Sharp XV-Z30000 3D DLP - Page 5

I think I am going to pull the trigger on it. The return policy seems pretty good, so I figure I can try it for a week and see if I like it. If so, it looks to be a pretty good deal. I believe MSRP on this projector was about $5k. Trying to replace a four year old Epson 7500UB. I have been wanting to try a single chip DLP for the sharpness and 3-D, but I have a 19' throw to a 110" high-power screen and most DLP (and even the Sony LCOS) projectors have insufficient zoom range.

What is groupon?

Thanks,
Tom

Whoa...that is a good deal. Had I not just bought my RS4810 I'd have given this one a shot just for giggles.

At $2k, this seems like a very good deal... for a few hundred more than the W7000, you lose FI and some brightness, but gain improved contrast (DC3), motorized zoom/focus with lens memory, a bit more zoom (1.4-2.8 throw), two pairs of glasses and a 3 yr warranty. On a stats comparison, that makes it sound worth the difference... my reservations are: 1) is it enough brightness in 3D?, 2) Is 24p content handled properly (have different reports here) 3) is 3D artifact-free without FI?, and 4) the financial health of Sharp with respect to customer service and warranty. Sure is tempting at this price.

Interesting to know how AMEX would handle this scenario given that they often extend the manufacture warranty.

this is tempting, but the comment Art made when comparing it to the W7000 scared me off a bit in regard to brightness. Plus the lack of FI in 3D.

if it was $1500 I would have picked it up just to check it out. Resale is probably non-existent though..

I came back to the site because I got the Groupon ad as well today. I dont think we are allowed to post links or I would post it? At 1999 this is a very good deal. But I am anly 2 years into a brand new Epson. So not ready to change yet.

Sure you can post it. We do have a dedicated subforum for any deals you may find:

http://www.avsforum.com/f/199/front-projectors-great-found-deals

Post it there and link to that thread here.

This would haven been the ideal shootout for most considering today's deal. Given fairly similarly price, the W7000 is the only hold back here. Throw distance and screen gain can possibly help the Sharp for most dedicated rooms.

I'm on the fence between this one and Mitsubishi HC5. Was looking for a single projector solution and picked these. I know, two completely different technologies. I've always wanted to experience crosstalk-free 3D and really like DLP's smooth, solid picture, but lack of FI and DLP's low native contrast stops me from pulling the trigger...

I need to order some glasses. The ZD201's can be imported from Amazon UK but wouldn't arrive until late next week. Amazon US has the True Depth available for prime shipping so I would get them Friday. Are the ZD201's worth the extra wait? I don't wear glasses if that makes any difference. I only need one pair as my little movie room only seats one. If I'm the only one who uses the room, would it be a good idea to get a backup as well? The True Depths are available on Amazon in a set of two. Thw ZD201's are sold individually.

My 7000 is out for delivery today.

Thanks,
Tom

I have two pairs of zd201s

Please excuse this post. I thought I put it in the Benq 7000 thread.

I have previously owned a Sharp XV-2000 720 DLP. For its time it was a very good image.

Given that this is similar in spec to the W7000, and Sharp's quality control is better (anecdotal); I pulled the trigger today to use the 30000 for 3D to compliment my RS4810. I previously bought a W7000 and had (like many others) a problem with the iris. I returned it. If the XV-30000 is as good as the review at hometheater.com says it is, it should be a nice 3D and general viewing projector for an excellent price. BTW, the Groupon deal indicated it expires in 9 hours.

Is it worth the extra 1K over a W1070? I would think so given the build quality of Sharp vs. BenQ, the addition of vertical and horizontal lens shift and lens memory to accommodate an anamorphic setup; these are not sub 1K features.

Willie
Edited by Willie - 2/6/13 at 1:15pm

With the clock ticking and now amazon giving an extra $50 back on the W1070, the decision is getting more interesting.

I think the few things to take into consideration is that both the W1070 nor the XV-Z30000 has Frame Interpolation. The W7000 has. I have stayed clear of the W6000 and also doing the same for the W7000 due to the iris issues many seem to experience. The XV-Z3K 3-year warranty is great if it will be honored for the full three years. The inclusion of the emitter and the two pairs of glasses is also a plus which the W1070 doesn't have (not sure if the W7000 includes them). With placement issues aside (at least for me with the W1070) the major issue seems to be the brightness or possibly lack of it on the XV-Z3K. So, all in all between the lack of FI and the lumens of the XV-Z3K, it seems it has most of everything else. Unfortunately, these two items seem to be major depending on usage. For sports, FI and for 3D the lumens.

