JVC RS 45 / Sony HW30 / BenQ W7000 / Epson 5010 mini-shootout - Page 28

With just white walls, the higher On/Off projector will sometimes look better than just a brighter projector that has poor On/Off contrast, that is true depending on just how close the walls are and how reflective they are back at the screen.

This concept is misunderstood on both sides, I studied it from whitepapers, let me see if I can clarify why this confusion exists...

If a room is bad enough, as the ANSI contrast is severely lost, our eyes start seeing the details blend together. Even if technically the white peaks and black floor still has the same contrast distance (On/Off), it won't matter because the intrascene contrast will be lacking detail due to the loss in ANSI within the scene and all details will blend and shadow detail lost even in the darker scenes. Native On/Off is still a white to black measurement and not an intrascene measurement, and it may be a great indicator in a normal room of how good a projector will do frame-to-frame contrast in dark scenes, but eventually there is a point of no return where too much loss in ANSI contrast messes up the entire picture, including On/Off scenes and scenes needing ANSI.

At some point, a projector displaying a higher On/Off contrast but with NO ANSI due to a terrible room would basically look like a flashlight turning on and off, it would just be a plain white screen or a plain black, there would be no detail in the image. Our eyes find it harder to differentiate details in dark scenes sometimes, so if you start losing intrascene contrast in dark scenes, you won't really care how dark or bright the image is, it'll just look so flat and muddy it won't matter.

We don't think of ANSI affecting darker scenes because projectors already have high enough ANSI for dark scenes, and ANSI isn't a big indicator of intrascene contrast in dark scenes in most rooms where projectors are used simply because they all have enough ANSI in a good room, but there is a catch here. If you make the room bad enough and lose too much ANSI contrast, now all of a sudden even darker shades of gray in dark scenes are not gradiated in the intrascene contrast because there was just too much ANSI lost and ALL details are blending together in bright and dark scenes. The three dimensional look we obtain in darker scenes is still due to both ANSI and On/Off, but you only need a tiny bit of ANSI and a whole lot of On/Off contrast, so we generally ignore the effects of ANSI and intrascene contrast in darker scenes. The problem with ignoring it in a poor room is eventually you lose that tiny bit of ANSI you needed, and who cares anymore about the On/Off.

That is the hole in the theory, even though ANSI contrast doesn't matter much in dark scenes, it eventually will if you lose too much of it.

My HP doesn't hot spot! I've used a HP screen on and off now for 10 years - floor mounted projectors, ceiling mounted and now shelf mounted. I've seen hot spotting on other higher gain screens and it isn't pretty. The HP has made a believer out of me that higher gain screens can work and work extremely well. I've tried 4 other screen materials and have always come back. Now with 3D making inroads I personally feel this screen is a no-brainer. With the Epson projectors we might actually have bright 3D images. Bring it on!

Here's a great article by Ron on ghosting -- JVC vs. Epson.

http://www.projectorreviews.com/proj....html#more-424

What is a HP screen? I am planning on getting a 1.78, 118 Carada BW which is 1.4 gain according to their site matched with a 5010. The projector throw will be 12 ½ ft with seats 13 ft from the screen (seating is 5 seats wide). I don't know if a narrow viewing cone will work or not in my case. Do I need a HP screen to take full advantage of 3D, or will what I planning on buying work just fine? According to the coder guy's projector calculator I can run in ECO and still have plenty of brightness for 2D and an abundance of brightness in 3D.
Thanks

Thanks Mike. Does it sound like I need to get one based on my dimensions? I figure I can fit up to a 126" screen in my allowed space which will put the top of the frame on my ceiling.

Coderguy. I do not disagree. My comment doesn't go to room effects on ANSI CR and on the various types of contrasts.

I have always been troubled by artificial measurements and various contrasts artificially described. MTF is a much better metric of contrast.

I think the least artificial is on off. ANSI is a completely artificial concept. sum 9 white squares and divide them by the sum of 9 black squares. Almost sounds like the integration of a fraternity house of nerds. So what does it show? A scary test pattern where the black squares aren't all that black. Most haven't even thought about or understand what that means to your picture. They want higher onoff, they want higher ANSI, and if you and I were to get another standard established, say 29 diamond shaped black and whites, they would want higher that. They want high anything modifying contrast even though such a contrast does not have a measurement standard. But they don't talk about it very much just focusing on on off which they at least understand how its arrived at and for which the Madison Ave of projectors keeps jamming down their throat. They dismiss the need for more when their rooms are bad, saying 50,000 is enough because my room can handle 200,000. That is so wrong.

