Yea, I realize that I am asking for an academic discussion/comparison of two items that are "apples and oranges" and that this is the "...Projector" section, but I think that there are several folks out there that may be considering, say for instance, the up-coming 70XBR 5 (rear projector) which is a slimmer-than-previous model, as opposed to a front projector, such as the JVC, or perhaps the Sony "Pearl." Again, different items, but for those that have experienced both, how would you compare (1) perceived "sharpness." (2) color accuracy, and (3) perceived black levels/shadow detail ??? And yea, I realize that this is 70" compared to 90-100-120". I'm going to assume that the Sony SXRD (RP) would be brighter. Comments? :cool:

I know where you're coming from, WOLVERNOLE. I was waiting and waiting for an 80" sxrd. But it looks like I'm out of luck. To me 70" is not a big enough upgrade from my 65" crt rptv. After reading in wsr and here about the rs1, I'm really rethinking my whole strategy.

Right. The 80" SXRD is apparently "wishful thinking" on folks' part. I would love to see an 80" though, frankly ! The Sony site, I think made an error when posting that 50-80" category...and people mis-read it. But I find the relative comparison between a large RP 1080p and FP 1080p interesting. I will get the ball rolling and state that at least for the Sony Pearl, a 110' projected image, while it is BIGGER and consequently shows BIGGER detail, I am not certain that it shows "sharper," though others feel that FP is a sharper image. Maybe it comes down to a "size thing." I guess I would love to get an SXRD image-quality at 96" and I want to know if that is reasonable to ask. :confused:

FWIW, I had a Mits 73" dlp rptv (73727) and like it very much, but finally decided I wanted to go for a 'really big' screen. I've now had a RS1 for about 3 to 4 months, with a 126" diag HiPower screen, and I'll never go back to rptv.

FWIW, I had a Mits 73" dlp rptv (73727) and like it very much, but finally decided I wanted to go for a 'really big' screen. I've now had a RS1 for about 3 to 4 months, with a 126" diag HiPower screen, and I'll never go back to rptv.

Cool ! Care to elaborate on the details, i.e. sharpness difference, shadow detail, etc.??? Size difference understood. ;)

Cool ! Care to elaborate on the details, i.e. sharpness difference, shadow detail, etc.??? Size difference understood. ;)

I'm sitting ~ 13 ft from the screen, thus ~ 1.4 screen widths away (1.5 seems to be the most commonly recommended distance, but I like it a bit closer), and the pic is sharp as a razor with good hd signals. sd tv is variable, from really crappy to watchable. The HP screen and RS1 give a very bright pic, as bright as a good rptv. And with good light control (see below), the shadow detail, etc., is much better than the rptv's I've had. I.e., the PQ is better is all regards.

The only real caveat for FP has to do with light control. If you are watching at night, then no problem, even if your room is a normal den and not a true bat-cave type HT (though darkening wall surfaces will make it even better). But things are not good if you try to watch during the day and have external light coming into the room. I have black out curtains over the only windows that allow external light and draw them if I'm watching in daytime (e.g., sports on weekend afternoons). You can read many threads where people discuss all these issues of FP and light.

I went from Panasonic 61inch and also felt I needed bigger, I went to the HD1/RS1 and am going with the 126" Carada BW. To me its well worth the whole process in the end.

This is also where I am. I am buying a pj and screen this week. I too hope that I will have better performance with a two piece setup. My Mits. RP CRT has a better picture than 90% of all TV's I install, and I hope that the set up I do will outperform it at 100+ inches.
I've been leaning toward the Pearl, but I demoed a RS1 on Friday and it looks so much better than the Peal's I have seen. Granted the Pearl's were at a BB, and think they had it set up to the wrong screen, improperly calibrated, and high lamp hours. I just hope I get a chance to look at the Pearl properly set up before I choose, or I will more than likely go with the RS1.

Yea, I saw the Pearl at a Sony style store. While some of the material looked good, much didn't look too sharp and that was all from a bluray source. Since 90% of my viewing is off of directv, I probably would only use a pj for movies which would be quite an expense.

fuseman13, where in LA did you demo the rs1?

Well, I think I'm qualified to answer this question. I have a 60" XBR2 in my living room and an RS-1 in the theater room. I like the picture on the RS-1 better. Besides just being bigger, it is brighter and has better blacks than the XBR2. The RS-1 appears sharper to me as well. Don't know about SD material too much. I'm feeding the RS-1 with HD cable, Tosh A2, PS 3 and an Xbox 360. The only SD DVD's I have watched were the superbit Lawrence of Arabia and the LOTR: Fellowship. These were upscaled through the A2 and looked great. I have not fed the RS-1 with a 480i signal at all. Everything is connected via HDMI (360 is an elite).

The XBR2 is an amazing TV and when I bought it in November, I didn't think you could get any better. I rarely watch it anymore. The girlfriend watches her stuff on it and I take the big screen. However, when football rolls around this fall, I think the XBR2 will be getting a lot more use.

