Really strange price-vs-quality curve on 4K projectors

puntloos

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Most "4K" projectors are actually fake 4K. The current common real-4K ones are only the JVC N5,NX7,NX9 and Sony 870,760 and 265 (or close.. their numbering is weird).

But there are a bunch of alternatives that "simulate 4K" in a way that I find at least interesting, and also a bunch of ultra-short-throw projectors are surprisingly cheap.

So for example:

My current ideal 4K projector seems to be:
JVC NX9 - 18,000 GBP - 2200lm - 1:100000 native contrast
since I really need the lumen and the cheaper native projectors all are below 2000 but ouch, that price is pretty much a dealbreaker...

But then there's (as just an example, feel free to look at epson or whatnot)
Optoma UHZ-65 - 3000 GBP - 3000lm - 1:200000 contrast (1:2000000 listed, but I 'dynamic' so I'm multiplying by 0.1)

And what about
Vava 4K Ultra Short Throw - 2200 GBP - 5000lm - 1:150000 contrast (1:1500000 listed.. dynamic.. x0.1)

I'm cutting corners here but can someone explain to me what I'm missing? A few thoughts:

- Optoma: I guess the DLP trick drops absolute sharpness a touch, but interleaving is a technique as old as the first ever TV just because it's so cheap and effective. If I had to guess the downside of this technique if it were absolutely the only difference, would only be a few % sharpness. Of course then you have DLP vs other tech, but the Optoma is laser-based.. so.. eh?

- USThrow - uh, well 'clearly' UST is kinda hacky where the image needs to be deeply distorted and probably some tricks with contrast/brightness to fix the effects of beaming 'straight up'.. so I can kinda imagine it ruins things.. but does it actually? Or does it just 'feel wrong'..

Anyone able to explain stuff to me? =) Has anyone compared the technologies side by side? Why is 18,000 reasonable?
 
Don’t worry about dynamic contrast manufacturers state, absolute nonsense.
I am not 100% sure but I believe most DLP projectors only have something like 1000:1 native contrast. Every DLP I have ever seen the blacks are grey and I hate RBE.
Your best bet is to go to a good dealer and actually look at some projectors back to back. If the JVC’s are a little rich have a look at the Epson 9400.
 
Contrast and lumen values are not to be taken for granted on the manufacturer's word.
Independent testing can give you these figures.

In the Home Cinema space, DLP projectors have poor contrast.
Some 3LCD are better, and LCoS. Depends on the model.

Resolution wise the 4K DLP's are capable of ~8m addressable pixels, the same as native 4K LCoS. In movies from an average seating distance there is no difference between the two.

3LCD's 4K implementation has ~4m pixels (1080p has ~2m).

However there is more than pixel count that matters to sharpness: lenses, resolution of source, resolution at which the video was shot at, contrast, screen fabric, visual perception, all add up.

Many users are perfectly fine with the 3LCD's 4K implementation.

For a large screen the Epson TW9400 (3LCD) is a great value. It's 4K, bright, has good blacks and contrast, good lenses.
 
Interesting. I think I'll take that epson for a spin in some demo room vs the N5 if I can. And elsewhere someone made the argument that the JVC N5 might actually be fairly similar for my use case (same light source, just no advanced iris?) as the NX9. I can much more readily afford the N5 than NX9 obviously..
 
For you to get a idea what your dealing with a DLP will have native contrast below 1000:1, Epson TW9400 around 3000:1, SONY VPL VW270ES around 10000:1 JVC N series depending sample 25000-50000:1

If you have high contrast you need less light, as the light headroom is normaly used to gain contrast.
Epson have very bright projectors, but you will max be able to achive around 5000:1 contrast calibrate, on a 110" screen, or less the bigger you go, also its a fake 4K projector, and there is a reason its the cheapest one, the eshift is basically just a vibrator moving the pixels, with no scaling, where the DLP and older JVC models addet resolution to the eshift.
The difference between a JVC NX9 and a Epson TW 9400 is huge, Diddern have them both, i seen them in action, we spend a weekend together calibrating and evaluating both some time ago.
Question is in the end what is good enough for you, what do you expect, and will you apriciate the higher quality image, it is really like night and day, hower not everybody see it, and if you never seen it side by side or know any better, you might be happy with money left in the pocket, and a projector that can still display a image.
Only real quality options are SONY and JVC, we can discuss if sony is good or bad, its a matter of preference, ill say the JVC can be significantly closer to a monitor/ reference display, where Sony always have some odd processing artifacts/ distortion.

