Official Sony VPL-VWPRO1 (VPL-HW20) Owner's Thread - Page 3

How was the brightness comparison between the two? I am leaning toward the Sony right now, but the brightness level could be the deciding factor. I like the motorised lens shift and zoom, but I would only use it once for the initial setup, so could deal with the manual instead of motorized.

Missed that somehow, thanks.

The lumens values at D65 for the JVC X3 and the sony HW20 are the same.

For example SONY HW20

Mode Lampe HIGH D65 : 900 lumens
Mode Lampe NORMAL D65 : 562 lumens

JVC X3

LAMPE high without iris : 898,3 lumens
LAMPE norma without iris : 562,8 lumens

Brightness about the same at D65. For the Sony, make sure it can work with your room dimensions. As the zoom is lower (1.53:1) than the JVC (2:1) and lens shift is smaller range as well.

As for brightness overtime, the JVC's lamp does seem to drop off over time, not sure if the Sony will be better or worse in this regard.

I believe both of these will work with my setup. The projector would be about 16' from a 133" (16:9) screen. The center of the screen is about 18" below the projector (which will be ceiling mounted). Horizontally the projector will be centered with the screen.

OK, so I'm not an expert at screenshots, but here are a couple from Inception, including a shot of a completely black title screen. I see no evidence of "light" corners, even in person. Also, this is essentially "out of the box" using Cinema mode and color temp low.

The lens of the Sony is approximately even with the top of the screen in my current setup (about 27 inches above the center of a 110" diagonal 16:9 screen) and is slightly off center horizontally. I still have some wiggle room left in the lens shift as well. You will certainly have no issues with placement with this projector since you are much closer to screen center and have a larger screen. (The JVC is even more flexible.)

Is there any image degradation by using the lens shift? could someone inform what is the vertical offset for a 90" or 100" diagonal image? thanks

I originally set the projector up on a stand and used minimal lens shift. In my current setup, I am using most of the lens shift capability. While a pro may be able to detect some image differences, I can't really detect any with a critical amateur eye.

As far as offset goes, for a 100 inch (16:9) screen (~49 inches high), you should have approximately 31 7/8 inches of vertical shift, meaning the center of your lens could be up to 7 3/8 inches above the top of screen (assuming zero horizontal shift), but that leaves NO room for error. Multiply by .9 for a 90 inch screen. In general, I recommend trying to get the center of lens no higher than top of screen.

Geo, thanks for the screens!

How do the blacks look to you, how about fade to black scenes, etc.?

Good to hear about the uniform blacks. Personally, I own a Sony A3000 Sxrd TV (uses 120hz sxrd panels), and the blacks are completely uniform. Never noticed the slightest bit of bright corners in 3 years of owning it. So I think it is incorrect to assume Sxrd is plagued by this issue. Maybe it was in the past, but so was JVC (HD1).

Those screen-shots look very good. Definitely no bright corner issue there - and it's usually more obvious in photos than in person.

Like convergence, the bright corner issue varies from unit to unit. Not enough reports yet to know what's typical for these projectors. Let's hope most of them look like the one above.

I'm not an "expert" by any means, but blacks look very good to me. When I look at say the pupils of someone's eyes, they look really deep black compared to the surrounding color. Admittedly I'm using auto iris, but I have not had one moment of distraction from iris-induced brightness changes. The Inception title shot is essentially almost like a fade to black and it looks pretty dark. Not sure whether it helps give you a better idea, but I would say that in my opinion, this projector on a fade to black looks more like "off black" than "dark grey" if that makes sense. Certainly there is some slight bit of light in the room on a fade to black and it does not look as dark as the velvet trim borders of my screen, but that level of black is not realistic from any projector I have ever seen.

As they say, you cannot project black

But your impressions of the picture sound very good. Also good to hear that the DI is very quick, but this is usually a Sony strongpoint anyways. Great purchase, may look into this PJ as well for 2D.

thank you for the explanation. Is there a PQ degradation if a little vertical shift is applied? I'm not sure yet if I could manage to have the lens leveled with top of screen. thanks, Jose

Let me be clear, to use ZERO lens shift, the lens will need to be exactly in the CENTER of the screen, NOT level with the top. If you put the lens even with the top of the screen, you will need to use quite a bit of lens shift (around 24.5 inches for a 100 inch screen). If your lens is higher than the top of the screen, you will need to use more than 24.5 inches of shift, but the MAX shift is slightly less than 32 inches. Thus, if you need to go a couple of inches above the top of the screen you should be OK, but I would not go more than 4 or 5 inches above and that is assuming you will be exactly centered horizontally on the screen (you want to leave a little margin for error). My experience is that the lens shift does not introduce signficant picture quality degradation even near the extreme end of the shift.

Humm, I was all wrong. My bad!!
Cristal clear now. Well, I'll be using a motorized lift system which will allow me to have the projector's lens at most 5" above the screen's vertical center, which I think requires minimum vertical lens shift. regards, Jose

One of the biggest change I've noticed (aside from the great picture quality) is how bright the darn thing is!

Before I'd religiously close 3 sets of blinds and turn all lights off. This past weekend, I watched all 4 NFL wildcard games with about 200 watts of lights in the room on and didn't care! To me, that's amazing. Previously, the picture would be very washed out. I'm glad I made this blind buy.

What projector did you have before?

Can anyone comment on the Motion Enhancer option on the vwPro1?

Is this function accessible in a user menu or the service menu?

Is it a similar implementation as used on the vw85?

Is the vwPro1 a 120hz panel where a 1080p24 source gets repeated like on the vw85?

Does anyone know the native on/off contrast or ANSI contrast for the vwPro1?

Thanks

I do not have this projector, but it is on the top of my list along with the JVC HD250.

I had a couple Sony projectors. I had a Sony HS10 (or was it HS20?) which was a 720p projector. I think got an HS50 which later I replaced with an HS60. It was also a 720p projector but an improvement on the HS20.


I'm projecting on a white wall . The other projectors were also projecting on a white wall, so that's a constant. I used AVIA to calibrate the brightness, sharpness, color saturation, tint, red, blue, green, etc.


Sorry, I have no idea about the motion enhancer questions. I plead ignorance. Regarding the ANSI, I think there were some reviews that measured it. I think the product specs say 1300:1, but I have no idea if that's on/off, right/left, up/down, male/female or what.

Thanks John...

The vwPro1 had to an awesome upgrade from your HS60. I went from the HS60 to the HW10 and I was very happy.

Thanks for your comments.

BTW...

I just received confirmation from a Sony contact. The vwPro1 shares the new tighter pixel gap design of the vw90 panels, the Advanced Auto Iris 3 with Auto Contrast Algorithm of the vw85 and vw90, but only has a 14K:1 native on/off contrast, as compared to 20K:1 & 25K:1 for the vw85 and vw90. Still, this is great info to keep in mind when considering this projector as compared to any previous Sony SXRD projectors.

Did that come with the projector? I forget I wonder if it uses the network? But does it even have an Ethernet port? Damn, I'm a bad owner, I don't know what it came with or what's back there! I was so excited to get the projector, I rigged it up, connected the HDMI out from my receiver and haven't looked at it since (or even at the CD or remotes that may or may not have been included) - too busy enjoying watching it.

ID3 (Image Director 3) may or may not work with the vwPro1. Traditionally, ID3 is included free of charge with any projector it can access, and does not work on any projector which does not include the software.

If ID3 does work with the vwPro1, you need a PC/windows to run the program and cabling to connect to the RS 232 port. Perhaps the ethernet port would work as well, I don't know.