The RS-1 is in a bat cave. Velvet covering all walls and ceiling. Black carpet on the floor and couch with a black slip cover. Projecting onto a 110" highpower. I sit about 11' away. RS-1 has ~ 450 hours on the bulb.

wolvernole, i am in the same boat as i have the 70XBR2. Looking at either the RS1 or the new sony amethyst.

Mr littlejeans why are you going back to xbr come football season?

Mr littlejeans why are you going back to xbr come football season?

Good question. Sports on the RS1, with a bright screen, are just amazing.

Millerwill, Mrlittle Jeans, Neofotis, et al...(ALL)=
Yea, this is great feedback...and quite a testimony to the RS-1 Mrlittlejeans ! For awhile, I thought that I was the only one with this (Huge RP vs. FP tussle), but I can see that a lot of folks have either made purchases or are considering purchases around these two.

I think we will se a lot more people considering theese two routes as prices fall in each, especially FP.

Dang ! Now I HAVE to find a demo of the RS-1/HD-1 in the Virginia/Maryland/WashDC area ! Any suggestions? ;)

I have a jvc 70-inch 1080p rptv (HD70-fh96) which also uses the 3 chip idla system. It's located in my family room and during the day, as well as sometimes at night, I watch it. Of course, in daylight, it shows a really nice, very watchable picture even with high ambient light. For whatever reason, I have not been able to get rid of crushed blacks with it on dvd's using my oppo 971h, but other than that, it provides a satisfying ht experience.

My RS1, otoh, is a fantastic,immersive experience which I think is even more special because I save it for the best (only the good stuff on HDTV & blu-ray). The rptv is good enough that I don't get the feeling of total loss if I happen to miss a good program on the RS-1 (make sense?) :)

I didn't mean to imply that the XBR2 does a better job at sports.

The XBR2 is in the living room and it looks great with lots of ambient light. I tend to have people over for games on the weekends and being able to watch with the lights on whilst drinking heavily is pretty important to me. Thus the comment about the XBR2 getting more use once football comes around.

If it is just me, I will typically have the fp on the game I most want to watch and the rptv on the game I next want to watch. I tend to walk around while watching sports (have a problem sitting still while football is on).

To the OP - If you can swing it, get both. I think they both throw up the best (IMO) picture you can get in the respective technology (fp vs rp) and I would be happy with either choice.

To the OP - If you can swing it, get both. I think they both throw up the best (IMO) picture you can get in the respective technology (fp vs rp) and I would be happy with either choice.

this is what I'm thinking, and having a drop down screen in front of the sxrd--since I can't have a fixed screen in my living room anyway. But wow, now we're talking LOTS more money! But this would be the ideal set up for me.

I have a drop down 100" screen that comes in front of my 46" Samsung DLP (but stays over my center channel speaker). I love having both options, because watching a pixelated Seinfeld rerun on the RS1 is just a total waste of bulb life. It also sucks the novelty out to of the movie theater experience if you watch too much crap.

Comparing PQ, my RS1 has better depth, color, detail, and black levels than my DLP. Compared to my parents 60" Sony GWIII, it's better on all those metrics, except maybe color, in which it's equal. IMHO, the sharpness on the RS1 is equal to either of those HDTVs. The big size makes lines a little less "razorish," but the superior contrast and black levels reveals subtle textures I never saw on TVs before. Overall, I think the RS1 looks much better than a good TV and better than a great one.

Light control, however, is a big issue. DO NOT drop an RS1 into your sunny living room and expect that you can draw some curtains and enjoy it during the day. That's what TVs are for.

I have a drop down 100" screen that comes in front of my 46" Samsung DLP (but stays over my center channel speaker). I love having both options, because watching a pixelated Seinfeld rerun on the RS1 is just a total waste of bulb life. It also sucks the novelty out to of the movie theater experience if you watch too much crap.

Comparing PQ, my RS1 has better depth, color, detail, and black levels than my DLP. Compared to my parents 60" Sony GWIII, it's better on all those metrics, except maybe color, in which it's equal. IMHO, the sharpness on the RS1 is equal to either of those HDTVs. The big size makes lines a little less "razorish," but the superior contrast and black levels reveals subtle textures I never saw on TVs before. Overall, I think the RS1 looks much better than a good TV and better than a great one.

Light control, however, is a big issue. DO NOT drop an RS1 into your sunny living room and expect that you can draw some curtains and enjoy it during the day. That's what TVs are for.

Thanks...yea, understood on the living room/light thing. ;)

Jeff, how do you handle 2.35 material with your drop down screen? Do you mask it in some way or do you just live with the projected "black bars"?

I have both a Sony XBR2 70" rear projector (in the family room) and an RS-1 (in dedicated home theater "bat cave"). I like to think of my XBR 2 as a "Pearl in a box" since it seems to share light engine and electronic components with the Sony Pearl front projector.

I was also fortunate enough to have my Sony professionally calibrated by Jeff Meier (UMR), widely-acknowledged to be the master in calibrating XBR2s.

Advantage XBR2:
- Much greater brightness
- Color far less oversaturated (especially after calibration)
- Better color convergence, at least on my sample
- Quieter operation

Advantage RS-1:
- Much bigger image (114" wide/133" diagonal in my case, on SMX acoustically-transparent 16x9 screen)
- Better contrast and shadow detail, but not by very much (the Sony's dynamic iris is quite effective; the Sony's black levels are also very satisfactory).
- No silk screen effect (SSE) on screen, which is occasionally visible on very bright white parts of the image on the Sony.