Dynamic contrast is a gimick made to compensate for lack of black level, and will not give you any of the image qualities that come with native contrast, it basically only apply when there is a black frame, and extremely low level scenes, however it will destroy the gamma and dynamics in those scenes. Some dont mind, others hate it. Dynamic iris/ contrast works best in combination with high native contrast.

Personally i find that calibrated 14-15fl on screen with 20000:1 + makes for a ok image, 50000:1 is very good, however if you then have 300000:1 its wow on specifik scenes. The higher contrast the less scenes you notice the elevated black level on projectors.
With a 4m wide neutral / 180" screen you need 1440 lumen to make 15fl on screen, thats about max you will get out of a calibrated JVC NX9, so ull likely have around 30-40000:1 contrast depending the sample, and no room for lamp dimming, the N5 will be fairly close in contrast but likely max out around 13-14fl on that screen size.

You can then get a gain screen to boost light, and gain some headroom to increase contrast, but it will in most cases cost some sparkeling and hotspotting/ color uniformity as a trade in.

If you go with a 150" screen wich is around 3,3m wide you only need 1000 calibrated lumen, wich leave some headroom for the lamp to dim over time, and gain a bit of contrast using the iris, to a point where i would personally go with the N5

I have a 110" neutral screen whick will need 540 luman to make 15fl, the N5 will not be able to go that low with only 1 iris, so i need a dubble iris model like the N7 or NX9. Had the RS2000/ N7 up but returned it due to very bright corners, and color uniformity issues around de 10 measuring 60 cm to the right on the screen.
Right now im running a JVC X5900 wich has minimum 18fl on my screen, same as my SONY VPL WV270ES.
The X5900 delivered max 1500 lumen new, and the N7 was 1350 lumen, both uncalibrated max zoom max lightoutput. They then drop quite some when calibrating.
 
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^Worse case will be 3000:1 for an Epson, most have been reported around 5600:1 - 7000:1 and when combined with this very effective dynamic iris you get a lot more.

@puntloos I had a Sony 360es in my bat cave to compare against my 9400, neither the owner of the Sony or I noticed the Sony having better blacks and as for resolution between Native 4K vs Epson e-shift we both had to move to between 6 and 7 foot from my 100” screen before the superior resolution of the Sony could be noticed.

Here’s a comparison between of the same image (might be a frame or two apart) between a JVC NX5 and my 9400, both images have been cropped and zoomed in.

JVC NX5
Epson 9400

Surprisingly similar in both colours and resolution, though if you look close you’ll see the JVC is a bit smoother with less noise and the Epson has slightly better colour variation.

One thing you will here from every Epson 9400 owner or the US equivalent owner on the AVS forum is none of us claim the Epson is as good as the JVC or has the same blacks but base of its price it gets surprisingly close and throws a bloody good image.

This is a very accurate representation of how the borders look on my Epson in my bat cave.


And here’s a video taken from 3ft away where I slower move to within 2-3” from the screen to show pixel fill from the Epson.



Hope this helps.
 
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If the Epson is a option ill seriously recommend looking on a 2nd hand JVC X5900, it do have significantly better contrast and pixel fill, and is a very bright JVC, but for a 4m wide screen pixels will be super agressive on a 1080P projector, and all scaling and eshift distortion will be a lot more visible, with that screen size you need to worry a lot about motion handeling, wich will be reduced on the eshift models when using eshift.
The bigger the screen the bigger is the pixels pixel grid and odd motion artifacts.
Ill link Diddern to this thread, he have the JVC NX9 and Epson TW9400 + all the pro calibration equipment, sure he can add some calibration data and comparison screen shots using a good camera.
 
