Jerry Gardner
04-09-07, 12:54 PM
Up until now I've been in the DLP camp. I've seen a few LCOS projectors and wasn't impressed. Until now.
One of the local Magnolia stores replaced the Sharp 12K in their projection room with a Pearl. All of the previous Pearls I've seen have been poorly set up, but this one was different. It was accurately aligned with the screen and not tilted (so no keystone correction was needed), had been calibrated to ISF standards, was fed with a Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD player (King Kong), and projected on a Stewart Firehawk (but not SST) screen.
This made a huge difference in the PQ compared to that I've seen on other Pearls. The image was slightlyless sharp than it was on the Sharp DLP they previously had in the room, but I had to get very close to the screen to see it. From normal viewing distance, sharpness seemed to be more than adequate. Brightness was almost too bright with the Pearl in low lamp mode and the iris set to Auto 1.
I came away from this demo with a new respect for proper set up and how it can affect the screen image. I'm completely at a loss as to why vendors selling high-end projectors often have them poorly installed and calibrated and then expect to sell them to anyone with a reasonably critical eye.
I'd almost ruled out LCOS entirely in favor of DLP, but now I'm even more eager to see an RS1 in action and may go with an LCOS machine. Even the Pearl, which hasn't gotten a whole lot of lovin' in this forum recently with all the talk about the RS1, may end up in my theater if the RS1 isn't noticeably better than the Pearl I saw this weekend.
One of the local Magnolia stores replaced the Sharp 12K in their projection room with a Pearl. All of the previous Pearls I've seen have been poorly set up, but this one was different. It was accurately aligned with the screen and not tilted (so no keystone correction was needed), had been calibrated to ISF standards, was fed with a Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD player (King Kong), and projected on a Stewart Firehawk (but not SST) screen.
This made a huge difference in the PQ compared to that I've seen on other Pearls. The image was slightlyless sharp than it was on the Sharp DLP they previously had in the room, but I had to get very close to the screen to see it. From normal viewing distance, sharpness seemed to be more than adequate. Brightness was almost too bright with the Pearl in low lamp mode and the iris set to Auto 1.
I came away from this demo with a new respect for proper set up and how it can affect the screen image. I'm completely at a loss as to why vendors selling high-end projectors often have them poorly installed and calibrated and then expect to sell them to anyone with a reasonably critical eye.
I'd almost ruled out LCOS entirely in favor of DLP, but now I'm even more eager to see an RS1 in action and may go with an LCOS machine. Even the Pearl, which hasn't gotten a whole lot of lovin' in this forum recently with all the talk about the RS1, may end up in my theater if the RS1 isn't noticeably better than the Pearl I saw this weekend.