There is a need to improve contrast regardless of its metrics. And particularly for on off. Some of those metrics are drasticaly affected by the room, some aren't.

Burt is contrast the most important parameter of picture qualty. And there the pros differ other than those that simply repeat what they are told in ISF class.

To mee, the benefits chasnge in intensity as on off goes up. One, me needs enough on off to run my preferred gama curves which vary between 2.2 and 2.5 for 2D sources. Once you exceed the on off necessary to run the gamma without crush, the benefits of more on off diminish. For me, I would rank other fsctors as being more important including higher ANSI CR, sharpness, yada yada.

I don't know if it is real or not but when comparing the images from the 30ES and the 5010, it seems like there is more detail in the Sony images. For instance, if you look at the grand canyon images, the tree and the rock in the lower left corner and the canyon int he background seem to have more detail on the Sony. Zombie do you see these types of differences in person?

I finally had the opportunity to watch the Epson in person, thankfully, a friend of mine who lives about and hour or so away got the unit and I had the chance to spend many hours with the unit.

I think the unit's picture quality is excellent and I thought the 3d presentation was great as well, I think This will be my future projector, as it is bright enough and I have a big 147" screen, My friend's screen is 110" I believe and is was very, very bright.

I have a question for those who have this unit though, While we were watching some 2D material (Harry Potter) where there's a lot of mixed and constantly changing dark and bright images going on, the irish makes like a rumbling sound that in quiet scenes distracts from the movie, I mean it takes you out of the experience, it usually is a low constant rumbling noise that sounds like a small mouse in a wood drawer, but then it goes into full Throttle and it feels more like hearing 6 mice playing around in a wood drawer. Notice that once you Disengage the auto irish the noise goes away and so do the best blacks. this noise also constantly changes back and forth in intensity, but it sounds like some special effect that belongs in the movie. Has anybody experienced this problem or do you think he has a defective unit? I never heard any such noise coming out of my ancient panasonic 2000. Other than that, I love this Projector, but if that constant low noise and many times very noticable rumbling is normal with this projectior I will not be getting it.

@luismanara
The Epsons always had somewhat audible IRIS's, they were even louder in the older models. Some of how much you hear it is just the room acoustics (not even just how far you are from the projector). The 5010 I saw was much quieter than the IRIS on the 8500ub I owned.

I don't think the unit is defective in the sense that some of them are noisier than others, but I do think you just got a noisier than average one, but exchanging it might help anyhow. They all vary a bit on how noisy they are. I think the one Art had also had the rumbling. The one I watched had a tiny tiny bit but you could barely hear it. You can get lucky and get one that has basically no sound to it.

If you have wood floors or concrete walls it will sound louder. If you have a lot of heavy furniture in the room between the projector and you, you might not even hear it. Of course you could try a hush box or other ways of dampening the sound.

Don't you hate how noisy those Auto Irish are
Always getting into bar fights and what not...

I love the noisy mouse iris annoyance scale factor. I think everyone should use this from now on

What's even scarier is when you hear mouse playing when the projector is turned off

I agree to try an exchange, but we went through this in the 8500ub/8700ub thread.

There is a unit variance and the noise is not the same from one to the next, so it's kind of like convergence I guess. Also the room temperature might have something to do with it, not sure.

When I get a 5010 again, I am going to strap it it to my err posterior. I will never here the iris that way though I can't remember hearing it when table mounting (my testing set up) behind me similar to Zombie's set up.

My 8500ub sounded like a miniaturized dwarf in the lens was trying to smith a sword. At least the 5010 was not noticeable to me either.

When I'm close to my Epson I hear it before the sound from the movie starts -- that's the only time I hear the iris -- you're right, don't blame the Irish! They've got enough problems (lousy economy, bad weather and so on).

Just tried Joe Clark's 3D dvd on my HW30. My settings are 3D Depth adjust was 2 and my brightness was MIN. My bulb is on low power mode.
1) The first 2 patterns showed how non-uniform my Sony glasses are. On the "dark side", the glasses had a black spot in the center that got lighter towards the edges. The test pattern's dark side was still visible with 10% brightness (where the glasses dark spot wasn't). Where the glasses dark spot was the test pattern was pretty much gone.
2) The R/L pattern was much better. The top R circle and the lower L circle were gone. The other two circles were very faintly there. The big L and R letters looked perfect.
3) The white lines on black looked pretty good. Hard to tell if there was any ghosting. If I did see some it went away when I moved my head. I wonder if I was getting on the black spot in the glasses
4) The black lines on white showed ghosting on the vertical lines only. Again this went away when I moved my head and got the black spot in the glasses over the ghosting line
It will be interesting to see what zombie gets with is HW30 and his glasses collection. If the MV are more uniform, looks like I'll be in the market for some of those.

