Official Sony vpl-vw70 (emphasis on B-stock)

The Sony VW70:

We are all late-bloomers, this is a 2-year old projector. Most of us purchased this projector from an incredible B-stock deal offered here by AVS for only $1,300 (they may have a few left here and there).

With the Sony vw70's incredible contrast for the $1,300 we paid, I'm sure most of us are very pleased. However, as mine comes in tomorrow, I'm not generally the future-telling type, so I'll have to wait and see.

It certainly destroys any projector's black levels anywhere near the price we paid for these B-stock units (easily rivaling the JVC hd250).

I've seen contrast ratings with the IRIS turned off ranging from 10,000:1 all the way up to 15,000:1, and saw one guy claim 17,000:1 on a vw80 which is supposed to have the same parts for the most part. Kick that IRIS into FULL gear, and we're approaching 40,000:1, now those are some dark blacks, and we're almost (arguably) in RS40 territory, and certainly not too far back from the JVC Rs20/25.

We also get motorized zoom and focus, incredible black levels, automatic zone adjustments (allows to custom align panels if you have mis-convergence, hence to fix one of those "fuzzy fuzzy" looks to your black text on white backgrounds).

Regardless, this was a steal, vw60r's and vw85'rs welcome in here too of course (heck this a forum, so we'll assume everyone is welcome, and even if you aren't welcome, doesn't look like I can do much about it).

Let's see what you think of your vw70.

I will post my review in a few days, still waiting on mine, should be hear in less than 24 hours, ya-hoo!!! (or google if you choose)

Sorry for the very bad jokes (as always).

How does the vw70 hold up to your Epson 8700ub for movies?

And... we have the one feature no-one else has, PIXEL SHIFT & ZONE ADJUSTMENT, we can fix convergence (to a point - heh).

I'm hungry, but I'll save the appetite for tomorrow. Here's completely hoping I eat my earlier words of this being a "hold-over" projector.

Personally, I would get the 106" Manual B HP 2.4 gain screen and then do the DIY later. You'll be hard-pressed to match the characteristics of an HP screen I imagine, although I'm not a screen DIY'r, so can't say for sure, pretty sure you can get a DIY close to the same quality of the HP if done perfectly, but I have my doubts in how easy it would be.

Reasons:
If you have a real screen at first, you'll have something to compare to the DIY so you'll know how it matches up. The HP Manual B 106" is very cheap, about the cost of a very cheap stereo (if you know where to buy it from), and in many cases the cost comes out lower than a DIY, or maybe only $100 more worst-case.

Note that you can't get the Manual B over 106", so for 110"+ you'd have to go with the HP Manual C, which is about double the cost.

That said, up to you of course, but DIY can take some skill to do it right.

Technically as you know, we're not supposed to talk about prices, although it shouldn't really matter so much just for a cheap screen.

The HP 2.4 gain 106" Manual B is right at that same price as he posted above, just to give you a general idea.
Fixed screens are better, but at these prices I paid for the 106" Manual B, I can practically consider it a throw-away if I need to.

Great, please do. Some of us might grab a vw85 even though we already own the vw70 if you get anymore of those in, and we'd try to resell our vw70's to another AVS member for about the same great price we paid.

*ignoring above poster*

Haven't watched enough content, but first impressions are decent. Sharpness is BETTEr than I expected after panel adjustments, very good.

It's plenty bright with my HP 2.4 gain screen, watching it in cinema mode with lamp on low is no problem for the time being.

IRIS is exceptional, better than any projector I've ever seen probably. Black levels are very good, cannot tell the difference between this and the RS20 unless A/B'n, at least from memory I'm pretty certain with the IRIS this thing gets very close to the RS20 on many scenes.

The black levels are better than I expected, I think many of the reviewers underrated the black levels.

The Epson 8500ub's black levels by memory are no match for this projector. I also have some images I took from a camera of the Epson and I just compared them to this projector, the Epson is a good 2-3 steps behind in black levels.

