I just updated my review of the Sharp 1080p projector, and I thought I’d post some numbers and impressions based on about one year of use.

Throw and lens shift

The Z20000 is a relatively long throw projector 1.85-2.5/1 screen width. It has a very flexible vertical lens shift of 1 screen height, which means that it is equally well-suited for a ceiling or a shelf installation. By default, the lens aligns with the bottom of the screen for a shelf mount and at the top of the screen for a ceiling mount. Use lens shift to adjust from there. Lens shift works like a charm, but it does reduce light output a little, so use it sparingly.

Brightness and contrast

Measuring brightness is not simple with the projector because it has so many different modes. Like the Z12000, the lamp has a Bright and a Eco + Quiet mode and it has an Iris with 3 settings, High Brightness, High Contrast, and Medium. It also has 5 Gamma presets and several Picture Modes. The default Picture Mode is Standard. With Standard gamma and Standard Dynamic Range selected in the Options menu, the gamma measured a nearly perfect 2.2 across the entire range. This offered exceptionally good shadow detail.

Initially, I did all my watching in the Eco + Quiet lamp mode, and subsequently changed to the Bright mode (with somewhat higher fan noise) as the lamp aged.

All measurements are post-calibration in the Standard Picture mode. The lumens figures were obtained with the projector set to minimum throw. For maximum throw, multiply by 88.6%. Throw range has a minimal effect on contrast.

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/new_table1.gif

I measured the ANSI contrast at 560:1 in the High Contrast mode and 489:1 in the Medium mode. Greg Rogers' review published in Widescreen Review reported 845:1.

The Medium Iris setting was my preferred setup. It offers a good compromise between brightness and contrast. Others with smaller or higher gain screens will no doubt prefer the High Contrast mode, as it certainly offers better contrast performance.

Color performance

The Sharp XV-Z20000 displayed the best gray scale performance out of the box that I have ever measured. By default, the color temperature is set at 7500k. I changed this to 6500k and then measured the gray scale.

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/Z20000_RGB_before.jpg

As you can see, the default gray scale is very good. I entered the custom Gamma mode and tightened this up somewhat and achieved virtually perfect performance. I did run across one problem. The gray scale controls for the low end of the scale did not seem to work. The controls are there and they respond to input, but they have no effect on measured performance. Fortunately, the performance was so good to begin with, I wasn’t too concerned with this. (See more on this below)

The XV-Z20000 includes a Color Management System that allows calibrators to adjust the primary and secondary colors to industry standards. By default, the Sharp showed a familiar color profile: oversaturated red and very oversaturated and somewhat yellowish green.

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/Z20000_CIE_Chart-before.jpg

After making adjustments in the CMS, I was able to get a nearly perfect color gamut.

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/Z20000_CIE_Chart-after.jpg

This is a must-have feature for obsessive tweakers. In fact, this projector is a calibrator's dream. It was particularly gratifying to get accurate green for a change. I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a digital display that didn’t exaggerate green. Sharp’s color management system works exactly as advertised, and I was much more impressed with it than I was with a similar system provided by Optoma’s HD-3000 external processor (the HD81 uses this) and by the one offered on the Epson TW1000.

The Value parameter in the CMS works as a color decoding adjustment, but the color decoding was nearly perfect out of the box (no red push here), so minimal adjustment was required.

Here are some before/after screenshots that show what the CMS can accomplish. The original is on top. The CMS processed image is on the bottom.

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/cms/grand_prix.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/cms/dexter.jpg

Optics

This projector also has the best optics I have ever encountered. The images show great clarity and precision with no evidence of chromatic aberration. There is ZERO color fringing even at the extreme corners of the screen, as shown in this image of the upper right hand corner of my screen.

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/crosshatch.jpg

In addition to vertical shift, the lens has manual zoom and focus. For convenience I would have preferred a motorized system, but on the other hand the lens assembly has a very solid and well-engineered feel. Sharp obviously devoted a lot of resources to the optics. This is an aspect of projector performance that gets far too little attention. Really good optics are expensive, unsexy, and thus difficult to market. Nonetheless, a really good lens can make a profound difference to the quality of the image with respect to sharpness and clarity.

White field uniformity was also very good, a hallmark of the DLP technology. The brightness varies by no more than 10% across the entire screen. I measured color temperature at about 150k lower on the right side of the screen. This is a measurable difference but not one that’s visible to the naked eye (at least not to mine), even when looking at a uniformly white 80IRE field.

Processing

Using the Silicon Optics Benchmark DVD and HD DVD, I was able to test the XV-Z20000's standard definition and high definition processing. It is excellent. It passes full resolution for 1080i film and video sources. It also correctly deinterlaces 1080i for film-based sources, applying 3:2 pulldown. For 480i sources the 20K passed all of the tests the DVD threw at it. It took about a half a second to lock on to the racetrack scene contained in the film detail test, which evaluates whether the display's processor can correctly apply inverse telecine for standard definition film-based material.

One test the XV-Z20000 did NOT pass is the deinterlacing torture scene at the beginning of Chapter 8 of the MI:3 Blu-ray or HD DVD. The staircase scene reveals some moire and considerable line twitter. Interestingly, this scene looks better using 1080i output from the Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray player than it did with the Toshiba XA2 HD DVD player, indicating either some difference in the way the 2 players output 1080i material or in the respective masters. Even the 1080p output of the XA2 showed problems. However, the 1080p output of the Sony was artifact free.

After its initial release, Sharp made a firmware update available that allowed the projector to accept 1080p/24 input, which it would output at 1080p/48. I am not particularly sensitive to the judder artifact that 1080p/60 supposedly induces so I cannot evaluate its success at eliminating it. However, the update did resolve some bugs, and the 480i processing seems improved insofar as prior to the update the XV-Z20000 did not pass the film detail test on the Silicon Optics Benchmark DVD. This firmware update is thus a valuable addition for this reason alone.

In the Dot by Dot mode, the projector maps the incoming signal directly to each pixel without any scaling. It is in this mode that 1080i and 1080p material look the sharpest. Using a 1080i multiburst signal from the Accupel test signal generator, I was able to verify that the HDMI input resolved the full limit of detail offered by HD sources. The component inputs, however, did not. This was apparent even with regular HD program material, which looked visibly softer over component than when fed the same material via HDMI.

Perhaps the best praise I can offer for the XV-Z20000's processing is that I no longer felt the need to use the Vantage-HD Realta external processor that had proven itself so valuable at improving the performance of the Optoma H79.

Problems

I ran across a few problems.


As I mentioned above, the RGB Bias adjustments for tweaking the low end of the gray scale seemed not to function. As it turns out, they do work, it is just that they work on only 10 IRE or below signals. This is a very strange--in my experience unique--implementation of a gray scale control that I fear will confuse a lot of owners and calibrators. Fortunately, you can use the RGB All Colors adjustment instead to adjust the gray scale in the 20-40 IRE range.
Page 40 of the User Manual, the page in which these controls are discussed, is reproduced in French! This is obviously a printing error.
The fan noise was a little higher than I would have liked and the light output was a little lower than I would have liked.
Some have reported seeing more rainbows on the Z20000 than they see on other high-end single-chip DLPs, but since I am insensitive to RBE, I cannot evaluate this.

Subjective impressions

My first thought upon seeing the image from the projector was: “I need a bigger screen!” The high pixel count really would shine more on something bigger than my 92-inch DaLite matte white screen.

I subsequently upgraded to a 100-inch Stewart StudioTek. I was surprised by the degree of improvement in image quality. First, I was able to get a larger image that did not, because of the true 1.3 gain, sacrifice any brightness. Second, this screen is able to resolve greater detail than the DaLite, so now the Z20000 seemed even sharper and more revealing than before. The DaLite imparted a subtle amount of screen grain to the image that disappeared with the StudioTek. This screen is a great match for this projector. If you wanted to go up to a larger 110" screen I would recommend the Stewart Ultramatte 150. For larger screens still, many users have reported very positive experiences with the DaLite High Power.

I spent a couple of hours looking at DVD, HD DVD, and broadcast (HD and SD). My only recent frame of reference was the SIM2 HT3000. They looked very similar, except that the Sharp seemed a little, well, sharper, a perception that I attribute to its superior optics. After tweaking, the Sharp certainly offered better measured performance. It provides better color performance and higher contrast. In fact, the only area of measurable performance where I thought that the Sharp needed improvement is light output. The High Brightness mode is quite bright, but the black level is unacceptably elevated. The High Contrast mode offers great black level, but it is too dim for my taste. The Medium mode is just about right, but by 670 hours I was getting only 9.5 fL so I had to get a new bulb. I was surprised how little visible change I saw after installing the new bulb, so I think I could have gone until at least 800 hrs. before the lack of brightness really began to impact viewing pleasure.

The biggest improvement of the 1080p pixel count is smoothness, depth, and a difficult-to-describe improvement in realism. The illusion that you are looking through a window viewing actual events is better conveyed with 2,073,600 pixels than it is with 921,600 of the little buggers. There’s clearly more picture information on the screen, which is evident even with standard DVD. However, I think that I was even more impressed by the Sharp’s optics, color, and gamma performance. The CMS system works wonderfully and it really shows on the screen.

There is actually one downside to 1080p projection, at least when combined with a unit with optics as good as the Z20000. As audiophiles have long known, one of the unintended consequences of using a very high-end sound system is that it is ruthlessly revealing of the source material. That is also true with video. The Z20000 did a much better job of revealing differences in quality between a variety of HD broadcast sources, differences that were not as obvious with my Optoma H79. I saw all sorts of flaws in these images that I hadn’t noticed before. However, with clean sources, such as HD DVD, the results are startling.

Despite the advantages of 1080p, resolution is only one measurement of performance and arguably not even the most important one. If the Z20000 had not also provided exemplary colorimetry, optics, and contrast, then the 2 million pixels wouldn’t matter much. Furthermore, to the extent that it does matter you need a large screen to appreciate it. I wonder how much obvious benefit users can expect from 1920x1080 50 and 60” rear projection displays.

Conclusion

In response to market pressures, Sharp has recently reduced the price on the XV-Z20000 to $6999, which is a truly great deal for a projector of this quality. Jason has these units in stock and can quote you a very attractive price, so if you are in the mood to upgrade you should give him a call.

To sum up, the XV-Z20000's strengths are:

World-class color available with the built-in full-featured CMS.
Excellent optics with zero convergence and chromatic aberration problems.
About the highest ANSI contrast available.
Very good native on/off contrast in the Medium or High Contrast modes.
Nearly perfect gamma provides excellent shadow detail.
Very good processing, especially for high definition sources.

Its weaknesses are:

Relatively low light output in High Contrast and Medium modes limits screen size.
Potential problems with RBE for those sensitive to this artifact.
Not appropriate for short-throw installations.
Lower on/off contrast than what's available from some similarly priced alternatives.
More fan noise than many competitors in this price range.

Thank you so much Tom. WOW, what a GREAT report!

Tom;
Thanks for your great report!
How is noise level (fan, color wheel, etc.) of this model compared to let's say its 720p brother?
_____
Axel

Thanks for the report. I loved the Sharp 12000, but I am disappointed with the contrast numbers and lumens. I would have expected much more from this unit in these areas.

Thanks for the marvellous review Tom and for getting all the measurements out so soon. Its great to read a review that includes comparisons to other projectors, subjective though it may be. You didn't mention whether you were using a scaler. If not, how does the onboard scaling measure up to the competitors?

Thanks millions, Tom! Yet another great report on a new breed 1080p DLP...:)

I find it curious that while the lower priced LCD projectors seem to be heading towards more lumens, the considerably higher priced 1080p DLPs you (and others) have reported on so far seem to have such low lumens output. Though I don't know for sure, I have a feeling that the new 1080p DMDs are still faced with the brightness/contrast tradeoffs that have plagued the lower resolution DMDs of the past. That is, they can deliver brightness OR contrast, but can't deliver both, and when manufacturers design projectors they have to make a conscious decision as to how much of each they will provide. So far, the HD-81 is the only unit with enough light output to make it watchable on what I consider a reasonably sized screen (100" to 120" diagonal) over the lifetime of the lamp. Your measurements of both the Sim2 and now the Sharp, as well as Greg's measurements of the Marantz, point towards a scary trend in brightness and contrast of 1080p DLPs. Although the brightness might be marginally fine on a new lamp, as you and I both know, this won't last long once the lamp begins to dim.

Thanks again for all of your efforts!

Thanks for the great review Tom. The one thing I have been confused about with this projector and trying to find out is what the "Auto Contrast" mode is and what it does. Did you see that in there? With a claim of 12k:1 on/off CR and your 4k:1 or so measurements, I'm hoping they actually have a dynamic iris mode.

Thanks,
Darin

This is beginning to sound like another near miss or "close but no cigar". I know it's good but when is digital going to challenge those CRT inky blacks? The only way to come close is to dim the lamp?
Perhaps I'm just expecting too much. Knowing Sharp it is an outstanding unit in every other way. I'm with Bob on this one.

Your measurements of both the Sim2 and now the Sharp, as well as Greg's measurements of the Marantz, point towards a scary trend in brightness and contrast of 1080p DLPs.I don't think it is so much a scary trend as evidence of what having a dynamic iris vs not having a dynamic iris means as far as then having to tradeoff lumens with CR, instead of getting both.

--Darin

I know people in Sweden have reported a very low black level for this machine. Shadow puppets were hard to see on the screen. With 250 ANSI lumen in the high contrast setting I doubt 4000:1 would lead to such comments. There must be more black level to squeeze out of the projector.

With 250 ANSI lumen in the high contrast setting I doubt 4000:1 would lead to such comments.
That depends on the size and gain of the screen...;) 250 lumens isn't a heck of a lot of light to start with.

I know people in Sweden have reported a very low black level for this machine. Shadow puppets were hard to see on the screen. With 250 ANSI lumen in the high contrast setting I doubt 4000:1 would lead to such comments. There must be more black level to squeeze out of the projector.

Could be in auto iris mode?

Thanks for the excellent review Tom!

I have to agree with others and say that I am disappointed in the lumens from this pj. I was certainly hoping for more.


The Z20000 is a relatively long throw projector 1.85-2.5/1 screen width.

....

I had originally wanted to go with the Optoma, but their bone-headed decision to market a projector with a 37% vertical offset with no lens shift dashed those plans.

The 37% offset would work for me with 10 foot ceilings. The more bone-headed move to me was having such a long throw. The Sharp's throw is just as long as the Optoma's. It would be about 16.5 feet from my 9 foot wide screen, in a 19 foot long room, with a soffit that extends 14 inches. This would make for a very, very tight fit, if it would work at all.

What's up with this long throw on the Sharp and Optoma? :confused:

How much can a high gain screen like the Dalite HighPower compensate for the low lumens of these 1080p dlp's? What downside (other than restricted pj placement and viewing angle) is there to the 'highpower solution' to the low lumen problem?

Could be in auto iris mode?

It doesn't have an auto iris.

Thanks Tom. I am just finishing my review as well. I found similar levels to you. Question, did you take your contrast/light output settings in High Lamp or Low Lamp? I ask because I did mine in High Lamp and found the following:

Light Output:
(High Lamp/High Brightness): 670 lumens
(High Lamp/Medium Mode): 325 lumens
(High Lamp/High Contrast): 268 lumens
(Low Lamp/High Brightness): 506 lumens
(Low Lamp/Medium Mode): 246 lumens
(Low Lamp/High Contrast): 202 lumens

On/Off Contrast:
(HL/HB): 1696:1
(HL/MM): 2722:1
(HL/HC): 3767:1
Note: I did not take measurements for contrast in low lamp mode.

ANSI Contrast:
(HL/HB): 497:1
(HL/MM): 537:1
(HL/HC): 596:1

I do also agree with you completely, the grayscale tracking was extremely good out of the box. I also found the bias wasn't working on mine. I need to adjust it for the low end IRE's a tad, but I could not get it to do anything.

