Sony's first Cineza, the VPLHS1, was an innovative projector: it featured 'sideshot', horizontal as well as vertical keystone correction which meant it was the first projector that could be placed in the corner of a room, and still project a perfectly rectangular image in the centre of a wall.

In particular, this set the VPLHS1 as a prime target for home video projection. It had a funky design, decent lamp life and connectivity, and its only real snag was the maximum resolution: 800 x 600 meant for grainy images, especially when connecting a PC.

The Cineza VPLHS10 projector addresses the resolution problem, plus ups the ante on every other facet that made the original Cineza a great projector. Aesthetically, the VPLHS10 looks the goods, although some people may find it quite large for their lounge room. This is where the 'sideshot 2' feature really comes into play as you can place the projector unobtrusively in a room, and use both horizontal and vertical keystoning simultaneously.

Better still, the unit comes with an extremely long PJ-Multi connector cable (with an S-Video, composite, 15k component and RGB ports on one end; and a 32-pin plug at the projector end). We were able to lay this cable right around the edges of a room, to the projector, which was centred at the rear wall and still had a meter of slack.

The image quality was superb, with 1,000 ANSI lumens and a 700:1 contrast ratio. Its maximum native resolution is a Wide UXGA of 1,366 x 768 that looked great when we tested with a PC, but TV and DVD is where the unit shines.

The VPLHS10 comes with a separate 'cinema' lens filter which you can screw on over the lamp. This helps provide richer colours and contrasts when displaying film, plus the ANSI lumens increases to 1,200 when you switch on the projector's 'Cinema Black' function which increases the overall brightness of the picture and raises the black levels when you watch video, and it works well. We experimented with and without, and if you're going to be watching a lot of video, we highly recommend leaving it, and the cinema lens, on.