Originally, I thought this projector was uncomfortably soft, but after fixing the convergence with the panel alignment and enabling noise reduction settings, BIG BIG improvement. Nice, now that POP is getting much closer to the DLP POP we strive for, and less like an LCD projector.
(and yes people, I know this is not a DLP or LCD, it is SXRD/LCOS)

I was able to dial in a the panel adjustments to where my convergence is only off by maybe 1/2 pixel on one color, close enough, looking better now. Essentially I got rid of the convergence fringing a bit after adjustments, hence the 1/2 to 1 pixel off-color now mostly resides within the boundaries of the text itself instead of fringing on the outside.

I used the full panel adjustment, the zone adjustment was way too much trouble (will have to read up on it, as it appears to shift one part of the image at a time).
Don't give up on this panel adjustment feature if your convergence is off, it's an excellent feature, you may have to play with it a bit to get it dialed in right. Even if all 3 of your panels are off a bit, this will help a lot.

I do not see any artifacts after using the full pixel adjustment, it seems to be just as visibly good as if the original convergence was nearly spot on.
Many reviewers have said only use the ZONE one and not the pixel shift, but even after doing an S&M test which checks panel alignment, the test passed better after the panel shift on my unit than before I enabled the setting.

Once I got this setup, and the noise reduction enabled, and the contrast/brightness set, the PICTURE improved tremendously.

Originally it was just a tad bit sharper than my Z5, now it is a whole step sharper. Also enabling the image noise reduction setting improved PERCEIVED sharpness. You'd think it would have the opposite effect, but it didn't, it helped the perceived sharpness because too much image noise seemed to bother me, and I think due to the fact that the image noise was too random.

OK I spent some time with the Spears and Muncil disk, but haven't used my eye-one meter yet (will do another day).

Everyone really needs to turn NOISE REDUCTION on for this projector.

So, I turned both NR and MPEG noise reduction on Medium for the time being, BIG improvement in both movies and TV, really smoothed the image. Out of everything I changed, this was the most drastic improvement (as well as adjusting brightness and contrast of course). Before I turned this on, the image noise was really bothering me, now it's not MUCH of an issue at all.

Unlike some projectors which do some built-in behind-the-scenes noise filtering, the Sony does almost none. So this means you are going to see more noise in the picture compared to most projectors until you turn this setting ON. It's under the Expert Menu > NR setting (off / low / medium / high). Before I had this turned on, I could not understand why this Sony projector was producing more noise than any other projector I have used, amazing BEFORE and AFTER difference, almost like watching a different projector.

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Almost all content we watch has some noise in the image (especially cable feeds and Netflix), so at a minimum I would turn this to low, and medium or high ain't a bad idea either. It provides a nice smoothing effect that really improved the image quality. There are 2 types (standard NR and MPEG), and the MPEG Noise Reduction setting appears to be a separate reduction capability. Also note that the MPEG one looks complicated at first, but actually it's quite simple, you just move the square around and you can read the result at the bottom (it will say low/low ... medium/medium, etc...).

Now I am starting to respect the Picture Quality of this projector, about time!
All I have to say to others is, this projector needs tweaking in areas many other projectors do not, hence it's sort of the opposite of some projectors. Let's say other projectors mainly need color adjustments, whereas this projector needs noise and maybe panel adjustments if your convergence is off. That's what makes this a quality 5K projector, it's excellent ability to correct MFR flaws, and the precise controls on things like noise levels, not to mention the darn-near perfect color!

The color accuracy is very good in Cinema mode, but Sony's default Contrast and Brightness are way way off, and I imagine this will hold true for most of us. Art's contrast and brightness settings were about right even though I'm using an HP screen, note though he used high lamp mode, I am using low lamp mode.

I used the Spears and Munsil Bluray to calibrate to the Plunge Low/High/Contrast patterns, and I ended up with almost the identical contrast setting that Art's review used. That definitely improved the intrascene contrast of images.

