We’re always wary of specifications. Often, a new product can seem fantastic at first glance, but turn out to be dreadfully disappointing in reality. It’s home cinema’s equivalent of beer goggles.

Happily, Marantz’s new 1080p-capable VP-11S1 packs the performance to match its promise. This DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector uses an ultra-high-resolution DMD (Digital Micromirror Device) chipset from Texas Instruments, and can display 1920 x 1080 content in its native, maximum-quality form.

Such high resolution is increasingly the norm rather than the exception, but as we’ve often pointed out, it’s also no guarantee of quality, any more than is Marantz’s claim of a 6500:1 contrast ratio for this projector.

However, spend any time with the VP-11S1, and you rapidly be convinced of its worth. For starters, it’s well screwed together: the new projector’s chassis is similar to the VP-12S3, an Award-winner back in 2004 – and as with that model, the sturdy, die-cast aluminium casing and intuitive user interface is a cut above that of most rivals.

Simple to set-up and use
High-end projectors are seldom this simple to set-up and configure, either, thanks to simple thumbwheel controls for lens shift, a logically laid-out remote handset, along with a built-in test pattern.

The good news continues once you settle down to watch. No doubt about it: this Marantz is a breathtakingly good projector, able to compete head-on with the best around. Colours are particularly impressive, being rich and lustrous when required, and yet beautifully natural with hard-to-render areas of screen image, particularly skin tones.

Blacks appear consistently deep and inky, yet there’s also clearly discernible delineation between various shades of dark grey and ‘proper’ black – so you can readily make out the details in, say, Darth Vader’s flowing cape. In fact, the entire Star Wars saga takes on a whole new appeal in 1080i high definition.

Marantz uses Gennum
To achieve such quality, the Marantz employs powerful video-processing from Gennum, dubbed VXP (Visual Excel-lence Processing): this handles everything from deinterlacing to video scaling, also providing niceties like noise reduction and edge enhancement. In tandem with the high-quality Konika-Minolta optics, the results are sublime.