Sorry for being MIA for a bit. I haven't had as much time to play with the 500es as I wanted to this past week and I had to man handle the 500es like its a shopping bag for hours so I was exhausted carrying that around.
Told my girl I wanted the biggest baby carrier she could get. She asked why, I said "Would you carry your baby in a box with a make shift handle?" She said "no". I said "exactly".
I spent about 1 hour calibrating the 500es today. I made zero changes to color or gamma. These projectors are AMAZING out of the box pertaining to calibrations. I made no color or gamma changes. Seriously it WAS THAT GOOD!
Chart incoming soon.
The highest dE was 2.2 on Cyan and Red, everything else was 1.5 dE and under utilizing the rec709 color space. I measured with an i1D3 with Calman 5.2.0a Enthusiast
500ES Settings:
Cinema Film 1
D65
RC: Off
Motion Flow: Off
Brightness: 52 (Crushing blacks @ default of 50)
Gamma: 2.2
Cinema Black Pro
Advanced Iris
-Dynamic Controll: Off
-Brightness: Min
Contrast Enhancer Off
Lamp Control Low
Resolution is set at 3840x2160 unless specified differently
4810 Settings:
Cinema
Iris: Max Open
Low Lamp
Projecting on a 100" 16:9 HP 2.4 Screen;
JVC 4810 throw distance 13ft
Sony 500ES roughly at 14ft
I matched the brightness to my RS4810. In order for me to do so, my RS4810 is at low lamp; Iris wide open, the Sony is at low lamp Iris all the way closed. Light output is dead even. My RS4810 has 800 hours on the bulb now. I lost about 7% of light output from new. I tried to match the 500es to my 4810 in calibration settings and gamma. I calibrated my 4810 to match the 500's gamma. Previously I calibrated using bt1886 on my 4810. I will calibrate the 500es to bt1886 when I have the time this weekend.
The tool I used was this:
Warm up: ******UPDATED 6DEC13******
This is the third 500es I physically played with. All three behaved the same. Blue shifts down/up (depending on mounting) the other colors are very solid. You need at least 30 minutes for it to settle. My 4810 is excellent on cold start and once it warms up after 30minutes to an hour the red very slightly shifts; however, doesn't shift enough for me to use the pixel adjust. So far two samples were off by 2 pixels and one was 1 pixel. The one I am currently using is off by about 1 pixel and then tightens up after 30 minutes or so. I absolutely promise you this is 100% normal.
5 Minutes since bootup (to let lamp fully brighten)
15 minutes since bootup - Notice it shifting down, I tried to get the H & V to display so you can see its set to 0, The PJ's focus hasn't fully settled.
40 minutes since bootup - Nice and tight, but looks like red convergence is off slightly
After I took the last warmup pic I went and scoured the web for some good 4k tests patterns (I only found a couple so far) but they were good enough for me to notice that the red pixels were doing some sort of scaling even though in the panel adjust the Horizontal and Vertical were both set to 0. Setting Red to H: +1 and V: -1 corrected the issue. Now it appears to be no scaling. So how do I know if it was scaling you say? On the horizontal and vertical test patterns it looked like 1 very solid line and another parallel line but much fainter. 1 click and the faint line disappeared. You can kinda see the pixel but you can defintely see HP screen texture.
Before Adjustment
After Adjustment
Focus & Focus Uniformity:
On a 100" HP screen it is tough to focus the 500es in so I can see the pixels. I mean really tough... I had a tough time distinguishing between texture and pixels on screen. I had to turn the light on in order for me to better see. Focus uniformity was excellent on all three sample and dare I say flawless? My 4810 looked just as good as the 500es. I didnt see anything different between the two in this department. The lens shift is very slight as the projectors are centered horizontally and very close vertically.
Lag: Both projectors fed straight from my HTPC. No AVR in path.
The 500es has worse lag than my RS4810. Game mode didn't alleviate this unfortunately. I didn't notice much of a difference between the different modes. I projected both images on the screen at the same time with a minor offset so I can clearly distinguish which cursors belong to which projector. I tried shutting down all processing such as RC and Dynamic Iris while in the Game preset and I didn't see much of a difference. I formally asked Sony Japan (well my girlfriend did on my behalf) if Game Preset was supposed to lower the response time and if it's a bug. No response yet as of Dec 4.
Contrast Pt1: 500ES Iris fully closed, Dynamic Iris Off; 4810 Iris Fully Open; Both Low Lamp.