Basically it appears you need a ratio of around 2:1 (contrast to brightness) in order to maintain the proper contrast and shadow detail, of course this could vary for everyone's different setup. You might also find that the ratio needs to be 2:1 + 10% extra contrast. So for instance, somewhere around 65contrast:30brightness or 55contrast:25brightness might also be near accurate depending on your setup. I ended up lowering mine around 80/35 for now or so just because my image was too bright until the lamp wears in a bit more. So in order to show all the reference levels of contrast and shadow detail without clipping, you need to set this. Even 100 contrast might still be doable with an adjusted brightness. The SXRD/LCOS panels tend to not blow the contrast out at the higher settings, unlike LCD projectors contrast and brightness settings.

I haven't gotten my eye-one meter out just yet, the projector's color accuracy is so spot on that it barely even matters. I did run through the blue filter color tests on Spears & Munsil real fast just to make sure I wasn't way off on color, but the projector's obviously already too close in color accuracy for this to show any color differences on a Spears & Munsil's blue filter testing.

The intrascene contrast is very good, very modernish DLP looking on bright scenes, kind of like a less-sharp DLP with better blacks (this is usually how I've described LCOS).

Still doesn't quite have the maximum 3-Dimensionality look of DLP, but I think this is mainly related to LCOS being smoother and not quite as sharp, as well as LCOS having a tad bit less of SDE (which can improve perceived sharpness to some extent). Let's just say that it is still my opinion that LCOS comes closer to the DLP pop than LCD in general. That said, the projector has a good bit of POP, it's just different. This projector has VERY good color POP.

The sharpness controls on this projector have almost no effect on the image but maybe I'll try this again, so far for me it's very hard to tell at all between 100 sharpness and 0, but I'll have to play with it more to see why. Keep in mind I've been staring at this thing a while though and my eyes are a bit tired.

Color wise I don't think you cannot get any better then this, the colors are just about picture perfect as far as vividness goes. I will give this projector a +2 over the previous Mits hc3800 I had for colors (which the colors were not quite as vivid as this).

That's it so far, definitely can't imagine anything else coming close to this for $1300, the hc4000 would be the closest thing, but you'd lose the black levels and gain a bit of sharpness.

...Edited out (found image noise solution)

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Note that you probably should not mess with the Color Management System unless you have a calibration meter. The blue-filter color tests from DVD's are not accurate enough to even bother using a CMS, especially on a projector like the Sony which can get so close to perfect on skin tones without even touching the CMS. I think the optimal color balance for Cinema in Medium with Lamp on Low and Gamma off, is going to be somewhere in the range of 48-55, depending on your screen and setup, but I'm just eyeing it and haven't calibrated yet. You may try Gamma 3 as well.
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Did you try Cinema mode in medium color, see if that helps as a temporary solution until you get a chance to calibrate. Also, the Gamma 3 setting gets you closer to D65 if all other settings are correct. Pale usually means the reds are weak and either the blues or greens are too strong, or there is just not enough color saturation in the image overall. Skin tones are harder to get accurate then everything else, but for me the projector came out-of-the-box with near perfect skin tones in Cinema mode on medium. If you don't have your brightness and contrast set right, even this can mess with skin tones. Pretty much every setting affects skin tones, that's why projectors have more trouble with them than anything else, but this projector has the best skin tones I've ever seen. So obviously your settings are messed up.

FYI AGAIN EVERYONE
- Sorry to repeat myself, but NOISE REDUCTION IS VERY IMPORTANT:

Under the expert menu, there is a setting called NR, it's the noise reduction setting and YOU NEED TO TURN IT ON.

This setting seems to make or break this projector entirely, I'm suprised Sony didn't have NR internally on at least a LOW,
without this on, there is just too much noise regardless of what your watching.

I'd recommend it on LOW or MEDIUM with all content at a minimum even for Blurays, and although I haven't tested it extensively on S&M test patterns, but HIGH doesn't seem to hurt the image either.

This was actually a huge improvement for me, it took the POP up to another level once the image was cleaned up. The image noise I was getting was really hurting the experience before.

Here is what the MPEG one does, again I have both the NR (standard noise reduction) and the MPEG one set to medium.
http://esupport.sony.com/docs/imanua...mpegnr_uc.html