I'll have my report online tomorrow evening with screen shots and such.

Darin, I played with the AutoContrast feature...I didn't find that it did a heck of a lot. I could notice a bit of change on the image, but, my measurements did not change at all on any of the settings.

disapointing,

Jason's measurements for max lumens is less than the Sharp 12000. It measured like 850 in high briteness and high lamp.

Yes indeed. I should also mention I was at the shortest end of the throw with my measurements. I don't know why it is, but the single chip DLP 1080p units are simply not that bright. Granted, that is only part of the equation and they really look phenominal picture-wise.

Jason

How's the optics compare to the Marantz 11s1? from Tom's review, the optics of the Sharp is extremely good even better than the sim2 3000.

Mike

Optics are excellent. I should comment they they are smooth adjusting as well (no slop in the movement). I saw little CA and was able to focus down to the finest pixel gaps.

It appears that the contrast is only slightly better than the HD81, but quite a bit dimmer (comparing Jasons measurements with Guitarmans).

I have some good news to report. It turns out that the lens shift affects brightness and contrast more than I thought. When I took my initial measurements it was with the Z20000 on a top shelf. I put it there only because that's where the H79 had been and I was lazy. Tonight I moved the projector down 15" to a lower shelf. This required much less lens shift. I then took my lumens and contrast measurements again, and this time I included measurements from the economy mode as well. I have updated the table in the original review. Both lumens output and CR improved significantly. With zero lens shift they would improve even more. Too bad that this convenience feature has such a performance penalty.

To answer some questions:

The fan noise is worse than the H79, but better than the Sony HS20. I haven't heard the Z12000. I would rate the noise level low, but noticable. The H79 was virtually silent. I hear no color wheel sound at all.

I am using the Vantage HD scaler. It ALWAYS makes HD look better. I haven't checked out the Z20000 without it, but I'm sure it wouldn't look as good.

The Auto Contrast is a mystery to me. It certainly isn't an auto iris and, like Jason, I couldn't see that it had any measurable effect on CR.

I have updated the table in the original review.
Tom, I don't know if it is just my computer monitor, but I can't read the updated table at all. Would you be so kind as to repeat the info in regular print?

Thanks.

Tom, I don't know if it is just my computer monitor, but I can't read the updated table at all. Would you be so kind as to repeat the info in regular print?

Thanks.

Bob, open the image or save it to disk and view it in Paint/Photo Editor or a similar program. Worked for me with both IE and Opera.

Tom, thanks for a nice write-up.

Tom, I don't know if it is just my computer monitor, but I can't read the updated table at all. Would you be so kind as to repeat the info in regular print?

Thanks.

It's not your monitor. I can't read it either.

Nor I...

If you select the table with your mouse it will let you read it by changing the background color of the table

Good news Tom! I only wish my room would allow me to move the unit and redo the shift. :) I too was a bit disappointed with the light output in high contrast mode. Usually the differences are pretty subtle, but in the case of the Sharp the light output dropped considerable when going into high contrast mode. As Tom stated, and I agree, the Medium Mode was a nice, well, medium. :)

OK, take a look at the table now. My attempts to use fancy formatting was a flop.

Tom

Great review. The HC measurements seems consistant with it's12K bloodline; 270 lumens@ 3,500:1 CR. :)

The 15% difference in CR between economy and bright HC modes suggests a measurement errror?

How much can a high gain screen like the Dalite HighPower compensate for the low lumens of these 1080p dlp's? What downside (other than restricted pj placement and viewing angle) is there to the 'highpower solution' to the low lumen problem?Other than the viewing angle issue, a High Power could only help here, a lot.

Dan

Other than the viewing angle issue, a High Power could only help here, a lot.

Dan

I've had my 12K for almost 3 yrs now, and have been using it with a 110" diag. High Power. I only watch DVDs, and leave it on hi contrast mode. In my totally light-controlled room, it's always been plenty bright (for me). I've always been very happy with this PJ; if the 20K is at least as good brightness/contrast-wise, I'll be happy.

I've had my 12K for almost 3 yrs now, and have been using it with a 110" diag. High Power. I only watch DVDs, and leave it on hi contrast mode. In my totally light-controlled room, it's always been plenty bright (for me). I've always been very happy with this PJ; if the 20K is at least as good brightness/contrast-wise, I'll be happy.

Hey Rider,

If you want the 20k to only be at least as good brightness/contrast wise as the 12k, why would you upgrade? What improvements are you looking for from the 12k? Do you currently see SDE?

Our brightness measurements are similar, but I am not getting nearly the contrast that you are. I am going to chalk this up to several things, including the different testing gear, environments and projectors.

Oh and likely my Silverstar...that tends to drop contrast ratings as it reflects so much in the room.

Oh and likely my Silverstar...that tends to drop contrast ratings as it reflects so much in the room.
Are you measuring light levels reflected off the screen or directly from the pj?

I did some more playing. For whatever reason, AutoContrast turned on to any setting lowers the contrast measurement for on/off. I was able to get 3767:1 in HB/HC. Medium mode went to 2722:1 and High Bright went to 1696:1. Again, I also didn't have the ability of using the lens shift the experiment.

Jason:

I took contrast readings using an tripod-mounted AEMC meter pointed at the lens in the near field (3-4 feet) so as to maximize the black level and get a more accurate reading. The only problem with this method is that you've got to be careful not to overload the meter when measuring full white. I'm pretty confident about these numbers. I had all the Sharp's fancy enhancement features (of which there are many) turned off.

The fact you are getting similar readings for brightness suggests that the descrepancy is the black level reading. You may be right that the Silverstar is the culprit. I had to take my readings twice because the initial round showed significantly higher black level readings, which were caused by the light coming off of my laptop, even though it was BEHIND the sensor.

Hey Rider,

If you want the 20k to only be at least as good brightness/contrast wise as the 12k, why would you upgrade? What improvements are you looking for from the 12k? Do you currently see SDE?

Slight SDE, but only if you look for it. But SDE aside, over double the resolution gives, well, a higher-res image; more life-like and "thru the window." Besides, who wants a 3-yr-old PJ anyway.... ;)

Sounds good. As I always mention in my "reviews", I don't have an ideal testing facility so my numbers are virtually always less than what the projectors are truly capable of.

Does the sharp support either 1080p24 or 1080p48 as input?

I have been asked that question by several. The long of the short of it is I don't know. I don't have any test material to try it with. Tom, by chance do you?

yes, it does accept 24p according to Sharp's manual.

There we go. Now if we can only verify that....

Our brightness measurements are similar, but I am not getting nearly the contrast that you are. I am going to chalk this up to several things, including the different testing gear, environments and projectors.

Oh and likely my Silverstar...that tends to drop contrast ratings as it reflects so much in the room.The Silverstar could help your ANSI CR, but it shouldn't change the on/off CR unless you have other lights on in the room or light coming in. If it added 10% from reflections, it should do it for both white and black and 1.1x/1.y is still the same as x/y.

--Darin

Hmm. Could have then also been my laptop. Or we could be overlooking this and it could simply be 2 different projectors. :)

Jason, Do you have a VP50 in house? If so, you can use that to test p24 and p48.

Great instructive review though:
- same chassis as the 9-10-12K units so fan noise remains an issue and require a box
or booth
- SAME problem of either getting contrast or brigthness. there the Pearl seems to be a killer machine with 8000:1 AND 800ansi+ in AUTO 1
solution: the SHARP must be used either with a 80" screen maximum in a BLACK ROOM or a 1.4-2.0+ 100-110max screen , in a BLACK room. I guess it's the same or worse with the Marantz. Speaking of the Marantz price or the C3X price ($15-20K), i'd go with this one in a split second: A 1080p MONO DLP than is bight and with excelent CR at the same time: PROJECTION DESIGN MODEL THREE 1080 DUAL LAMP DUAL WHEEL . Price has dropped 20% from last year. Seen recently by friends on a 150" screen they were floored: ultra sharpness, amazing contrast and punch, no rainbows, no dithering.
One with the budget should consider this unit over the competition, in this pricing range, imho. Extremely reliable machines also.

Great instructive review though:
- same chassis as the 9-10-12K units so fan noise remains an issue and require a box
or booth
- SAME problem of either getting contrast or brigthness. there the Pearl seems to be a killer machine with 8000:1 AND 800ansi+ in AUTO 1
solution: the SHARP must be used either with a 80" screen maximum in a BLACK ROOM or a 1.4-2.0+ 100-110max screen , in a BLACK room. I guess it's the same or worse with the Marantz. Speaking of the Marantz price or the C3X price ($15-20K), i'd go with this one in a split second: A 1080p MONO DLP than is bight and with excelent CR at the same time: PROJECTION DESIGN MODEL THREE 1080 DUAL LAMP DUAL WHEEL . Price has dropped 20% from last year. Seen recently by friends on a 150" screen they were floored: ultra sharpness, amazing contrast and punch, no rainbows, no dithering.
One with the budget should consider this unit over the competition, in this pricing range, imho. Extremely reliable machines also.


I was seriously consider the PROJECTION DESIGN MODEL THREE 1080p, but I think it's

1. really, really loud. will need a hush box for sure.
2. I think widescreen review measure the Digital projection Ivision 1080p(same unit?) at 4400CR and 290 lumens, it can go bright like 2500+ lumen but only 1k CR.

I used to own both a qualia 004 and ruby For me, the pearl or any sxrd for that matter simple cannot measure up to the 1080dlps in turns of HD viewing, the image definition, clarity and details are so much better with the DLPs.

I have the marantz now and love it but would love to have something brighter, I am getting the sharp 20000 to try from Jason (Thanks!! :) ). will report back how the Marantz and sharp compares.

I have the marantz now and love it but would love to have something brighter, I am getting the sharp 20000 to try from Jason (Thanks!! :) ). will report back how the Marantz and sharp compares.

That would be great -- please post your impressions/results.

No offense to anybody who bought this pj, but with less briteness than the 12000, it only makes sense if you sit very close to the screen.

With the 12000, I cant see SDE even at 1.2x screen width. Less than than I barely start to.
Considering the price difference, hard to see this model being a big seller.

I will be getting the Sharp today, to compare against my C3X. I am more than a little dissapointed to hear that the brightness is not what I expected, but I am hopeful that it will look good anyway.

I am sure it will look great. Just like the 12000 looks great. Sharp puts great optics, processors, etc into their top line stuff.
Just hard to imagine the 20000 is worth many thousands more than the 12000, which can be had for a price that almost puts it out of this forum.

No offense to anybody who bought this pj, but with less briteness than the 12000, it only makes sense if you sit very close to the screen.

With the 12000, I cant see SDE even at 1.2x screen width. Less than than I barely start to.
Considering the price difference, hard to see this model being a big seller.
There is a lot more to this TI Chip than its effect on SDE. You seem to have convinced yourself that this PJ is a flop because it offers 116 fewer lumens than the 12000.

The only problem with the brightness will be for those who have screens above, say, 110". At that size and especially with just a little gain (Stewart StudioTek would be a good choice), the brightness is fine, 15.5 FtL to be exact, in Medium Iris, High Lamp Mode.

In my installation (I have a 92" screen) I have to run it in Low Lamp mode because the High Lamp Mode is TOO bright.

Right now there's about a 3k premium to get 1920x1080. Consumers will have to decide for themselves whether that's worth it. If you are willing to wait, I'm sure that by next year that premium will have been substantially reduced, if not eliminated.

Tom, for me personally, yes... this is a flop.
I have the 12000 on a 100" screen. It looks great, but I wish I had more lumens, especially in high contrast mode.
Fortunately, otherwise, I love the pj and have no plans to upgrade until something is a drastic improvement.
But others may be different, if you have a 92" screen and a dark room, and want to sit 1 screen width away, then I am sure the 20000 is great.
But for what I have seen 12000's going for, I'd save the $5-6K before I got the 20000.

Free, I am VERY interested in hearing how it compares to the C3X!

Tom, for me personally, yes... this is a flop.
I have the 12000 on a 100" screen. It looks great, but I wish I had more lumens, especially in high contrast mode.
Fortunately, otherwise, I love the pj and have no plans to upgrade until something is a drastic improvement.
But others may be different, if you have a 92" screen and a dark room, and want to sit 1 screen width away, then I am sure the 20000 is great.
But for what I have seen 12000's going for, I'd save the $5-6K before I got the 20000.

If 720p to 1080p is not a major upgrade, I really don't know what is a major upgrade anymore. :)

you can always use a high gain screen like silver star or highpower, I use the marantz with 137" highpower, I only use the economy high contract light setting
and it's planty bright.

you have to go see a hd movie with a 1080p dlp, you don't know what you are missing.

MC6, that was my whole point.
At my 1.5x screen width, 720 to 1080p is NOT a major upgrade. And yes, I have seen several 1080 pj's.

Ok, I have spent some time with this projector today, and it is very nice. For me, it is necessary to have the Iris open to get the brightness I desire, but medium is also a decent setting. I actually wish there was a setting between the two.

My comparison is to my old Sharp 12K, and my current Sim2 C3X, which the Sharp held up to very well. It is significantly better than the 12K, with a much smoother, detailed image that has significantly less noise.

Against the C3X there are pro's and cons. On the Pro side, there is a bit more detail in bright scenes than the C3X, probably just from the resolution increase. The colors are nicely saturated, and the picture is smooth like the C3x.

On the con side, it is not as bright, and at max brightness it is comparable to my C3X with 600 hrs on the bulb, and an ND filter in front of it. There is also less shadow detail on the Sharp than the Sim2, and the contrast seems slightly better on the Sim than the Sharp at the same brightness level. The Sim is also a bit easier on the eyes, with a slightly more stable and smooth image, and no rainbows.

Overall, this is a very nice projector, and I am enjoying playing with it. :)

Tom, curious what Gamma setting you are using. I am wondering if I can get more shadow detail out of it??

Free:

I am using the Standard gamma. As I wrote, this gamma curve is nearly ideal. However, you can create a custom gamma to do virtually anything you like.

Regarding the Z20000 vs. the C3X, yes, at equivalent brightness the C3X has better contrast, because to get C3X brightness out of the Z20000 you must leave the iris open. With the iris in the medium setting, though, the contrast is about the same, and with it in the lowest setting it is considerably better, though neither of these settings can approach the C3x's light output. I did not find the C3X smoother, though the type of screen will have a great effect on how one perceives this.

One area in which a tweaked Z20000 is significantly better than the C3X is color accuracy. In fact, the Sharp is about as close to perfect in this respect as is possible. However, if you need lots of lumens or if you are sensitive to rainbows, then the C3X is a better choice.

I am not sensitive to rainbows, but others who are have reported that they see fewer on this 1080p DLP chip than with the 720p DarkChip3.

Anyway you look at it, these are both great projectors.

I'm somewhat puzzled that obviously nobody here actually sees the real reason why the new Sharp Z20000 falls short in brightness compared to its predecessors. It has nothing to do with the new 1080p DMD, the new lightpath or anything else about the projector itself. The reason is plain and simple that the Z12000 (and even the Z10000 for that matter) used a 270W SHP lamp, whereas the new Z20000 uses a 220W SHP lamp resulting in an obvious loss of brightness. It is as easy as that. Why Sharp made this decision is another matter - one reason may be that the new 0.95" 1080p DMDs are more light efficient than the old 720p chips and therefor "compensating" for some of the light loss caused by the weaker lamp. The weaker lamp on the other hand should allow for cooler and more silent operation. But who knows what actually made them do THIS :confused:

... The reason is plain and simple that the Z12000 (and even the Z10000 for that matter) used a 270W SHP lamp, whereas the new Z20000 uses a 220W SHP lamp resulting in an obvious loss of brightness....

Sorry, i'm a bit confused: do you mean that the z10000 (that i currently own) is *brighter* than the z20000? Looking at specs it seems the opposite.
please explain ...