With the Iris fully closed on the 500es and the Iris fully open on the 4810 the contrast difference between the two are very subtle. The 4810 has some weird reflection where if I display a black screen with a white text box in the lower right corner I can see a very faint white text box in the upper left. Mind you its very faint and I can only see it when my eyes fully adjust to the scene. Why do I mention this? Well in my opinion I think the 500es has slightly better ANSI contrast than the 4810. This is based on watching movie credits where the black level between the two were very close but If you look at the credits directly the 500es looks a little blacker but if you look towards the edges and let your eyes adjust then you can see the black floor is better on the 4810, but when focusing back onto the credits the 500es looks slightly better and I attribute this specifically to the better ANSI contrast on the 500es.
RS4810
Sony 500ES
This is the best I can do when capturing this photo. I locked the exposure settings so the pics match with what I see. The 4810 does have slightly redder skin tone. The 4810 in this particular scene makes the contrast a little noticeable. Look at Jude Laws cheek. Thats where you'll spot the difference.
Motion Pt1: Both projectors not utilizing motion flow or CMD.
With no Motion flow on either the Sony or the equivalent on the JVC. I think there is a slight advantage to the 500es. Its not day and night difference to me. The slight advantage is it seems the 4810 streaks/blurs a hair more than the 500es. I used movie credits to gauge which had the better motion resolution. I test slow movie credits and fast ones. Now I already had it in my mind that the Sony was better in this department based on what I read here. So I really spent a lot of time A/B between the two and got my girlfriend to chime in. I didn't want to fool myself into believing the Sony was better because thats what everyone says. Ultimately I am concluding the 500es is in fact better in motion handling than the 4810 without using any motion enhancing algorithms on either one. The difference IMO is slight and can be noticeable on certain content such as credits and certain pan shots.
4K vs Faux 4K using HTPC:
Now I had an issue with my Denon X4000. It wasn't letting me go to 4K and so I had to bypass it and go straight from my HTPC. I don't know if there is an issue with the X4000 or what but It was acting really poopie when I was trying to feed a 4K signal. It locked up once and had to turn it off and turn it on again and after that it was ok but it seemed like I had to do things in a certain order for it to act right. On the other hand it could've been my fault but I'm gonna go ahead and say the X4000 was poopie.
If you are using an HTPC hands down the 500es is like viewing a Macbook Pro Retina. The 4810 looks pretty good, but the text on the 500es just looks beautiful. If you look at zombie10k's shootout thread there is a good picture of what e-shift II is doing to the text. Looks slightly jagged on the 4810. There is just no comparison here. It just looks much better on the 500es. The 4810 kinda pisses me off on text and I usually turn off the e-shift if I use my HTPC to view websites. It makes the text seem sharper and more pleasing to read this way. No amount of MPC settings on the 4810 comes close to the smoothness but yet crispiness of the 500es.
RS4810 eshift off
500es RC off
Panel Uniformity:
JVC RS4810
Sony 500ES
Not even close. The 500ES has the best consistent panel uniformity I have ever seen. My 4810 looks like a hot mess. In reality If I stared at an all black screen screen until my eyes fully adjust I can barely notice it.
3D Preview: Utilizing Samsung SSG-5100 3D Glasses. Results look identical with the JVC glasses. I don't have the Sony glasses on hand but I heard they make the 3D look like a soup sandwich on the 500ES.
3D is inconclusive at this moment. I'm still analyzing. I'm gonna bump the JVC to high lamp and open the Iris on the Sony to match the lumens and re-analyze contrast and then visit 3D performance. Hopefully this weekend.
500ES using Samsung 5100 glasses *****Updated 6 Dec******
2D Conclusion: *****Updated 6 Dec*******
I am heavily biased towards black level and contrast. I own a Kuro and I bought a JVC just for that. So with that out of the way let's get into it..
With the 4810 Iris fully open and 500es Iris fully closed and no processing on the Sony and Eshift set to film with all three sliders set to zero the picture quality difference is not readily apparent and it is subtle, but the Sony is better, gives a more smooth analog look.
If I take eshift off on the 4810 no contest. The 500es is superior. The eshift keeps the JVC in the game. The 4810 isn't bad without eshift but can't compare to a naturally 4K projector with real 4K pixels despite the content being 1080p. I can see the difference and I attribute this to my close viewing range to the screen. The 4810 looks more digital and the screen door effect is more pronounced.
The 500ES may not have the low black floor as the 4810 but it holds itself together during scenes with high brightness and pitch black at the same time. Like a flash light in the dark. Twice my girl and I moved out of the way during a scene in the movie and I didn't even think twice about it, seemed the natural thing to do as it was blindingly bright and I think subconsciously we felt we had to get out of the way. I have done this before on my 4810 but the effect wasn't as pronounced and I feel as the flashlight washes out the blacks a bit and I notice it sometimes and that detracts me from the movie for a brief moment.
