JVC RS 45 / Sony HW30 / BenQ W7000 / Epson 5010 mini-shootout - Page 3

Are we jumping a bit to conclusions in this mini-shootout?
Remember the Sony lens is not too good according to Tom Huffman.

"Comparisons (2D)

"People will no doubt be interested in a comparison between the JVC RS45, Epson 5010, and the Sony VPL-VWPRO1 whose street prices are all at or slightly below the $3,000 point. From my limited exposure to the Sony it was my least favorite of the three based solely on the quality of the optics, which did not seem to resolve inter-pixel detail as well as the other two. Choosing between the JVC and Epson is a little more difficult. Both offer excellent installation flexibility with wide zooms and lens shift. Both provide excellent RGB convergence after making minor adjustments with the provided tools. Both offer a wealth of calibration controls and possess excellent colorimetry, grayscale, and gamma with only minor adjustments.

The JVC's image was somewhat more refined with better depth and a lower black floor. On the other hand, the Epson provided a punchier image, which I attribute solely to its greater light output. Other than that, there was little to choose between them. If you need the higher light output, go with the Epson. If your priorities are with contrast and the silky smooth quality of a LCoS engine go with the JVC. I doubt that many would be disappointed with either."
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=1627

Logically then it would be most informative to see then same pictures of ghosting is on the Epson 5010 or even the Panasonic 7000. The everyone can make an objective choice.
The major confirmation (Mark stated what we already knew) of this mini-shootout is the 2D black level of 3D DLP projectors is neither competitive or acceptable for home theater. Every single one is consistently bad.

Re: saying DLP black levels unacceptable for 2D home theater I would add JVC RS45 ghosting makes it unacceptable for 3D use... I believe they were using a high power screen which most W7000/W6000 users probably won't use and probably hurts its blacks.

I'm leaning somewhat to the Sony unit, I'm wondering how much depth this unit has for regular 2D compared to the other two.

Is it just me, or does anybody else see the Sony unit looking a little sharper on the 3-D screen shots, maybe less depth?........I'm going nuts.

I wonder in anyone other than Tom had this experience with the optics? I've read lots about the hw30 and, other than Tom's observation, do not believe I've read elsewhere.

Perhaps it was unit specific? Or, perhaps it is common

... Altan

Just wanted to add my appreciation for your efforts in doing this evaluation - Jason and Mark. It's above and beyond.

The shootouts in my opinion only have limited value because unlike LCD or Plasma TV's there are many other variables, including the screen used, The specific room the throw distance and countless other things. There can also be differences from unit to unit. I wonder if the results would be the same with a different screen?

I don't think changing the screen would change the conclusions. The screen is a non-factor for lag-time, lumens, and 3D crosstalk. The CMS results could be affected by the screen, but I'd bet the calibrations took the screen into account. Even if the cals were done facing the pj, the HP is relatively neutral on axis. Now, unit to unit variations could certainly come into play.

I should have been more specific. I agree a screen is a non-factor for lag-time,and lumens. I am not so sure that 3d ghosting would not be impacted by a specific screen. The biggest difference would probably come from unit to unit variations. Looking at the threads there seems to be quite a bit of difference from unit to unit especially with certain manufactures. I previously owned an Epson 9500 and it took me 4 replacements to get one with good convergence.

Mark, can you please elaborate. I am coming from an RS2 and very concerned about black level. Maybe I made the wrong choice with the BenQ.

How about a fan noise comparison?

Here's one. Great service.

http://stores.3d-blurayrental.com/StoreFront.bok

Its late and I am tired. I typed a long post but lost it somehow and will redo it tomorrow.

But I think some of the people who are posting here, including HIFIFUN, are clueless as to what has or is being said by Tom, myself, and Zombie.

We are talking, the JVC RS45, the Sony VPL-vw30AES, the Epson 5010, and the Benq W7000. All these machines have strengths and weakness. Three of them at current street prices are approximately the same price after adding in two pairs of glasses and an emitter for those which don't include two pairs of glasses and/or an emitter.

The biggest weakness of one of the machines is its ghosting in 3D and the biggest strength of one of the machines is its ghost free 3D. But there is so much more involved in an evaluation of the strengths and weakness of the four machines.

The biggest weaskness of the BenQ is its relatively low contrast and high reference black levels. But this is easily cured with the addition of a ND2 filter. Good quality such filters are relatively inexpensive and designing and building as holder for it is child's play. It should be noted that the DI of the Benq is not noticeable re artifacting (pumping) but it is not very aggressive and its use does not improve contrast very much. But the Benq is the champ here re intrascene contrast as would be expected since it uses a DLP.

The Sony when viewed up close to the screen does not resolve the pixel grid very well. But when viewed at normal viewing distances, the eye can not resolve the grid and all the machines including the Sony have quite good sharpness. Side by side small differences in sharpness can be noticed but nothing to make me, as LovingDVD calls me a sharpness freak, to chose one machine over another. Tom Huffman remarked to me how sharp the Sony looked despite its lens weakness in not be able to sharply resolve the grid.


