Epson on Monday removed the covers from its first PowerLite home theater projector to provide HD video well below the $1,600 mark. The PowerLite Home Cinema 720 offers virtually the same image quality as the premium Home Cinema 1080 at a more modest 720p resolution; the three-LCD chipset allows for similar 10-bit color processing and a 10,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio that is only slightly behind the much more expensive model. It can also produce a 1,600-lumen brightness that tops most other devices in the class, Epson claims. The banding artifacts that sometimes creep up in images are gone thanks to 1,024 different grayscale levels.

Viewers can offset the lens by 100 percent vertically or 50 percent horizontally to fit the projector into an unusual den or living room setup. Connections are supplied at HD resolutions in component or HDMI as well as analog through RCA and S-video. Shipments of the Home Cinema 720 start before the end of the month and will see the Epson projector sell for $1,299.