4K Sony VW 1000 first short Test - Page 8

According to my most recent info, it does not. Why it doesn't, I have not a clue. Whether there will be a firmware update supplying it, I would hope so. How close the color space points are already I don't know. But Tom and I will measure them in my demo unit and if any correction is needed, a variety of low cost external VPs could accomplish same for 1080p sources.

I baked him Sachertorte, that works each and every time

I always enjoy visiting a true enthusiast and seeing a work of passion. Norman is very passionate about home theater and has the means to build something of special qualities.

Please allow for one question about your 3D photography. Do you still use your dual Canon 5D MKII setup as prime source? Can you do 3D video with this setup as well? I myself worked as professional photographer in my youth and also have a 5d MK2 atm. I would be very interested to hear more about your experiences in this field and I am tempted to try it (which is off topic here).

Thank you!

If the VW1000 does not have a CMS then it better have perfect colorspace out of the box, if not it is ubelivable when both the HW30 and the VW95 has working CMS...

I have not played around with the CMS in the VW95 because I use the Radiance for that. However I am not sure how you want to define "working CMS" as SOWK checked it out and reported that it did not track linearly.

The only question I have about the Sony1000 is how well it will perform with typical dark movies scenes. (I also watch a lot of sports and have no question about how well it will do with this!) I've had a JVC RS20 for 3 yrs and been very pleased with how it handles these, and the new RS55's that I have seen are even better.

Will the 1000 be a step backward in this regard, or does its DI overcome its lower native CR?

Hopefully at some point someone can get a measurement for 0 ire for us and compare to the same we have seen posted for the 95 and JVC rs55 and 65.

The measurement for the VW1000 have already been posted in this thread. Take W.Mayer's lumen measurement and divide it by his CR measurement and you will get the 0 ire (black level) measurement. So 2065/11050 =?

Knowing the measured on/off contrast of the 3 projectors you already have that info. The projector with the highest on/off CR will have the lowest black level.

This makes the BL for the 1000 quite a bit higher than that of the RS55, say, and it's hard for me to tell (until I see it) how much this will really matter. Also, I don't have any experience with DI's , to know how much this will compensate for the lower native CR of the 1000 (compared to the JVC).

Will, remember that Wolfgang uses and measures the Sony wideopen, so without the DI Enabled.

Yes, he quoted CR values with the DI off, but then when he tried the DI he raved (as much as a good German can rave!) about it.

Would the highest on/off necessarily have the lowest black level? Since the 1000 would more than double the 100 ire lumens of the others, could it not have twice as high of a black level and still measure higher contrast?

Black level depends on contrast ratio, light output, screen gain and screen size. You need all of them to calculate the black level. Twice as many lumens means twice the black floor if all else is kept constant. Double the screen area and the blacks will be cut in half. Etc.

It is true that the black level coming out of the projector could be higher, but you don't have an absolute black level for your images until you pick a screen material too. Screens don't come in infinite varieties and so situations will differ, but in general if one projector is twice as bright with higher on/off CR you can use a surface that is half as bright (a gray screen) and your whites will be the same while your absolute blacks will be darker and the gray will also help kill the negative effect of room reflections to help ANSI CR.

Also, if the 1000 has a service menu option to change the most open iris position it is possible that it could be dimmed down and improve native on/off CR even more.

These are some reasons that lowest black level coming out of the projector does not necessarily mean lowest black level for your images once the projector is matched with a screen and appropriate setup options are chosen.

Edit: I see Drexler beat me too it and much more concisely too.

--Darin

From my experience with the VW95, the dynamic iris doesn't make as big of a difference as one might think. It find the greatest areas it helps in are:

- lowers the absolute black level at 0 IRE. The black level on a fade to black is much darker with the DI engaged, compared to how it looks with the iris OFF or the iris closed all the way on manual.

- the DI makes the blacks in mixed scenes look a little darker.

- the black level at 0 IRE jumps quickly once there is a small bright object somewhere on the screen. So while a VW95 may be 80,000:1 on/off with DI, I don't think in practice it really gives anything close to this (since the step from 0 IRE to a little light in an otherwise all black scenes results in a quick jump in the black level).

- I have spent a lot of time experimenting with the VW95 service menu iris controls. There is no free lunch here so I would not expect too much. You can close the open reg down so that black levels are better, but then the image losses its luster and pop. You can counter that by then raising the open reg. Then very low to mid APL scenes look fantastic, but this comes at the expense then of high APL scenes which then look rather flat (the result of pushing the open reg higher).

I don't know how this will play out on the 1000 but these are my experiences so far with the VW95.

As you know the BL by itself has little meaning other than in some contrived testing situations. It is really the intrascene contrast that is important.

If we take W.Mayer’s 1500 lumen 17K:1 best case native CR with a ND2 filter , I doubt you or anyone else in a double blind test of video sequences would be able to accurate differentiate it from the 850 lumen 25K:1 RS20 number also quoted. Paraphrasing what gregr in the past said about another Sony DI projector, enabling the DI (4x) would enable it to deliver dark scene intrascene contrast equal to a projector with 4x the on/off CR in most dark scenes.

So if the VW1000 delivers 30K:1 closed and has a 4x multiplier it will deliver intrascene Cr equal to a 120K:1 projector on most dark scenes. Based on some double blind testing we did last year between a RS50 setup at ~ 26K:1 and a RS60 at ~70K:1, most people would not be able to differentiate real video sequences.

Well, HHF, your analysis is more encouraging the l'dvd's, so I hope it's the reaction I have!

Just watch the opening credits/scene from LOTR 1 or some of the torture test fade to black and fade from blacks scenes from Tree of Life. Good or bad, it will tell you a lot about the importance of the absolute black level to you, which is a matter of personal taste. Also the size, type, and gain of the screen and the throw distance will play a role.