Luigi

I'm somewhat puzzled that obviously nobody here actually sees the real reason why the new Sharp Z20000 falls short in brightness compared to its predecessors. It has nothing to do with the new 1080p DMD, the new lightpath or anything else about the projector itself. The reason is plain and simple that the Z12000 (and even the Z10000 for that matter) used a 270W SHP lamp, whereas the new Z20000 uses a 220W SHP lamp resulting in an obvious loss of brightness. It is as easy as that. Why Sharp made this decision is another matter - one reason may be that the new 0.95" 1080p DMDs are more light efficient than the old 720p chips and therefor "compensating" for some of the light loss caused by the weaker lamp. The weaker lamp on the other hand should allow for cooler and more silent operation. But who knows what actually made them do THIS :confused:

Better contrast maybe? with 1 chip you have to choose either higher light output or higher contrast. the optoma h81 has a 300w lightbulb, the light output is good but at the cost of contrast, it's still very good, but I guess sharp feel the need to raise the contrast for its new projector.

Better contracts maybe? with 1 chip you have to choose either higher light output or higher contracts. the optoma h81 has a 300w lightbulb, the light output is good but at the cost of contracts, it's still very good, but I guess sharp feel the need to raise the contract for its new projector, so they choose to use a dimmer bulb.

Contracts? ;)

TheLion. Yes, I noticed this and your right that it probably would run a little cooler however, I don't think Sharp has done anything in terms of quieting down the projector with a different fan or slowing it down. At least not according to it's specs or what others have said.

Free:

I am using the Standard gamma. As I wrote, this gamma curve is nearly ideal. However, you can create a custom gamma to do virtually anything you like.

Regarding the Z20000 vs. the C3X, yes, at equivalent brightness the C3X has better contrast, because to get C3X brightness out of the Z20000 you must leave the iris open. With the iris in the medium setting, though, the contrast is about the same, and with it in the lowest setting it is considerably better, though neither of these settings can approach the C3x's light output. I did not find the C3X smoother, though the type of screen will have a great effect on how one perceives this.

One area in which a tweaked Z20000 is significantly better than the C3X is color accuracy. In fact, the Sharp is about as close to perfect in this respect as is possible. However, if you need lots of lumens or if you are sensitive to rainbows, then the C3X is a better choice.

I am not sensitive to rainbows, but others who are have reported that they see fewer on this 1080p DLP chip than with the 720p DarkChip3.

Anyway you look at it, these are both great projectors.


I will try the Standard Gamma, thanks, I think I was using Movie 2. I agree, that the colors are very nice on this projector, very rich, and the image is smooth, but in a different way than the 3 Chip. It is the smoothest single chip I have seen but there is still an inherent instability to the image, that gets me, after watching for a while, even if I am not seeing rainbows. I am hoping I adjust to this over time.

Your observations, and measurements on brightness vs contrast in the various iris positions, are accurate to my eyes. Unfortunately, I just find Medium a little too dim for me. I wish there was a position between medium and iris open, since there seems to be a huge jump between the two.

Tom,

How would you compare the z20000 to your old h79 when it comes to contrast, black level, and brightness.

I love the picture the h79 throws, but was hoping to upgrade to a 1080p projector also. Just like you, the H81 wont easily fit into my room so the z20000 and the upcoming benq are new options for me.

Contracts? ;)

TheLion. Yes, I noticed this and your right that it probably would run a little cooler however, I don't think Sharp has done anything in terms of quieting down the projector with a different fan or slowing it down. At least not according to it's specs or what others have said.

Thanks :o it's kind of too early for me!!

How would you compare the z20000 to your old h79 when it comes to contrast, black level, and brightness.The Z20000 is a lot more flexible because of the different settings. The only option you have on the H79 is High and Low lamp mode. With a new lamp I got 600/500 lumens @ 2800:1. This is less light than with the Z20000's iris open, but more contrast than in that mode. With the Z20000's iris in the medium or high contrast mode, you get better contrast than the H79 but with less light output.

It is in other areas where the Z20000 it is a profound upgrade over the H79: much better color accuracy, smoothness, realism, and overall refinement.

Sorry, i'm a bit confused: do you mean that the z10000 (that i currently own) is *brighter* than the z20000?Greg Rogers WSR review of the Z10000 measured 851 lumens in the maximum brightness mode. Compare that to the 734 lumens I got in the same mode for the Z20000. About what you would expect from the 50 watt less powerful lamp. Of course, the Z20000 gets MUCH better contrast and is superior in many other ways as well.

The only option you have on the H79 is High and Low lamp mode. With a new lamp I got 600/500 lumens @ 2800:1.

Was that with the H79 in high or low lamp mode?

Here is my opinion (and use) of my h79 (upgraded from a Sharp Z9000).

- 100% light controlled room.

- 110" diag Firehawk.

- I watch movies in low lamp mode. (High lamp mode is raises the black level too much. At 300 hours, low lamp mode is too bright sometimes. Transition from low light to bright hurt my eyes occasionally. The contrast is more than acceptable. It could always use more, but I would only want to sacrifice a little light output and elevated black level would never be acceptable.)

- I play video games and watch HDTV in high lamp mode. (Would love more brightness in this mode where black level or contrast is never really an issue.)

- h79's color and picture quality is good, it definitely could be improved.

- The low fan noise is great, but, I owned a Sharp z9000 for 2 years and it never was a real problem.

Maybe I'm repeating what you stated, but, in addition to all of the color and quality benefits of the z20000, can the Sharp be configured to:

(1) For movie watching, provide better contrast and lower black level over the h79 in low lamp mode while lowering the light output [B]only slightly.

(and)

(2) For HDTV or game playing, provide more brightness and similar contrast than the h79 in high lamp mode.

Although I still may consider getting the h81 because of the benefits of the external scaler and extra brightness, the Sharp could potentially be a possibility for me.

Brad

Was that with the H79 in high or low lamp mode? Both. 600 in High, 500 in Low. Just compare the numbers I got in the various modes to answer your questions.

I went out of my way to emphasize in my original post that resolution was just one criterion of performance and should be taken in context with other benchmarks to get a wholistic picture of then projector's performance. I wrote this because I was concerned that people were obsessing about 1080p to the exclusion of all other issues.

After reading a lot of the responses to my post, I now think that people are obsessing about light output while ignoring everything else. In Normal lamp mode and medium Iris setting the Z20000 gets a post-calibration 428 lumens @ 3600:1 on/off contrast. Unless you are using a really large screen with no gain, this is plenty of light and excellent contrast. We will have to see how well the lamp ages and and long adequate brightness holds out.

After reading a lot of the responses to my post, I now think that people are obsessing about light output while ignoring everything else. In Normal lamp mode and medium Iris setting the Z20000 gets a post-calibration 428 lumens @ 3600:1 on/off contrast. Unless you are using a really large screen with no gain, this is plenty of light and excellent contrast.
Welcome to the "dim" projectors club. :) :)

After reading a lot of the responses to my post, I now think that people are obsessing about light output while ignoring everything else. In Normal lamp mode and medium Iris setting the Z20000 gets a post-calibration 428 lumens @ 3600:1 on/off contrast. Unless you are using a really large screen with no gain, this is plenty of light and excellent contrast. We will have to see how well the lamp ages and and long adequate brightness holds out.


Tom
I bought the sharp mostly based on your excellent review, what interested me the most is the high contrast setting of the z20000 and the options to put out more light than my marantz 11s1.

Mike

After reading a lot of the responses to my post, I now think that people are obsessing about light output while ignoring everything else. In Normal lamp mode and medium Iris setting the Z20000 gets a post-calibration 428 lumens @ 3600:1 on/off contrast. Unless you are using a really large screen with no gain, this is plenty of light and excellent contrast. We will have to see how well the lamp ages and and long adequate brightness holds out.

What do you consider "really large"? (I have a 123" diagonal 1.3 gain screen).

Could someone please post the formula to calculate foot lamberts for a given screen size and gain (I know this has been posted before, sorry).

Thanks!

Could someone please post the formula to calculate foot lamberts for a given screen size and gain (I know this has been posted before, sorry).

ftL = lumens * screen gain / screen size (in sq. ft.)

Rob:

That's a little bigger than I would be comfortable with at 1.3 gain. Your initial illumination will be about 12.4 FtL at the Normal Lamp, Medium Iris setting, which is fine. However, the normal aging of the bulb will put you below 10 FtL, which I would consider the minimum, within a couple of hundred hours, forcing you to use the High Brightness mode. This will cut the contrast in half.

Roughly speaking, I would limit screen size to 110" unless you are using a High Power or Silverstar screen.

I know this may be asking too much :), but could somebody please look in the manual and see what it says the "Auto Contrast" feature does. I can't find a copy of the manual on Sharp's site.

Thanks,
Darin

Thanks Bob and Tom.

I am finding that my options are very limited with my screen size. :(

Tom, I had the Silverstar before, and I won't go back to it. The sheen bothered me enough to make it an issue.

Thanks Bob and Tom.

I am finding that my options are very limited with my screen size. :(

Tom, I had the Silverstar before, and I won't go back to it. The sheen bothered me enough to make it an issue.

Why not a Dalite Highpower?

Why not a Dalite Highpower?

Because my pj must be mounted on the ceiling, therefore negating almost all of the benefits of a HP

I know this may be asking too much :), but could somebody please look in the manual and see what it says the "Auto Contrast" feature does. I can't find a copy of the manual on Sharp's site.

Thanks,
Darin
"This function automatically adjusts the image contrast to suit the scene."

Options are:
Off
Level1
Level2
Level3

Not very helpful is it?

Tom, have you measured it with the Auto Contrast on. I have it turned on, and I like what it does to the image. Seems to enhance the appearance of contrast somehow.

The "Unveil" feature, on the other hand, really screws up the image.

"This function automatically adjusts the image contrast to suit the scene."

Options are:
Off
Level1
Level2
Level3

Not very helpful is it?Interesting though. It would be interesting to see what the different levels would do with a 20 IRE window on a black background or a 50 IRE window on a black background. It wouldn't surprise me if it raises the light level for the window while keeping the background the same. I've always wondered what the saturation feature on one of the Mercury 3 chip DLPs that Alan had does and if it does something similar (analyzes the image and tries to separate things from each other through something similar to a dynamic gamma).

--Darin

Darin, that is what it appears to me to do. When looking at the pluge bars, you can see the change as well.

Better contrast maybe? with 1 chip you have to choose either higher light output or higher contrast. the optoma h81 has a 300w lightbulb, the light output is good but at the cost of contrast, it's still very good, but I guess sharp feel the need to raise the contrast for its new projector.

Simply lowering the bulb output should not by itself raise contrast* as the white level and black level will decrease by the same amount. The trade off between light output and contrast in single chip DLP comes from the use of irises to prevent scattered light from escaping through the lens.

*Presuming color balance is unaffected.

Simply lowering the bulb output should not by itself raise contrast* as the white level and black level will decrease by the same amount.
Thay is why I raised the question about the measured ~ 15% CR difference! :)

Thay is why I raised the question about the measured ~ 15% CR difference!This is a phenomenon related to the Iris. If you look at the the measurements for the Maximum Brightness setting (Iris Off), the CR is virtually identical for Normal and Economy Lamp modes.

This is a phenomenon related to the Iris. If you look at the the measurements for the Maximum Brightness setting (Iris Off), the CR is virtually identical for Normal and Economy Lamp modes.
Thats why I asked the question. I know that the 12K, and most other irised DLPs had virtually the same CR in HC/ hi brightness mode as HC/economy. In the 20K the CR is the same for other modes, except for hi brightness. I wonder if there is an implementation difference in HB to account for the increased CR?

This is a phenomenon related to the Iris. If you look at the the measurements for the Maximum Brightness setting (Iris Off), the CR is virtually identical for Normal and Economy Lamp modes.Tom,

Could you try measuring the CR from different distances with the high contrast mode and the 2 bulb settings to see if the differences hold up. Unless there is something with the way the light goes through the system with the 2 bulb settings, they really should be very close. Did you recalibrate after changing the bulb setting?

Thanks,
Darin

OK, I took contrast measurements again and no huge change, except that I discovered that the LED lights from my equipment rack were contaminating the result in the near field. The contamnation had a bigger effect on the low lamp mode. Once I covered the light sources up, I got pretty much the same results in both modes. Fortunately, the economy mode numbers were revised up. So I'm getting about 5500:1 in the High Contrast Iris Mode in both lamp settings. Oddly, in the far field I got consistently a little better, closer to 6000:1 in the same mode. However, I trust the near-field numbers more.

All in all, about the same numbers for bright mode, and a little better for economy mode.

It's amazing how much impact small lights from equipment can have on the screen. My equipment rack is against the back wall of my HT. With all the lights off, you can easily make hand puppets on the screen (1.3 gain) even when the equipment lights are in standbye mode! :eek:

I actually have a extra piece of cloth that I used on the front screen wall that I can put over the equipment, but my wife things I am way too anal when I start doing things like that! :o

Here's a question not related to color, contrast, etc:

Hows the handling or horizontal panning? I have a Sharp 12000 and had a 10000 before it. For still and slowly moving pictures, I have no fault to find (after some minor calibration) and love the picture.

But I find horizontal scrolling to often be fuzzy/muddy/etc. Part of this is that the projector doesn't really support anything but 60hz refresh (you can feed it 48hz, but the color wheel speed doesn't change and that introduces all sorts of nasty problems -- things that clearly show with tools like JudderTest), but as I understand it, mostly this had to do with limitation of the DMD update rate (limited channel speed between the processor and the DMD or on the DMD itself -- I don't recall the specifics).

I'm hoping the newer generation DMD and driver/processor chip has a higher bandwidth and can better keep up with such things.

A great example is the title sequence for 11:14 which has lots of (virtually continuously) horizontal scrolling/panning. I find all the text in that intro to be almost unreadable until the moving text "catches up" with the moving background (which effectively makes the text stop moving on the screen). The effect is almost as if it's "blurry", but I know it's not a focus thing per se.

When I ran this same sequence through my brothers CRT system (which is really my old projector handed down), the text was readable all the time, even when moving.

So while I look longingly at the 1080p res for better dot fill, I'm mostly hoping it will do a better job on the horizontal stuff.

Love to hear any info/impressions you z20000 folks have on the topic.

Gerry

Gerry, I don't see any fuzzy or muddiness, but I do have a sense of a bit of instability when panning scenes. This is absent on my 3Chip, but the Sharp, I notice. It is subtle, but I do feel it could be more stable.

Thanks! I suspect there is nothing to be done to get 100% perfect panning with 1-chip solutions -- it's asking a lot to happen very quickly. I've periodically contemplated a 3 chipper, but, of course, the cost is a big deterrent.

I'll have to take the 20000 out for a spin when it shows up in town.

Gerry

Tomorrow I am placing an order for the Sharp 20000. This will be my second Sharp projector upgrade having initially started many years ago with a Runco. I am so very satisfied with Sharp image quality. Over the years I have compared Sharp image quality with several other brand projected images. All in all, I have not seen a better projected image, even with brands at triple the $$$$. I must tell you that I judge audio and video quality by two attributes only: my eyes and my ears. I can read and appreciate all the electronic measurements of image/sound....but...being a right-brained individual, emperical data via eye and ear is most impotant to me.

I have been very enthusiastic about the color management feature offered in the Z20000. Here is an example of what it does.

Before CMS

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/no_CMS.jpg

After CMS

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/CMS.jpg

As you can see, the CMS makes the skin tones and the green in the palms much more natural. By default yellow and green are extremely oversaturated and red is modestly so. Also, prior to correction red is modestly shifted towards magenta.

Some people who prefer a more colorful image might actually like the exaggerated colors more, but once you get used to the natural color palette it's impossible to go back.

Very nice CMS settings Tom! What type of light meter and software are you using? Despite an incredible number of efforts and experiments over the years, I've never been able to get an accurate CIE chart/measurement out of ColorFacts 6 using a variety of meters and even with different projectors. Yep, for those of you following along at home its been 3 years now and still no such luck!

