The LG AF 115 is a Full HD, SXRD projector, available since late 2008. The device is available online for around 1,700 GBP.

Florian Friedrich, tested on December 15, 2009

Extremely bright.
Superb 24p reproduction.
Excellent video processing.

Requires manual adjustment for optimum picture.
Operating noise is too loud.
Bluish residual illumination.
No letterbox zoom.
Some color-shading when using the zoom lens.

LG’s SXRD projector, the AF 115, is extremely bright and can happily illuminate pictures of over three meters in size. The drawback: The LG only delivers a truly attractive picture once you’ve carried out extensive fine-tuning — the colors don’t look so hot in the factory setup. So if you’re crazy about huge pictures and have enough patience to adjust the device properly, the LG gets the green light. Impatient or technophobic buyers should probably consider other projectors.

Operation and Features

The LG’s remote control: pleasingly handy and clear.

Until recently, LG and home-theater projectors was no great love story. The AF 115 was supposed to change all that, offering big-style movie enjoyment. The basic points sound good, too: SXRD technology (which is based on reflective LCD pixels), powerful HQV video-processing, and the “isf-ccc” logo, which promises professional color calibration.

Positioning the LG projector is easy — keywords: 1.8x zoom and lens-shift. The picture can shift upward by 20 percent and downward by 100 percent without serious loss of quality. The menu is delightfully clear and logically constructed; if, for example, you change one of the settings, the word “User” appears in the menu behind the corresponding entry. Still, the interface often reacts with a significant delay, and the lack of a “letterbox” zoom disappoints. If, therefore, the set-top box providing the pictures lacks the corresponding picture-format setting, non-anamorphic movies will appear with nasty black bars on all four sides. The excessive operating noise also leaves much to be desired.

What a shame: The USB socket on the rear of the unit is for service purposes only — and not, for example, for playing back JPEG photos.

Grumbling aside, let’s turn our attention to more enjoyable matters — for example, the many picture-setup tools. Even the picture-cropping (overscan) offers fine adjustment, and there are three gamma settings and a gain/offset control for adjusting the color balance.

Color and Light

After calibration, the LG displays almost color-neutral grayscales.

So we decided to tune the LG ourselves — to do justice to the powerful light output and high-quality video-processing. At the end of this review, you’ll find our ideal settings, which will significantly improve your viewing experience. In our new ‘preset’, the colors are reminiscent of our home-theater’s color-reference projector, a Samsung DLP model (DP-A 800 B), which was calibrated by the video-pope himself, Joe Kane. But even when tuned correctly, the LG doesn’t entirely match the performance of the Samsung, producing bluish residual illumination and — with black-and-white movies — a blue tint in dark grayscales.

Picture Quality of Standard Signals

Inputting 576i material via HDMI produces a picture in full DVD resolution and that’s free of overscan, leaving no doubt about one thing: The signal processing works flawlessly. The LG delivers images free of stair-step effects or blur, providing, that is, that the de-interlacing is set correctly — choose “Real Cinema” for movies, for example. We did, however, discover one shortcoming: The ideal brightness/contrast values differ significantly depending on the color space (RGB/YUV). Also annoying: The Korean projector cannot display blacker-than-black regions in YUV-encoded images, which would have allowed you to set the brightness precisely using a test disc.

Picture Quality of HDTV Signals

If presented with Blu-rays, the LG displays a punchy, crisp picture. Full HDTV-resolution checkerboard patterns with one-pixel-sized black and white squares display clearly and with only minimal loss of contrast. In test patterns, the lower half of the picture shows an offset of the primary color blue, but this never exceeds a two-pixel distance and is rarely noticeable in practice. With the tricky opening sequence of “Casino Royale”, we compared the test candidate’s output to that of a single-chip DLP projector known to produce perfect playback — this confirmed that the LG reproduces even the finest of details with precision and sharpness. The judder-free 24p playback is a pleasure to watch.

With HDTV documentaries such as “Antarctica Dreaming”, on the other hand, images blur slightly during fast motion, and there’s unfortunately no setting for increasing the motion clarity. Furthermore, we noticed pink and cyan clouds of shading in many white images when using the zoom lens. Wide-angle projections, on the other hand, display perfectly.

We’d better say a few words about contrast, one indispensable ingredient of a successful home-theater; a picture will only take on a three-dimensional look if blacks are deep enough to contrast strongly with bright spots. The “Auto Iris”, which can be set to a number of levels, improves blacks to some extent in dark images. Within individual images, the Korean projector produces a respectable contrast ratio of 2,400:1. But it’s a shame that — even after fine-tuning the color settings — the projector produces a blue residual illumination, which grates on the nerves particularly in black-and-white movies and indoor shots.

Ideal Settings

Picture Mode: Expert2

Brightness: 64

Color: 45

Fresh Contrast: Off

Gamma Mode: Preset

Gamma Adjustment: High

Lamp Mode: High

Contrast: 49

Sharpness: 30

A.Iris: Auto Iris3

Fresh Color: Off

Color Temp.: Warm

White Balance: Red Contrast -2, Green Contrast -7, Blue Contrast -6, Red Brightness 3, Green Brightness 2, Blue Brightness -6

* These settings apply to realistic playback of HDTV/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations might necessitate slight adjustment.