I also have a Radiance so it is not a problem for me when I get my VW1000, but I think it is mandatory to have a good and working CMS with a PJ in this pricerange. I have heard from the best calibrator in Norway that the CMS in the HW30 and VW95 works.

First of all, why are the W1000 threads in this forum, shouldn't they be in the 20,000 and up forum.....? Just kidding but now that it is in this forum where I often hang out I am now considering this beast.....and my wife is threatening to change the locks....

Back to this projector. I can tell you I had the pleasure of watching the CES demo of what I believe was still a pre-production W1000 and in regards to fade to black, this projector faded to very close to black. The demo room was completely black so this was easy to judge.

There were also a number of good low APL scenes in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trailer that looked very good, and the high APL scenes looked fantastic. Let's just say that I was so impressed by this projector that while I have never purchased a projector that was over $5K, I am now seriously considering the purchase of this projector.

With this said however, I don't think this projector would compete with the black levels in low APL scenes that I have seen from the JVC RS65 and if that is the most important aspect then you certainly should not spend this kind of money on this projector.

For me this projector is a dream, with a real calibrated 2000 lumens I will still have plenty of light for my 1.0 gain 165" AT screen even after bulb aging. This projector clearly has better black levels than my current DLP while being nearly twice as bright!!! Amazing...It is also razor sharp due to that nice big high quality lens....and no visible picture structure from any seating distance. Combine that with future compatibility for 4K blu-ray and 3D that I can play with and this projector is more than I could have hoped for! There is no other projector that can put out a true 2000 calibrated lumens and maintain greater than a native 10,000 to 1 CR! This is simply unprecedented and I am surprised people are not making a bigger deal about this accomplishment. And that doesn’t include whatever the CR is with Sony’s very good DI engaged.

I guess the CMS thing seems wierd but I also have a Radiance so it is not a big concern for me. If you don't have one, the mini3D like I have is a great option.

Off to try and get the money together for this while still maintaining my marriage…..

Wont help much when the input is 4k... unless Lumagen is going to do us all a solid and just firmware update the Radiance to 4k for free..

Obviously, until 4k sources are out, the argument of "just use the Radiance" holds.

That's what I've heard suggested, but no promises.

Yep !

Art

While that is true in theory I think Greg may have actually helped keep that from being the case with Sony projectors. My memory may be off on some of this, but the reason I say that is that Greg pointed out the brightness compression issues that happened between near 100% stim pixels and 100% stim pixels with an early iris implementation by Sony and my impression was that they changed their later algorithms to not do as much compensation as they closed the iris, in order to avoid brightness compression. Brightness compression was much easier to find or prove than dark scene intra-image CR not improving as much as the iris is shut down and their choices with the tradeoffs later could be argued to be an improvement. So, not saying Greg was wrong, but just that I think he was influential enough in pointing out some weaknesses that they moved further away from giving that almost perfect application of iris shutdown multiplier to dark scene intra-image CR.

IIRC, Planar took a tact more like Greg described with the full iris shutdown multiplier going to compensation that would apply to intra-image CR in dark scenes. That is, if they shut the iris 3x they also boosted non-black pixels 3x to get them back to the same amount of light coming out of the projector for them. But this caused brightness compression problems with some material.

From a quick look at some of Mark Petersen's measurements with a Sony VW50 from here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=852467

it looks to me like with iris shutdown of about 3x they gave 2x or less improvement to intra-image CR with some of the patterns he used.

It wouldn't surprise me if Sony has improved the iris action more with the VW1000, but I suspect that they are still very sensitive to causing brightness compression and so I'm guessing they have been conservative with how much boosting to the panels for non-black pixels they do as the iris shuts down.

--Darin

Whats up with Sony still not producing CMS that tracks in a linear manner?

They used to rule the post-production and broadcast world with their CRT Trinitrons.

As far as I know or my best estimate is that the most invisible IRIS's are simply using derivatives and responses to plottings. This means you can't really accurately estimate the contrast effect or visible dynamic black effect by an On/Off reading of the IRIS by using a 0 IRE measurement.

A good test might be measuring both a JVC and Sony with a pixel fade-in pattern that starts at a full black 0 IRE then adds 1 pixel at rgb(1,1,1), then 2 at (2,2,2) on opposite sides of the screen, etc... Slowly going up all the way to multiple white pixels in the image at various parts on the screen. Take the measurements of the black level at the farthest point from the pixels in succession (middle of screen) and then back to full black and then to full white and see the effect of the on/off as it changes (well wouldn't technically be on/off, since you'd be switching between full white and partial black with pixels, but you get my point), etc... Something like full black, black with 1 pixel at 1,1,1... Full black measured to black with 2 pixels at 2,2,2, and keep going, could even throw in some full whites back to those patterns, or all 3 in a row in succession. Average it all out or something.

I'm sure someone could come up with a better test, but I mean something in this general range.

I am getting somewhere around 50,000:1 Native On/Off from a JVC RS-45 at farthest throw, if I raise the manual aperture from -15 to say -5, the loss in Native on/off is not terrribly visible (but you can see it). So I'd say even if the IRIS has a small effect starting at 20,000:1, you might not notice much black level loss compared to a JVC. Maybe vs. an RS-55 or RS-65 a bit, but the thing is how many people are actually getting 100% of the Native from their JVC's (I am but I am using an HP screen at farthest throw), so most of the people buying this projector would probably be doing so for the extra lumens and 4k ability with a larger screen. The black levels should be good enough in the overwhelming majority of scenes.

A couple more first hand impression of the Sony 4K in this thread for those interested.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/proje...r-uk-news.html