Looked a bit on the addet pictures from the N5 and TW9400, and even they are to low res to show the projector resolution i think they are exelent examples of how muddy and distorted the Epson look in comparison to the JVC, also looks like there is some enhancement processing on the Epson.
What the sharp eye will notice when waching these 2 projectors in a setup is how much more organic and liquid the JVC look, even far back in the room where ull not be able to pinpoint the pixels.
With the JVC ull comfortable wach a 4m wide screen from 3m back, where the JVC X5900 ill say 5m+ back, and the Epson 7m+ back, this is only in relation to pixel structure and noise/ artifacts, to get back to a point where its not to obvious, some have better eyes than others, so its not everybody who feel the same, pixels and artifacts are mostly obvious in bright white elements on screen, and much less visible in dark elements and scenes, if you only watch Harry potter you wil likely never concider it a issue, same goes with motion handeling, its becomes more obvious the brighter the image is.
image_2020_02_01T16_45_33_916Z.png
 
^I agree with the above, the image is smooth with the JVC unlike the Epson but you don’t see this with a moving image only when still. Also both images came from YouTube, in my case from my Panasonic 420 which does the processing prior to feeding the signal to the Epson. Don’t know if this is causing this but will try and get a proper 4K disc of this to see if it’s still present and if caused by the Epson and not from YouTube or the Panasonic itself.

Here’s an image from a proper 4K disc


And now the same image zoomed in the same way


None of the grain or noise present like in the other comparison.

Went back to the YouTube demo and paused at the same point, on close up I think the issue was the image enhancement was set at 4. Retook photo only this time at IE preset 2.

There’s still a bit of noise but nowhere near the level of before, no doubt the NX5 is still superior but at half the price the Epson is not that far behind IMO.
 
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The thing that definitely strikes me is how much a matter of taste this all is to me at this point.

As a quick anecdote - I think back to my journey with 'mp3' where back in 1993ish era, I was stunned that this 128kbit (fraunhofer cbr..) mp3 was basically CD quality to me, where today with even the crappiest stereo I will immediatelly yell fire and try to delete the file from my drive after hearing those artifacts.

Now clearly there are some 'truths' in my improved listening skills, I think the 'warbling S sounds' indeed are simply poor encoding quality, but some artifacts might only be bad because I've taught myself that they are 'bad'.

But yes, when just ABing (and I genuinely didn't know what I looked at) the N5 came out on top for me on many aspects, but in particular indeed that area stridsvognen pointed out is quite muddy/messy with the 9400

As with MP3 I wonder if this will start to bug me more and more.. Perhaps I should never look at a NX9 - ignorance is bliss.

Thank you Luminated67 for showing.

Sadly(?) of course it's not the end of the story, my currently intended screen width is 4m with a planned throw distance of 8m, so perhaps the N5 (nor N7 or NX9.. uh oh..) might not suffice lumen-wise but I will need to re-read a lot of the theory that has been thrown at me over the last few days by stridsvognen and others (thanks so far).

Perhaps I need to consider shrinking my screen to 3.5?

One thing I think is definitely true, when you 'come in from outside' and then get plonked in front of a screen, brightness is a big deal, but once your eyes adjust, brightness still matters but I think indeed contrast is more important than the absolute values of brighness.
 
that last pic is a extremely small image file, not sure what its surposed to ilustrate.
My experience is you will need something like 4x the resolution camera to try capture the resolution on screen, and its very important to have a camera with a very high quality lens.
So for a 4k ill think a 25mp camera is minimum, + a lens with the same resolution power.
If douing A-B comparisons you will need to be on the same screen, same tripod setup, same camera settings and focus, important to not touch the camera between the 2 pictures, use a remote trigger.

Pictures can not really be shown to document what they dont capture, so if multiple people take pictures of the same type of projector, the image ilustrating/ resolving the information the best should be used, and a good start point specially with a 1080P projector is to be able to zoom in on the image and see the projectors pixel grid, if you cant do that its not really useful to evaluate image artifacts and noise.
Colors can never be evaluated true a camera as they will see it different than the human, so a Dila machine most likely not come out the same as a LCD, even the colors on screen is exactley the same.

