ProjectorCentral, "The World's Largest Projector Resource™," and online retailer ProjectorScreen.com have announced plans to once again join forces for their 2nd annual Laser TV Showdown, while also announcing a companion event: the first-ever Lifestyle Projector Showdown.

After the successful 2022 Showdown, which faced-off a record 14 UST projectors, the 2023 Showdown will see up to 10 late-generation laser TVs competing directly side-by-side. A separate competition will be held on the same day to compare as many as five of the new premium laser and LED lifestyle projectors. These high-tech transportable projectors deliver surprising brightness for their size, excellent color accuracy with wide gamut, and advanced features for quick set-up on movie and game nights.

Scheduled for Thursday, October 26th at ProjectorScreen.com's New Jersey headquarters, the 2023 Showdown will be conducted under the aegis of ProjectorCentral Editor-in-Chief Rob Sabin, with ProjectorScreen.com providing the test facility and access to retail shelf samples to avoid wherever possible the use of cherry-picked units from the contending manufacturers.

As in 2022, the event will rely on expert industry judges from the A/V editorial and professional calibration communities. Sammie Prescott, Jr. of AV ChromaCal, a professional ISF Level III calibrator and Contributing Technical Editor for ProjectorCentral, will be calibrating all the units for optimal image quality in advance of the event and will be on site in the preceding days to help fine-tune each projector for its best performance.

Additionally six expert reviewers have been recruited to participate as judges, including:

  • Chris Eberle, professional ISF-trained display calibrator, display reviewer for Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity (hometheaterhifi.com), display reviewer for Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)
  • Andy Grimm, projector reviewer and contributor for Home Theater Review (hometheaterreview.com), display calibrator
  • John Higgins, Managing Editor, Tech, at Reviewed, part of the USA Today Network (reviewed.usatoday.com/tech), ISF-trained display calibrator
  • Mark Henninger, Editor-in-Chief for Sound & Vision (soundandvision.com), former Managing Editor for Home Theater Review, former Editor-in-Chief for AVSForum.com, THX-trained display calibrator
  • Ralph Potts, veteran Blu-ray Reviewer and A/V writer at AVSForum.com
  • M. David Stone, long-time projector reviewer for PCMag.com, veteran contributor for ProjectorCentral

Both the UST Laser TV and Lifestyle projectors in the competitions will be judged on image quality across multiple criteria and use-cases, including with standard dynamic range (SDR) content in both bright- and dark-room conditions, and high dynamic range (HDR) content in dark-room conditions. The projectors will all be viewed on reference-quality 100-inch screens provided by sponsor Spectra Projection. The UST Laser TVs will be evaluated on 10 matching lenticular ALR (ambient-light rejecting) screens specifically designed for UST projectors, while the lifestyle projectors will be viewed on five matching matte white screens.

The lists of competing projectors for both the 2023 Laser TV Showdown and 2023 Lifestyle Showdown are being finalized and will be released shortly.