New JVC DLA-X75R/DLA-RS56 $7,999 projector with 3D RF glasses and E-shift CEDIA 2012 - Page 4

Interesting. I never thought that the results (after adjusting contrast/brightness) would be different but now you have me curious so I'll try it out and see if I notice any difference.

Kal

I found the idea of crushing blacks with "standard" HDMI (16-235) but not with "enhanced" HDMI (0-255) to be puzzling. Properly calibrated they should give the same result.

So last night I changed my RS56 to "enhanced" and recalibrated the brightness and contrast accordingly. Brightness had to go from 0 down to -7 and contrast went from 0 to +16. I was using the various patterns on the AVS709 test disc meant specifically for setting the black/white points to test.

I ended up exactly where I was before, same black level, same white level (perfect, no crushing or clipping). This is what I would have expected.

So I went back to "standard" with brightness and contrast both at 0.

Kal

I have mine set to -7 and +15 (+15 gives a bit of headroom above 235). Anything higher than -7 starts to raise the black floor just as anything above 0 does when using HDMI Standard. I do find a smidgen of improvement in black crush using HDMI Enhanced but it's not much (there was a shade more improvement with my RS55). Using HDMI Enhanced does allow one to see blacker than black but in any event the last thing I want to do is start raising the black floor.

Agreed. This is why I used -7 brightness as well in my tests. Might as well buy a RS46/48 if you're going to raise the black level.

Kal

Interesting that you tried this as I had discussed with Geoff on another thread about this. I've never found any difference myself (on my old HD350 and current X35), but Geoff and some others seem to find improved shadow detail.

The only explanation that I can think of is that the greyscale levels for the darker points are moved relative to the gamma points (especially if using the custom gamma), so allowing for tolerances on different machines this might mean that the gamma for the low points may be lower. This would show 'improved' shadow detail, though whether it measures at the target gamma or a bit lower is another matter.

In my case I can just about make out the 17 bar flashing so I'm happy using superwhite myself and I'm running a flat 2.3 gamma at the moment (pending another attempt at BT 1886 when I get the chance).

The other explanation may be that they're raising their black level higher making 17/18/19 easier to see? Like yourself I can juuuust make out 17 but barely when running standard on this AVS709 test screen:



(Not a picture of my screen - I'm just showing the test pattern for reference).

When switch to enhanced, I can easily go lower such that 17 shows up a bit more but 16 barely does or it's not noticeable (not as easy to do when in standard). I actually set the brightness higher when I first did this. It wasn't until I put up a 100% black screen (16) that I notice that the brightness I picked with "enhanced" was actually elevating the black level. So I stepped it down to get it back to the lowest level possible without raising the black level (same as brightness 0 on 'standard') which was actually a notch or two darker with brightness.

It's easy to miss on the above test screen since with brightness up a notch or such the background gets brigher isn't noticed because of the other content. It's not until you go to a 100% black screen that you notice that you've slightly elevated the black level.

IMHO, slightly elevating black to increase shadow detail isn't necessarily a bad thing if you don't have advanced means of playing around in the darker areas (like some form of advanced/parametric gamma adjustment). It's a personal choice.

Kal
Edited by kal - 1/8/13 at 12:09pm

I have an update!

So we decided to have the original installer of the speaker and HDMI wires come back out and get this stuff installed, after sounding out the wires I thought a few were in the wrong place and would be a pain to handle by myself. Plus I wasn't too excited about doing the ceiling mount...price was right so leave it to the pro's. Of course they were busy right before Christmas, so here is the projector at the big party:



That's right, sitting in the basement.

So the day after Christmas the ball got rolling, and even though the wires were up in the ceiling there was some serious work with 2x4's and hanging to get everything mounted, definitely a two-person job with 10' ceilings. RS-56 with Chief mounts, 3" pipe, matching cabinet door (leftover from kitchen - lucky!) and a Panamax line conditioner:



Once we found the power line behind one of the wall sockets we had juice! The speakers were a pain because almost every one needed a notch in a stud, but the screen went up pretty easy - I like the grey of the Firehawk G3.



The room has semi-dark walls, seems to work very well. So commence the spray-painting of speaker grills to wall color (seven for this room and four others). It just isn't a home project unless I'm up past 3:00 AM painting! Of course we have windows in the back and an opening to the foyer on the left - the dining room lights reflect off of foyer mirrors onto the screen! But it's easy to flick off a few switches for true dark viewing. Game on!



