Official Sony VPL-HW30(A)ES Owners Thread - Page 4

Anyone able to check if all 3 panels in the Sony have the same polarization? It may be a concern for those with screens that retain some polarization.

Sorry I had missed that you had already confirmed you are not using much lens shift. So it really is a quality control or more likely shipping damage issue with the projector's optics. Sounds like your only choice is to ship back to Sony for repairs or get the dealer to exchange it for a replacment.

Mark H. (AVS sales) indicated he planned to check, but I haven't seen any info to indicate if he has done so yet, or the results.

Ekki posted the link to the www.cine4home.de review (translated version is HERE) of the pre-production HW30 then posted an update for the production unit. As I recall they measured about 900 lumens in calibrated 2D mode and about 150 lumens for 3D mode (including the light loss thru the Sony 3D shutter glasses). Both values are for high lamp mode and with the iris fully open.

I'd like to test this with my setup. The 3D is the brightest i've seen yet through the glasses. (vs Rs40 / Xpand 103, RS50 / Xpand 103, Monstervision 3D, Acer 5360 / Nvidia 3D vision).

of course having the HP screen doesn't hurt either.

So jealous of your screen

Wililiam - Let me know if you have any other issues with the 3D and your PC.

OMG!!! 803's used as surrounds?! WOW!

Native On/Off contrast is atleast 2x @ 20K-25K:1 depending on who you ask. That puts the native contrast in the ball park of a very good JVC LCos. Add in the auto iris and you have stunning on/off performance.

Better Lens which offers over all better clarity, something I posted about when watching Avatar 2D on both the HW10 and vw90. It's a level of realism you would notice.

Better colors... if the HW30 is more like the HW10, the vw90 will present a more vibrant image, although the extra lumens of the HW30 will also contribute to a great deal of POP.

Power Zoom, Focus, Offset, etc... is a great feature set if your projector is a hard to reach location, but not so important if the projector is easy to reach. In fact, I actually prefer manual focus if I can reach the projector, since I find it easier to pull focus quickly. It's also great for running a 16:9 and 21:9 screen/masking setup.

If I were in the market for a new Sony and had to chose between a HW30 and a vw90, the Motion Flow on the HW30 would make the decision more difficult. The math basically comes down to Approx...

$4K - HW30
$6-$7k vw90
$8-$9k for the vw95 when it's ready (guess-timate)

Because the hw30 3D is only marginally better, I would either go for a good deal on a vw90 or wait on the vw95.

I'd like to see the 90 next to my 30 and RS50. With the smallest of changes, I can get the HW30 to rival the IQ of my heavily calibrated RS50. i watched some 2D clips tonight and it's impressive how bright it is on my HP screen. The contrast is very good, definitely exceeding my expectations or the #'s you'd see on the spec sheets.

Someone buying this projector can take it out of the box, turn it on, and enjoy quality skin tones and overall color. Gamma is right on out of the box and I have little desire to mess with any of the settings since it looks so nice.

@ William - I checked my focus on the 1920x1080P desktop.. i am not seeing the same issue you posted, my start menu and time in both corners are quite clear with no apparent 'double image' as you posted earlier. Hopefully your replacement will work out well.

So the consensus is that the hw30 is only marginally better than the vw90? I know it isn't a lot brighter lumens wise in 3d, but isn't the depth and ghosting greatly improved over the old model?

I haven't seen the VW90, but i don't think anyone is going to be disappointed with the 3D coming from 3D frame packed blurays on the HW30. This is my 5th 3D projector (RS40, RS50, HW30, LED QUMI, Acer 5360) and currently the leader for 3D for certain. It rivals the ghost-free Acer 5360 more so than my JVC could and the FI in 3D is growing on me.

For this price point, the lack of noticeable ghosting 3D + Motion flow is a combo that is going to be tough to beat. This feels like a 2nd gen 3D projector with adjustments, no warmup time for 3D playback, etc. JVC will at least have to come up with a quality FI mode for 3D, faster refresh of the panels and less noticeable ghosting to compete with this model that is already on the street pre-cedia.

The price is almost the same as what folks were paying for a decent LCD just a few years ago. The popularity of 3D in 2011 must have been enough to get these CE's to keep the engineering going. In the next few months, we're going to have a few new 3D JVC's, more 3D Sonys, Panasonic 3D LCD, Mitsubishi 3D DLP (1080 + lens shift, yes!!), Optoma 3D DLP w/ Lens shift, etc.

This price category is going to quickly get busy with plenty of choices, certainly more than last year at this time.