Here is a example of fairly well resolved Epson pixel grid.
IMG-20191205-WA0005.jpg
 
^Yeah you will see that from screen if you were standing 6 inches away and without e-shift ON. Even the JVC e-shift models show pixel grid.
 
Just to re-iterate what was said earlier, the only way to know if a projector is right for you is to do a comparison at a dealer, as to specs then apart from size, inputs etc. they are only relevant to designers and engineers. (Oh and marketers to get creative)

Bill
 
The thing that definitely strikes me is how much a matter of taste this all is to me at this point.

As a quick anecdote - I think back to my journey with 'mp3' where back in 1993ish era, I was stunned that this 128kbit (fraunhofer cbr..) mp3 was basically CD quality to me, where today with even the crappiest stereo I will immediatelly yell fire and try to delete the file from my drive after hearing those artifacts.

Now clearly there are some 'truths' in my improved listening skills, I think the 'warbling S sounds' indeed are simply poor encoding quality, but some artifacts might only be bad because I've taught myself that they are 'bad'.

But yes, when just ABing (and I genuinely didn't know what I looked at) the N5 came out on top for me on many aspects, but in particular indeed that area stridsvognen pointed out is quite muddy/messy with the 9400

As with MP3 I wonder if this will start to bug me more and more.. Perhaps I should never look at a NX9 - ignorance is bliss.

Thank you Luminated67 for showing.

Sadly(?) of course it's not the end of the story, my currently intended screen width is 4m with a planned throw distance of 8m, so perhaps the N5 (nor N7 or NX9.. uh oh..) might not suffice lumen-wise but I will need to re-read a lot of the theory that has been thrown at me over the last few days by stridsvognen and others (thanks so far).

Perhaps I need to consider shrinking my screen to 3.5?

One thing I think is definitely true, when you 'come in from outside' and then get plonked in front of a screen, brightness is a big deal, but once your eyes adjust, brightness still matters but I think indeed contrast is more important than the absolute values of brighness.

Everything comes down to viewing distance, what Native 4K does beyond e-shift from either JVC or Epson is allow you to sit significantly closer to the screen and still see a super clean image. In the case on my 100” screen the Sony still looked great at 6ft away whilst the Epson you could tell wasn’t as good, now in my case I don’t like this super immersive viewing experience and prefer to sit about 9.5ft from the screen, at this distance the difference between the two projectors wasn’t there as each looked as good as each other.

If you intend to sit at a ratio of 1ft viewing distance per 18” of diagonal of screen then Native 4K really is the only option. As I say and continue to say the JVC is the better projector the gap isn’t as great as some here would have you believe but it’s still there regardless, I think everyone who is seriously thinking of spending this kind of money needs to get a few demos as only then can they make a informed decision.

I have the money sitting if I wanted to get the JVC now but I only watch about 300hr per year and can’t justify the almost twice the price for the NX5 compared to the Epson. If I used it like I do the TV in the front room then I would probably have an NX7 but for my limited viewing the Epson gets remarkably close to JVC performance and offer more lumens if required. If Epson offer DTM with a firmware update in the future then I doubt I will ever consider making the switch.
 
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My experience with JVC eshifters vs the JVC native 4K projector in my HT is that the 4K was a significant upgrade, the image is just so much more CRT alike, ill call it organic, even you dont pinpoint pixels on the JVC 1080P projectors its still something about a no pixel grid, and the very very good bit handling and overall calibration tracking that makes a good sample of a JVC N series significantly better than the JVC 1080P models, its smoother but at the same time more defined, sharpness is not a term i like to add to image, my knife is sharp, not my image.

And yes some dont notice the differences, just like the audio example, it can be related to your financial or visual capabilities, nobody can tell whats right for you, we can only share the objective differences, wich in some cases is easy to document with a good picture, not low res cell phone pictures or alike that wont capture ½ of the actual information on screen.

