Boy do I suddenly feel "cool" like all the rest of you luckies who got to go play at Cedia... http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
Thanks to Lito who emailed me to let me know that a Sharp 9000 was parked in my own backyard here in Washington DC!
Where did I see these two projectors in action for 2 hours of solo-DVD swapping time?:
ProVideo
2428 Wisconsin Ave, NW
Washington DC 20007
202-333-9200
salesdc@provideoinc.com
Lito had emailed me privately to alert me to that this retailer had a Sharp 9000 on display. So I called the store to verify and arrived there yesterday after work with about 20 DVDs in hand (or actually a large bag).
Met with the manager Paulo Teixeria who was very nice (and knowlegeable) and took me down to the basement room where they have the projector. Here I was all flustered just to see a real 9000 and then...there in front of it on a table a foot shorter than its own...was the Sony 11 HT...pointing at the same screen!!!
(deep breath to calm down...)
Paulo powered up the 9000, handed me the projector and DVD player remote, and let me at it. A frenzy of DVD swapping ensued:
Gladiator. Dark City. Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Neverending Story. Frequency. Annie (a really shockingly high-resolution/filmlike transfer on a big screen). X-Men. And some so-so non-anamorphic titles to see what they'd look like big: Black Stallion, Room with a View. And the 4x3 Hobbit.
Also a bit of "live" native 480I with the James Taylor DVD.
There were many other DVD titles I played that I can't remember right now.
The first 1.5 hours was just the Sharp. Then Paulo turned on the Sony (I hadn't realized they could be played simultaneously) and the compaisons began.
Screen: a 4x3 (to be replaced soon with a 16x9) Draper with a gain of approximately 1.2. The image was about 80 inches wide and I was sitting a distance of about 10 or 12 feet away.
DVD player: A sony (can't remember the model, but not ES) that was outputting 480I via component, being switched by the pioneer receiver, running through a component splitter to send video to the two projectors. So yes, the projectors were getting 480I component input. A progressive-scan DVD player is in the future.
Disclaimer
Neither projector were ISF calibrated nor had ProVideo made any attempt to calibrate them other than how the came out of the box. I was shocked how good they BOTH looked (especially the Sony) considering this. I was given full control of the remotes for each projector so I played around with setting a tad but I would hardly infer that I had optimized the image in the 10 minutes of fooling around with the image adjustment menus.
Also, the video source of 480I, being sent through the receiver's video switching circuitry and then through a splitter to each projector can not be considered ideal. Again I was shocked how good the image looked considering this.
Overall impression
I'd take either projector home. The Sharp was amazing, and had slightly deeper blacks than the Sony, but the Sony put out a brighter image that looked "crisper" than the Sharp and in some ways was more satisfying as a result. I was quite surprised how good the Sony looked in comparison especially considering how negative the reports were from CEDIA. It wasn't a night-and-day difference. More a matter of degrees. The Sony had a SLIGHTLY more visible screen-door effect, but I didn't feel the Sharp was screen-door free either. I'll talk more about that when I describe each separately. The Sharp seemed to have a more lush color pallette than the Sony...reds seemed more true on the Sharp (which actually had INCREDIBLE red reprodution. I've never seen Reds like that on any digital projector).
Also, on the James Taylor 480I-native DVD, the Sharp showed combing on motion like in the hands movements on the guitar strumming. The Sony seemed more adept in handling motion on the 480I video.
Sharp 9000
First off the 3-2 pulldown on both projectors worked admirably. I didn't see any motion or combing artifacts with film-based source material (except sometimes on DVD menus with motion, which probably confused the projector into thinking they were still watching film when the menus were in fact video-orgin). The Sharp seemed to comb on the 480I James Taylor DVD which I found a tad distracting. I didn't have time to fiddle with the menu to see if there was some "auto" film-mode detect feature or something that might be adjusted to provide a better picture with native 480I as I popped the James Taylor in right before the store closed. Any of you with experience with the built in deinterlacer please share more.
Blacks were good but not great. As I mentioned earlier, I was surprised at how close the Sony came in overall image quality including black-level. I've heard so many talk about how great the blacks are on the Sharp I have to think that some adjustments could have been made to render better blacks.
Interestingly, because we were using a 4x3 screen, it was easy to see the absolute black-level the screen could produce above and below the 16x9 projected area and compare that to the letterboxing of 2.35:1 films inside the 16x9 frame...which was the blackest the projector could output. There was a clear difference from the black of the dead-screen area compared to the black of the letterboxing. Of course, I've also seen 4x3 DLP projectors that show the same difference with the absolute black they do in their anamorphic shrink vs the black in the letterboxing bars coming out of the DVD player...so who knows. I wish DVD players would start passing blacker-than-black levels since obviously in these cases the Digital projector can, in fact, produce a deeper black than the DVD player is rendering (there was a thread about that...)
