Ok, my turn..
Firstly, 2 fingers up to the warden who gave me a parking ticket that i will robustly appeal!
A massive thanks to the guys for organising the event. I arrived at around 7:30pm. The venue was a relatively large Hi-fi shop with 2 enclosed rooms/theatres. The larger of the rooms had damp issues so we were given the smaller room consisting of a 2 seater sofa 2 PJ's (x35 and x55), humongous speakers and a retracted 16:9 matt screen which looked to be around 1.6 or 1.8 mtrs wide. The backing wall was a deep red but the side walls and ceiling of this fairly small yet 'cosy' room were..... white
. To be fair its a room in which speakers are exhibited. Given my experience of a fair number of JVC PJ's i was able to appreciate that the environment wasn't ideal to show off the magic these PJ's could pull off. I did mention this to Steve of JVC and he agreed that a treated room would have been better but not everyone has batcaves to be fair.
The beauty of being the last member to arrive on scene was that I got to spend as long as I wanted with Steve. I was kindly led into the room and spent alot of uninterrupted 1 to 1 time with Steve who answered any and all questions I asked during the viewing.
I viewed the following:
JVC X35 -
Quantam of Solace - opening scene
Valkyrie - ad hoc scene
JVC X55
Batman Dark Knight (various scenes) with Eshift OFF and ON.
Avengers Assemble - 3D final battle sequence
3D underwater sequence
I also had a Q&A with Steve who was so insightful. It was both wierd and quite exciting as I was used to watching Steve Withers and Phil Hinton firing questions during the exclusive video productions.
I was then interviewed on tape by Phil and Steve about my experience. Following on from this I have to say it was really great to have a chance to geek with the pair who are so massively knowledgeable and honest with their views of the various PJ's past and present. I could have stayed and chatted all night to be honest!
Ok, impressions... Of course these are subjective. You also have to appreciate that the viewings were not done in a remotely treated room. The screen washed out in brighter scenes but I was here to see e-shift, the general brightness of the PJ's, 3d, motion etc.. The rest didn't really matter and i was able to analyse the relevant points without issue. Steve was even happy for me to walk right upto the screen and ask for scenes to be paused randomly.
I'll keep the impressions brief as i was interviewed and covered most points there.
JVC x35: FACT .. for me anyway.. a MUCH better colour pallete than the HD350! JVC have listened. Don't get me wrong, the HD350 is excellent, it really is. My one gave excellent colours but there was a slight push on the reds. I was able to adjust through my HTPC but it was there. The x35 i saw hadn't been calibrated per se. It had been gently adjusted. The colours were clean and the image was sharp. QOS was good to watch but has quite a gritty, grainy and noisy opening so wasn't able to really show off the image sharpness. It was very good. Seriously. Better than the HW50E? I can't comment on the blacks as they were grey in this room. But, JVC machines are the best with blacks and I know blacks would be better at home or in a living room. Also, the models seen today are pre-production. The final model i'm told will be 10-15% better!
I didn't watch any 3d material on the X35... sorry! But, if the question is whether the x35 is an improvement, the answer has to be yes. It's obviously brighter. I can say this as a matter of fact. I mean, I only spent 400 hours watching a HD350 and could probably tell the difference
Did I find this to be a better PJ than the Sony? Hard to answer as the Sony was played in a treated room. Motion issues? I noticed them, slightly.. but hey, I notice motion at the Odeon on an 8k system so thats probably just me. I love the JVC blacks. Period. Who doesn't? This isn't a better PJ. It's on par. I really enjoyed the hw50e. They are falling into the same price bracket as I understand it. The Sony has reality creation on its side which certainly makes a difference. The X35 has the better blacks but just.
JVC X55: The Dark Knight was awesome. Ok, again I can't comment on the blacks as they didn't look great in this particular room. But I know how good they
will be in a larger room without bright white walls and ceilings only 3 mtrs from one another. The sharpness of this machine was on a whole new level, thats all I'll say for now. I covered alot of this when I spoke to Steve and Phil on camera so I'll leave much of it for that.
To clear up any speculation.. E-shift 2 did NOT soften the image. I actually asked Steve from JVC to zoom out fully with both PJ's because i wanted to see the image maxed out. I then focussed on the actual screen area and look for pixelation/structure/screendoor/softness when turned on and off. It didn't soften the screen an iota. I walked right up to the screen, my nasal hairs an inch of the screen. No softness at all. The whole talk about a Darbee complimenting the X55 and compensating for e-shift softening is in my now 'learned' opinion total and complete garbage. E-shift I found cleaned the image up. Thats it. I didn't see a night and day difference when turning on or off. I saw a great difference with the Reality Creation but in many ways i saw artefacts too with RC that i didn't see with E-shift. I also note that e-shift levels are adjustable. I didn't play with this.
3D on the X55 was good. I got a slight headache but i guess it takes getting used to. I didn't get a headache with the Sony.. But, to be fair i was sat quite away from the screen when watching the Sony. I noticed motion on Avengers but was totally blown away by the deep sea sequence that Steve put on. 3d doesn't massively interest me.
I'd also say this.. Sony 1000 or X55? The X55 any day of the week!
Again, thanks so very much to Steve (JVC), Phil Hinton and Steve Withers. Lovely chaps.
AVForums events are great. Seriously. Though I didn't meet any forum members (my fault, I arrived late) it was great meeting the 3 experts!
The chap who runs the venue was also really helpful. I'm sure we'll be speaking again very soon!
I had a chat with Mooro73 on the way home and we agreed that it would be great to host events like this in dedicated theatres of Forum members. I'd gladly have allowed the guys to pop the x55 or x35's cherry in my cave which is 'treated' and could have accomodated around 8-10 members comfortably. Oh well, maybe next time?
Equally, it'd be great to host a forums get together at some point. You'll all have seen my face by now as I'm making a second appearance in an AV video. I actually had a shave this time to make myself a little more presentable compared to the Sony video where i attended with a messy 5'o'clock shadow .. not that I'm vein, it's just not very easy being this sexy ..