Liquid crystal display, or LCD, technology is amazingly versatile. It'll tell you the time on a digital watch. On your laptop it provides a display that enables you to learn, shop, and send mail. Scale up a little more and the humble LCD turns into a flat-panel HDTV, home entertainment tech's latest electronic hearth. But what really turns the humble LCD into a world-class entertainer is a front-projection video display like the Sony Cineza.

This simple, compact LCD projector delivers an amazingly big, beautiful picture.

The Cineza produces a picture using a trio of liquid crystal panels in video's primary colors of red, green, and blue. Because it sends light through the panels, rather than reflecting light off them, it is classified as a transmissive (as opposed to reflective) LCD product. The picture can reach a stunning 300 inches in either widescreen (16:9) or conventional (4:3) proportions. That's a lot of entertainment.

At a list price of $3499.99, the second-generation Cineza VPL-HS20 costs $500 more than the original Cineza VPL-HS10 but includes several significant upgrades. The grid of dots producing the image — they're called pixels (picture elements) — now has 1386 by 788 pixels, a slight increase over the previous model's 1366 by 768. Both projectors have more than enough resolution to produce high-definition television in the 1280 by 720 format used by, among others, ABC.

Sony has upgraded the lamp life to 3000 hours. The new lamp also improves the contrast ratio, which in turn facilitates daytime viewing — though strictly speaking, tube-based direct-view TVs have the advantage there.

The back panel includes high-quality digital interfaces such as HDMI, a new addition, and DVI. Sony supplies an unusual cable that plugs into a large multi-pin jack on the projector and provides component video, S-video, and composite video plugs at the other end — thus feeding a motley assortment of old video source components with a single cable. Separate component, S-video, and composite video jacks are also provided. And on the front panel is a jack that accepts a Memory Stick from a Sony digital still camera. That's definitely cooler than the clunky slide carousel I remember from childhood.

Clever Side Shot correction makes the Cineza a viable part of many living rooms.

The projector can be set up with a space-saving ceiling mount. I suspect, though, that Sony designed this projector more for the ad hoc enthusiast who wants to plop it on a table at the back of the room. To help such casual users, Sony provides keystone adjustments, which adapt trapezoid-shaped pictures into proper rectangles. The horizontal correction, called Side Shot, lets you place the projector on a table to one side of the seating area. There's also a vertical correction. Note, however, that eagle-eyed videophiles prefer to avoid the extra processing inherent in these vertical and horizontal corrections. They'd rather just move the projector to fix a misshapen picture.