CIH ALERT: NEW JVC PROJECTORS W. 4K simulation and Lens Memory!

I've said for quite some time that 4K could allow people to discard their anamorphic lenses by either zooming for CIH or even using scaling for a CIA setup. It appears that the combination of lens memory and higher resolution on the new e-shift (wobulated 4K) JVCs will easily tip the scales in favor of zooming for a CIH setup. The only benefit that a lens offers in this case is an increase in brightness over zooming when using a larger screen, or in 3D mode.

Screen size is also a limiting factor for zooming. With a lens, I was able to use a larger screen in my small room. Also, you still need a scaler to watch films like Avatar and The Dark Night in scope.

True, in situations where throw is a limiting factor, an anamorphic lens can allow a greater screen size.

And the scaler isn't completely necessary if you have masking sufficient to eliminate the black bars regions in a zoom setup.

In a case where a lens allows for a larger screen, you end up using the lens with a very short throw. This often results in unacceptable lens distortions/issues. Sounds like this is what happened in your setup.

Wow

The cheapest JVC with 4K retails at $7,999.99 so street price will be over 5K. In this economy, it's out of my price range.

I bet we will be seeing a bunch of used RS40's for sale in the six months.

Tom

How do these new projectors display 4k when the display chips have not changed from 1920x 1080?

www.cine4home.de has an explanation

Your killing me Rich

Tom

I am most interested in how the black bars are not lit? Is there some sort of internal masking? which would be great, but doubtful? I dont think that a "scaling" function would stop light from hitting the pannel, but I am no tech. Can someone confirm with JVC this function and if we are correctly interpeting the capability? if it does it somehow its a major plus for me!!!

Even if the 'black' bars remain unlit by the projector, room reflections will surely light them up, so masking will still be required.

Everyone is forgetting the best feature, they will all do Vertical Stretch in 3D! I'm glad I didn't buy a lumagen, I know the lumagen has a great CMS but I would have specifically bought it for the VS feature.

-Sean

Some believe this may be more of a kind of Panasonic "smoothscreen" feature to hide the pixel grid more-so than a way to do true 4k projection.

If that's the case, it may create a perceived sharpness hit to the image and cause more dithering artifacts.

Only time will tell.

True 4k displays at a decent price (with a proper 4k media source) will be long in coming if the trial and tribulations with Blu-ray and 1080p HD are any indication.

wrt the room reflections, that is what I am getting a Black Diamond screen for, so all the better if the black bars are gone...

Panasonic uses smoothscreen because of the low fill factor that is inherent to LCD. LCoS has no such issue, in fact the fill factor is incredibly high. I don't see JVC implementing e-shift for any other reason than to increase perceived resolution in order to maintain a competitive edge.

It's an interesting innovation. I might be interpreting how it works wrongly, but if the pixel size doesn't change because they're just being shifted, then zooming for CIH means you'll still be increasing the same 1920 x 1080 pixels by 33% in both directions, so it's possible that it won't remove the need for an A lens - I was kinda hoping it was going to be genuine 4K res so we could use just a 2.35 (3840 x 1634) portion of the display and have no need for a lens or zooming.

If it means that we visually perceive the pixels as being as small as a genuine 4K res pj, then I think they've got a result.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how it works out in practice though.

Gary

JVC wouldn't have added vertical stretch for 3D if the 4K was good enough to be used for CIH.

"JVC’s 3D anamorphic feature combined with an optional anamorphic lens make it possible to enjoy 3D movies in the popular 2:35 scope format"

That quote is from JVC's press release, this feature is found on all 7 of the new PJs, which includes the 4Ks.

-Sean

I'll be interested to see if the JVC's do offer a blanking option like the Panny. Movies such as Dark Knight and Tron Legacy need this option for zooming CIH. I find it very beneficial that I can mask the bottom of the screen so when the IMAX scenes open up, the picture isn't spilling over down below.
But I do applaud JVC and Sony for adding the lens memory to their feature set.