BTW. I was present for all of Tom's viewing, testing, and calibration of the various machines he discusses and for all of Zombie's three machine shootout.

Better not to read things in or hang on every word in a desperate attempt to support what ever misbegotten conclusions one is harboring.

I really am annoyed with the verbiage being spouted by HIFIFUN. Every one is bad, NO. Every one is weak in the area of contrast because that was a design choice made to favor other considerations. BUT. That can be fixed with a filter and other weaknesses of other machines can be fixed.

The RS45 doesn't have a CMS. But one can be added. Its ghosting can not be fixed. But it is still a great machine.

The Sony lens can't be fixed. But Sony made a design compromise choosing to spend it bucks to make other things better. And a compromise that really doesn't affect performance very much at normal viewing distances. I am going to bed.

Throwing in numbers for the Acer might have been nice.

My thought is this: 3D with active glasses leaves you with 20% - 25% of the brightness you started with.
Thus, for a projector to be good at 2D and 3D both, the 3D mode needs 4 or 5 times the brightness of the 2D mode.
I consider my 5360 just bright enough for 3D. It is reviewed to be around 2000 lumens. My Panny ae2000 is reviewed around 450 lumens in best mode which is just right.
The only projectors capable of both are the Panasonic 7000 and the Epson 5010 (although probably still a bit bright for me in dimmest). To compare, the W7000's dimmest mode is over 1000 lumens. It would need 4000 or 5000 lumens in 3D mode to work well for both.
Epson has 80ms input lag which is kinda bad. Only the Panny has a game mode. Older panasonic's have measured at 20ms lag, which is about as low as you find. I feel safe assuming the new one is the same.
So far for me, the Panasonic is the only contender for a one projector 2D/3D system. If you don't game, the Epson is probably a slightly better contender with it's better 2D blacks, although it disables DI and FI in 3D mode, which the Panny doesn't giving it better 3D blacks.

Then screen size and screen gain come into this. With HP screens, just about any projector is bright enough in 3D. If you do not have a very high gain screen, then it will depend on your preferences and mainly your screen size. The JVC and Sony have a better range in their manual IRIS's to close down and maintain black levels for 2D after being too bright in 3D. You do NOT need 4000 or 5000 lumens for 3D. Our eyes do not see changes in brightness linearly based on a percentage (20% lower brightness is not a 20% visible drop, it's more like 5% visible or something). The 75% loss in brightness from 3D does not acutally look like 75%, probably looks like 25% to maybe 40% drop. Our eyes adjust fairly well.

The w7000 should also have some of this range by a service menu adjustment (but who wants to go into the service menu and change the IRIS every time they go between 2d and 3d), so for the Benq the ND filter + gain screen is the solution to 2d/3d.

The Epson 5010 has double the native contrast of the Panny 7000, IRIS blacks are not 100% equal to native contrast black levels IMHO, on the Sony IRIS they get close because the Sony has higher native beyond a critical point. I do not consider the Panny's 3000:1 native good enough to make it a black level winner in any mode even if it has an IRIS (and this 3000:1 native is ONLY if you mount it at or near farthest throw).

The native contrast of the Panasonic is more in line with DLP's, and the Epson 5010's native contrast is getting closer to the Sony LCOS.

If you are going to consider the Panny 7000, I would consider the Benq w7000 or Epson 5010 instead, because the Panny's blacks may be ahead of the Benq from the aggressive IRIS, but not enough IMHO to shoot it down. And the Benq w7000 has the advantage in the other areas. The Epson will easily win in black levels for 2D, and hang fine in 3D, so you shouldn't consider the IRIS on the Panny an advantage in any way over the Epson (even for 3D).

Also, most 3D content does not have a lot of dark scenes, and the Epson starts out with the blacks being darker before the IRIS even starts closing down on the Panny. Sure there are some movies that are in 3D with dark scenes, but other than Avatar and a couple others, most 3D content is generally done in bright stuff (animated films, HD documentaries, bright fishies, etc..). Black levels are the least of our problems with 3D content in general.

Also, a lot of people will disable the IRIS in 3D anyhow.

I thank you and Zombie for your contributions and findings and sympathize with your position as sales manager.
However let the truth be spoken, even if it’s unflattering or complicated in an objective manner in this scientific forum. Leadership is sometimes painful and tiring. 3D projectors have improved remarkably in just one generation, with more to come next year - but only if we continue to raise the standards.
I bookmark significant findings from reliable sources for each projector in its own folder. The MS Bing translator has recently become the favorite.
This simple system reveals excellent and accurate consistency between the professional reviewers from around the world, including France, Germany, England and the USA.
After reading many posts, there is also considerably discrepancy and variation between the review the sample and what consumers actually get to purchase. This is true from so many unsatisfied owners. Further it’s difficult for consumers to find all the issues within the 4 hour return window. The factory tolerances for what is considered to be defective should be published, as this is just as important as the warranty.
Every review should include Mark's favorite Grand Canyon tree shot for evaluating 3D ghosting. With this scene, my dinky 70" Sharp 735 shows some ghosting too, but it takes on a less objectionable form in being lighter rather than darker.
Building consensus among stakeholders can be difficult. But after numerous reviews, it’s obvious that the 2D black level in 3D DLP projectors has been compromised. It would be most beneficial if the Texas Instruments DLP product manager or one of their design firms would discuss the issues and the plan moving forward.
Again thanks for the mini-shootout. One picture is truly worth 10,000 posts.