[All productivity in the house has now stopped for viewing of Charter HD On-Demand and Vudu HDX blockbusters]

One way to check your brightness level to ensure you're not raising the black floor is to set it with the test pattern and than select a 0% field from the other test pattern section. With this field up, press the hide button on the remote and compare. Hide is the absolute black floor of the projector and it should be the same as what you get when you set brightness correctly. If you are worried about shadow detail near black, you can tweak the gamma settings at near black (be careful, bit depth falls off rapidly at low IRE levels, so messing with near black levels can have bad results elsewhere).

When I get my cal gear out I'm going to look at HDMI Enhanced vs Superwhite again. I'm not sure if gamma plays a role in this. That said, the way I solve solve black crush is by diddling with the gamma curve (or the dark level control). At any rate it's okay to barely be able to see 17 and personally I'd settle for level 18 rather than raise the black floor. But, if room lighting is always on then the black floor doesn't mean much.

Anyone tried Panasonic RF glasses yet to see if they work?

Also, has everyone checked their focus uniformity?

Used test image from this thread

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1436740/sony-vpl-hw50es-focus-nonuniformity/30#post_22804908

and lower leftcorner is a bit fuzzy - can't fully focus on that area at all and it is best when the rest of the picture is in focus.
It is minor and so I am sure this will be called "within spec"
Just wondering what other people are seeing.

Small focus uniformity issues like that may not even be the projector. It could be the screen has a dip or push in that area that makes focus there impossible. So many variables......

Kris, I didn't think about the hide feature with the 0% pattern....thanks. My setting's at -3B & +10C are dead on and do not raise the black floor. I have four calibration disks Avia/WOW/Getgray/AVS709 and tried them all last night and find minor differences between them. When I went to the -7B & + 17C on my setup it crushes the blacks. One thing that has helped me out is when forum member "Michael TLV" came to my house a couple of times and calibrated (and educated me) my projectors, is that after getting very good chart specs he said to me now lets see what the picture looks like. This new X75 has a surprisingly good picture even before calibration and am happy with the current brightness and contrast settings to start the calibration after I get about another 50hrs on the bulb.

I hope you're going to mix in some pristine bluray discs occasionally and see what that bad boy is really capable of once it's optimized All due respect to Charter and Vudu HDX

It could also be from using different areas of the lens. The more you use lens shift, the more you may push the image towards the edge of the lens elements where things chromatic aberrations, softness, and other issues can rear their ugly heads. The closer you have it to the screen the larger the lens area used too.

Kal

Ah, Michael Chen. One of the best calibrators in the business and someone I'm happy to call a friend. Glad to hear you hired him for the job, you couldn't of picked a better one!!

On another note, I just received a replacement X75 from JVC to see if I have the same issues I was talking about before. The new unit had none of them, so it was an isolated case. Looking forward to doing a bit of measuring tonight!

I've used the hide feature method you describe when setting (or verifying) my brightness setting. It works just like you said (naturally). But I found it easier to just put up a 0% pattern and then change brightness on the JVC. I can instantly see if the light level changes by using this method. On my projector changing brightness from -5 to -6 is quite apparent as is changing from -6 to -7. The -7 to -8 change results in no noticeable difference so I left the setting at -7. I stand near the screen when doing this.

I hope your replacement x75 is A-Okay with regards to convergence, etc...

Convergence on the new unit is near perfect. There is some very light fringing but this is probably more of an individual color focus issue than a panel aligment issue. Pixel focus is also considerably better than the other one, more in line with my RS35. I did a calibration last night and like the last one it barely needed any work. Using their preset 2.3 gamma resulted in a perfect linear 2.3 gamma. Grayscale only took a few clicks to get every IRE below 1 dE. The entire color gamut was under a dE of 3 in standard with no tweaking at all. Only downside is this projector has the issue with green hue being a bit off where the other didn't. Luminance was perfect though. I did a multi-point read after I tweaked everything and at all the different saturation levels everything ended up under a dE of 3 with most under 2. Some of the green points were in the mid 2s due to the hue shift. I also ran the new color checker in CalMan and the average dE was less than 1.5 with the highest being a 2.7 (greenish blue). I will use my Radiance XE or Spectracal Color Box at some point and run a full cube but I will wait until I have more hours on it.