LOL! it got everyone's attention though.

Sharpness set to MIN is another big one for the HW30. Even turning it to 1 produces ghosting in scenes it can`t be seen at MIN.

I`ve never changed the depth adjust (other than testing).

so in a nutshell which projector is the best overall between the Sony hw30 and the Epson 5010 (9000 uk) ?

i want the best 2d and 3d image, my previous pj was the Sony VW60, i am hoping either pj will be a significant improvement as i was very happy with the 60. i have had the optoma 33 and found the 3d to be excellent, zero crosstalk and best 3d image i have seen anywhere. i also had a home demo of the hd 83 (8300 us model) better than the 33 in 2d but slightly softer image in 2d.

i've also seen the Panasonic 5000, good 2d but poor 3d.

i had a brief demo of the epson 9000 excellent bright punchy picture and good 3d performance and seems to getting a lot of praise.

not seen the sony 30 model only what i've read so far. i've also considered the sony 95 but it is quite a jump in price and i'm trying to justify the cost and improvement in performance.

can anyone assist?

My Xpand, JVC and Samsung glasses are all non-uniform. I can see different levels of transparency depending on the area of the lenses I'm looking through. Displays are not perfect, and neither are glasses. There's a lot of work to be done for both.

My HP doesn't hot spot, either. I've never seen brightness or color uniformity problems in anything I've ever watched on the HP. It's as close to a "transparent" screen as I've ever seen - that is, it disappears and I just see the image.

I read Ron's blog and it was great. I suggested after seeing one of his posts a few weeks ago that he take a look at the potential difference in dark on light vs light on dark ghosting. He measured the difference, and it's profound for the JVC - 17%. (I never saw this second article before your post, Deja Vu. I made my suggestion after reading the first article. I don't want people thinking I lifted Ron's ideas. I've been talking about this difference for quite some time.)

Joe,
I guess I'm kinda confused why the glasses should be so non-uniform. I didn't think
LCD technology was that difficult to do anymore. The LCD is on or off. There shouldn't
be "almost off" problems. Unless we are getting into the "that's good enough"
mentality. Again it will be interesting see what zombie's monsters can do.

Fat Dave,
I usually don't run those setting , but put it in those setting when the first pattern wouldn't disappear. Then I
started to realize it was the glasses causing the problems. I never got around to set it back. But I may leave it
in that mode if it helps with the ghosting (or lack of)

The Sony has the higher pixel fill, if you sit very close to the screen I might lean you towards the Sony. The Sony has less gaming lag if you play games and care about lag (FPS gamers).

Have you seen an Epson LCD?

The Epson is edgier with more brightness in dynamic modes, much brighter 3D, but has no FI in 3D. The Epson has the darker blacks in some scenes from its more aggressive IRIS, but the Sony's IRIS is smoother looking.

The Epson should be a little sharper especially if you get one with good convergence, but a Sony with good convergence should be sharp enough as well.

If I were mainly watching movies and was sitting close or if I preferred the film look of LCOS, I would take the Sony.

If 3D brightness is your main concern and you have any ambient light issues in the room, definitely take the Epson.

Ron's Bottom Line:
"With the Epson 5010 I did not find any program, either using DirecTV or Blu-ray as the 3D source, where the level of visible 3D ghosting was to the level that I would consider it a major issue."
Ron's ghosting picture's agree with my personal evaluation using the Grand Canyon tree scene. No way that I could not live with it long-term. I will go view a another sample this week.
I also went and observed the 30ES at Magnolia on a grey screen (Oh what a mismatch). I viewed the menu and noticed the smearing of the light from bright pixels onto the adjacent black ones.

thanks for the reply. the room is about 33ft in length and the pj will be mounted in the centre of the room. the screen is a 9ft wide screen and the room is the main lounge i.e. not a batcave but al viewing will be in the dark without any lighting on. any views on the 95 compared to the 30 and epson?

Which showrooms did you see these projectors?

I've been trying to find them all around the Puget Sound area and can't seem to find any that has these 3 setup in a showroom.