My head hurts.

Oh - other things, the XV-Z3K does not do 1080p/24.
Here is what I am comparing to move from my trusty SP-7210: LINK
Edited by tradewinds - 2/6/13 at 1:49pm

I have never liked frame interpolation. As far as brightness goes I am building a new theater in a new home as soon as the house I am in sells. Wife has given me cart blanche on design elements, including flat black ceiling, very dark blue walls, etc. It will be a total bat cave. I am basing the rest of this purchase on how well I liked my first Sharp, including being one of the first nearly rainbow free DLP projectors in the market at the time. At 2k for the Sharp it seemed like very close to a no-brainer (for me anyway). Hope I find out it was.

I demoed the W1070 this week, but couldn't get the placement right for my setup. The image the W1070 throws is a good value. However, upon review I couldn't live with the poor BenQ build quality including light spill, and screwy focus and zoom ring. I guess the image is worth 900 bucks . . .

Just not to me.

Willie
Edited by Willie - 2/6/13 at 3:19pm

How long do you think it will be before you have the room ready? The reason I ask is whether this will get cheaper in a few months from now (seems this was the second Groupon offering. The last one had a screen and about $500 more). I am not in need for a PJ immediately and already have the bat cave room. I am still on a seven (gosh, that long already) year old 720p PJ and it is still going strong. With the super bowl crowd this past weekend the PJ and IQ were certainly still a wow factor and not a factor of it being dim or anything like that given how old it is now. I may be willing to let this deal go and hope that in a few months this or something better comes up to take a look at. I certainly wouldn't mind playing with higher resolution and 3D in the room I built in 2006, but I'm also not one to keep changing PJs frequently. The two I have had since getting into FP were both extremely highly recommended (SP-4805 and SP-7210) and I certainly never had any regrets about them and have surely enjoyed them way past the cost. I am hoping my next PJ can sit at those high standards.

I realize this is the second Groupon deal on this; so, yes, it may go cheaper in the future. I expect (hope) my house will sell by July. The new construction will take about 90 days.

The Sharp has roughly the same throw specs as my RS4810. A dual setup will work nicely. I have already added the mount for both in the new theater design. My plan is to do a calibration of the Sharp and see how it looks for myself. As far as why now? I am not getting any younger, so for me there is no pointing in waiting.

I will post some pics and my impressions (review) on the Sharp after I have it dialed in. I am hopeful.

Willie

I received my Z30000 from the Groupon deal on Friday and have watched about ten hours of material on it over the weekend. The projector I am replacing is a four year old Epson 7500. I am shooting 19' onto a 110" High Power 2.8. My walls and ceiling are dark brown and dark grey, respectively. My observations so far:

1. Color. I put the Sharp in movie mode and used Art's recommended calibration settings. The colors still looked off. I don't have color measurement equipment, but was able to make some manual tweaks by eye that seem to have improved things.

2. Brightness. My Epson had about 800 hours on the lamp. In low-lamp HD mode, I was measuring 69 lux at the screen. The Sharp, with brand new bulb, low-lamp (eco) mode, and Iris #1 set to high contrast, I am measuring 108 lux at the screen. If I set the Iris to high brightness, the lux go up to 172. If I then switch to high lamp mode, lux go up further to 333. In sum, the low-lamp, high-contrast mode is plenty bright on my screen.

3. Sharpness. My Epson had pretty good convergence, but the sharpness of the Sharp DLP is way better. Very pleased. Focus uniformity is very good but not perfect. I am able to make out the pixel structure at the center and all four corners of the screen, but it is a little more or less distinct in different areas. Overall, the picture looks considerably sharper than the Epson. The Sharp has slightly more video noise than the Epson - I believe this is a known issue with DLP? Only noticeable in some scenes when really looking for it. Not a big deal.

4. Black Level & Contrast. I am not a black level fanatic like many on these forums. The black level is higher than my Epson, but not by much. Unless I am looking at an all black screen, I can't tell the difference in black level.

5. Noise. With respect to fan noise, the Sharp is quieter than the Epson in both high and low lamp modes. However, there is a slightly annoying high pitched component to the Sharp's noise spectra (color wheel?) that the Epson does not have. Nevertheless, I still give the Sharp the overall advantage here.

