I'm curious about the view of other RS55 owners on this subject:
I continue to be blown away by the clarity and contrast dynamics this projector produces. I personally have never seen a sharp and detailed an image as this before, let alone one that looks as high contrast. It's closer to a flat-panel in terms of it's dynamics than I've seen from a projector. My RS55 has been calibrated by a very well respected calibrator, so I doubt this arises from a calibration issue per se. In fact, my calibrator (umr) suggested that projectors like the JVCs are starting to offer un-filmlike levels of contrast - more than one may need, or even want, when it comes to faithfully reproducing the look of projected film. If that is so, I wonder if this is what I'm confronting here.
And that gets me into the issue I want to raise: I'm finding the image overall less film-like than I'm used to (having come from my previous RS20, which I compared extensively to the RS55 before I sold it to my friend...I still watch movies on the RS20 at my friend's house as well). It's not the color, which seems to be dialed in quite accurately and looks film-like and natural. Rather, it is perhaps the increase in contrast (or so it appears).
I've been trying to pin down why and it seems to come down to the brightest areas of the image. The black levels look much the same as my RS20, but the brightest high-lights look really, really bright. This is very positive in many respects - street lights during night scenes, night city-scape shots etc, look positively brilliant - the street lights now look less iike light on film, and more like bright lights shining in the night, which improves the vibrancy and realism. At the same time, it looks less "film-like" to me.
As an example, I'm linking to two screen shots from the Blu-Ray screenshots thread:
This image above from Taxi Driver looks pretty film-like to me in terms of it's contrast/brightness of the hanging light bulb in the shot. It looks to me like a light bulb a shot on film. Whereas on my RS55 that light bulb would be really bright, looking almost like a real light bulb hanging in the image.
Again, it feels more realistic, like I'm in the room, but it does feel less film-like, less "cinema" in a way.
Likewise in a shot like this:
The bright white tape would be much brighter, really popping off the screen, in a way more realistic, but also maybe more exaggerated.
In essences, the black levels of my RS55 seem essentially the same as my RS20, but everything at the the very top end of the brightness scale, highlights on eyes, faces, metallic reflections etc, all have a greater sense of brilliance, brightness and contrast that makes those areas look more real...but also edges it to more "real" and even more to HD video vs film.
It seems to a signature that the projector brings to film after film. Sometimes I love it; sometimes it seems to undercut a bit of cinematic quality (just as the "soap opera" effect of frame interpolation does for movies on film...and no, I do not turn on my CDM/frame interpolation on the RS55).
So my question is: Do you find anything similar to the effect I've mentioned? Any thoughts, opinions on the subject?