4K is only available in 2D - adding vertical stretch for 3D allows users to use an anamorphic lens with 3D to maximize brightness and pixel count for that content.

It's intriguing, I'll give you that. The biggest issue I see for an "ideal" CIH setup without a lens is that they're limited to 1080p input. So you couldn't use something like a Lumagen to do your aspect ratio management, because if you do, you'll end up shrinking everything to fit in 1920x1080. I'm not terribly interested in lens memory.


I drew a postulation out in the other thread, but from the info given, it looks like the shifted pixels overlap the unshifted pixels, so the result of the sum of these is each pixel becomes 4. The trick is how do you uniquely address each of those 4 subpixels. Not sure how that would work, though you'd probably have to use some sort of


Alan's pictures looked promising.

Though frankly the new Sim2 LED machines sound more interesting to me, though probably way too far out of my price range.

Nice and a very big deal. Horizontal squeeze?

Hmm, not sure about that one. I'm guessing you like to leave your lens in place?

-Sean

This is a very encouraging sign that companies believe there's a demand for out of the box CIH solutions. This makes 4 companies (Panasonic, Epson, JVC, Sony) and two projector technologies (LCD, LCOS) that have (or will soon release) products in the < $10k segment that offer lens memory. Seems like CIH is becoming more mainstream.

The only downer is that this solution won't be available to those that prefer DLP.

Well I am please to read that these scale for CIH in 3D. I am now looking forward to working JVCs stand at CEDIA next year.

At first glance the new 4k JVCs sounded incredible. I knew something may have been up with Onkyo's 4K feature. I'm not a fan of the Wobby having spent time with the 1080x960 dlp rptv that went back. But it may solve my problem with screendoor with 2x viewing. Mind you its only with credits and high apl scenes, but once you've experienced those scenes with a 4k panel, you know what it could look like.

While lens memory is a cool feature, its much too slow for me as I'm use to instantaneous aspect ratio changes. It must have shrink mode. Actually I could live with this if I had to, essentially having a 810x1920 projector. I would need to have blanking to coverup potential off screen content. In my case my center speaker would be illuminated.

As far using an A-Lens goes, the pros out way the cons, as long as 16x9 chips are used, regardless of how they are manipulated. When the 2.35 projectors hit the mainstream(less than $5K), the A-lens will be obsolete, and only then. A 33% brightness boost is the equivalent of going from 300 to 400 lumens or 600 to 800 or 1200 to 1600 lumens. I wouldn't call that a small difference. With 3d content every lumen counts. Not having 4k with 3d content doesn't help either. The msrp between the RS45 and the RS55 is $4500. That will buy you a nice lens. Even JVC is using the RS45 for 3D because of there admitted brightness advantage over the RS55,65 (they state 10% but if its like this year more like 20%). So with 2d or 3d content an RS45/A-lens is a better option than a 4k zoomed RS55 as far as light goes.

As far as the bulb being the same, I think its a non-issue. While my first bulb blew at 296hrs with 30-40% light loss prior to burnout, my new bulb with the "7" designation has only 5% loss at 350hrs. If I can get to 1500 hrs will only 20% loss I'll be happy.

As I stated months ago I thought the answer to improved 3D performance lied in improving the glasses. It's good to hear there has been an improvement there and that the new glasses are backwards compatible. Its good that JVC has added 3d stretch (still hoping for a Oppo 93 update), but I need HS as well and a working CMS is a plus. I think the Lumagen will still be my answer.

I think I have been spoil by the rapid increase in projectors in the mid 2000's with the increase from 480-720-1080p, increased lumen output, large contrast improvements especially with the introduction of the RS1 and DI's, and incredible advancements in processing/scaling. Auto zooming is a needed and useful feature but it just seems that the last few years projectors have little to look forward too. All gimmickry and cloak & dagger instead of groundbreaking progress.