The 500ES made me feel more engaged in the movie. I didn't notice the bright whites bleed all over the blacks like bloody murder on the 4810 sometimes. The effect is worst on 2.35 movies on the 4810 where the white bleeds into the black bars. The 500es bleeds into the black bars as well, but not as much. The 500es is also much more versatile in the brightness department whereas my 4810 is at its limits. Yeah my 4810 has been used for almost 800 hours now but the lumen drop is negligible since when I first got it. I still use low lamp with an iris setting from -15 to -6 depending what I will watch. The 500es can get extremely bright on my 100" 2.4 HP screen that it seriously hurts my eyes.
Once I started to turn on the 500es controls like Dynamic Iris and RC the 500es pulls away. I kinda feel like the 500es is a Porsche with 500lbs of weight in the trunk to match it to my 4810. The 500ES give the better overall picture, and I reckon the advantage will be even bigger those with bigger screens than I. The 500ES can't match the black floor of the 4810 but with the amount of brightness on tap using Dynamic Iris and the better ANSI contrast it becomes irrelevant quickly through a lot of content that doesn't have a lot of black space.
If you are watching space films the 4810 will be better in contrast but up to a certain point. If there is something really bright the black level isn't as noticeable anymore and the 500ES really shines here. Sometimes I prefer the 4810 and sometimes I prefer the 500es. If I put my 4810 in high lamp and clamp down the iris and open the iris up a little on the 500es to match lumens the contrast difference is better on the 4810. If I clamp down to -15 and try to match with the 500es the 4810 looks washed out because I can't get the 500es to go that low in lumens and the 500es just plain old looks better because its much brighter, black floor be damned.
The 500es OOTB using Cinema 1 profile is accurately calibrated to D65 rec709 and that is really amazing! The jury is still out for how well the calibration out of the box holds up and I'll update as I take measurements.
Once I start using the Reality Creation controls and Dynamic Iris the 500es begins to overpower my 4810 in lumen output so much that when I try to A & B my 4810 looks so dull. As far as the dynamic iris is concerned on the limited setting it was really good. I highly prefer the DI on the 500es than to the Epson's from the 6010, to 5020ub. I didn't notice any weird gamma shifts that messed with the colors like I did with the Epson. I also think the Iris is much faster but I'm going from memory and not a direct test for what it's worth.
Told my girl I wanted the biggest baby carrier she could get. She asked why, I said "Would you carry your baby in a box with a make shift handle?" She said "no". I said "exactly".
I spent about 1 hour calibrating the 500es today. I made zero changes to color or gamma. These projectors are AMAZING out of the box pertaining to calibrations. I made no color or gamma changes. Seriously it WAS THAT GOOD!
Chart incoming soon.
The highest dE was 2.2 on Cyan and Red, everything else was 1.5 dE and under utilizing the rec709 color space. I measured with an i1D3 with Calman 5.2.0a Enthusiast
500ES Settings:
Cinema Film 1
D65
RC: Off
Motion Flow: Off
Brightness: 52 (Crushing blacks @ default of 50)
Gamma: 2.2
Cinema Black Pro
Advanced Iris
-Dynamic Controll: Off
-Brightness: Min
Contrast Enhancer Off
Lamp Control Low
Resolution is set at 3840x2160 unless specified differently
4810 Settings:
Cinema
Iris: Max Open
Low Lamp
Projecting on a 100" 16:9 HP 2.4 Screen;
JVC 4810 throw distance 13ft
Sony 500ES roughly at 14ft
I matched the brightness to my RS4810. In order for me to do so, my RS4810 is at low lamp; Iris wide open, the Sony is at low lamp Iris all the way closed. Light output is dead even. My RS4810 has 800 hours on the bulb now. I lost about 7% of light output from new. I tried to match the 500es to my 4810 in calibration settings and gamma. I calibrated my 4810 to match the 500's gamma. Previously I calibrated using bt1886 on my 4810. I will calibrate the 500es to bt1886 when I have the time this weekend.
The tool I used was this:
Warm up: ******UPDATED 6DEC13******
This is the third 500es I physically played with. All three behaved the same. Blue shifts down/up (depending on mounting) the other colors are very solid. You need at least 30 minutes for it to settle. My 4810 is excellent on cold start and once it warms up after 30minutes to an hour the red very slightly shifts; however, doesn't shift enough for me to use the pixel adjust. So far two samples were off by 2 pixels and one was 1 pixel. The one I am currently using is off by about 1 pixel and then tightens up after 30 minutes or so. I absolutely promise you this is 100% normal.