Reminding everyone that I was watching 480I component in, I felt that the scaler in the Sharp was good but not great. The image was a bit on the soft side (lacking the cripsness of the Sony 11 HT, which was odd), but still very detailed and natural/film-like. It exhibited the same thing I saw on the 10HT a while back and this 11HT that I call "macro blocking" I think this is what most people mistankingly refer to as "screen door" which is when the scaler tends to lump several pixels together at a time in a large square rather than dithering or scaling to the finest gradation possible. So from a distance you get a "blocky" or "screen door" effect that isn't really being caused by the actual pixel density of the DLP chip itself. Naturally it disappears the minute you put on an HDTV or other signal that makes better use of the available resolution without relying on the scaler to do the dithering. (this is infact what I meant earlier when I said I didn't think the Sharp was free of "screen door" artifacts...I was actually referring to macro-blocking. Sorry for the purists who got led astry...)
This macro blocking was most obvious with credits and text which for some reason must have been more challenging than regular video. The credits during the opening of the never-ending story were painfully "blocky" looking, as were the credits and text of almost everything else I watched. I'm sure with a better scaler or maybe even 480P input this might be abated.
Colors...WOW...the image produces some of the most amazing greens, blues, and reds i've seen. Pee Wee Herman's big adventure really showed me just how saturated and rich these colors could look when the DVD material had it on the disc. Gorgeous cherry-apple reds...as true as you can imagine. Flesh tones were excellent too. I felt that the color and black level were a big plus over the sony (which I wouldn't have thought less of had I not had the Sharp to compare).
Big PLUS...You can easily cycle through the various aspect ratios by a simple button on the remote. What a luxury! The fact that the Sony makes you go into a menu, press a couple of arrow keys, select another option...then pick your aspect ratio out of an archane list of cryptic terms only a HT buff would understand is a major plus for the Sharp right there. Any HT nut's significant other would not have a problem punching the button until faces looked the right shape and black bars had gone away on this projector. I still get the willys when I come in and see my other half watching a 4x3 lbxed movie in 4x3 side-bar mode cuz it's to complicated to figure out the menu system on my ProScan TV...so I really REALLY welcome this simple "punch the button till it looks right" approach (a small label comes up with each press which indicates the aspect ratio being viewed...so there's no doubt).
The Sharp's ability to handle non-anamorphic 4x3 lbxed material was admirable as well. Looked as good as the Sony's scaler in this regard which I've always held in high esteem.
Darnit. Now that I think about it I wished I had played around with the sharpness control of the Sharp! Oh well...next time http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
Sony 11 HT
Not bad. Less screen door than the 10HT and better blacks. A very crip image to my eyes with DVD...at least in comparison to the sharp. Significantly brighter than the Sharp which would be important for someone with alot of ambient light issues. A very crisp image to my eyes with good DVD input and a good de-interlacer that switched well between film and video material.
I won't say to much more here becaues the Sony had been described/compared throughout the rest of the review. But I'll say this...While the Sharp would probably be my preference (I'd have to calibrate each projector and really spend some time to decide), I'm shocked by how much head-scratching there was over the lack of dramtic difference. Those of you who loved the 10HT might be happy to see what's been done with the 11. I wish there had been a Sany 60 in the room...now THAT would have been the ultimate!
But my word for you all is that the Sony was VERY watchable and had live-able blacks if you're not nutso about black-level. The Sharp did a better job with discs like Dark City and the opening scenes in Gladiator...but overall the Sony would be a well-received gift if someone decided to drop off an 11 HT in my living room http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif Those of you who have heard bad things about the 11HT from CEDIA might want to wait to see it for yourself before you decide. My impressions of the 11HT were much better than what I read from CEDIA.
Conclusions
I was impressed with both projetors. I think I was a little more impressed with the Sony than I had expected and a little less impressed with the Sharp (which I had expected to have really deep blacks which it did not). Over all I think I preferred the Sharp but it was not a closed-case night-and-day difference. There were some pros to the Sony (like the brigher image) that might be more pleasing to some people. My guess is that if the Sharp had been calibrated properly it would have come out father ahead in my impressions and in black level. Also, I'd love to see these two projectors with proper DVD input like progressive-scan as well as an out-board scaler. But for those of us on a budget...it's nice to know what your image would look like if you bought a Sharp/Sony and took it home and hooked it up to your DVD player while you saved for the rest of your system.
