Nice info @Phil Hinton
It looks well over priced when the UHD Optomas can be picked up at less than half the price - less than £2k in terms of the Optoma HD550x. I'm hoping you'll maybe get one of those in for review?
I've a good grasp of what you are saying in reference to the JVC's and Epsons - very good qaulity projectors.
I would like to understand more about your actual opinion of the overall image quality in terms of sharpness. Do you think this new DLP chip has better sharpness than the JVC's and Epsons?
The reality for me is that I don't have a dedicated room and my viewing content these days seems to be sky UHD sports, gaming, animation movies with the odd feature film thrown in. In that respect, things like black level, WCG etc become less important and getting the extra sharpness is an attractive proposition for me.
I would have liked to hear a little bit more about the comparison between the mentioned projectors in terms of image sharpness. Does this DLP projector give better sharpness compared to the others and if so, is there much in it?
Reason I ask is that looking at comparisons I've seen, its clear that the Acer has a clear advantage in terms of image sharpness v the Epson 9300 for example. The thing that isn't clear, is that from a seating position, how much of a difference can be seen? Thats the million dollar question for me
Epson 9300 below
v the Acer
Epson
Acer
The images above show that the Acer makes a much better job of sharpness, nice rounded, detailed edges with no stair stepping. But paused, cropped pics are one thing - watching moving images from your seat is another thing entirely....
Hi Soupdragon,Nice info @Phil Hinton
Reason I ask is that looking at comparisons I've seen, its clear that the Acer has a clear advantage in terms of image sharpness v the Epson 9300 for example. The thing that isn't clear, is that from a seating position, how much of a difference can be seen? Thats the million dollar question for me
Hi Gary, yes and yes. Measured from the projector at the usual 6ft mark and using the standard pattern. For those measures we take the room out of it as much as possible. Thanks.Hi Phil, thanks for the review.
Can I ask how you measured the ANSI contrast, as 1308:1 is spectacularly high. I'm guessing it was at the lens but was it the standard 16 square checkerboard pattern?
Cheers.
Gary
I'm afraid your description is incorrect, but completely understandable given the misleading information put out by the manufacturer. I was very pleased to see Phil accurately capture this unlike other reviewers. If you read up on the spec of the TI chip being used you'll see it's exactly the same tech as the JVC's and Epsons but it starts with more pixels so can get to 8.3m but it's still two overlapping images.I must correct a couple of inaccuracies in this review, The DLP chip puts 8.3 million discrete pixels on screen there is no pixel shifting with this technology which is why it is clearly sharper than the Epson and JVC, comparable to the Sony 4K projectors. I have an Optoma HD300X and I find the black level to be more than adequate for movies this chip uses the same technology so why would you assume the black level would be any different?
If you read up on the spec of the TI chip being used you'll see it's exactly the same tech as the JVC's and Epsons but it starts with more pixels so can get to 8.3m but it's still two overlapping images.
Single chip is always going to be sharper than 3 chip due to the alignment, so that would be a difference in sharpness just because of that I would think.
I wonder how good the dynamic black is for contrast performance. I don't think I've seen it mentioned how well it works (or not).
Epson & JVC cannot process more than 4 million pixels, therefore the 8 million that comes in gets down converted to 4 million, they then display the same 4 million pixels twice with a pixel offset to give the impression of 4K. (It’s essentially chip level upscaling)
The TI DLP chip projectors can process all 8 million pixels and then splits them into 2 discrete 4 million pixel layers, which it then displays one after the other at a speed that the eye cannot see, which means as far as the eye can determine it is true 4K (8 million pixels), (Effectively it is the modern DLP version of the old interlaced TV) this is why if you compare a Sony 4K SRXD (Or JVC equivalent) to the TI DLP the sharpness (Within the limitations of the lens used) is identical, something the pixel shift projectors cannot do. (It’s such a simple idea (Although difficult to implement) that it’s just brilliant)
As to 3 chip distortion, then this is possible, but to be honest, unless they are using really cheap mountings or have abysmal quality control, this should not be a problem in this day and age.
Where the 4K DLP do fall down is with WCG as the colour wheels can only produce RGB (Rec 709) which restricts the amount of colours they can deliver, (Although as these are 1st generation I am sure this will be overcome in the future) although some do use RGBRGB colour wheels to offer a little mitigation of this limitation.