I'll be setting mine up this week. Question: after engaging eShift2, should I then set the output on my Oppo BDP-105 to "2k-4k"? I understand both devices are merely upscaling, but is there a benefit to double upscaling? I'm upgrading from an RS45, which I absolutely loved, but my viewing distance rendered it impossible to enjoy blu rays authored less-than-pristinely.

Also, I still have my Lumagen Radiance calibrated to the 45....should I leave the calbrated CMS settings as-is (as a baseline) on the lumagen, and just fine tune using the RS56's CMS (using a Lumagen test pattern, of course.)?

if u are watching blu rays or 1080p content, I suggest u keep the resolution at source direct. You will not be able to us the 4k upscaling with the eshift. Also, the Qdeo by Marvell processing doesn't work well with blu rays, it adds unwanted distortions. It however works well with hdtv for me

I'd also suggest that you clear the CMS and other settings (or just change to an unused memory) in the Lumagen. Then pick a mode that is likely to be somewhere near accurate until such time as you can do (or have done) a proper calibration. Using 2 x CMS sounds like a receipe for banding and other issues. In my X35 just using Standard colour space, 6500K and 2.3 gamma wasn't that far from the mark once I got my meter out, so similar settings on the X55/RS48/RS4810 should do for the time being.

Personally, with a Lumagen I wouldn't even bother using the JVC CMS, especially if you can do the 125 point autocal.

+1.

Do CMS in one spot, the best spot. That would be the Lumagen.

Kal

If the colorspace meets the requirements for a successful 125 point cal (∆E ≤ 3) I agree. But if there are luminance, under-saturation, or hue errors at 100% then the 125 cal may not be able to fully correct the gamut. In this case I would use the internal CMS to attempt to minimize undersaturation, low luminance, and hue errors because the 125 point cal cannot correct for undersaturation and may not be able to correct hue errors at 100%. Internal CMS's may worsen saturation tracking but this is precisely what the 125 point cal corrects.

This is what I was thinking in my mind. When calibrating my RS45, changes had to be made to the tint after lumagen calibration due to undersaturation. A bit of a compromise that I feel better about tackling with the RS56 after the Lumagen Calibration.

Thanks for this. It's currently at source direct, but I wasn't sure if I should keep it there or move it. Now I know! thanks Blee0120.

I think I may do that. from my research, I'm seeing that the RS56 is capable of coming very close to accuracy before calibration. Thanks!

I have an RS4810 and I did use the internal CMS to correct Red and also to help a Green under-saturaiton and hue error. I also tweaked yellow a bit. Then I did a 125 point cal. I see no banding or any unwanted effects by using both CMS's but neither CMS is doing anything extreme. In my case I could not use either the internal or external CMS to "fully correct" (∆E = ≤ 3) gamut but by using both I was able to achieve better results than just using just one or the other. Put another way, the Lumagen would never be able to expand the colorspace whereas the internal one may be able to (depending on color) so using both may get the best results.

Great info Geof, thanks! I am just waiting for my Mini to get back as it is being repaired right now. My Mini is scheduled to hit mid next week at which point I am going to do my first auto cal with my 45. Since my 45 does not have a CMS, is there any other way (tint?) to pull up an under-saturated color before running the 125 point cal if standard, wide 1 and wide 2 all have under-saturation to some degree?

Thanks

I'm not sure Todd. You can try using the color control but I was under the impression that Wide1 (or 2?) didn't have any undersaturated colors. I guess that varies unit to unit tho. Hopefully any under saturation error is low and not accompanied with a significant hue error. You may wish to ask in the cal thread or the RS45 thread. I know Manni has (had?) an RS45 and if there is a way to fix an under-saturation error he'll know about it. Even though my RS4810 has a CMS is does not significantly help with the green undersaturation and hue error (but I could fix red and yellow). Fortunately the 125 point cal helps correct any green hue error at 75% saturation and 75% is far more common that 100% saturation with real content. While any hue error may be reduced with a 125 pt cal an undersaturated color is undersaturated at any level and cannot be corrected externally. The good news is that you'll be able to fully correct gamma and grayscale and those errors can be far more noticeable than most small color errors. Good luck!

Pardon my barging in, but I have a spare new PK-12210UP lamp assembly for sale, please see my sig for anyone interested.