Also Tom - any word on the problem with getting the Sharp to react properly to the BIAS controls when doing grayscale cali?

Using ColorFacts 6 with the Spyder2 and the EyeOne probes. I find that these 2 probes (EyeOne off the screen and the Spyder2 pointed at the lens) yield similar results.

And, no, so far as I know Sharp as not fixed the Bias controls. This will require a firmware update and to my knowledge they have not yet issued one for this PJ.

Tom I am about to spend some time with the Z20000. Can you elaborate on the Bias issue. Does this mean it cannot properly be calibrated from the user menu.

Thank you.

Huge difference in those pics Tom. It looks like the bottom (CMS corrected) pic has a bit too much green in it though.

Tom I am about to spend some time with the Z20000. Can you elaborate on the Bias issue. Does this mean it cannot properly be calibrated from the user menu.

Thank you.Correct. The Gains work fine, but the Bias controls, though they respond to input, have no effect on the grayscale. I got one of the earliest models, and I'm hoping for a firmware update to resolve this. Also, I have yet to get any info about how to access the service menu.

Tom, I am looking at picking up a 20000 around X-Mas. I plan to use it with a 100" Firehawk. Would you, (are anyone else), publish your final user and service menu settings for your best calibrated picture. This would provide a good starting point or the rest of us.

We've been playing around with the XV-Z21000 and got some interesting results.

I was able to actually measure 16000:1 on-off CR off the screen in high contrast mode. Color gamut out of the box was quite a bit different than Tom's pictures, but we were in BC on mode. We used almost no lens shifting and it took a long time to ensure perfect aim with the eye one beamer.

The auto contrast feature does not really modify contrast measurements if you use (which you should) window patterns for the measurements. It's a contrast stretching feature that makes images appear more contrasty than they really are (very common system for plasmas and LCDs). I've never seen it implemented as good as on the 21K. Normally, the shift between contrast stretching modes is visible to sharp eyed observers, but I noticed no such artifacts here.

I did see some color fringing towards the left area of the screen on the unit I tested. It was barely visible.

With convergence patterns, rainbows galore, but on normal images I hardly saw any of it.

In short, a very good projector, I can't remember seeing a better picture on any other consumer projector.

We've been playing around with the XV-Z21000 and got some interesting results.

I was able to actually measure 16000:1 on-off CR off the screen in high contrast mode. Color gamut out of the box was quite a bit different than Tom's pictures, but we were in BC on mode. We used almost no lens shifting and it took a long time to ensure perfect aim with the eye one beamer.

The auto contrast feature does not really modify contrast measurements if you use (which you should) window patterns for the measurements. It's a contrast stretching feature that makes images appear more contrasty than they really are (very common system for plasmas and LCDs). I've never seen it implemented as good as on the 21K. Normally, the shift between contrast stretching modes is visible to sharp eyed observers, but I noticed no such artifacts here.

I did see some color fringing towards the left area of the screen on the unit I tested. It was barely visible.

With convergence patterns, rainbows galore, but on normal images I hardly saw any of it.

In short, a very good projector, I can't remember seeing a better picture on any other consumer projector.

Were the bias controls active on your 21000?

I was able to actually measure 16000:1 on-off CR off the screen in high contrast mode. Color gamut out of the box was quite a bit different than Tom's pictures, but we were in BC on mode. We used almost no lens shifting and it took a long time to ensure perfect aim with the eye one beamer.

In short, a very good projector, I can't remember seeing a better picture on any other consumer projector.

WoW. Any plausible explanation as to why you measured four times the on-off CR as others? Just got a good unit? ;)

I'm not doubting your numbers per se. Just wondering why they're so different from other's measurements and those of a similar projector (Greg Rogers' review of the Marantz).

We've been playing around with the XV-Z21000 and got some interesting results.

I was able to actually measure 16000:1 on-off CR off the screen in high contrast mode. Color gamut out of the box was quite a bit different than Tom's pictures, but we were in BC on mode. We used almost no lens shifting and it took a long time to ensure perfect aim with the eye one beamer.

The auto contrast feature does not really modify contrast measurements if you use (which you should) window patterns for the measurements. It's a contrast stretching feature that makes images appear more contrasty than they really are (very common system for plasmas and LCDs). I've never seen it implemented as good as on the 21K. Normally, the shift between contrast stretching modes is visible to sharp eyed observers, but I noticed no such artifacts here.

I did see some color fringing towards the left area of the screen on the unit I tested. It was barely visible.

With convergence patterns, rainbows galore, but on normal images I hardly saw any of it.

In short, a very good projector, I can't remember seeing a better picture on any other consumer projector.



WoW!!! 16000:1 on-off, no one has come even close to that figure. Could you explain a bit more on how to get the figure? consider it's still a DC3 chip

thanks
Mike

The key word is "off the screen" :) At such low light levels one is likely well outside the device's margin for error. :)

I doubt that the contrast ratio is 16000:1 but it could be close to 12000:1 but not much higher. If it was much higher Sharp would say so.

I've heard some amazing things about the Sharp 20K and it sure sounds like it beats the Ruby in many key areas. So I'm considering it as a replacement for my Ruby.

However the one area I remained concerned about is the Sharp's light output. My Ruby has been incredible in the punch department. I am one that is not bothered by brightness compression and hardly notice it. I'm enjoying 15,000:1 and higher CR and awesome black - all while getting great punch thanks to its DI (which I'm also a big fan of).

The main thing I'm interested in replacing the Ruby is because it is generally soft. I miss that razor sharp image of DLP. Heck even my $2k SXRD 50" A2000 is MUCH sharper than the Ruby.

I'm hearing that the Sharp works best in its Medium output mode (whatever combination of lamp/contrast settings that may be). However I'm concerned that in such a mode the black level will be higher than the Ruby and CR not as great. Also I'm concerned it will look dim compared to the Ruby.

What do you guys thing?

BTW, my Ruby at 500 hours is still very bright on my 106" Firehawk. I've read many reports from Ruby owners saying it looks quite dim after 400+ hours, but to me mine is still very bright.

The main thing I'm interested in replacing the Ruby is because it is generally soft. I miss that razor sharp image of DLP. Heck even my $2k SXRD 50" A2000 is MUCH sharper than the Ruby.


This is interesting. I haven't seen a Ruby or Pearl, but I have seen the A2000. After doing an extensive A/B comparison with a 1080p DLP, I found the A2000 to be plenty sharp indeed. It is discouraging to hear that this doesn't carry over on the Ruby (and therefore the Pearl).

A smaller picture looks sharper.
Always see the projected image with your own eyes, it is your perception that counts.

I am puzzled by the CR seeming to be tied to the lens shift on the 20000. I have set up the projector, and watched the image while I adjusted the lens shift, and noticed no change in brightness or CR to my eye.

BTW, how do you know you are at zero lens shift? My projector was a demo, so it had been adjusted before, so I don't know where the "zero" position is, and there doesn't appear to be a marking. Is it all the way up, or down, exactly in the middle, or some other position?

BTW, how do you know you are at zero lens shift? My projector was a demo, so it had been adjusted before, so I don't know where the "zero" position is, and there doesn't appear to be a marking. Is it all the way up, or down, exactly in the middle, or some other position?
"By default, the lens aligns with the bottom of the screen for a shelf mount and at the top of the screen for a ceiling mount."

A smaller picture looks sharper.
Always see the projected image with your own eyes, it is your perception that counts.

Yep, a smaller pic does look sharper. But this was a 60" SXRD, so it wasn't "puny" either. I plan on seeing a Pearl or Ruby next week.

I just discovered something really odd and useful about the Z20000. Recall that the RGB Bias controls seemed not to function. Today, I experimented with the Z20000's Custom Gamma settings to see if I could get it to work, and I found that these controls appear to work after all. They are just mis-labeled. The Gamma menu has 3 sections:

All Colors
White Level
Black Level

It is the Black Level RGB adjustments that seem not to function and which I assumed was the Bias control. However, I found that I could get a perfect gray scale by using the RGB All Colors adjustment instead. In conjunction with the RGB White Level controls (which do seem to function like conventional RGB Gains) you can fully adjust the gray scale.

Weird, uh?

I don't know if this is a mistake in labeling or Sharp intended to label it in this non-standard way. In any case, it works after all.

My guess is the 16000:1 is distorted. When measured off the screen, it is possible to get decent 100IRE readings as there is plenty of brightness. However, at 0IRE I doubt any probes would be good enough to pick that up with any sort of accuracy. I could be wrong but that is my guess.

I just discovered something really odd and useful about the Z20000. Recall that the RGB Bias controls seemed not to function. Today, I experimented with the Z20000's Custom Gamma settings to see if I could get it to work, and I found that these controls appear to work after all. They are just mis-labeled. The Gamma menu has 3 sections:

All Colors
White Level
Black Level

It is the Black Level RGB adjustments that seem not to function and which I assumed was the Bias control. However, I found that I could get a perfect gray scale by using the RGB All Colors adjustment instead. In conjunction with the RGB White Level controls (which do seem to function like conventional RGB Gains) you can fully adjust the gray scale.

Weird, uh?

I don't know if this is a mistake in labeling or Sharp intended to label it in this non-standard way. In any case, it works after all.

That is what I found as well, and the controls I used to calibrate my projector. What I am wondering, is what is the purpose of the CMS, since I found little change in using it, and my Colorimeter?

My guess is the 16000:1 is distorted. When measured off the screen, it is possible to get decent 100IRE readings as there is plenty of brightness. However, at 0IRE I doubt any probes would be good enough to pick that up with any sort of accuracy. I could be wrong but that is my guess.

Jason,

Weren't you (and/or someone else) going to do a comparison between the Sharp and the Marantz? Did I miss it?

What I am wondering, is what is the purpose of the CMS, since I found little change in using it, and my Colorimeter?
What are you using to measure this? The CMS makes enormous changes to the default color profile that is easily visible to the naked eye, much less to instrumentation. Take a look at this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8752134&&#post8752134).

I am using the Progressive Labs CA-6X. I may have been doing something wrong, as I was in a hurry, so I will re-visit it again. What is the point in messing with the CMS if the Greyscale is properly set?

I am using the Progressive Labs CA-6X. I may have been doing something wrong, as I was in a hurry, so I will re-visit it again. What is the point in messing with the CMS if the Greyscale is properly set?The Grayscale adjustments have nothing to do with the CMS, which adjusts the primary and secondary color points.

I think I have got it. Adjust the primaries first, and then the greyscale.

For some time I have been a big fan of external processors/scalers. I found that the Realta-based VantageHD unit provided significant improvements to image quality for both my 720p Optoma H79 and the 1080p SIM2 HT-3000, especially for 1080i sources. For this reason, when I initially setup and evaluated the Z20000 I automatically connected it to the VantageHD outputting 1080p with the Sharp set to pixel-for-pixel.

I had some problems with the Vantage, so yesterday I took it out of the signal path. Just for grins I connected the HD DVD player, cable box, and DVD player to the Sharp directly to see what I would get.

I was surprised to put it mildly. The HD performance was at least as good and the SD performance was noticeably better (the weakest aspect of the Vantage is its 480i performance). The Z20000 includes really good internal processing. I was especially surprised when I switched my Panasonic S97 DVD player from 480p to 480i output. This player's progressive component output has always my gold standard for DVD performance. I was shocked to see that the Sharp's processing resulted in a significantly better image than I was able to get with the S97's deinterlacing doing the work.

Today I used the HQV processing test disc to more formally evaluate the Z20000 image processing capabilities. The results were interesting. On every test, except two, the results were as good as or in some cases superior to the results I obtained with the HQV processing in the VantageHD. I thought that the Vantage did a somewhat better job with the noise reduction test and it performed significantly better with the film detail test (the racetrack). When using the Sharp's processing, it never fully locked on to the racetrack scene and showed an obvious moire pattern. However, the Sharp did a better job with the first and second jaggies test and a slightly better job with the cadences test, passing all of the unusual cadences. With the remaining tests, it performed about the same.

Subjectively, though, it was no contest. The Z20000 handled 480i signals MUCH better than the VantageHD, providing images with greater depth, saturation, and realism. With 1080i sources it was a much closer call. I thought that they looked about the same, which, considering that this is the Vantage's strongest area, is a great compliment to the effectiveness of the Z20000's internal processing.

I was very enthusiastic about the Z20000 when I first evaluated it with a 1080p input, primarily because of its resolution, contrast, gamma, and exemplary color performance. Since then I have resolved the problem I initially saw with its gray scale controls and discovered that it offers truly great, though not perfect, 480i and 1080i video processing.

This is turning out to be one great unit. I am looking forward to hearing some feedback from others as more of these units filter their way into owner's hands. This may be a while, as I understand that they are currently back-ordered, so Sharp is obviously having a hard time keeping up with demand.

Now all they need is to get the 1080p24 fixed.

Tom - thanks for all the great information and keep us posted. I am very interested in this unit... This also confirms what I heard from another great source that told me the Sharp 20K processing is excellent.

My only hesitation in selling my Ruby for the 20K is that I'm wondering if it will be bright enough in high contrast mode on my 106" Firehawk. And if not, whether I'll be satisfied with the black level and CR running in medium mode - compare to the great punch I get now with Mr. Ruby....

Now all they need is to get the 1080p24 fixed.

What is the problem with the Z20000's 1080p24?!

We've been playing around with the XV-Z21000 and got some interesting results.



The answer is probably simple, but is there a difference between the XV-Z21000 and the XV-Z20000???

The answer is probably simple, but is there a difference between the XV-Z21000 and the XV-Z20000??? They are the same unit. Sharp gives different model numbers for different markets. I think that that 20000 is for the N American market and the 21000 is for everyone else. I know that the Asian market has the 21000.

Tom,

about the "Unveil" feature: what exactly does it do? The manual says Edge Enhancement is applied - so can you conform that "Unveil" is some sort of "depth of field adaptive" sharpening filter -> therefor further sharpening the focused foreground while leaving the blurry (-> field of depth) background untouched - resulting in a more "3d-like" image? Does it show any of the usual side effects like halos/ringing?

And just to confirm what you said about the lens shift having an influence on contrast/brightness - if you align the projector lens on the same height as the bottom of your screen (table mount)/top of your screen (ceiling mount) there is no lenshift in place and therefor you get max. brightness/contrast with this setup? The other way round - if you have the lens at the same height as the middle of the screen you have max. lensshift and therefor min. contrast/brightness!?!

Thank you very much indeed! :)

And just to confirm what you said about the lens shift having an influence on contrast/brightness - if you align the projector lens on the same height as the bottom of your screen (table mount)/top of your screen (ceiling mount) there is no lenshift in place and therefor you get max. brightness/contrast with this setup? The other way round - if you have the lens at the same height as the middle of the screen you have max. lensshift and therefor min. contrast/brightness!?!Yes. That's it.

I couldn't tell that the Unveil feature did much of anything. It certainly doesn't make the image better.

Tom,

about the "Unveil" feature: what exactly does it do? The manual says Edge Enhancement is applied - so can you conform that "Unveil" is some sort of "depth of field adaptive" sharpening filter -> therefor further sharpening the focused foreground while leaving the blurry (-> field of depth) background untouched - resulting in a more "3d-like" image? Does it show any of the usual side effects like halos/ringing?




The "Unveil" feature definately adds edginess to the image. When I first got the projector I turned it on, since I am a sharpness freak, and started watching a movie. Although it created a sense of sharpness, it really screwed up the image, especially when there was motion, it turned into a mess, with all sorts of jitteryness. I would definately recomend leaving it off. This projector is plenty sharp without it. :)

The "Unveil" feature definately adds edginess to the image. When I first got the projector I turned it on, since I am a sharpness freak, and started watching a movie. Although it created a sense of sharpness, it really screwed up the image, especially when there was motion, it turned into a mess, with all sorts of jitteryness. I would definately recomend leaving it off. This projector is plenty sharp without it. :)

Thank you very much for your kind reply, Phil. Actually we have one thing in common - I am a sharpness freak myself. That's the reason why I always go 1-chip DLP. I know it is not very popular around "true videophiles" but I usually go as far as using well implemented sharpness/detail extraction filters (no excessiv haloing/ringing) to further increase upon DLP crispness with very good, clean sources. Are there any of those filter available with the Z20000 internal processing? How well is the standard "sharpness" control working? After seeing the IMHO well implemented "Edge Enhancement" feature of the Optoma HD81 I'm curious if the Sharp would give me an equally crisp impression compared to HD81 plus processing/filter enabled?

