Here is my report from CEDIA, its been a long day and I realised a few things:
Trying to cram it into one day is hard work
I am really not into 3D
I don't ever need to see 'The Art of Flight' ever again
I'll start with my favourite of the show: Sim2 M.150 - This was the only home theater projector Sim2 had on display (they had the Pro C4 as well). They were showing it on a 107" Stewart Screen (standard 1.3 gain I think) there was a bit of ambient light coming in from the door and some low lamps. It seemed to make good on its 1100 lumen claim and the black levels were excellent, perhaps not quite as good as LCOS but so close as to not be an issue. The colour reproduction was what hooked me on this, just gorgeous. I have never seen a bulb based projector produce such subtle dark shades and the neon clothing in the demo just popped off the screen. It was very sharp, as expected and suprisingly bright. Not sure if it is quite bright enough for my setup but given a bit of gain with a screen it could probably work. I also waited until the end of the demo movie to see if I could hear how noisy the projector was as people have commented on this. I couldn't hear anything terrible but it was mounted quite high up in an enclosure but it didn't sound like an air conditioner... I must have spent about an hour watching this...
DPI Dvision 35 LED - They were showing this on a masked off 144" screen as it was also used for their native 2.35:1 model. The effective viewing must have been about the same as the Sim2. Again colour was great but a little annoyingly, they only showed it for a couple of minutes then switched back to the 2.35:1. It may ahve been the setup but I would give the edge to the Sim2, plus I overheard them saying ti would retail for $40K
DPI native 2.35:1 - Same screen but unmasked to 144". Very bright, around 2900 lumens I think they said. It looked pretty sharp, colour was pretty decent but I had been spoiled by the LED. It may have been the Seabiscuit demo but the black levels didn't look great, they looked better in the MI4 demo but still nothing mind blowing.
DPI Highlite Cine 330 - Very bright but didn't blow me away, black levels were nothing to write home about and the demo conditions may not have been the best. I think this uses thesmaller DLP chip and trying to pump 3000 lumens is perhaps too detrimental to the black level.
Epson 6020 - Shown on a 120" 1.3 Stewart screen, rather impressed with this actually. Seriously bright, 2400 lumens and the black level was still very good. Apparently it was running in one of the lower lumen settings. Would make a good living room projector. The 2D image quality lacked refinement but overall it did a decent job with colour, was reasonably sharp, I didn't see any pixel structure and I was about 6-7' away. The 3D was suprisingly good, well, in that it didn't make my eyes hurt (unlike the majority of other models I saw). Retail was under $4k apparently, out in November
Mitsubushi 8000D - Screen size was around 110", seemed bright for a .65" chip DLP, certainly brighter than my Sharp Z15000. They were only showing 3D which was unfortunate as I found it virtually unwatchable. I presume the projector was tuned to make the 3D more punchy as the black levels didn't look too hot at all. Out in November, not sure of price. Perhaps on a bigger screen of configured differently this might be quite good for the price.
Sony VW1000ES - Bright and punchy, probably the best non-DLP projector I saw, overall picture quality was excellent. Interestingly, it probably doesn't have as high a native contrast as the JVCs but the dynamic iris does such a good job that I actually preferred the Sony. It had what I can only describe as a more DLPy look than the JVCs. Seriously bright, they had it on a 150" Stewart screen in a totally light controlled room, it didn't seem to have any problem filling it. They were also showing this at the Screen Innovations on a Black Diamond screen with some ambient light and it looked good but far better in a light controlled room. I have to say though, the 2k to 4k upscaling didn't work miracles for me and on closer inspection, looked a little CFI-y. Obviously the 4K content looked great and I would probably take this over their similarly priced 84" 4K TV.
Sony HW50 - They had this on the show floor with loads of ambient light on 84" black diamond screen, it looked pretty washed out in these conditions. They are saying its 1700 lumens but I know that my IN83 produces similar lumen numbers and doesn't look as washed out on a grey wall with several lights on. Hard to tell how good it actually was from the demo.
JVC X95 - They had this in a seperate light-controlled theater on a 120" Stewart screen. It looked suprisingly bright, certainly a step up from my old RS1 with a new bulb. It looked as though it could have gone bigger as the black level looked a little high. The 2D image quality was very good, colour and sharpness seemed good, the eshift really makes a difference. Contrast obviously top notch and created some really excellent depth in dark scenes. The 3D used IR glasses, it was OK but flickery to me, certainly not my favourite or something I could use for long periods.
JVC X75 - Very similar to the above but they had it on a 100" black diamond screen and only running 3D. I don't know if it was the Black Diamond screen or the RF glasses but this gave me a headache almost instantly. Once I took the glasses off however, the blurry image looked colourful with good contrast :-)
JVC X55 - Again, pretty close to the above models, for $5k if you have a light controlled room and don't need massive lumens this is a great deal for $5k (apparently) they had this running 2D on a 100" black diamond screen. They did a demo with eshift on and off, it definitely improves the image. Basically it looked like a half-sized version of the Sony VW1000ES
Runco X200i - a huge chassis for a single-chip projector, looked quite bright on the 120" Stewart 1.3 screen. The 3D was the least painful of all that I saw at the show so, by default, gets top marks for that. The overall image quality didn't seem to be anything terribly mind-blowing especially for the (5 figure) price.
Runco LS12d - 3 chipper on the same 120" screen. Again, pain free 3D which was great, the image looked punchy, bright and colourful and still retained good black levels. Pretty impressed with this one.
Runco SC35D - 168" screen, 2D looked great, excellent black level considering how many lumens it must have been pumping out. I didn't ask the price, but I am assuming it was - a lot.
Sorry if this is all a little subjective, its the best I can do given my current state, having been up since 4.30am