6. Other. I have noticed that the Sharp has much improved HDMI handshaking compared to the Epson. The Epson would take 8-12 seconds for HDMI to handshake after every channel or input resolution change. This made channel surfing a real chore. The Sharp has no such delays. I like the motorized focus and zoom of the Sharp, and one is able to make fairly fine adjustments using the controls.

In short, for me the Sharp is an improvement over the Epson 7500 and I will be keeping it.
Edited by pliesj - 2/10/13 at 4:14pm

Thanks! You don't sound excited one bit. =\ What about rainbow effect? And dynamic iris, do you use it? How noticeable is it?

What was your order date?

My order date was February 4.

I am using the dynamic iris (#2). It does not seem as aggressive as the Epson's. But on the plus side it is much quieter compared to the Epson's (which I don't use because of the grinding noise it creates). I have yet to see any rainbows.

Probably rather than a known issue, what you are seeing is the noise that is in the source. DLP has higher MTF than LCD, especially in motion, and so if there are artifacts in the source they will be visible on the screen. LCD tends to smear away high frequency noise, but the downside is that it also smears away high frequency detail. With a DLP display compression artifacts like mosquito noise will be more visible, along with film grain. The benefit is that for the best sources you will be seeing more of the detail that is in the source.

Can somebody do a close-up photo of this pattern? http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/6567/sharpnessadjust.png

I'd like to have a general idea of Z30000's sharpness and amount of fringing. Here's 7800 sharpness/fringing for example:

I take delivery tomorrow. I'll see if I can do it Saturday.

Willie

Mine was delivered just now, and I plan to take some pictures tonight if I have time. However I've recently moved and the construction on my new home is not complete yet so I don't have a legitimate theater at the moment, plus most of my equipment is still in storage. Since I needed to make a decision about keeping the projector in the next 14 days I found a local supplier that rents a 70" wide projection screen. It isn't ideal but I should at least be able to make the call about keeping it or not.

I've been playing around a bit and I've attached some pictures to show sharpness and convergence. Overall I'm not too happy with how the pictures turned out, as they don't look as good as in real life. One big issue is the screen I rented, it is a cheap tripod setup and there is a large degree of texture on the fabric that is affecting detail. During pans you can easily see the texture showing through the video projecting on it, and it is obscuring the pixel grid. When I put a sample of the JKP Progressive fabric on top of the screen the pixel grid became much more distinct.

With regards to my general impressions, so far I would say I am very pleased. On my unit the focus and uniformity appear excellent. All four corners are focused to the same degree, except possibly the top-right one which could be very slightly sharper (the screen is impacting my evaluation here). There is some CA from the lens, and on the edges it probably gets to be around 1/2 a pixel. From a seating position no CA is visible, however I'm only projecting at 70" and so I can't be 100% confident this will still be the case once I'm at 10' or 12' wide. I haven't seen any rainbows yet, the motion resolution is excellent, there is very little posterization on moving objects, and the auto-iris has been invisible to me so far. The image is sharp corner to corner, and this is especially visible on a Windows desktop. I flipped through the projection modes (rear, front, ceiling, etc.) with the Start Menu displayed and it looked great no matter what corner of the glass it was projected through. I can only imagine how much sharper it will get once I project onto a HT screen instead of this cheapo unit I have.

Two things I noticed when I tried to use ProjectorReviews.com's recommended settings:

• They suggested a red gain of 12 in Movie 1 mode, but on my unit this made everything VERY red. I think things looked better with no gain applied as white looked white this way.
• In their chart Color Enhancement was left at 3 in Movie 1 mode, but I found this introduced a lot of noise in the shadows and things looked better with it set to 0.

Thanks a lot!

Wow, that is some horrible sparkling on that screen. What do you all need that high-gain screens for? I mean, you are talking about sharpness while you have such distortions on your screen. Just look on the white or blue areas...horrible an worse than screendoor.
Edited by steak2 - 2/14/13 at 11:30am

This is a horrible screen, but it was the only one I could find locally on short notice. It isn't a home theater screen, it is a cheap pull-up unit for data presentations. My old screen is in storage across the country. I can't order the new one until I get the PJ hung in the new house to confirm how wide I can go and still fit the center speaker on the wall.