Thank you!

TheLion, I have to tell you, that prior to getting the Sharp, I was using the Belkin RazorVision (http://www.pureav.com/razorvision/) processor, with my prior projectors. The detail enhancement chip in it comes from Digivision, and I had their HT-70e before that. Anyway, when I tried sending 1080p through it, it wouldn't do it, so I had to remove it, and this is the first time I have been totally satisfied with the sharpness without added processing.

The built in sharpness control in the projector is very good, and can be boosted up a bit on very clean sources, but I have to tell you, that this projector really lives up to its name, and is the sharpest projector I have ever seen.

By the way, if you can feed it true 1080p, it takes it to an even higher level of detail.

For you Z20000 owners out there, can you elaborate on what iris and lamp setting you are using most often, and the black level and perceived contrast at that level - especially as it compares to the Ruby at that setting, if you have experience with that pj?

I am very interested in this pj. However I really love a bright and punchy picture. With the Ruby I am able to achieve great blacks and CR while still having a super bright image.

My concern with going to the Sharp is that it will be too dim for my tastes on my 106" diag Firehawk.

I have heard others say that in its lowest setting the Sharp 20K is too dim for tastes and most seem to be running in a "medium" mode. That mode sounds fine - but I'm left wondering then, at that lamp and iris setting, whether the black level and contrast will not be as good as what I have with the Ruby. In case you are wondering my main motivation for selling the Ruby was to get much better sharpness and ANSI CR that the 20K clearly delivers. Thanks!

" if you have the lens at the same height as the middle of the screen you have max. lensshift and therefor min. contrast/brightness!?!

Yes. That's it."

Has that been verified by measurement and/or observation?

Because for optical systems in general (DLP might be an exception because of the DMD being off-axis), zero lens shift would correspond to the center of the image passing through the centers of the lenses.

Received my 20k from jason yesterday and installed last night. I have a lens shift question. The center of the lens is 3.5" above the top of the screen. The lens is 13.5' from the screen. With the projector level, the bottom of the projected image is about 4" above the bottom of the screen. The lens shift wheel would only move the image UP from that position. i thought the lens shift would have allowed me to move it the other way. Does anyone know what it is supposed to do? Is this the only flexibility i have? As a temporary measure i just tilted the PJ to align it with the screen. I guess i can just leave it there if necessary since whatever keystoning that created was not noticable in pq.

This unit definitely has finer resolution, slightly better black level and contrast ratio than the dead Samsung 710 it replaced, but i have to say that the difference is remarkably small (although i don't have the benefit of a side by side comparison, just an increasingly faulty memory :) ). This makes me think the Sammy, if more reliable, would be one of the best values on the market for those who prefer the sharpness of single chip DLP. At more than double the cost of the 710, the 20k is by no means double the pq.

I did not have time to play with picture adjustment too long, but settled on medium iris and high lamp mode as my favorite combination on my 92"diagonal FireHawk. low lamp mode was certainly watchable, but i definitely prefer the pop of high lamp mode. I chose the 20k over the HD81 primarily because of the reports of highly accurate colors (which i really liked about the Samsung) and Sharp's history of generally better reliability than Optoma's (which was an issue with the Samsung i'm not eager to repeat).

With respect to noise, the 20k is very quiet at low lamp level - much lower than the Samsung despite the 28db claimed by Samsung vs 31 claimed by Sharp. Noise level is certainly more noticeable at high lamp, but at least it's a whooshing noise that's much less annoying than the grating, high pitched color wheel whine of the 710. I'm putting it in a hushbox anyway since i dislike the distraction of PJ noise during quiet passages of a movie.

Oops, forgot to say thanks to Tom Huffman for starting and contributing heavily to this thread, and to all the other first-adopter guinea pigs who added their experiences. It was a major factor in my purchasing decision. I find it almost impossible to find working models of new PJs at retailers or home theater shops (unless you want a high end Runco) that are set up in a useful evaluation atmosphere. This is an invaluable resource.

I have a lens shift question. The center of the lens is 3.5" above the top of the screen. The lens is 13.5' from the screen. With the projector level, the bottom of the projected image is about 4" above the bottom of the screen. The lens shift wheel would only move the image UP from that position. i thought the lens shift would have allowed me to move it the other way. Does anyone know what it is supposed to do? Is this the only flexibility i have? As a temporary measure i just tilted the PJ to align it with the screen. I guess i can just leave it there if necessary since whatever keystoning that created was not noticable in pq.I assume that you have a ceiling mount? Is the PJ installed right-side up or upside down?

The center of the lens needs to be within the top of the screen to the middle of the screen. This particular PJ does not offset above the screen for ceiling mount applications. So you should lower your PJ 3.5".

Hope this helps.

Bob

The center of the lens needs to be within the top of the screen to the middle of the screen. This particular PJ does not offset above the screen for ceiling mount applications. So you should lower your PJ 3.5".

Hope this helps.

Bob

Isn't Sharp one of the last companies to not offer an offset that would allow the pj lens to be outside the screen area? This would look pretty silly in my HT with 10 foot ceilings since the extension pole would be so long! :eek:

Thanks for the responses guys. i finally had a chance to look at the manual. It is as Bob L states - no offset beyond the top or bottom of the screen. I have a low basement ceiling and i am building a hushbox around the PJ, which is ceiling mounted between the first and second row of seats. I can't lower it further without creating a head banging obstacle due to the second row platform, so it looks like i will just live with a little bit of tilt induced keystone.

More disturbing is that with 6 hours on the PJ, it shut down 3 times last night after 10-15 minutes of operation. i gave it about 10-15 minutes cooldown time between restarts. it was in medium iris, high lamp and high fan mode with a perfect picture right up to the point the screen went black. The lamp and power indicator lights switched from solid blue to solid red. Manual pg 46 says Problem -"burnt out lamp or lamp circuit failure" Possible Solution "replace the lamp; take the projector to your nearest sharp authorized service center or dealer for repair". Ironic that i sent the Samsung 710 back for a similar problem.

More disturbing is that with 6 hours on the PJ, it shut down 3 times last night after 10-15 minutes of operation. i gave it about 10-15 minutes cooldown time between restarts. it was in medium iris, high lamp and high fan mode with a perfect picture right up to the point the screen went black. The lamp and power indicator lights switched from solid blue to solid red. Manual pg 46 says Problem -"burnt out lamp or lamp circuit failure" Possible Solution "replace the lamp; take the projector to your nearest sharp authorized service center or dealer for repair". Ironic that i sent the Samsung 710 back for a similar problem.

Hi Jon V.

A couple thoughts.

1) The Sharps have an Auto-Off feature which will turn the pj off after 15 mins. assuming there is no signal applied to the selected input. Try turning this feature off as perhaps its malfuntioning.

2) A thermal sensor in the Sharps will shut down the pj to avoid overheating. This action is preceded by a flashing warning on the lower left corner of the screen. You mentioned that you are building a hush box. Is it possible that you're at a stage where air flow might be restricted causing overheating?

Hope this helps.

I saw the Sharp at the Expo yesterday and I like the picture. I thought that the blacks were really good. It was set up in the high contrast low brightnessmode

Thanks mjmbond.
The hushbox is not built yet. PJ is mounted 4" from ceiling with plenty of free airspace around intakes.
Jason suggested removing and reseating of lamp, thinking there could have been some loosening in shipping. If that doesn't work i'll try your first suggestion.

Jon I'll be around this weekend so let me know what you find.

Jason, Removing and re-installing the lamp per your suggestion seems to have solved the problem. i have put another 7 hours on the pj with no unwanted shutdowns.
Thanks

I wanted to update and revise some of my earlier reports about the Sharp's processing.

1. The Z20000 includes MPEG and Dynamic noise reduction options in the Advanced menu. I was concerned that using these would involve a noticeable tradeoff in detail. In fact, it does not. It does a nice job of cleaning up the image--though not as good a job as the HQV processing in the Vantage HD--and with seemingly little side-effects that I could see.

2. I had earlier reported that the Z20000's internal processing was better than the DCDi processing of the Panasonic S97 for SD material and significantly better than the Vantage's SD processing. Well, after spending some more time with this I see that it's a lot more complicated than that. The video and odd cadence processing of the Z20000 is best, but the film processing of the S97 is superior, at least on test patterns. With real-world programming they are very close. I had earlier given the advantage to the Z20000 here, but I now think that I wasn't being careful enough. For DVD film anyway I think I slightly prefer the DCDi, but again only slightly. I'll withhold judgment about HD performance until the HQV benchmark disc becomes available for HD DVD around the first of the year.

3. Most importantly, I used the Accupel HDG-3000 to feed a 1080i multiburst pattern into the Z20000 to check the video frequency response for both HDMI and component. The 37.1 MHz pattern looked very clean and sharply defined using HDMI. With component the response was severely rolled off. The bottom line is that to avoid losing detail you should not use the component input for 1080i sources. It's fine for DVD, though.

Thanks Tom for the updates.

After consulting with other AVS members, I finally got around to adjusting the Value parameter contained in the CMS for the Sharp 20K. So others won't make the same bone-headed mistake I did, let me explain how this works. First, here's the targets for HD colorimetry:

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/xy.gif

The CIE chart represents only the information represented by the xy coordinates, which are adjusted by changing Saturation and Hue on the Sharp CMS . The Y coordinate is not represented on the CIE chart, but represents the brightness or intensity of the color and and is adjusted by changing Value on the Sharp CMS.

It's important to remember that the xy coordinates are absolute, whereas the Y coordinate is relative to the measurement of white. This is because the intensity of white and the all color varies with luminance. Move your probe closer to the lens and Value will increase, but the xy coordinates should stay the same.

Thus, the Value of red will be 0.213 only if the measured Value of white is 1. But, for example, if the Value of white measures 3, then you should adjust he Value of red until it reads 0.639 (3 x 0.213). Since the Value measurements are relative to white, it is essential that you measure the Value of white prior to making adjustments to the Value of the primaries and secondaries and use the same meter and measuring technique as when you measure white.

I obtained some strange results. The secondaries were very close to correct, requiring very little adjustment. I lowered their Values 2-4 ticks on the CMS. The primaries, however, were considerably off. I had to raise their Values by 10-15 ticks. Don't know why this would occur. I was surprised by this and the fact that after adjusting the Values of the primaries so much the subjective impact on the image was perceptible, but not dramatic. The colors had a little more pop and impact and the image provided an even more 3-D effect than before. However, the difference was not nearly as dramatic as what I obtained after adjusting Hue and Saturation. See earlier before/after CMS screenshots (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8752134&&#post8752134).

After consulting with other AVS members, I finally got around to adjusting the Value parameter contained in the CMS for the Sharp 20K. So others won't make the same bone-headed mistake I did, let me explain how this works. First, here's the targets for HD colorimetry:

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/xy.gif

The CIE chart represents only the information represented by the xy coordinates, which are adjusted by changing Saturation and Hue on the Sharp CMS . The Y coordinate is not represented on the CIE chart, but represents the brightness or intensity of the color and and is adjusted by changing Value on the Sharp CMS.

It's important to remember that the xy coordinates are absolute, whereas the Y coordinate is relative to the measurement of white. This is because the intensity of white and the all color varies with luminance. Move your probe closer to the lens and Value will increase, but the xy coordinates should stay the same.

Thus, the Value of red will be 0.213 only if the measured Value of white is 1. But, for example, if the Value of white measures 3, then you should adjust he Value of red until it reads 0.639 (3 x 0.213). Since the Value measurements are relative to white, it is essential that you measure the Value of white prior to making adjustments to the Value of the primaries and secondaries and use the same meter and measuring technique as when you measure white.

I obtained some strange results. The secondaries were very close to correct, requiring very little adjustment. I lowered their Values 2-4 ticks on the CMS. The primaries, however, were considerably off. I had to raise their Values by 10-15 ticks. Don't know why this would occur. I was surprised by this and the fact that after adjusting the Values of the primaries so much the subjective impact on the image was perceptible, but not dramatic. The colors had a little more pop and impact and the image provided an even more 3-D effect than before. However, the difference was not nearly as dramatic as what I obtained after adjusting Hue and Saturation. See earlier before/after CMS screenshots (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8752134&&#post8752134).

Tom - approximately how much brighter percentage-wise did the colors get as a result of moving the 10-15 clicks?

Also just wanted to make sure that you double checked your xy after adjusting Y because these are interchangeable and changing Y will often times shift xy, particularly in Red.

It was fairly significant, maybe 20%. I didn't experience much interactivity. The saturation seemed affected a little. For example, after raising red Value 20% I had to lower the saturation 1 tick.

BTW, I wonder if you even need a colorimeter for this parameter? Couldn't you just measure the light output of a post-calibration white, use that value as a baseline, and then measure the light output of each of the colors?

It was fairly significant, maybe 20%. I didn't experience much interactivity. The saturation seemed affected a little. For example, after raising red Value 20% I had to lower the saturation 1 tick.


Interesting it needed that much adjustment. Did you happen measure the Y values for all colors after grayscale tracking but before any CMS adjustments were made? It would be interesting to hear if those were off to, or only off after CMS adjustment.


BTW, I wonder if you even need a colorimeter for this parameter? Couldn't you just measure the light output of a post-calibration white, use that value as a baseline, and then measure the light output of each of the colors?

My hunch is that you could probably adjust the Lightness (Y) of the colors with your AEMC 813 just the same. In fact I'm thinking it may actually even be a tad more accurate that way since as I understand it that meter is better at reading light levels than colorimeters.

As a quick experiment you could measure with your AEMC the values you have now and see if it agrees with the values you get for Y from the colorimeter. Of course your units will likely be different (CF will give you cd/m2, AEMC will give you fc/lux) but you can convert the measurements. If you try this please post back what you find.

It was fairly significant, maybe 20%. I didn't experience much interactivity. The saturation seemed affected a little. For example, after raising red Value 20% I had to lower the saturation 1 tick.

BTW, I wonder if you even need a colorimeter for this parameter? Couldn't you just measure the light output of a post-calibration white, use that value as a baseline, and then measure the light output of each of the colors?

Thanks for posting on this, Tom.

I'm looking at getting a Da-Lite High Power screen to go with the Sharp 20k. The sample they sent me looks pretty spectacular, at least as much as you can tell from a 6"x6" square. I used a very high tech way of positioning the sample at different points on the screen - a bag clip, twine and a heavy stapler on top of the Firehawk. Gain is about 2.8 optimal (although the sweet spot is small).

How much does a bulb cost for the 20K? I've also looked at the Ruby and the $1000 bulb cost has really put me off.

How much does a bulb cost for the 20K? I've also looked at the Ruby and the $1000 bulb cost has really put me off.

$599. Not Ruby shock, but still a harsh slap.

BTW, I have backed off my changes to the Value parameter. I initially thought it gave the image more punch and vividness. After I lived with it for a few days it started to seem cartoonish and unnatural, so I decided to remeasure. Although the substantial increases to the Value of the primaries had little effect on their saturation, I discovered that it had a profound effect on the color control in the main menu. So I put all Values back to 0.

Why I can't seem to adjust this parameter correctly is a mystery to me, but the image looks (and measures) the best when they are all set to neutral.

BTW, I have backed off my changes to the Value parameter. I initially thought it gave the image more punch and vividness. After I lived with it for a few days it started to seem cartoonish and unnatural, so I decided to remeasure. Although the substantial increases to the Value of the primaries had little effect on their saturation, I discovered that it had a profound effect on the color control in the main menu. So I put all Values back to 0.

