Interesting observation Mike. I would have to agree that in my last five years watching the industry as ProjectorCentral's EIC the "budget" segment of the home theater category has experienced a migration toward brighter and brighter images for use in higher ambient light and away from trying to extract deeper blacks. Although dynamic contrast schemes on laser/LED solid state projectors have improved somewhat, when you go brighter there is typically a sacrifice made in contrast, and if you're watching in a lit up room there is of course no point in even discussing black level.

There wasn't really anything to look at in this $3K-ish and under price range on the floor or in live demos in Denver, aside from some USTs demo'd and a few lifestyle projectors out on the floor. But the quality of projection in the dark-room theater demos was quite excellent including good contrast and blacks. We are talking about high end projectors from JVC and Barco for the most part. There were also some outstanding miniLED walls showing real movie content, which can typically get very dark, though I can't say from my brief observations how well they climb out of black and retain shadow detail in the near-black brightness levels.

No, those higher end long-throws are really in a different class and designed for a different application/environment. But in a dark room with an appropriate ALR UST screen, meaning a dark lenticular surface with negative gain that sacrifices some peak brightness in favor of deeper black, you can get very satisfying contrast out of the better USTs.