5 Minutes since bootup (to let lamp fully brighten)
15 minutes since bootup - Notice it shifting down, I tried to get the H & V to display so you can see its set to 0, The PJ's focus hasn't fully settled.
40 minutes since bootup - Nice and tight, but looks like red convergence is off slightly
After I took the last warmup pic I went and scoured the web for some good 4k tests patterns (I only found a couple so far) but they were good enough for me to notice that the red pixels were doing some sort of scaling even though in the panel adjust the Horizontal and Vertical were both set to 0. Setting Red to H: +1 and V: -1 corrected the issue. Now it appears to be no scaling. So how do I know if it was scaling you say? On the horizontal and vertical test patterns it looked like 1 very solid line and another parallel line but much fainter. 1 click and the faint line disappeared. You can kinda see the pixel but you can defintely see HP screen texture.
Before Adjustment
After Adjustment
Focus & Focus Uniformity:
On a 100" HP screen it is tough to focus the 500es in so I can see the pixels. I mean really tough... I had a tough time distinguishing between texture and pixels on screen. I had to turn the light on in order for me to better see. Focus uniformity was excellent on all three sample and dare I say flawless? My 4810 looked just as good as the 500es. I didnt see anything different between the two in this department. The lens shift is very slight as the projectors are centered horizontally and very close vertically.
Lag: Both projectors fed straight from my HTPC. No AVR in path.
The 500es has worse lag than my RS4810. Game mode didn't alleviate this unfortunately. I didn't notice much of a difference between the different modes. I projected both images on the screen at the same time with a minor offset so I can clearly distinguish which cursors belong to which projector. I tried shutting down all processing such as RC and Dynamic Iris while in the Game preset and I didn't see much of a difference. I formally asked Sony Japan (well my girlfriend did on my behalf) if Game Preset was supposed to lower the response time and if it's a bug. No response yet as of Dec 4.
Contrast Pt1: 500ES Iris fully closed, Dynamic Iris Off; 4810 Iris Fully Open; Both Low Lamp.
With the Iris fully closed on the 500es and the Iris fully open on the 4810 the contrast difference between the two are very subtle. The 4810 has some weird reflection where if I display a black screen with a white text box in the lower right corner I can see a very faint white text box in the upper left. Mind you its very faint and I can only see it when my eyes fully adjust to the scene. Why do I mention this? Well in my opinion I think the 500es has slightly better ANSI contrast than the 4810. This is based on watching movie credits where the black level between the two were very close but If you look at the credits directly the 500es looks a little blacker but if you look towards the edges and let your eyes adjust then you can see the black floor is better on the 4810, but when focusing back onto the credits the 500es looks slightly better and I attribute this specifically to the better ANSI contrast on the 500es.
RS4810
Sony 500ES
This is the best I can do when capturing this photo. I locked the exposure settings so the pics match with what I see. The 4810 does have slightly redder skin tone. The 4810 in this particular scene makes the contrast a little noticeable. Look at Jude Laws cheek. Thats where you'll spot the difference.
Motion Pt1: Both projectors not utilizing motion flow or CMD.
With no Motion flow on either the Sony or the equivalent on the JVC. I think there is a slight advantage to the 500es. Its not day and night difference to me. The slight advantage is it seems the 4810 streaks/blurs a hair more than the 500es. I used movie credits to gauge which had the better motion resolution. I test slow movie credits and fast ones. Now I already had it in my mind that the Sony was better in this department based on what I read here. So I really spent a lot of time A/B between the two and got my girlfriend to chime in. I didn't want to fool myself into believing the Sony was better because thats what everyone says. Ultimately I am concluding the 500es is in fact better in motion handling than the 4810 without using any motion enhancing algorithms on either one. The difference IMO is slight and can be noticeable on certain content such as credits and certain pan shots.
4K vs Faux 4K using HTPC:
Now I had an issue with my Denon X4000. It wasn't letting me go to 4K and so I had to bypass it and go straight from my HTPC. I don't know if there is an issue with the X4000 or what but It was acting really poopie when I was trying to feed a 4K signal. It locked up once and had to turn it off and turn it on again and after that it was ok but it seemed like I had to do things in a certain order for it to act right. On the other hand it could've been my fault but I'm gonna go ahead and say the X4000 was poopie.
If you are using an HTPC hands down the 500es is like viewing a Macbook Pro Retina. The 4810 looks pretty good, but the text on the 500es just looks beautiful. If you look at zombie10k's shootout thread there is a good picture of what e-shift II is doing to the text. Looks slightly jagged on the 4810. There is just no comparison here. It just looks much better on the 500es. The 4810 kinda pisses me off on text and I usually turn off the e-shift if I use my HTPC to view websites. It makes the text seem sharper and more pleasing to read this way. No amount of MPC settings on the 4810 comes close to the smoothness but yet crispiness of the 500es.