Why I can't seem to adjust this parameter correctly is a mystery to me, but the image looks (and measures) the best when they are all set to neutral.

I used some of your comments some posts back to adjust the Value parameters, also, and I had pretty much the same reaction. At first, everything had more pop and vibrancy, but it wasn't as natural or pleasing after a while. I put those values back to their default positions. Most things on my Sharp 20k are at default. The color temp I set to 6500 and the iris I set to High Contrast, with Brite lamp mode. The DVI input, I found, works well with RGB Video levels, instead of RGB PC levels. When I first tried switching from PC to Video level, I got a strange scaling shift, where the image overscanned dramatically and other image parameters seemed to be thrown way off. After I shifted to Dot to Dot mode, changing to RGB Video level worked as I had expected it would originally.

I'm awaiting a new Da-Lite High Power screen, which should arrive tomorrow. I found after prolonged viewing that the medium iris, eco lamp mode was robbing the image of some pop. The Brite lamp/High Contrast iris mode combo was more pleasing. I plan to shift back to eco lamp mode once the High Power arrives. There should be plenty of brightness to spare then (it's a 2.8 screen gain, and I should be able to get close to that), and I'll be able to keep the iris closed all the way down.

Joe - How's the noise level on Bright vs Eco?

I had a great demo of the Sharp, but could hot determine the noise level with the projector sealed in the back.

If you can compare the to Pearl on low/high that would be familar to me.
I have High Power too, which works best with a mid shelf mount, but noise becomes an issue. The Pearl was fine on low, high was pushing the comfort zone.

A friend of mine has the 20K and he said that the unit is much louder in the high lamp mode, disruptively so for his tastes. He did say that the lamp in the normal mode is not very quiet but is acceptable. This of course is very subjective as everyone has different tolerances for pj noise level, and it also depends on how close you sit to the pj.

Joe - How's the noise level on Bright vs Eco?

I had a great demo of the Sharp, but could hot determine the noise level with the projector sealed in the back.

If you can compare the to Pearl on low/high that would be familar to me.
I have High Power too, which works best with a mid shelf mount, but noise becomes an issue. The Pearl was fine on low, high was pushing the comfort zone.

It's definitely louder in Brite mode, but it doesn't bother me where it is now - high shelf mount, at about 7', about 2' behind me and 3' above my head. When I put it down lower for the new screen, it'll go back into low lamp mode, so it shouldn't be a problem. I have never seen/heard the Pearl, so I can't compare. I can say, though, that the noise has never bothered me, in either lamp mode where it is now.

A friend of mine has the 20K and he said that the unit is much louder in the high lamp mode, disruptively so for his tastes. He did say that the lamp in the normal mode is not very quiet but is acceptable.That's about right. I find the fan in High mode annoying. In Normal mode it's there but I don't really notice it unless I try.

Tom - your comments about the internal processor seems to differ from Greg's WSR review.
Greg's review left me with the impression that the internal processor was less than ideal.

"Scaling quality was unexceptional and could be improved..."

Under HDTV Broadcasting... "Images very slightly softer..."


Any comments?

Yes, I know. I stand by what I said. A few points:

1. One of his criticisms dealt with the artifact he noticed on 1080p inputs. I'm using 1080i inputs, so I didn't see this.

2. Much of his criticism of the Z20000's processing (especially with HD material) seemed to be in comparison to the VXP processing he saw in the $20,000 Marantz 1080p projector, which he thought was a little better. I haven't seen the Marantz, so I can't comment.

3. The Z20000 is the first PJ I've seen that didn't obviously benefit from a Realta-based processor (Vantage-HD) that I have been using for several months. That's fairly high praise. I did quite a bit of A/B comparisons and I've yet to find a single case where I clearly preferred the image I obtained with the Vantage-HD in the loop.

4. I ran the Z20000 through the series of tests provided by the Silicon Optics Benchmark DVD. It passed every test, except one: the race track Film Detail test. To give some much-needed perspective, this is MUCH better performance than what you get with the Lumagen HDQ external processor, which Greg reviewed positively in WSR just a few months ago.

5. Some of these judgments are somewhat subjective. For example, I looked at the bobbing frozen branch scene he mentioned in the Montage of Images and I didn't see the jaggies he referred to. That doesn't mean they aren't there. I just didn't see them.

So, yes, all in all, he and I see this differently. I also think that the Sharp's implementation of gray scale controls is unintuitive and very difficult to use, and he barely mentioned this. People see different things. I guess that's human.

Yes, I know. I stand by what I said. A few points:

1. One of his criticisms dealt with the artifact he noticed on 1080p inputs. I'm using 1080i inputs, so I didn't see this.

2. Much of his criticism of the Z20000's processing (especially with HD material) seemed to be in comparison to the VXP processing he saw in the $20,000 Marantz 1080p projector, which he thought was a little better. I haven't seen the Marantz, so I can't comment.

3. The Z20000 is the first PJ I've seen that didn't obviously benefit from a Realta-based processor (Vantage-HD) that I have been using for several months. That's fairly high praise. I did quite a bit of A/B comparisons and I've yet to find a single case where I clearly preferred the image I obtained with the Vantage-HD in the loop.

4. I ran the Z20000 through the series of tests provided by the Silicon Optics Benchmark DVD. It passed every test, except one: the race track Film Detail test. To give some much-needed perspective, this is MUCH better performance than what you get with the Lumagen HDQ external processor, which Greg reviewed positively in WSR just a few months ago.

5. Some of these judgments are somewhat subjective. For example, I looked at the bobbing frozen branch scene he mentioned in the Montage of Images and I didn't see the jaggies he referred to. That doesn't mean they aren't there. I just didn't see them.

So, yes, all in all, he and I see this differently. I also think that the Sharp's implementation of gray scale controls is unintuitive and very difficult to use, and he barely mentioned this. People see different things. I guess that's human.

I think Greg has a (deserved) rock star status here on AVS, but the ultimate judge of these issues has to be our own eyes. I have a Lumagen Vision HDP and I'm really hard pressed to tell the difference between material I watch via 1080i or 1080p from it to the Sharp. I don't have Tom's level of expertise when it comes to measuring these things formally, and I haven't run the battery of tests he has, but I'm very, very happy with the de-interlacing job the Sharp does with both film and video 1080i material. I hope, as someone reports in another thread, that the Sharp will be upgraded to accept and display 24p sometime in March. The judder issue is of course completely separate, but it's one I'd like to see the Sharp be able to handle.

After being with the Sharp for the last few weeks, and seeing more and more shows that I know well from my previous H79 projector, I'm consistently impressed with how much better the image looks on the Sharp. It's the contrast that I'm even more impressed with than the bump in resolution. I paired the Sharp with a Da-Lite High Power screen, so I'm able to take advantage of the High Contrast iris mode. It's amazing how much I was missing before. (And that's not a brightness issue, either. I was running the H79 in High Brightness mode and it has a brighter lamp.)

I have some good news to report. It turns out that the lens shift affects brightness and contrast more than I thought. When I took my initial measurements it was with the Z20000 on a top shelf. I put it there only because that's where the H79 had been and I was lazy. Tonight I moved the projector down 15" to a lower shelf. This required much less lens shift. I then took my lumens and contrast measurements again, and this time I included measurements from the economy mode as well. I have updated the table in the original review. Both lumens output and CR improved significantly. With zero lens shift they would improve even more. Too bad that this convenience feature has such a performance penalty.


I just purchased the new Sharp 1080p projector, and I thought I’d post some preliminary numbers and impressions.

Throw and lens shift

The Z20000 is a relatively long throw projector 1.85-2.5/1 screen width. It has a very flexible vertical lens shift of 1 screen height, which means that it is equally well-suited for a ceiling or a shelf installation. By default, the lens aligns with the bottom of the screen for a shelf mount and at the top of the screen for a ceiling mount. Use lens shift to adjust from there. Lens shift works like a charm, but it does reduce light output and contrast, so I’d use as little of it as is practical for your installation.

Tom,

I have done alot of thinking about your lens shift assessment. Sadly I don't have a lightmeter at hand anymore to verify this myself.

Basically you are saying that the "default lensshift position" of the Sharp Z20k is aligned with the top of the screen for ceiling mount - that's how I use it right now (mainly following your suggestion, I never measured it myself (stupid me)). I can confirm that this is the setting my factory sealed Z20k came in - but somehow I doubt that this is the "zero lens shift" position and therefor provides the best optical performance. If you look at the projector lens you can see that this lensshift setting shifts the image as much downwards (relative to the optical path/lens) as possible. IMHO, without knowing the specifics of the optical path, I see this as one of two extreme lensshift settings (it uses the outer parts of the lens). In general the 20k has exactly one full picture height lensshift range.

Isn't it quite logical that aligning the Z20k lens with exactly "half-picture-height" is in fact ZERO lensshift as this exactly centers the picture relative to the lens/optical path? This is true as long as Sharp didn't design and optimize the optical path for one of the "extreme" lensshift settings.

Therefor this "center setting" should provide optimal optical performance, light output and contrast. As mentioned I sadly cannot confirm this by making any objective measurements myself atm. If this turns out to be true (verified by some measurements) I would be happy to lower my ceiling mounted Z20k in order to take advantage of increased performance.

What do you think about it, Tom?

The projector central review gives some insight. How much lens shift are the guys getting low reading using? According to Projector Central, "One final note on lumen output—the projector loses about 12% of its light output when the lens shift is set to the extreme ends of the lens shift range as compared to having the lens in the neutral position. That brought the lowest reading we could get from the RS1 down to 340 lumens (low lamp power, max telephoto, max lens shift). So all in all, there is absolutely nothing to worry about as far as the 700 ANSI lumen rating on the spec sheet is concerned."

A post about the JVC RS-1 that had me thinking...

I wanted to post some updated lumens numbers and correct a mistake I made in my original review regarding lens shift.

First, after 422 hours of use, here is my updated lumens chart

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/lumens421.gif

As you can see I have lost 20% of the lamp's brightness in the High Brightness iris mode and 35% in all other modes. I can't explain the discrepancy. In my case, the result of this loss of light output has forced me to start using the Bright lamp mode. The Economy lamp mode/Medium Iris mode now returns less than 10 FtL on my 100" 1.3 gain StudioTek screen, but in the Bright lamp mode it is still over 12 FtL.

I made a mistake when discussing the effect of lens shift in my original review. I made 2 assumptions, both of which turned out to be incorrect. I assumed that the 20K would ship with the lens shift at its neutral position as the default AND I assumed that zero lens shift would yield the highest light output.

The result of the first incorrect assumption was that, in my original install with the lens about vertically aligned with the center of the screen, I had to use lens shift to move the image down significantly to fill the screen. This led me to believe that zero lens shift was the lens aligned with the bottom of the screen (shelf mount) or top of the screen (ceiling mount). In fact, zero lens shift is the lens aligned with the center of the screen, exactly the way I had it originally. I was confused about this because the 20K does NOT ship with its lens in the neutral state. Its default is with lens shift invoked for either an inverted ceiling mount (lens aligned with the top of the screen) or a right-side-up shelf mount (lens aligned with the bottom of the screen). Sharp must just assume that these will be the most common installs.

Now, when I moved my shelf mount install down about 15" and noticed measurably higher light output, I attributed this to the fact that I had gotten the PJ closer to the zero lens shift position. I think I even wrote that more improvement was possible if I could only move the PJ lower. As it turns out, this was correct, but for the wrong reason. This leads us to my second mistake.

The best light output for the 20K is NOT zero lens shift. Sharp apparently engineered the optics so that the best light output is just where I originally said it would be: an inverted ceiling mount (lens aligned with the top of the screen) or a right-side-up shelf mount (lens aligned with the bottom of the screen). It's just that the lens shift required to accommodate these installs, though it is the default shift and offers the best performance, it is NOT the zero lens shift position. Zero lens shift (my original install) actually gets you LESS light output. Weird, uh?

I hope that this clears up any confusion my original post may have caused.

Any update on how to calibrate the XV-Z20000? Mine seem to have way to much blue in the low IRE but I can't do a proper calibration using the Sharp controls. Anyone have access to the Sharp service menu or info about a firmware update that would correct this problem?

Greg Rogers didn't seem to have any problems calibrating his Sharp. Is the problem present on only a few Sharp and not others? Can we find out what firmware version we have..so we can compare?

The service menu doesn't help, largely because when entering the unit defaults to the high brightness, high lamp mode, which doesn't translate in any obvious way to the mode in which you are likely to use it.

I was able to get a very flat grayscale by using the RGB adjustments under All Colors to adjust the low end and then the RGB controls under White Detail to adjust the high end of the brightness scale. That's really the only way to do it.

The service menu doesn't help, largely because when entering the unit defaults to the high brightness, high lamp mode, which doesn't translate in any obvious way to the mode in which you are likely to use it.

I was able to get a very flat grayscale by using the RGB adjustments under All Colors to adjust the low end and then the RGB controls under White Detail to adjust the high end of the brightness scale. That's really the only way to do it.

Thanks Tom, I was able to calibrate yesterday using the RGB adjustements under all Colors, The black adjustement actually work for IRE below 20 IRE (basically 10 IRE)

Now can you help me with adjusting the primaries? I try yesterday with red and wasn't able to go closer to magenta but not toward yellow. How is Hue, saturation and Tint supposed to affect the primaries. Sorry for the dumb question.

Bruno

Bruno:

First, set the user Color and Tint control using a blue filter and blue color bar provided on Avia or the equivalent. The CMS adjustments in the Advanced menu should allow you to move Red hue either towards magenta or towards yellow. On my unit I had to move red towards yellow. What equipment do you have to measure the color points with?

I'm using Progressive labs software with the CA6X probe (also know as Opticone).

It's actually quite efficient. You see real time what the control do to the primaries. I will give it another try tomorrow. Maybe I didn't do it correctly.

I have a question. What should I use for primaries measurements. I have access to AVIA (regular DVD version) DVE Essential and Getgray calibration disk.

I've read somewhere that the AVIA magenta is slightly off. Is that the truth? I guess getgray is probably more acurate. Just need to find the disk (move in my new home not that long ago). I'm waiting for my copy of DVE in HDDVD but that won't be until may last time I checked Amazon.

Have been able to calibrated my primaries and secondaries with AVIA. I will probably burn another Getgray disk in the next few days to compare. I found the picture better in a lot of scenes and going back to my previous setting show clearly how oversaturated it was. But I found the skin tone a bit to green. My grayscale is flat from 10 to 100IRE between 6350 kelvins and 6500 kelvins. Maybe one of the secondaries is not right on AVIA and cause some bad coloration on skin tone. Maybe it's my test disk as well (CRANK in Blue Ray). I will need to check more movies before I'm sure what I want.

More question. Should I use the enhanced mode in the Dynamic range section? or enhanced should be use only for computers? Watch movie with a PS3, Toshiba HD A1 and TV with SA8000HD. What about brillant colors? What is it supposed to change? What should be the benefits of it? Any info on that subject would be appreciated.

Thanks! Again and again!

But I found the skin tone a bit to green. My grayscale is flat from 10 to 100IRE between 6350 kelvins and 6500 kelvins.
You can not adjust grayscale by degrees Kelvin. You MUST use dE or equivalent. Degrees Kelvin is worthless.

But I found the skin tone a bit to green. My grayscale is flat from 10 to 100IRE between 6350 kelvins and 6500 kelvins.To pick up on what Greg said, the reason color temperature is not a reliable guide to getting good gray scale tracking is that it ignores green.

Before I did anything, I check more than just one film. Sometimes films have specialized color palette.

You can not adjust grayscale by degrees Kelvin. You MUST use dE or equivalent. Degrees Kelvin is worthless.

What is the equivalent?

I check in the Progressive labs manual and dE is never mention. I see Delta C? Is that equivalent?

When I do my calibration I use a feature with a blue, green and red bar that display a %. You can decide the colors you want to serve as reference. And you need to move the ajustement of the two others colors to get the proper level. Doing that I get that none of the colors is more than 0.5% above the reference. That should Indicate that I'm ok....right?