Hey zombie how is it with side by side content compared to the rs40 and how is gaming

good question, I'll get to that over the weekend and post when I have some feedback.

I am curious about this as well. This is where my 40 falls apart.

Thanks for all the early reports guys. Sounds like one awesome projector! That FI in 3d sounds very cool!

so what would you guys suggest? i am torn on the Panasonic 3D lcd and this sony 3D.

however i have no idea when the panasonic will come out. but i think Cedia will be a good show to check to show their 3D LCD projector.

The dust blobs are the main reason for looking for a new PJ. My 4 year old Mits HC6000 was dust blob free until about 3 months ago and bam I have them all over the place.

My Mitsubishi HC5500 LCD had dust blobs after it was just a few months old. I used to take it completely apart and blew out what I could. Maybe Panasonic has found some way to get around the issue with an open light source path? Otherwise I wouldn't want to deal with that again.


William - why not just use it? if the center is primarily sharp, we generally don't tend to stare into the corners while viewing movies.

If you guys want to show off the 3D projector to guests that haven't seen 3D before, I recommend picking up this animation from Amazon UK.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Turtles-Tal...3239207&sr=8-1

I've been watching 3D projectors since about this time last year and have seen every single 3D bluray in existance (US and overseas). imo, this is the best display of 3D yet. They nail it on every scene with depth and pop outs.

This is also a difficult title for ghosting, there are plenty of colorful, high contrast scenes that creates noticeable ghosting on my RS50 (especially once the lamp starts dimming, it gets pretty bad) but looked very good on the HW30. We'll see how it holds up as the lamp starts to dim.

For what its worth. It is entirely possible that Panasonic won't be demoing its new projector at Cedia. I have been at Cedias where Panasonic had big displays but no projector on demo.

oh no, seriously, 100ms lag for gaming would kill this projector for me.have you tried the lip sync while in game mode? The vw90 only had 16ms lag, even in 3d mode. Can anyone else verify this? If so extremely disappointing!

True....i believe that was the case at last years CEDIA.

Oh, phew!
I'm 99% sure that this is the projector I will get, for the price point and performance, it sound great.but if the lag was that bad, I couldn't do it.

I'm very interested to hear how this compares to the rs40/x3

Panasonic didn't have any new offerings last year so the fact that it didn't show anything was predictable. Since PC has one undergoing evaluation right now indicates, to me at least, that Panasonic has demos and may show one at Cedia.

The Adventures of Sammy (turtles movie referred to above) is exceptional 3D, however, I feel there is some IMAX stuff that revivals it.

I am anxious to see how these new 3D projectors hold up over time. My Acer will do for now and it does what it is supposed to do which is kind of boring (no excessive lamp dimming, no ghosting, no warm up required etc.). I guess I can live with boring.

And there's my debate right now.... given how much the HW30 is doing, it's really hard to justify an additional $5k-$6k (which I think will be closer to the difference between the 30 and the 95 - I think your guesstimate on the VW95 is based on what it might be discounted to while you list the HW30 slightly above MSRP).

It's hard to say without knowing the specs of the VW95. I think it would be really hard to justify a VW90 over an HW30 if you're interested in 3D and can't wait to see what the VW95 has in store.

I'm not sure the quoted contrast specs will translate to the same variance in perceptible difference, meaning I doubt the contrast looks "almost half as good" as the VW90. I have no doubt the VW90 offers superior 2D performance... but will it be a large enough difference to justify $3k?

I wish I could see one of these running side-by-side with an 85 (which I am more than happy with and wouldn't consider ditching if I weren't interested in 3D). I know if I got an HW30, I'd be downgrading 2D performance in order to gain 3D. The big question is how much I'd notice.... As long as blacks don't start to look grey, I could be ok.

Plus, I'd imagine my 85 hasn't been at "peak" performance for awhile since I am pushing the life span of the lamp right now, hoping to make it until I either get the HW30 or the VW95.

I would be surprised if Panasonic did not show projectors this year. Last year they had nothing new but this year according to Projector Central there will another new model along with the 7000

I has been reported the VW95 is the 3D enabled replacement for the VW85 (not the VW90 replacement) and there is a new flagship model in the works that perhaps could be considered the VW90 replacement, but probably more expensive than the VW90. These reports seem to be fairly reliable. There is also some pure speculation that there will be another mid-level model above the HW30 but below the VW95, but I have seen nothing to directly support this rumor. Sony is having a press event at 5pm on Wed., Sept. 7th at CEDIA, so any new models should be announced there (or at IFA a few days earlier in Germany).