We've been chasing, slaving and salivating after high Contrast Ratio since the early days of Plasma and LCD. Personally, with figures like VW60's 35,000:1, I think CR will soon be as exciting as "yes, this unit comes with 2 remote controls, sir". The next level in this pagoda should be gray scale performance.

I propose we start focusing on what really counts.

Now, anybody have any idea how one can measure, gauge, judge, tell the GS performance of anything?
Should one start with a gray scale chart from, say, a Video Essential disc?

"We've been chasing, slaving and salivating after high Contrast Ratio since the early days of Plasma and LCD."

And for good reason.

It's still the performance parameter that, on average, has the most room left for visible improvement.

Lots of pj's have, or can be adjusted to, grayscale thatmost people couldn't distinguish from perfect.

The next level in this pagoda should be gray scale performance.
There are three aspects of color performance that are important, not just grayscale:

1. Grayscale
2. Color decoding
3. CIE primary and secondary coordinates

Right now exists projectors with excellent decoding and grayscale, but all of the primaries are oversaturated, so color rendition is inaccurate. Another projector might have excellent grayscale and primary coordinates but the color decoding is off....It too will be inaccurate. You get the point.

And we haven't even touched on gamma yet...;)

I haven't really thought about calibrating grayscale much until recently, having used on VE's grayscale bars. I think there's only 10 bars on there, and I never found that very effective. Wouldn't make more sense to present 256 bars since RGB color can display at most 256 levels of gray? This way you could see if there is any clipping.

I think other features such as color accuracy/adjustability, fan noise, sharpness, and light output will drive a lot of the decision making going forward. But I agree manufactures need to pay attention to other attributes other than contrast. Of course contrast ratios and lumens are easy hooks for the marketing people.

No doubt CR was a critical issue with early bulb projectors. Glad to see it's being addressed to a point where the 'issue' will no longer dominate every digital FP thread in AVS. ;)