Bruno

When I do my calibration I use a feature with a blue, green and red bar that display a %. You can decide the colors you want to serve as reference. And you need to move the ajustement of the two others colors to get the proper level. Doing that I get that none of the colors is more than 0.5% above the reference. That should Indicate that I'm ok....right?Yes, that's fine. Delta-E is a mathematical expression of deviation from a color standard, in this case D65. The lower the Delta-E the better.

I check in the Progressive labs manual and dE is never mention. I see Delta C? Is that equivalent?
For your purpose yes. Just adjust for the minimum delta-C over the grayscale range that you can. The problem with using degrees Kelvin is that it is a correlated color temperature, which means your gray color lies on a line that passes through that same color temperature on the black body curve. But your color may be anywhere on that line, i.e. it may be close to D65 (the grayscale target color) or it may be far away from D65 (too green or too magenta). delta-C is a particular measure of the distance from D65, so that is why you want to minimize it over the entire grayscale range.

I tried to recalibrate my primaries with Getgray yesterday. The result were different than the AVIA disk. I now beleive that the colors space may be not well convert by my scaler. I will try today directly from my sony PS3 and my Toshiba HD A1 to see if there is a difference. I thing that Greg was saying that the conversion matrix in the Sharp are almost perfect. If I see no difference, maybe my calibration probe need calibration. Red turn orange when I make it fit the the point on the 709 reference. Any trick to make sure I do the correct thing? My scaler is an Anthem D2. How can I know for sure that the colors space is correct. A expert calibrator would know right away because he have seen many. It's not my case. I never calibrated primaries before.

One more question. If I feed 480p directly to the sharp the colors space from avia and Getgray will be 601? If It goes via the scaler and output 1080p it's now 709 right?
Bruno

ps: I guess I should move that discussion in the calibration forum. I posted there as well. You can answer me there Calibration of primaries for Sharp XV-Z20000 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10109348#post10109348)

OK, I have finally resolved the problem I was having getting the Value parameter right in the CMS.

First, the numbers for the Y of the secondaries I provided in the previous post on this subject (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9348877&&#post9348877) were wrong. It really wasn't my fault. I got the numbers directly from ColorFacts, and they had it wrong. Argghh! The intensity of the secondaries is a sum of the intensity of the primaries, not an average. Thanks to Krasmuzik for pointing this out.

Second, you've got to be careful to compare the light output of the color field with an equal intensity white field. So, a 75% color field should be measured against a 75% white field. In Avia, that's the Gray field, not the white field, which is 100 IRE.

Third, if you use a white window, compare that against a color window. Don't compare a white field with a color window or vice-versa.

Here are the updated Rec. 709 (HD) specs.

http://home.comcast.net/~tlhuffman/cie.gif

So you can use a light meter and a white window and color windows to measure the appropriate Value for RGBCYM, which will be a percentage of the measured light output of white.

You'll probably find, as I did, that this parameter (unlike saturation and hue) requires very little adjustment.

Just joined the 20K club today. I should be getting mine on Saturday. My wife is asking for screenshots to get an idea of what I just spent our tax refund on. Can you guys post some and help a man with the ever important WAF?

Thanks!

My Sharp XV-Z2000 show a strage behavior. Everytime I turn it on it keep it's Iris Open even if it's supposed to be in High contrast mode. I need to click on medium or high brigthness and then go back to high contrast to get it to close like it supposed to. Anyone else have that problem? Anychance that a firmware upgrade fix this? Is this a known problem?

Bruno

Sounds like a defect to me... sorry. :(

Every time I would fire up my projector, it would clamp down the iris to the last position I left it, which in my case was High Contrast mode. It might take a second or two to do it, but it always did it.

Same here, no problems.

Bruno, you've had some bad luck with this thing.

Hi, I know that's a flawed question I'm going to ask about recommended settings, as they depend on the source(s), room specific issues etc. So with this mia culpa to begin with, any recommended 'generic' settings? I have the XV-Z20000 feeding from a Crystalio 2 3800. Which in turn receives video from a Denon DVD-A1XVA, an HTPC, a PS3, an Xbox360 and a local cable network. I'm using the HDMI input on the Sharp, and the C2 switches the different sources. I tried setting things up to my best 'bare hands' or better yet 'bare eyes' ability, but I'm looking for something better, more natural skin tone for example. I would gladly pay for an ISF calibration (my second display also feeding from the C2 is a Pioneer FHD 50" that would also benefit from a proper calibration), but I found no ISF calibrators in my region (Israel). I'm mainly looking for recommended settings (or advice) for my HTPC source for the Sharp as the majority of my HD content is viewed from it.
Let me just add that this thread was one of my key reasons for getting the Sharp, thanks a lot for the great review and excellent feedback you all put in it.

Set the Color Temp to 6500K and dial back Red saturation 5 ticks, Yellow and Green saturation 10 ticks in the CMS. That will get you fairly close.

I finally got my hands on the new HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the HQV Benchmark test discs today. These discs are the first commercially available test patterns I know of that offers a way to test a display's ability to properly process 1080i video and film sources.

The results confirmed my earlier assessment that the 20K has excellent processing. The disc has tests for


HD Noise Reduction
HD Video Resolution
Jaggies (diagonal processing)
HD Film Resolution


With the HD DVD player and Blu-ray player set to output 1080i, the 20K easily passed ALL of the tests. The 20K was set to Auto in the Film Mode sub-menu in the Advanced section of the Picture menu. Selecting 3D Fast or 3D Slow didn't seem to make much difference to the the HD Video Resolution test. With either setting the 20K passed. I also set the DNR and MNR Noise Reduction settings On but to their lowest point, which did not result in any loss of resolution that I could see.

The only glitch I saw was with the HD Film Resolution test. The test requires you to look at squares of evenly-spaced horizontal and vertical lines while the entire test pattern bobs back and forth horizontally. A deinterlacer that correctly applies inverse telecine to 1080i sources without any loss of resolution will be able to cleanly resolve even the single-pixel lines in these squares without flashing or distortion as the pattern moves. I noticed that the test areas were rendered quite cleanly, except every tenth bob the squares would flash. I originally thought that this indicated some flaw in the 20k inverse telecine processing. However, this phenomenon persisted even after I switched the HD DVD and Blu-ray players to 1080p output, thereby bypassing the 20K's processing. I decided that the pattern was just looping every tenth bob and the processor momentarily lost a lock on the cadence.

BTW, these tests confirm something Greg Rogers noted in his review of the 20K. This projector does a better job with inverse telecine processing for 1080i sources than it does for 480i sources. The 20K fails the film resolution test on the SD DVD version of the HQV Benchmark Test disc.

I did the same tests with mine Tom. And my Sharp handle a 1080i signal even better than my Anthem D2 with it's Gennum chip.

I did the same tests with mine Tom. And my Sharp handle a 1080i signal even better than my Anthem D2 with it's Gennum chip.Yea, I tested and Anthem AVM50 the other night and it failed the film resolution test, though it passed the video resolution test and picked up 3/2 pulldown fine. I wonder what's going on there?

I am at 670 hours on the lamp and I have lost about half of my original brightness. That puts me at about 9.5 fL, so it's time for a new bulb. This is the cost of doing business with this PJ.

What gain screen are you using Tom? I am finding the image extremely satisfying, when paired with a 119" diagonal High Power, and my bulb is getting up there as well. I positioned the projector perfectly to take advantage of the 2.8 gain of the screen, and the image is amazingly punchy for such low lumens.

What gain screen are you using Tom?A 100" StudioTek 130. I understand that with a higher gain screen I could go longer without replacing the bulb, but I really like the quality of the image I get from the StudioTek.

I am at 670 hours on the lamp and I have lost about half of my original brightness. That puts me at about 9.5 fL, so it's time for a new bulb. This is the cost of doing business with this PJ.

Tom:

When Chuck Williams calibrated my XV-Z20000, he suggested that I await approximately 100 hours on the bulb. It was right about there when he did his work early last month.

Is there any reason I should expect that, when I eventually need a new bulb, any further calibration will be necessary? I'm assuming not, but thought I'd check.

Thanks,

Nick :cool:

Tom,

I'm at about 1200 hours on my bulb, High Contrast, Eco mode, and on a 110" High Power it's still very satisfying. I had a Stewart Firehawk before and it definitely had a sheen, but this HP has none. It's a beautiful image! I don't know if I'll make it to almost 3000 hours before it gets too dim, but here's the thing - with the cost of 20k lamps, you could pretty much pay for an HP screen with the money you save on lamps. Of course, you have to be able to sit in the HP "cone" to realize the gain, but if you can do that, there's really no down side to the screen in terms of image quality.

BTW, I had my ISF calibration, and the natural skin tones are striking. Love this projector.

Can anyone tell me if any of the video modes allow the use of a lense for a 2.35 scope screen without the use of an outboard scaler? Can not tell from the manual or find any references in this thread. Thanks in advance.

Can anyone tell me if any of the video modes allow the use of a lense for a 2.35 scope screen without the use of an outboard scaler? Can not tell from the manual or find any references in this thread. Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately you need a scaler. That is from what I remember when I looked into the sharp 4 months ago

I've seen the Sharp several times (with Blu Ray/HD-DVD) a while back, but recently saw it again playing an excellent HD feed (some cop/monster show) on a Stewart Firehawk screen. What an unbelievable picture. The color, contrast and clarity are so amazing for a projector and the clarity/sharpness gave up nothing to the plasmas. Wow! (As I always say, too mad I see "rainbows" with single chip DLP).

Is there any reason I should expect that, when I eventually need a new bulb, any further calibration will be necessary?I made some minor changes to the gray scale when I put the new bulb in, but they were really small. The CMS setting didn't change at all.

BTW, putting in a new bulb took me from 9.5 fL in Bright mode to 13.5 fL in Eco mode. To be quite honest, the difference was almost imperceptible. I could have easily gone another couple of months before changing bulbs. This experience causes me to re-evaluate what amount of brightness I consider minimally acceptable.

I made some minor changes to the gray scale when I put the new bulb in, but they were really small. The CMS setting didn't change at all.

BTW, putting in a new bulb took me from 9.5 fL in Bright mode to 13.5 fL in Eco mode. To be quite honest, the difference was almost imperceptible. I could have easily gone another couple of months before changing bulbs. This experience causes me to re-evaluate what amount of brightness I consider minimally acceptable.

Thanks, Tom. This projector continues to deliver superbly in every aspect, and it makes me happy that I have it instead of my Qualia '004. The latter was also great, but, when I consider that I paid under $6,000 for a brand new XV-Z20000--with an additional warranty (two years) from Sharp, to boot--I feel a lot more financially flexible for the next new great thing that comes 'round the pike.

By the way, is it true that Sharp has discontinued this projector? If so, people should start to drool to snap them up at the likely discounts that will be around.

Thanks,

Nick :cool:

Still going strong in High Contrast/Eco mode on a Da-Lite High Power, with over 1300 hours on the lamp. And unlike my Optoma H79, I haven't had a single issue with the Sharp 20k.

I was wondering what iris setting other owners of the 20K use? I find that the high brightness mode unacceptably elevates the black level to the point that I wouldn't seriously consider this setting for HT use. What's odd is that the CR is around 1800:1, which isn't exactly horrible.

Although I see a difference between the high contrast and medium modes, the difference seems really small to my eyes. Furthermore, the increased brightness in medium is more noticeable to me than the very small subjective loss in contrast. Thus, I prefer the medium mode. I just don't perceive enough increased performance at high contrast to justify the loss of lumens.

I'm curious how others see this.

I use high contrast mode. Since I have over 1600 hours on my lamp now, I switched to medium recently but I switched back, because the image seemed flatter. I'm still pretty happy with the brightness, so I think I'm probably good for a few hundred more hours before I'll have to switch out the lamp. I might even just order a new lamp and let this one fail, if it doesn't get too much worse (though I probably won't get much past 2000 hours). I'm using a High Power screen.

High Contrast mode here too. High Brightness & Medium modes don't distinguish this pj from most other 1080 DLPs; HC is what makes this pj special...

However, I have a 100% light controlled environment, and I doubt HC would work in anything else.

To my eyes, the greatest difference is between HB & Medium. The difference between Medium & HC is slight, but I do feel the lumen loss justifies the better contrast on most images.

HC mode pretty much exclusively. Sometimes at the end of the bulb life (speaking on my Sharp 12k -- the 20k bulb is still new), I'd bump up to medium, but just until I replaced the bulb. I can definitely see a difference between medium and HC in image depth (and I've tested this on unwitting friends as well).

I've had the 10k, then the 12k and now the 20k and I love the pic and how much better it's gotten with each generation. The colors in the 20k are much deeper (after calibration) than the 12k too.

I also have a 100% light controlled room and use a silverstar screen.

I'm going to need a lamp for the 20k before too long. Anyone have a good source?

anyone tried this with a Silverstar screen?

anyone tried this with a Silverstar screen?

2 posts up.

Originally posted by Nick:

By the way, is it true that Sharp has discontinued this projector? If so, people should start to drool to snap them up at the likely discounts that will be around.

Where did you hear the 20000 is discontinued?

On the Canadian Sharp website they still list it under "new products"

BTW, I recently took some extensive measurements of the 20K as a contribution to Mark Peterson's contrast project. I discovered a couple of interesting facts.

First, there is considerable variation in the performance of bulbs. I just replaced my bulb and I'm getting 20-25% less on/off contrast than I got with the original, both in their new state. ANSI seems about the same, though.

Second, in the High Contrast mode, the 20K not only returns better on/off contrast. It also returns better ANSI contrast, especially when you use one of Mark's 20 APL patterns, rather than the 50 APL pattern more commonly used for this test. This is important because 20 APL is around the brightness that most movies are filmed. Very few scenes go above 40 APL or below 10 APL.

BTW, I recently took some extensive measurements of the 20K as a contribution to Mark Peterson's contrast project. I discovered a couple of interesting facts.

First, there is considerable variation in the performance of bulbs. I just replaced my bulb and I'm getting 20-25% less on/off contrast than I got with the original, both in their new state. ANSI seems about the same, though.

Second, in the High Contrast mode, the 20K not only returns better on/off contrast. It also returns better ANSI contrast, especially when you use one of Mark's 20 APL patterns, rather than the 50 APL pattern more commonly used for this test. This is important because 20 APL is around the brightness that most movies are filmed. Very few scenes go above 40 APL or below 10 APL.

Where did you get your lamp, Tom? I'm going to need one before long.

What were your measurements for on/off with the second lamp?

I asked Jason first, but AVS doesn't carry it.

I ended up getting one at that oriental mail order source of whom we dare not speak its name. Even with shipping from Japan, they had the lowest price by far I found. Some dealers are asking over $500.

I got in the mid 4000s at high-contrast and just over 3000 in medium contrast. ANSI was mid 500s. As you can see from my original post, the on/off is considerably lower than I initially got with the first lamp.

Hi Tom,

I just want to thank you for all the contributions to this thread. It's in part due to your first impressions and continued comments that I decided to buy this projector 2 weeks ago.

I am at about 20 hours on my bulb using High Contrast, Eco mode, Brilliant color on and projecting on a 110" Stewart Firehawk screen. I am in the process of tweaking the projector, although I find the color out of the box to be very satisfying.

I had a Sharp 9000 prior to buying this. The contrast is amazing, colors, black levels, resolution and brightness are amazing. I am seeing more details in the picture than before.I saw 300 on HD and this blew me away. Discovery HD is like lokking out a window on this projector.

I am very happy with the Sharp xv-z20000 :)

Thanks.

Sam1970, congratulations on your new PJ. Glad you found this thread useful.

BTW, let me recommend something to 20K owners (actually, the recommendation stands for all owners of front projectors). I would really seriously consider getting an AEMC CA813 light meter. It is inexpensive ($150), requires no technical expertise to use, and is an invaluable tool for measuring light output, gamma, and contrast.

