TruVue Vango review - Page 22

Oh, I knew why you were going there. I was just wondering if you were going to fly into Gainesville or the bigger airports and rent a car.

Good point. I usually fly to Jacksonville and rent a car, but it's only a bit further from Orlando to Gainesville, which I've done several times. So maybe it would be better, as you say, to go in and out of Orlando. Tx!

Millerwill, I hope you took my last comment as tongue in cheek.

Back on topic, this is my first PJ, but I have been watching a friends DLA 950 regularly since it was released.

Like I have said before, all I have is a bed sheet which is obviously not ideal, but I am having a hard time telling which has better blacks. It could be the JVC by a nose at the moment, but then I would rather make a comment after I get a proper screen setup. If I had them side by side I may be able to give a better opinion. But that aside, I think the strength of the Vango is that it put out a much brighter image while holding great blacks. Even with the JVC on a new bulb the image seems way brighter.

Sorry I could not help beyond this, but I am satisfied that it is putting out a superior image to the 950 even on a bed sheet as a screen.

Dave. when I was in law school I went to a toga party with a really attractive coed and she was wearing a bed sheet. Later that evening I discovered that was all she was wearing.

I am going to stick with the bed sheet now.

She certainly got rid of it quickly and did even bother to fold it up. To each his or her own.

Makes sense, I didn't think Alan was old enough to live in St. Pete!!!

Probably the only one in Bradenton with a serious home theater..

Question regarding vertical image offset.

Not sure why I'm so dense regarding vertical lens shift percentages, but so be it!

With a 50" vertical screen, is the maximum lens position above the top of the screen 5 or 10 inches???

Kevin

Since you have 60% vertical lens shift, measured from screen center, that gives you 10% of you screen height which you can use if necessary. 10% of 50 inches obviously is 5 inches. Just as all other projectors that have lens shift, Its use is not a free lunch. I am not going to discuss it here again. I have many posts throughout thisforum about this. As a rule, one should not mount the projector higher than lens center at screen top. Manufacturers often include lens shift above this but doing so is for marketing considerations, to offer more mounting flexibility. Some say and others do not, to avoid its maximum use. Its essentially the same degradation that occurs regardless of brand though. The only way to allow extreme lens shift would be a extremely large prohibitive cost lens with a hugh center spot.

And there are some pj's that REQUIRE it to be ABOVE the screen, sometimes by quite a large amount (e.g., I remember the Optoma 81, I believe it was; for me would have had to have been ~18" above the top of the screen; crazy.) Fortunately these are not so common anymore.

Isnt the InFocus SP8602 one of those PJ's that work better mounted above the top of the screen as well?

A lot of projectors with large offsets were really presentation projectors thrown into the HT market. Over the years this offset received a lot of complaints as most HT people could not fit this offset into their theater design.

Obviously a projector can be designed with a required fixed offset. The lens and lens mounting are designed so that when the chip is centered in the lens, it angles down correctltly in correct relationship to the plane of the screen and filling the screen so that trapezoidial distortion does not occur. Such projectors are the the best for the best optical performance re say focus accross the entire plane of the screen. But such projectors are limited in sales potential due to relative installation flexibity without tilting the screen.

regarding the Infocuses which now have lens shift, what is optimum placement involves trading off certain parameters. Brightness, sharpness, contrast. But peak sharpness will always be obtained with the projector set up with the chip image coming from lens center.

It seems to me that if one's projector was mounted in a multi-purpose room, the greatest amount of offset would be most beneficial. If I wanted a projector in my family room, I'd want it pretty much on the ceiling. The screen would optimally sit lower and close to eye level.

That said, I'm not aware of any really good projectors that support serious downward shifting these days. Five inches above the screen top is more or less the screen top.

There certainly are advantages to having it up on the ceiling and out of the way. In my case, though, I wanted to use a HiPower screen, and this location for the pj is far from optimal for it (the retro-reflected light goes back to the ceiling). Very many considerations come into play in various room situations; it's good to have different choices available.

I agree with you -- I'd like as much shift as possible.

The recent JVCs support mounting 30% above the top of the screen (i.e. on a 50" high screen, the projector can be ~15 inches above the screen top). That's the most I've come across, although I haven't been searching on this criterion. Obviously the caveats already expressed regarding optical quality may apply.

In my under-construction theater, one option under consideration is actually lowering the front row by saw-cutting the slab and creating a 12" deep "pit". I have a low ceiling, so raising the back row is less desirable.

The problem is that the front row is the prime row in my theater, so the screen would need to be somewhat low to make for the most pleasing viewing angle, and that then causes problems in terms of projector placement.

All the buzz for the new JVC projectors seems to have diminished interest in LED DLP projectors, which seems odd. Are people thinking that this generation of D-ILA projectors are now capable of being better than DLP projectors? Or is it just the price? Not that long ago I had the impression that people thought DLP had better sharpness and better ANSI contrast - giving more "pop" than D-ILA.

I'm buying a new projector this fall and could really use some input from those who have seen the Vango and the new JVC projectors.

Here's the main difference - $$$$$

I think it's more a case of "drowned out" than diminished. JVC has a great price point with options to cover any budget in the $3k-10k range. Whenever anything JVC comes out there's always a huge uproar about it.

They're just by their nature going to get a lot more attention than projectors in the $10k-20k+ range.

Other than that, DLP just isn't that "exciting" these days. They throw a great picture, they've thrown a great picture for ages. What's really happened of most note in the past few years is that to a large extent it seems DLP has largely abandoned the $3k-10k. Maybe I shouldn't say that, maybe it's just more a case of "mediocre" DLPs have been caught up to/overtaken by other technologies. If you read around I think you'll find that in the $10k+ range DLP still gets about the most respect of any tech out there.