Very similar:
- Sharpness and resolution

Overall, I've been pleasantly suprised by the peformance of my XBR2, whereas the RS-1 did not quite meet my expectations due its oversaturation and less-than-perfect convergence when using any vertical lens shift (despite trying to correct with one-pixel offset) -- especially after waiting 6 months for the RS-1. But both put out great images.

- Dave

Dave, Do you know aproximately what gain your screen is? With a 126" diag (110"W) Dalite HiPower I certainly do not find my RS1 to be less bright than an RPTV, at least with no external light in the room. Bill

Dave, Do you know aproximately what gain your screen is? With a 126" diag (110"W) Dalite HiPower I certainly do not find my RS1 to be less bright than an RPTV, at least with no external light in the room. Bill

The SMX screen material has a 1.16x gain, far less then your Dalite HiPower. I'm right on the edge of what some people in this forum would find acceptable for brightness, probably less than 10 foot-lamberts unless I run the RS-1 bulb on "high." (I don't have the equipment to measure it.) But to me the brightness is perfectly acceptable in a totally light-controlled room.

I initially found my XBR2 rear projector to be way too bright for a basement family room with big windows but no direct sunlight -- it was "searing my retinas." But as the bulb aged, it settled into a very nice level.

- Dave

OK, that sounds right. With the 126" HP, the RS1 (which is located pretty much optimally for the HP) generated ~35 ftL when the lamp was new, and this of course was VERY bright (just like TYYG likes it!), but it's now down to ~25 ftL, still nice and bright. (My room is fairly good--no external light, medium brown rug, dark blackout curtains, and some dark farbric on the ceiling about 4 ft out from the back wall--but it's not the true batcave HT.)

uberanalyst - I calculate you are getting around 17ftl assuming 500 lumens and the 1.6 gain. I'm getting around 39ftl with a 110" highpower assuming 500 lumens and 2.8 gain. This is probably what causes our brightness conclusions to be different.

uberanalyst - I calculate you are getting around 17ftl assuming 500 lumens and the 1.6 gain. I'm getting around 39ftl with a 110" highpower assuming 500 lumens and 2.8 gain. This is probably what causes our brightness conclusions to be different.

But he said 1.16 gain.

But he said 1.16 gain.

whoops. that drops it down to around 12ftl...

i'll take my highpower...

i'll take my highpower...

No argument from me on that one!!

Jeff, how do you handle 2.35 material with your drop down screen? Do you mask it in some way or do you just live with the projected "black bars"?

I live with the bars and they don't bother me a bit.

I have both a Sony XBR2 70" rear projector (in the family room) and an RS-1 (in dedicated home theater "bat cave"). I like to think of my XBR 2 as a "Pearl in a box" since it seems to share light engine and electronic components with the Sony Pearl front projector.

I was also fortunate enough to have my Sony professionally calibrated by Jeff Meier (UMR), widely-acknowledged to be the master in calibrating XBR2s.

Advantage XBR2:
- Much greater brightness
- Color far less oversaturated (especially after calibration)
- Better color convergence, at least on my sample
- Quieter operation

Advantage RS-1:
- Much bigger image (114" wide/133" diagonal in my case, on SMX acoustically-transparent 16x9 screen)
- Better contrast and shadow detail, but not by very much (the Sony's dynamic iris is quite effective; the Sony's black levels are also very satisfactory).
- No silk screen effect (SSE) on screen, which is occasionally visible on very bright white parts of the image on the Sony.

Very similar:
- Sharpness and resolution

Overall, I've been pleasantly suprised by the peformance of my XBR2, whereas the RS-1 did not quite meet my expectations due its oversaturation and less-than-perfect convergence when using any vertical lens shift (despite trying to correct with one-pixel offset) -- especially after waiting 6 months for the RS-1. But both put out great images.

- Dave

I forgot to comment on the color oversaturation. I do notice it from time to time, but, after ISF calibration, the annoyance is rare and ephemeral. Overall, I think the colors are beautiful.

One more comment, based on some HD satellite viewing last night. When watching HD programming, I just feel like the RS1 image looks more "real" than any TV I've seen. More of the window effect, much more 3-D, more subtle texturing of everything. It just doesn't distance you from the source material in the subtle way that a TV does.

That's less noticeable on movies, which have an intentional distancing effect of their own, but I just think the RS1 looks better (with good source material) than a TV.

whoops. that drops it down to around 12ftl...

i'll take my highpower...

I would have gone with a HighPower as well, except that I required an acoustically-transparent screen. I have high-end Triad Gold Monitor in-wall speakers hidden behind the screen (with tweeters that go up to 40 KHz), and the SMX screen material seems to be the only material that avoids rolling off highs or comb filtering of the sound.

But for people who don't need acoustical transparency, a higher-gain screen probably makes far more sense. Someday I expect to replace the RS-1 with a brighter projector.

- Dave