You need surficiant light, but lightoutput without contrast just makes for a washed out dull image.
your problem will likely be that you cant go anywhere to see a 4m wide demo setup, will likely be tough to find a 3m wide setup, wich is a far far from what your trying to do, so what some guy think is amasing on his 120" can be completely crap on your 180" screen, your up where ill say native 4K is a must, and regarding lightoutput your only real quality alternatives is SONY VPL VW5000ES, or no less than a JVC DLA Z1.
It would be super interesting if you could borow a Epson TW9400 to try out on a 180" screen, and share the experience.
 
FWIW I found this one quite useful too:
Yes, in german, but the auto-generated subtitles work (I think? I can understand german, so didn't need them) but also they are using english terms for most things so you can make out what they're saying I think..

hint: "Jot Vau Tzee" = "JVC" ;)

TL;DW or TG;DW (Too German, Didn't Watch): Sharpness differences are fairly minimal, but there are abunch of other quality effects you can tell, and they show it pretty nicely.
 
^I’m curious, did they run all the stats with the Epson on Natural?

I’ve watched the latest Ghostbusters movie and frankly those colours and brightness levels are way different to that of my own.
 
No idea of course, but they did say that they're mostly focusing on 'HDR performnance' in this video..
 
No idea of course, but they did say that they're mostly focusing on 'HDR performnance' in this video..

I can assure you the Epson does not look this bright when watching HDR with filter engaged. I’ve never seen an image as washed out like that.
 
I'd have to rewatch but I think they mentioned something that they calibrated the 3 projectors "the same way" whatever that means I don't remember, but perhaps because of that there's a slight 'unfairness' in other things?
 
Rewatched a tiny bit, and I think what they're saying is that the only main advantage the epson has is the brightness, but when you switch away from brightness mode then the comparison falls flat anyway. So they're comparing devices at max brightness/HDR settings, sure you can trade light for color/contrast..

Anyway fair or not they are actually very positive about the epson, just 'obiously' a bit of a different class of hardware
 
With the first video unless they were showing off some factory pre-sets, all of them were in a fully calibrated mode, just like most have their TVs and projectors fully calibrated to give the best performance in their environment.

Bill
 
These videos are to some degree useless as a camera can not capture the color, contrast and black level differences well, so its more important to read and listen wat they are trying to explain, the first video is a bit of a joke, specially the way he is measuring ansi contrast on screen with 3 projectors on all the time, so the results will be whatever the room and conditions allow, not the projectors capabilities.
The last review from Germany adds up, specially when you listen to what he is explaining.

The Epson however naturally belong in the class fighting the 4K DLP projectors, where its more equal pricing, where epson have a contrast advantage, and DLP seems to do pretty much most other parameters better, mostly making it a question if your sensitive to DLP rainbows or LCDs lack of pixel fill.
 
The Epson however naturally belong in the class fighting the 4K DLP projectors, where its more equal pricing, where epson have a contrast advantage, and DLP seems to do pretty much most other parameters better, mostly making it a question if your sensitive to DLP rainbows or LCDs lack of pixel fill.

To be honest in lots of ways 4K DLPs beat Native 4K projectors from JVC and Sony, motion they are without a doubt the best and they suffer none of the convergence issues 3 chip machines do but their biggest failing is blacks.

Let’s address this lack of pixel fill and your image you posted earlier, I had posted videos on here that actually shows just how close you need to be to the screen to see the pixel gap. Oh and BTW your image is without e-shift.

Now we can discuss where the Epson should be positioned in the market, hold on there’s no need because it’s price squarely places it below the likes of the JVC and equivalent Sony. So why do so many reviewers keep comparing the Epson against the likes of the JVC and Sony, simple because it’s performance gets surprisingly close despite the price difference so this reviews are designed to show why the other two are priced so much more and explain where the improvements are.

Again we Epson owners acknowledge the differences but also know that it’s a hefty price hike that not everyone will be willing to pay so always suggest everyone to demo it against the others so they can see if the improvements justify the price difference for them.
 
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