Problem is in the <$10k things like lens quality, pixel resolving ability, "ANSI"/MTF/inter-pixel sharpness/contrast just aren't weighted as heavily as things like (uncalibrated) lumens and sequential contrast.

For a good while there, even a "mid range" DLP could compete with JVC and Sony and Epson, not even compete but beat on just about every level. Any more the mid range (<$10k) can really only compete on ANSI/MTF/inter-pixel sharpness/contrast, and that's a somewhat abstract concept if you haven't actually seen it.


I think they still do. But frankly, I think a lot/most don't really care. Most here care primarily about sequential contrast/black level, and unless you're willing to spend quite a lot of money on a DC4 machine with a good DI, DLP just arguably isn't that competitive there.

Once and for all. The Sim2 50 is essentially the same as the Vango. There are cosmetic differences. Performance wise they are identical. The Vango does has the extra brightness mode in the TI enabled. But one must have an eecolor box to correct the most noticeable color errors associated with that mode. I think we will see that mode enabled in future Sim2 LEDs and use of a correction process licensed from EE and called something else so Sim2 can take credit for it. I don`t know anything inside re this except that EE has been very agressive in trying to get other manufacturers to license it from them and the rumor mill has that they have been quite suscessful in doing so. There are only so many manufacturers selling DLPs now. And the mode of getting extra brightness is a TI mode available on all TI drivers. The mode is not proprietary to anyone other than TI. Sim2 is very very aggresive in staying ahead of the performance curve or at least not falling behind it in any area.

I get the Sim2 50/Vango similarity and I'm not concerned with how good the Vango is. What I'm struggling with is if the new JVC projectors might have improved to the point that I should get one instead of a DLP. As Stranger89 commented upon, there are very few mid-priced DLP projectors these days. Runco makes a couple, but they seem to be Planar models that are several years old... it really seems to me that DLP is marching in place (at least in the under $10K range). I'm hoping someone can tell me if this is just a perception from successful D-ILA & LCoS marketing, or not.

Reports are that the new RS40/50/60 are brighter and sharper than earlier JVC projectors. I think the idea of the Vango is wonderful and I know I'd be happy if I got one. But I wonder if I'd be just as happy if I got a RS40 plus an EE color box.

I think your perception is correct. Seems like TI just doesn't consider it profitable to invest significant research into developing it further; must consider the market too small.

If the new JVC's do indeed have signficantly improved ANSI CR this year, this will remove one of the last aspects of how dlp had a leg up on lcos.

You know, I still don't get why everyone thinks the new JVCs are brighter. Everything I've read is that they're still right around 900Lumens at D65, which is right where the old ones were. And Jason has said before that if you calibrate the older JVCs to high color temps they are brighter than most other machines (Epson).

So from where I sit, it looks like JVC did nothing with brightness but to raise the specification on the machine based on a higher color temp, under the "excuse" of it being for 3D mode.


Well to answer that question I'd go read the Mico50 thread in the $20k+ forum. I think there were a few comparisons done to the RS20/RS35.


They seem to have moved on to 4k development.


There will still be the motion issues and uniformity, convergence.

1) I suspect the reason is that they have a brighter bulb (220 watts vs 200).
2) I did! based on that I decided to pass on last years' JVC projectors.
3) There was some discussion that JVC has improved their motion issues. Convergence is a problem with all 3 chip solutions, isn't it?

It is great that TI is moving ahead with 4K development, but it is still leaving those of us who want to spend between 5-10K with not much to get excited about in the DLP world.

Stanger. JVC used a bulb this year that puts out at least 10% more light (the bulb is more efficient and higher wattage) plus revised the optical path to make it more efficient. To silly ole me, this means more light at D65. While it is true that the 3D mode is where the 1300 ANSI lumen spec comes from and which would not be at d65, it seems to me me intuitively obvious that the bulb and optical path changes mean more light at D65 than previous years. How much more. Dunno. But i am guessing 150 more lumens. This of course doesn`t mean that if the old was say 900, this would make the picture 17% (rounding) brighter.nes eyes would see it as being slightly brighter since the lumens would have had to be increased to 3600 for one to see a doubling of brightness.

Shows how little I've been paying attention to the JVCs, I knew they had a new lamp, but didn't catch it was higher wattage. I'd just seen that they're still rated at 900Lumens for 2D/D65 just like the old ones.

Sorry, but that's not true. They're not "rated" for any specific Lumens for 2D/D65 at this point. All we've seen are guesses about how many Lumens we might get at D65. We don't have that data yet. The 900 Lumens you're refering to is nothing but a guess.

Madshi. I think the issue is whether the lumens are up from last year at d65. I think it fairly safe to say they are at least considering nothing other than a 10% more efficient bulb.

That's right, they aren't saying anything but 1300 are they (which is unofficially at 8000K).

Agreed.


Yep.

Back to the TruVue Vango. Personally, I was tempted for a while, but I decided against the Vango because of 3 reasons (sorted in order of importance):

(1) I need a rather short throw (~1.4x) which the Vango can't do.
(2) For my HTPC software development I need 3D capability.
(3) There have been hints about local dimming features coming to LED DLP soon, which should help on/off contrast quite a lot.

I'm a bit disappointed in the Vango throw limitations. I mean they've already split up the zoom range, but they still bottom out at 1.5x? Epson, Sony, Panasonc and JVC all go down to 1.4x, IIRC. I wish they'd have split the Vango into 3 zoom ranges with the short throw lens going down to 1.3x or so. That would've been nice.