Please post your thoughts!
dave http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
Thanks to Lito who emailed me to let me know that a Sharp 9000 was parked in my own backyard here in Washington DC!
Where did I see these two projectors in action for 2 hours of solo-DVD swapping time?:
ProVideo
2428 Wisconsin Ave, NW
Washington DC 20007
202-333-9200
salesdc@provideoinc.com
Lito had emailed me privately to alert me to that this retailer had a Sharp 9000 on display. So I called the store to verify and arrived there yesterday after work with about 20 DVDs in hand (or actually a large bag).
Met with the manager Paulo Teixeria who was very nice (and knowlegeable) and took me down to the basement room where they have the projector. Here I was all flustered just to see a real 9000 and then...there in front of it on a table a foot shorter than its own...was the Sony 11 HT...pointing at the same screen!!!
(deep breath to calm down...)
Paulo powered up the 9000, handed me the projector and DVD player remote, and let me at it. A frenzy of DVD swapping ensued:
Gladiator. Dark City. Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Neverending Story. Frequency. Annie (a really shockingly high-resolution/filmlike transfer on a big screen). X-Men. And some so-so non-anamorphic titles to see what they'd look like big: Black Stallion, Room with a View. And the 4x3 Hobbit.
Also a bit of "live" native 480I with the James Taylor DVD.
There were many other DVD titles I played that I can't remember right now.
The first 1.5 hours was just the Sharp. Then Paulo turned on the Sony (I hadn't realized they could be played simultaneously) and the compaisons began.
Screen: a 4x3 (to be replaced soon with a 16x9) Draper with a gain of approximately 1.2. The image was about 80 inches wide and I was sitting a distance of about 10 or 12 feet away.
DVD player: A sony (can't remember the model, but not ES) that was outputting 480I via component, being switched by the pioneer receiver, running through a component splitter to send video to the two projectors. So yes, the projectors were getting 480I component input. A progressive-scan DVD player is in the future.
Disclaimer
Neither projector were ISF calibrated nor had ProVideo made any attempt to calibrate them other than how the came out of the box. I was shocked how good they BOTH looked (especially the Sony) considering this. I was given full control of the remotes for each projector so I played around with setting a tad but I would hardly infer that I had optimized the image in the 10 minutes of fooling around with the image adjustment menus.
Also, the video source of 480I, being sent through the receiver's video switching circuitry and then through a splitter to each projector can not be considered ideal. Again I was shocked how good the image looked considering this.
Overall impression
I'd take either projector home. The Sharp was amazing, and had slightly deeper blacks than the Sony, but the Sony put out a brighter image that looked "crisper" than the Sharp and in some ways was more satisfying as a result. I was quite surprised how good the Sony looked in comparison especially considering how negative the reports were from CEDIA. It wasn't a night-and-day difference. More a matter of degrees. The Sony had a SLIGHTLY more visible screen-door effect, but I didn't feel the Sharp was screen-door free either. I'll talk more about that when I describe each separately. The Sharp seemed to have a more lush color pallette than the Sony...reds seemed more true on the Sharp (which actually had INCREDIBLE red reprodution. I've never seen Reds like that on any digital projector).
Also, on the James Taylor 480I-native DVD, the Sharp showed combing on motion like in the hands movements on the guitar strumming. The Sony seemed more adept in handling motion on the 480I video.
Sharp 9000
First off the 3-2 pulldown on both projectors worked admirably. I didn't see any motion or combing artifacts with film-based source material (except sometimes on DVD menus with motion, which probably confused the projector into thinking they were still watching film when the menus were in fact video-orgin). The Sharp seemed to comb on the 480I James Taylor DVD which I found a tad distracting. I didn't have time to fiddle with the menu to see if there was some "auto" film-mode detect feature or something that might be adjusted to provide a better picture with native 480I as I popped the James Taylor in right before the store closed. Any of you with experience with the built in deinterlacer please share more.
Blacks were good but not great. As I mentioned earlier, I was surprised at how close the Sony came in overall image quality including black-level. I've heard so many talk about how great the blacks are on the Sharp I have to think that some adjustments could have been made to render better blacks.
Interestingly, because we were using a 4x3 screen, it was easy to see the absolute black-level the screen could produce above and below the 16x9 projected area and compare that to the letterboxing of 2.35:1 films inside the 16x9 frame...which was the blackest the projector could output. There was a clear difference from the black of the dead-screen area compared to the black of the letterboxing. Of course, I've also seen 4x3 DLP projectors that show the same difference with the absolute black they do in their anamorphic shrink vs the black in the letterboxing bars coming out of the DVD player...so who knows. I wish DVD players would start passing blacker-than-black levels since obviously in these cases the Digital projector can, in fact, produce a deeper black than the DVD player is rendering (there was a thread about that...)
