, which turns at high speed. Both this rotating wheel and the cooling fans (3 small ones rather than one big noisy fan) for the bulb make some noise, though it is much less intrusive than those of the Dream Vision DL-500 (Smr 00). Designed for both business and home theatre use, these projectors are light in weight, fully portable, and very easy to set up. The Seleco models, made in Italy, are very organically styled, curvacious in colour schemes of blue, silver, black, or red. Our review sample was two-tone, silver and dark acrylic blue, as was the remote control.
The HT 200 has both motorized Focus adjustment and Zoom, making match with a screen almost instant, once you figure out how to use the remote control. Inputs are provided for RGB, component (both by a 15-pin computer monitor input or by 4 RCAs), S, and composite video (RCA), these easily selected on the remote. You can also quickly choose the picture shape to suit the source, with 4:3, 16:9 Letterbox, Anamorphic, and Zoom, this latter allowing blowup of the picture’s centre. An additional User setting provides access to a sub-menu that allows you to vary screen size and anamorphic shape in a zoom-like fashion; thus you can match the specific squeeze of any picture source, making sure there are no unnaturally shaped Allys or Ritas on the screen, what contributing editor Gordon Brockhouse calls “the McBeal/McNeil syndrome”.
In our home theatre room, about 14 by 16 feet, with a screen customized (or scrounged, to be more correct) from an old slide screen a 5-foot diagonal picture was the largest possible, and probably a little too big for this projector’s resolution limit. Although it claims to reproduce 480p, 1080i, and 720p, the HT 200 will probably do full justice to only the first two of these, given its pixel count (the HT-250 will do better with 720p). As I understand it, 480p is upsampled to 600p, with 1080i doubled to the same count with a better resolved flicker free picture and upsampled to 600p. And I’m told a progressive scan DVD player will provide the best picture currently from DVDs, bypassing the HT 200’s internal scaler through the RGB/component input.
projectors, and this means that the primary colours are separated by a colour wheel, which turns at high speed. Both this rotating wheel and the cooling fans (3 small ones rather than one big noisy fan) for the bulb make some noise, though it is much less intrusive than those of the Dream Vision DL-500 (Smr 00). Designed for both business and home theatre use, these projectors are light in weight, fully portable, and very easy to set up. The Seleco models, made in Italy, are very organically styled, curvacious in colour schemes of blue, silver, black, or red. Our review sample was two-tone, silver and dark acrylic blue, as was the remote control.The HT 200 has both motorized Focus adjustment and Zoom, making match with a screen almost instant, once you figure out how to use the remote control. Inputs are provided for RGB, component (both by a 15-pin computer monitor input or by 4 RCAs), S, and composite video (RCA), these easily selected on the remote. You can also quickly choose the picture shape to suit the source, with 4:3, 16:9 Letterbox, Anamorphic, and Zoom, this latter allowing blowup of the picture’s centre. An additional User setting provides access to a sub-menu that allows you to vary screen size and anamorphic shape in a zoom-like fashion; thus you can match the specific squeeze of any picture source, making sure there are no unnaturally shaped Allys or Ritas on the screen, what contributing editor Gordon Brockhouse calls “the McBeal/McNeil syndrome”.
In our home theatre room, about 14 by 16 feet, with a screen customized (or scrounged, to be more correct) from an old slide screen a 5-foot diagonal picture was the largest possible, and probably a little too big for this projector’s resolution limit. Although it claims to reproduce 480p, 1080i, and 720p, the HT 200 will probably do full justice to only the first two of these, given its pixel count (the HT-250 will do better with 720p). As I understand it, 480p is upsampled to 600p, with 1080i doubled to the same count with a better resolved flicker free picture and upsampled to 600p. And I’m told a progressive scan DVD player will provide the best picture currently from DVDs, bypassing the HT 200’s internal scaler through the RGB/component input.