RS4810 eshift off
500es RC off
Panel Uniformity:
JVC RS4810
Sony 500ES
Not even close. The 500ES has the best consistent panel uniformity I have ever seen. My 4810 looks like a hot mess. In reality If I stared at an all black screen screen until my eyes fully adjust I can barely notice it.
3D Preview: Utilizing Samsung SSG-5100 3D Glasses. Results look identical with the JVC glasses. I don't have the Sony glasses on hand but I heard they make the 3D look like a soup sandwich on the 500ES.
3D is inconclusive at this moment. I'm still analyzing. I'm gonna bump the JVC to high lamp and open the Iris on the Sony to match the lumens and re-analyze contrast and then visit 3D performance. Hopefully this weekend.
500ES using Samsung 5100 glasses *****Updated 6 Dec******
2D Conclusion: *****Updated 6 Dec*******
I am heavily biased towards black level and contrast. I own a Kuro and I bought a JVC just for that. So with that out of the way let's get into it..
With the 4810 Iris fully open and 500es Iris fully closed and no processing on the Sony and Eshift set to film with all three sliders set to zero the picture quality difference is not readily apparent and it is subtle, but the Sony is better, gives a more smooth analog look.
If I take eshift off on the 4810 no contest. The 500es is superior. The eshift keeps the JVC in the game. The 4810 isn't bad without eshift but can't compare to a naturally 4K projector with real 4K pixels despite the content being 1080p. I can see the difference and I attribute this to my close viewing range to the screen. The 4810 looks more digital and the screen door effect is more pronounced.
The 500ES may not have the low black floor as the 4810 but it holds itself together during scenes with high brightness and pitch black at the same time. Like a flash light in the dark. Twice my girl and I moved out of the way during a scene in the movie and I didn't even think twice about it, seemed the natural thing to do as it was blindingly bright and I think subconsciously we felt we had to get out of the way. I have done this before on my 4810 but the effect wasn't as pronounced and I feel as the flashlight washes out the blacks a bit and I notice it sometimes and that detracts me from the movie for a brief moment.
The 500ES made me feel more engaged in the movie. I didn't notice the bright whites bleed all over the blacks like bloody murder on the 4810 sometimes. The effect is worst on 2.35 movies on the 4810 where the white bleeds into the black bars. The 500es bleeds into the black bars as well, but not as much. The 500es is also much more versatile in the brightness department whereas my 4810 is at its limits. Yeah my 4810 has been used for almost 800 hours now but the lumen drop is negligible since when I first got it. I still use low lamp with an iris setting from -15 to -6 depending what I will watch. The 500es can get extremely bright on my 100" 2.4 HP screen that it seriously hurts my eyes.
Once I started to turn on the 500es controls like Dynamic Iris and RC the 500es pulls away. I kinda feel like the 500es is a Porsche with 500lbs of weight in the trunk to match it to my 4810. The 500ES give the better overall picture, and I reckon the advantage will be even bigger those with bigger screens than I. The 500ES can't match the black floor of the 4810 but with the amount of brightness on tap using Dynamic Iris and the better ANSI contrast it becomes irrelevant quickly through a lot of content that doesn't have a lot of black space.
If you are watching space films the 4810 will be better in contrast but up to a certain point. If there is something really bright the black level isn't as noticeable anymore and the 500ES really shines here. Sometimes I prefer the 4810 and sometimes I prefer the 500es. If I put my 4810 in high lamp and clamp down the iris and open the iris up a little on the 500es to match lumens the contrast difference is better on the 4810. If I clamp down to -15 and try to match with the 500es the 4810 looks washed out because I can't get the 500es to go that low in lumens and the 500es just plain old looks better because its much brighter, black floor be damned.
The 500es OOTB using Cinema 1 profile is accurately calibrated to D65 rec709 and that is really amazing! The jury is still out for how well the calibration out of the box holds up and I'll update as I take measurements.
Once I start using the Reality Creation controls and Dynamic Iris the 500es begins to overpower my 4810 in lumen output so much that when I try to A & B my 4810 looks so dull. As far as the dynamic iris is concerned on the limited setting it was really good. I highly prefer the DI on the 500es than to the Epson's from the 6010, to 5020ub. I didn't notice any weird gamma shifts that messed with the colors like I did with the Epson. I also think the Iris is much faster but I'm going from memory and not a direct test for what it's worth.