Reminding everyone that I was watching 480I component in, I felt that the scaler in the Sharp was good but not great. The image was a bit on the soft side (lacking the cripsness of the Sony 11 HT, which was odd), but still very detailed and natural/film-like. It exhibited the same thing I saw on the 10HT a while back and this 11HT that I call "macro blocking" I think this is what most people mistankingly refer to as "screen door" which is when the scaler tends to lump several pixels together at a time in a large square rather than dithering or scaling to the finest gradation possible. So from a distance you get a "blocky" or "screen door" effect that isn't really being caused by the actual pixel density of the DLP chip itself. Naturally it disappears the minute you put on an HDTV or other signal that makes better use of the available resolution without relying on the scaler to do the dithering. (this is infact what I meant earlier when I said I didn't think the Sharp was free of "screen door" artifacts...I was actually referring to macro-blocking. Sorry for the purists who got led astry...)
This macro blocking was most obvious with credits and text which for some reason must have been more challenging than regular video. The credits during the opening of the never-ending story were painfully "blocky" looking, as were the credits and text of almost everything else I watched. I'm sure with a better scaler or maybe even 480P input this might be abated.
Colors...WOW...the image produces some of the most amazing greens, blues, and reds i've seen. Pee Wee Herman's big adventure really showed me just how saturated and rich these colors could look when the DVD material had it on the disc. Gorgeous cherry-apple reds...as true as you can imagine. Flesh tones were excellent too. I felt that the color and black level were a big plus over the sony (which I wouldn't have thought less of had I not had the Sharp to compare).
Big PLUS...You can easily cycle through the various aspect ratios by a simple button on the remote. What a luxury! The fact that the Sony makes you go into a menu, press a couple of arrow keys, select another option...then pick your aspect ratio out of an archane list of cryptic terms only a HT buff would understand is a major plus for the Sharp right there. Any HT nut's significant other would not have a problem punching the button until faces looked the right shape and black bars had gone away on this projector. I still get the willys when I come in and see my other half watching a 4x3 lbxed movie in 4x3 side-bar mode cuz it's to complicated to figure out the menu system on my ProScan TV...so I really REALLY welcome this simple "punch the button till it looks right" approach (a small label comes up with each press which indicates the aspect ratio being viewed...so there's no doubt).
The Sharp's ability to handle non-anamorphic 4x3 lbxed material was admirable as well. Looked as good as the Sony's scaler in this regard which I've always held in high esteem.
Darnit. Now that I think about it I wished I had played around with the sharpness control of the Sharp! Oh well...next time http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
Sony 11 HT
Not bad. Less screen door than the 10HT and better blacks. A very crip image to my eyes with DVD...at least in comparison to the sharp. Significantly brighter than the Sharp which would be important for someone with alot of ambient light issues. A very crisp image to my eyes with good DVD input and a good de-interlacer that switched well between film and video material.
I won't say to much more here becaues the Sony had been described/compared throughout the rest of the review. But I'll say this...While the Sharp would probably be my preference (I'd have to calibrate each projector and really spend some time to decide), I'm shocked by how much head-scratching there was over the lack of dramtic difference. Those of you who loved the 10HT might be happy to see what's been done with the 11. I wish there had been a Sany 60 in the room...now THAT would have been the ultimate!
But my word for you all is that the Sony was VERY watchable and had live-able blacks if you're not nutso about black-level. The Sharp did a better job with discs like Dark City and the opening scenes in Gladiator...but overall the Sony would be a well-received gift if someone decided to drop off an 11 HT in my living room http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif Those of you who have heard bad things about the 11HT from CEDIA might want to wait to see it for yourself before you decide. My impressions of the 11HT were much better than what I read from CEDIA.
Conclusions
I was impressed with both projetors. I think I was a little more impressed with the Sony than I had expected and a little less impressed with the Sharp (which I had expected to have really deep blacks which it did not). Over all I think I preferred the Sharp but it was not a closed-case night-and-day difference. There were some pros to the Sony (like the brigher image) that might be more pleasing to some people. My guess is that if the Sharp had been calibrated properly it would have come out father ahead in my impressions and in black level. Also, I'd love to see these two projectors with proper DVD input like progressive-scan as well as an out-board scaler. But for those of us on a budget...it's nice to know what your image would look like if you bought a Sharp/Sony and took it home and hooked it up to your DVD player while you saved for the rest of your system.
Please post your thoughts!
dave http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif