Dreamvision Dreamy

By Jamie Gemming

February 2006

Dreamvision Dreamy projector. $3999

Dreamvision Dreamy

Dreamy! My first thoughts were: lame name, lame projector. But after three weeks of testing, my thoughts have changed to: lame name, great projector.

The long throw of the projector’s lens will place it at the back of most rooms, on top of book shelves or roof-mounted to get a decent sized picture. To give you an idea of what I mean, when I placed the Dreamy in the same location as my Panasonic AE-500 (about 4.5metres from the screen) it only filled about half the picture size of the Panasonic. Having to place the projector against the back wall would pose a problem for some projectors heat-wise, but the Dreamy vents through its front panel and has obviously been designed to live close to a wall.

The Dreamy comes with a padded carry bag which business users will find handy. Also supplied are composite, S-video and VGA cables. You’d never describe this projector as a looker, but it’s not ugly either. It’s boxy in shape and doesn’t look ultra modern with its slightly off white exterior; the best description would be “functional” looking.

The guts of the machine is made up of a 6 segment colour wheel and a 200w 850 lumen lamp controlled by a Texas Instruments DarkChip2, which fires out a native 16:9 image at a resolution of 480P. Depending on inputs and using its electronic smarts, the Dreamy can produce interlaced images with resolutions of 576, 720 or 1080.

Crisper than a Granny Smith

Upon firing up the Dreamy, the first thing I noticed was how crystal clear the image looked. The picture was sharp, very clear, well defined, and I instantly preferred it to my Panasonic AE-500. The first couple of DVDs I watched featured a great deal of very dark scenes. The Dreamy gave the gym scenes in Million Dollar Baby real depth and great contrast, which is often an area of downfall for cheaper projectors. It also performed admirably with the deep, rich colouring featured in Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The default temperature setting is 7500k. This originally seemed fine but on the editor’s advice, I experimented a bit and ended up settling with the setting at the bottom of its scale, where I found skin tones looked very natural. A visit to the Dreamvision website confirmed my final temperature setting was 6500k. The Dreamy does not have any form of manual lens adjustment but it does offer digital vertical and horizontal key stone correction, though I did find that this introduced some image noise and artefacting when used and is nowhere as effective as the actual lenses shift feature of the Panasonic 900 which I have also had the pleasure of viewing recently.

Quiet as a mouse

When I bought my projector three years ago, cooling fan noise was a big thing for me and I found the Panasonic was quietest on the market for around $5,000. The Dreamy is $4,000, so prices have improved and technology has certainly moved on. I sit directly under my projector and cannot hear it until I change the channel and the decoder momentarily mutes Sky’s volume. Whereas if the 28db Dreamy wasn’t firing a picture onto the wall, you’d swear it was switched off! The Dreamy is quieter than even the new Panasonic 900.

With the Dreamy I didn’t once notice the dreaded rainbow effect but more impressively, my partner (who identifies focus problems normal humans don’t and gets headaches from the smallest image issues), thought the Dreamy was outstanding!

All up, I think the Dreamy is a great budget projector. It’s certainly the match of anything currently in the sub $4,000 bracket (Infocus 4805 and Hitachi TX100 included). It gives the new Panasonic 900 a damn good run for its money. It’s a must audition!

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