Can anyone tell me what affect on the lumens of this PJ to expect from being on the long end of the throw range? Tom's table at the top of this thread shows variability of lumens based on the different lamp and iris modes, but doesn't the length of throw also affect lumens? Jason's lumens measurements were even lower and were taken at shortest throw, he said.

It seems to me that this PJ could work for me at the lumens Tom quoted (344 in HC/bright mode; 251 in HC/economy mode) if I mount it vertically just above eye level so that a high gain screen like the HP can be utilized. To avoid a ceiling mount and position the PJ optimally for an HP screen, I would need to mount the PJ at a throw of almost 2.5x of screen width (the max. for this PJ). I have my eye on a Dalite HP 106" diag. which would yield approx. 19 FtL in HC/economy mode or 26 FtL in HC/bright mode (assuming I get a 2.5 gain in the sweet spot of the HP "cone"). That would be fine and give me some room for bulb dimming. However, if the lumens at max. throw are much lower than stated above, then my FtL will be adequate only with a new bulb.

Bonus question: My other leading PJ candidate is the Sim2 D80. It seems that these two are fairly comparable machines - similar (high) ANSI contrast, both with great optics, sharpness and processing, both need to be paired with high gain screens at a respectable screen size. Similar price points. The edge in on/off contrast goes to the Sharp. Any comments on this shoot out?

Thanks.

The contrast/lumens figures I originally provided were for minimum throw. For maximum throw, multiply by 88.6%.

For what it's worth, I just witnessed the "new Qualia" at CEDIA (the VW-200). Quite impressive, but it will list for $15,000 and you'll wind up paying close to double than what you can get the Sharp for.

I owned the Qualia 004. I now own the Sharp. I saw no reason in the demo to make me change my mind, but I'll be back tomorrow to check it again.

The Sharp is one of the finest projectors on the market, and is an absolute steal at the $6,000 you can now get it for on the street.

By the way, theXV-Z200000 was on display (not running) at the Sharp exhibit. I asked and was told that the unit has not been discontinued.

Thanks,

Nick :cool:

By the way, theXV-Z200000 was on display (not running) at the Sharp exhibit. I asked and was told that the unit has not been discontinued.

Thanks,

Nick :cool:

Good news, Nick. That's one of the pieces of info I was hoping for from the show. Did Sharp mention a DC4 model? Given the performance of their DC3 model, I would anticipate it being excellent.

I was wondering about Sharp at CEDIA. I guess nothing new. Too bad.

I just saw thi PJ at a local dealer and I was VERY impressed. It's sharp and clear. The dealer also have the JVC RS1 and the Marantz 11s1 on but I kept on coming back to the Sharp. The RS1 looked fine and just as bright as the Sharp but I find the later much better. The RS1 looked a little soft. The Marantz also put out a great picture but I find it dim. What pleasantly surprised me about the Sharp upon close inspection on the screen was there were no visible SDEs. It's completely smooth. The RS1 had a very faint SDE up close but disappears as I backed up. So, in short, I loved the picture on the Sharp Z20000. Looks like this may be my new PJ. Now that the price has dropped, it sure is tempting to get it now. ;)

Sharp announced a significant price drop at CEDIA. I believe the new MSRP in the US is $6999.00.

Yes, the dealer offered me in the $6,000 range. I'm already considering getting it. I wonder why Sharp decided to drop the price. Are they planning on releasing a newer model or is it it's just not selling well.

I think it was just a realistic reaction to the pricing of other 1080p projectors like the RS1.

I've decided to purchase the z20000 from a local dealer today. It's on order and I should be getting it soon. This PJ replaces my Panasonic PT-AX100u which I purchased a little over a year ago. If anyone's interested or have a question, it's up for sale. PM me.

Sharp announced a significant price drop at CEDIA. I believe the new MSRP in the US is $6999.00.
Whoa...I didn't know that! That means it should street for significantly less very soon. I will be keeping my eyes open for a deal on one of these...;)

Yes, they did. I asked the dealer why the price drop and he said that the JVC's RS1 is hurting Sharp's sale of the XV-Z20000s so they decided to drop it in order to compete.

I think Sharp need to come out with the unishape thing that Sim does. Sharp Projector are really good ( I have one) but the could be a bit brighter. Sim claims 100% increase brightness at D65. That would be very nice.

I can't wait for a DLP manufacturer to find a way to jump on/off significally. I'm not talking about 20 000:1 but 100 000:1 or more. That would be so cool High Ansi and High on:off. :)

I'm sure Tryg would start saying that on:off is not that important anyway! :)

Isn't Darkchip 4 supposed to do 100,000 to 1?

The answer to the brightness problem is an HP screen. Goin' on 1900 hours now and still a very watchable image on my Sharp 20k, with a 110" HP screen.

These stratospheric on/off contrast numbers are not terribly meaningful. CR above 5000:1 or so is going to be completely invisible except on extremely low APL scenes.

Tom,

Thanks for your wonderful review of the Sharp XV-Z20000 on this thread. It's the reason why decided to demo it and finally purchase it.
What are your current settings on this PJ (Picture Mode, Gamma Position, Iris Setting, etc...)?

Tom, you mentioned earlier in this thread that the Z20k was the brightest when the least amount of vertical lens shift was used (or something to that effect). You also mentioned that the default position was at the bottom of the screen for a shelf mount. Is the default position also the brightest? In my installation I will be shelf mounting the projector at the approximate middle of the screen vertically and am just wondering how that will effect brightness. My assumption would normally have been that mid screen would be the "straightest" shot for the lens and would thus be the brightest, but I just want to know whether you have found that to be correct or not.

Thanks!

I have my eye on this projector as well. The cut in MSRP is great news. Just waiting for the price to come down. I don't see that it has yet.

Tom, you mentioned earlier in this thread that the Z20k was the brightest when the least amount of vertical lens shift was used (or something to that effect). You also mentioned that the default position was at the bottom of the screen for a shelf mount. Is the default position also the brightest? In my installation I will be shelf mounting the projector at the approximate middle of the screen vertically and am just wondering how that will effect brightness. My assumption would normally have been that mid screen would be the "straightest" shot for the lens and would thus be the brightest, but I just want to know whether you have found that to be correct or not.
Bob, the lens shift issue is a complicated one. The best performance in terms of light output seems to be top of the screen for inverted ceiling mount and bottom of the screen for shelf mount. However, these positions are not zero lens shift. Sharp seems to have engineered the optics this way. I don't have any numbers handy to tell you exactly how much of a difference it makes, but it is definitely measurable.

What are your current settings on this PJ (Picture Mode, Gamma Position, Iris Setting, etc...)?The Standard picture setting with Standard selected under Dynamic Range in the Options menu gives an almost perfect 2.2 gamma.

The iris setting is a trade off between contrast and light output. I find the contrast of the Medium setting quite satisfying (about 4000:1), but many others prefer the High Contrast setting (about 5500:1), though I think a high gain screen is desirable in this mode. High Brightness is not really suitable for home theater use.

Regarding the CMS and custom gamma settings for gray scale, get it professionally calibrated. It makes a big difference and you can't eye ball it and get it right.

These stratospheric on/off contrast numbers are not terribly meaningful. CR above 5000:1 or so is going to be completely invisible except on extremely low APL scenes.

Stars field betweeen a 6000:1 projector (sharp XV-Z20000) and 15000:1 (RS1) are very different. I think the magic number is closer to 50000:1 for those low APL scenes.

Stars field betweeen a 6000:1 projector (sharp XV-Z20000) and 15000:1 (RS1) are very different. I think the magic number is closer to 50000:1 for those low APL scenes.I didn't give a "magic number" for low APL scenes. What I said is that UNLESS you are watching a particularly low APL scene, CR above 5000:1 just doesn't make any visible difference. Yes, a very high on/off PJ, such as the RS1, will provide deeper blacks on very low APL scenes, but ANSI CR (or perhaps something else, like MTF) is more important for conveying depth on everything else, at least as long as you have achieved a reasonable threshold of on/off CR. I suggested that this was 5000:1. It may be lower.

The ANSI contrast on the Sharp is really, really good. Greg Rogers measured it at about 800:1. May have been a wee bit more or less, so don't quote me on that number. My only issue, when the lamp was new, was that rainbows seemed more noticeable than with my Optoma H79. As has been the case with all my DLP's, though, that issue disappeared very quickly. Now, I can't see them unless I really work at it.

The ANSI contrast on the Sharp is really, really good. Greg Rogers measured it at about 800:1.I know that's what Greg got, but no one else I know has. I have been unable to measure any higher than 560, and I was really careful about blocking off all extraneous sources of light. This is still excellent, but it's about what you get with most good DLPs.

There must be something special about his measuring technique that allows him to get such a high figure. It's that or the sample he measured was not typical. He also measured 8000:1 on/off CR in High Contrast mode. The best I can get is about 5500:1.

That's still about twice as good or more than typical LCoS, isn't it? It's a feature of the Sharp I really like.

That's still about twice as good or more than typical LCoS, isn't it?Yep.

The ANSI contrast on the Sharp is really, really good. Greg Rogers measured it at about 800:1. May have been a wee bit more or less, so don't quote me on that number. My only issue, when the lamp was new, was that rainbows seemed more noticeable than with my Optoma H79. As has been the case with all my DLP's, though, that issue disappeared very quickly. Now, I can't see them unless I really work at it.
__________________My only issue, when the lamp was new, was that rainbows seemed more noticeable than with my Optoma H79. As has been the case with all my DLP's, though, that issue disappeared very quickly. Now, I can't see them unless I really work at it.
__________________

Joseph, so the the rainbow disappeared as the lamp ages on the Sharp? Is this typical of all DLP's.

__________________

Joseph, so the the rainbow disappeared as the lamp ages on the Sharp? Is this typical of all DLP's.

I think in my case, it's simply a matter of my brain making the adjustment to DLP. When I'm away from DLP (out for repair, say) and come back to it, I see rainbows for a short while. Then, they disappear and I have to work really hard to see them. That took maybe a little longer with the 20k, for some reason, but it happened. I don't really think it was the lamp's aging that was the reason, but I'm probably going to find out before too long. I have close to 1900 hours on the original lamp and I have to think about a replacement. With an HP screen, though, I do expect to get 2500 hours or more out of this lamp (in High Contrast, Eco modes). HP rocks.

I know that's what Greg got, but no one else I know has. I have been unable to measure any higher than 560, and I was really careful about blocking off all extraneous sources of light. This is still excellent, but it's about what you get with most good DLPs.

There must be something special about his measuring technique that allows him to get such a high figure. It's that or the sample he measured was not typical. He also measured 8000:1 on/off CR in High Contrast mode. The best I can get is about 5500:1.
It measured 845:1. I don't think it was atypical because I measured the Z12K at 728:1. The Sharp's have been consistently higher than other DLPs, apparently a function of their optical path design. It can be a little tricky to measure checkerboard contrast patterns but my method is very consistent from projector to projector.

It measured 845:1. I don't think it was atypical because I measured the Z12K at 728:1. The Sharp's have been consistently higher than other DLPs, apparently a function of their optical path design. It can be a little tricky to measure checkerboard contrast patterns but my method is very consistent from projector to projector.What method do you use? I did everything I could to minimize extraneous light sources and I took the measurement at about 4 feet from the lens. I consistently got in the mid 500s.

It measured 845:1. I don't think it was atypical because I measured the Z12K at 728:1.
That is a significant reason that it is very difficult for me to buy anything other than a Z20k for my next projector. I am so damned pleased with the picture I am getting from the Z12k in terms of color accuracy, sharpness, intrascene contrast and image depth, optics quality, and lack of picture noise/grain (it is there but just not exacerbated like on the RS-1) that I am somewhat afraid to buy anything else for fear of being disappointed. If this thing came out of the gate with about 100 more lumens than it has I would already own one. I'm seriously considering reducing my screen size - I'd rather have quality than quantity if I have to make a choice.

I have been thinking about the Marantz 15S1, but I wonder if I would be happy with its lesser ANSI contrast and slightly oversaturated primaries (just how bad are they?), though it supposedly will supply the lumens I need/want.

That is a significant reason that it is very difficult for me to buy anything other than a Z20k for my next projector. I am so damned pleased with the picture I am getting from the Z12k in terms of color accuracy, sharpness, intrascene contrast and image depth, optics quality, and lack of picture noise/grain (it is there but just not exacerbated like on the RS-1) that I am somewhat afraid to buy anything else for fear of being disappointed. If this thing came out of the gate with about 100 more lumens than it has I would already own one. I'm seriously considering reducing my screen size - I'd rather have quality than quantity if I have to make a choice.

I have been thinking about the Marantz 15S1, but I wonder if I would be happy with its lesser ANSI contrast and slightly oversaturated primaries (just how bad are they?), though it supposedly will supply the lumens I need/want.

Have you checked out the High Power, Bob? I had a Stewart Firehawk before and I couldn't be happier with the HP. I don't have the color shift, hotspotting and snowy sheen I had with the Firehawk. Your room may not work for an HP, but if it does, it's a great screen.

Joe, I think he already has a High Power. It is just that he also has a 160"+ screen.

Bob, since I haven't seen the VP15S1 I can't say anything very intelligent about it other than it is apparently brighter but without the near perfect color accuracy of the 20K. The optics on both are excellent, but the 20K is a known quantity and to that extent represents less risk.

If it were me, and clearly it is not, I would go with quality over quantity and reduce my screen size to, I don't know, maybe a 110" Ultramatte 150 or a 133" High Power. Of course, that's added expense and hassle, which you may understandably not want to incur.

A somewhat smaller screen would also give you added flexibility for future PJs you may consider. It's always easy to add a ND filter to a PJ that's too bright, but if what you have isn't bright enough for your screen you are kind of screwed.

Good luck. Let us know what you decide.

I had my 20k professionally calibrated by the ISF guy here in St. Louis, and it looks spectacular. Rich but natural color and skin tones that actually look like skin. I think you'll like it.

Joe, I think he already has a High Power. It is just that he also has a 160"+ screen.
Yes, that is mostly correct. I have a 139" X 59" HP in 2.35:1 format, so I believe that figures out to around 151" diagonal. Joe, you don't have to sell me on the High Power - It is my my favorite screen under many circumstances. :)

Of course, that's added expense and hassle, which you may understandably not want to incur.
There is NO added expense and very little additional hassle. When I bought the pulldown HP (Model C?), I did so with the intention of eventually building my own frame and scavenging the material to mount in it. I already have a smaller frame (and much higher quality than commercially available ones!) built, but I am thinking of cutting it down a bit more before making the switch. Right now it measures 131.6" X 56", and in order to get 12 ftL I would need 245 lumens (assuming a gain of 2.5 from the HP). While I know that the Z20k can output more than that when new, my only thought is for how long it can maintain a minimum of 245 lumens. Tom, did you track your initial lamp? If I can get 500 hours out of a lamp then I am golden...:)

What method do you use? I did everything I could to minimize extraneous light sources and I took the measurement at about 4 feet from the lens. I consistently got in the mid 500s.You may be too close to the projector for your sensor size. Move far enough back that moving the sensor 50% further back has no effect on the least significant digit of your contrast ratio. Keep the sensor in the center of the block. You could also reduce the aperture size of the sensor. Be sure you have enough digits of resolution. Check the linearity of your sensor at low light levels with filters. Have you completely covered the screen so there is no reflection from it? Have you tried a black curtain behind your sensor that blocks the entire pattern from the screen and end wall? Have you tried a "tent" around the sensor? Have you tried masking the area around the sensor with black velvet? Is the sensor in exactly the same position (tripod mounted) when measuring each white block and the corresponding black block?

Sorry, Bob, didn't know you had one. I've become a bit of an HP evangelist. It's just such a beautiful image. Wish I had the space for a 133" HP, but 110 is the absolute max I can manage in my theater. A friend has a 119" HP with his Pearl and the 9" difference is really striking.