I tested my x3 on 3D....
With my Dune Smart-B1 as sorce (3DSBS), the ghosting was terrible.
Connected my old Tvix M6500A and the 3D SBS was VERY good almost(!) without ghosting at all!
Bought me an Oppo BDP-93, and to my testing trough several 3D blurays, the 3D PQ can hardly get any better than through this combo.

My glasses are the Monster VisionMax 3D.

It is normal to drop 3% to 15% even in the first 100 hours. I'd say average is 5% to 10%, but it depends and everyone's mileage will vary. I am not sure how others are measuring, but I am using a $200 light meter (not a $1000 one, but hey). I have seen a few claims in this forum about projectors not losing any brightness, but I have never seen this happen myself (nor have I ever measured such a thing).

I have measured many projectors over the course of 1000+ hours with light meters, and I usually see drops in that general range (3% to 15% at 100 hours). I've had one lamp on an Epson drop 50%+ in 10 hours but it was a bad lamp.

Yes. It gets much closer. Not quite as good, with theJVC being the best, but close enough for me.

The Benq does not have threads on its err lens hood. So one wpould have to mount it with some sort of holder. If the projector is table mounted, almost anything would work. Remember those weighted bases with a flexible arm and aligastor clips for holding small objects when you needed another hand for soldering. That what I use to hold a filter in front of a lens. For ceiling mounted. I attached an extra adjustable arm to a Peerless mount and put a goosneck at its end. The possibility our endless but I think the best would be a good looking young lady o hold it in place at the right angle. Remember these filters need to be tipped a bit to reduce reflections rather than being placed parallel to the lens.

There are a variey of ND filters on the market. Ideally, I would get a 4 inch by 4 inch Schneider ND2. This one is relatively expensive and hard to come by. I had to call Schneider and even then all I could get without waiting months was a 3x 3 inch. That works but requires more careful placement than just shoving the 4 x4 in front of the lens. Remeber only the chip image coming from the lens to hit the filter, the filter does not need to be infront of the lens in any other area. Most lens will be bigger in area than a 3 x3 inch square but the exit chip image won't be especially id the filter is placed very glopss to the front element glass (or plastic) as the case may be.

If you want to find ND filters, cheap and expensive, look at B&H Photo on line.o

Jason, I will second what someone else mentioned in this thread which is you should be doing reviews on the side Awesome job! Same goes for Mark!

Are you going to keep the BenQ for 3d duties, or stick with the Sony?

I really hope next years JVC improves on flicker, ghosting and will include FI for 3d. The other ???? still remains if these new JVCs will get even worse with ghosting as the lamp hours accumulate (like some have reported with the 40/50/60 including me) which chances are they will unfortunately, but time will tell.

Zombie and I couldn't get into the service menu on the 7000. We just couldn't do everything in a day and one half. The work here is incredible not to mention the posting work and time. And there were other scenarious that we could have tested.And we didn't even try different 3D source players and formats to see how that played into ghosting.


From the comments above (my observations have not been stated by me becomes I am politically correct although not entirtely morally straight) is that the JVC had the worst ghosting during the shootout.

I would add that at home, viewed thru a cheap Panasonic Bluray player, I wasn't aware of very much ghosting with the JVC on my torture tests. A little, but nothing like last year. But at home, I watch moving scenes rather than still screens.

If you are looking at the Sony and the Panasonic, then there is no reason that price should be an issue with the jvc...

Jason,

Mark mentioned that depth and contrast are related which I totally agree with. In your 3D summary, you didn't comment about which projector gave you the most sense of depth with the image.

Yes, congrats to Zombie and Mark for an excellent review.

Hi Mark.

Could you comment on how the Epson 5010 stacks up to the other projectors in the shootout? I know the Epson wasn't at Jason's but just going by memory since you have seen the 5010 recently.

I've always been a huge fan of Epson price/performance ratio and there AMAZING warranty.

Thanks.

Hey Zombie,

How did you feel about peripheral motion blur on the DLP, is the 3D blur I'm seeing on
the JVC related to slight ghosting that is not visible in motion (or I'm not catching it) or is it just the way 3D is shot?

Thanks.

I guess I should pause the image next time I see it and look for ghosting.

It's already available now. Except it's marketed under the Sony brand name with a model number VW95. . Would have been great if a RS55 and VW95 were preset.

Jason - any plans to add comments on black level comparisons? I recall seeing notes about the one needing an ND filter but nothing specific comparing the others unless I missed it?