Bill
Epson & JVC cannot process more than 4 million pixels, therefore the 8 million that comes in gets down converted to 4 million, they then display the same 4 million pixels twice with a pixel offset to give the impression of 4K. (It’s essentially chip level upscaling)
The TI DLP chip projectors can process all 8 million pixels and then splits them into 2 discrete 4 million pixel layers, which it then displays one after the other at a speed that the eye cannot see, which means as far as the eye can determine it is true 4K (8 million pixels), (Effectively it is the modern DLP version of the old interlaced TV) this is why if you compare a Sony 4K SRXD (Or JVC equivalent) to the TI DLP the sharpness (Within the limitations of the lens used) is identical, something the pixel shift projectors cannot do. (It’s such a simple idea (Although difficult to implement) that it’s just brilliant)
Bill
That would be great but it's not how it works. It's 2 images of 2716x1528 overlaid. They want you to think you're getting the exact 8.3m pixels from the source but you're not. Read the TI specs or believe Phil.
But you can't take 2716x1528 and get it to equal 3840x2160. As I said the marketing blurb is highly misleading resulting in some inaccurate reviews and a confused public. Still I'm sure Donald Trump would say these are just alternative facts.Here is my take on it after visiting the factory of both Digital Projection and BenQ:
Lets say you have a projector that is 1000 pixels across (using simple numbers here for ease of explanation). Your image is 2000 pixels across. You have an issue whereby you cannot display the entire image without doing something e.g. ignore every other pixel or downscale it. In neither of these examples are you getting the 2000 pixel across image.
What XPR/Wobulation does is take the 1000 pixel projector and adds a half pixel shift to the optic. So you can now take your 2000 pixel across image and break it in to two images. The first is made of all the odd pixels across (odd image) and the second all the even pixels across (even image).
You then send the odd image and have it display for a fraction of time e.g. 1/120 of a second. Then you use your half pixel shift optic to shift the image 1/2 of a displayed pixel to the right and send it the even image for 1/120 of a second.
Now if I understand them correctly this means they are not overlaid they are in fact 2 separate images but displayed so fast that it is essentially putting the full 8.3m pixels on the screen.
But you can't take 2716x1528 and get it to equal 3840x2160. As I said the marketing blurb is highly misleading resulting in some inaccurate reviews and a confused public. Still I'm sure Donald Trump would say these are just alternative facts.
Your explanation is sound for interlaced tv. That's because the second pixel so to speak is being displayed directly above and inline with the first pixel. So this would work if the DMD chip was say 3840x1080. But here the second pixel is diagonally shifted by half as per the JVCs and Epsons and overlaps the first pixel (not a bad thing for a projector).Let’s take a picture and print it out on A4 paper and then blow it up (Upscale it) to A3 size, you find that the image is not as good as leaving it as A4.
Print half the picture on an A4 sheet and the other half on another A4 sheet, then put the two half’s together and you have a nice clear image as there is no zooming (Upscaling) required.
The principle of the Ti chip is the same, it just does it at pixel level and overlays the 2 half’s, rather than placing them side by side, thus as far as the eye can see (It overlays the 2 images faster than the eye can see) it is true 4K (8 million pixels), whereas faux 4K is still 4 million pixels.
I can’t see what the problem is, as nobody is saying that the Ti chip displays the 4K image in 1 go, because it doesn’t, it does it in 2 goes (Faster than what the eye can see) just like the old interlaced TV system that required 2 passes to display 1 image.
Bill
I'm afraid your description is incorrect, but completely understandable given the misleading information put out by the manufacturer. I was very pleased to see Phil accurately capture this unlike other reviewers. If you read up on the spec of the TI chip being used you'll see it's exactly the same tech as the JVC's and Epsons but it starts with more pixels so can get to 8.3m but it's still two overlapping images.
Your explanation is sound for interlaced tv. That's because the second pixel so to speak is being displayed directly above and inline with the first pixel. So this would work if the DMD chip was say 3840x1080. But here the second pixel is diagonally shifted by half as per the JVCs and Epsons and overlaps the first pixel (not a bad thing for a projector).
Here's the best explanation I've seen:
http://cineramax.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/BARCO-whitepaper-4K-UHD.pdf
The pj takes the 3840x2160 image, converts it to a whopping 16m pixels and then works out how to display that using two diagonally shifted images. It's much cleverer than simply displaying half the pixels on one pass and the other half on the next.