I had
@Apollo round earlier to get his eyes on the nx9 and give me an unbiased opinion between the 2.
Firstly I set up the Sony, we tested for brightness (albeit a cheap meter), on high laser it was showing 360 lux, dropping down to 330 on 80% laser. The difference in picture is slightly noticeable but I'm used to 80% as it runs much quieter.
We then tested a few demo clips, a combination of blu rays and 4k.
Hans Zimmer in Prague - Blu Ray
Avatar - Blu Ray
Super 8 - Blu Ray
Interstellar - 4k
Avengers Infinity War - 4k
Moving over to the JVC, the brightness was somewhat surprising. Baring in mind the bulb is 800 hours old, we're guessing at a light loss anywhere between 10-20%. On low lamp (still louder than the sony on 80%, similar to the sony at 100% laser), it measured around 320, kicking it into high lamp, the Lux rating shot up to 430!! It's clearly therefore ALOT brighter than the Sony.
Obviously the JVC has't been calibrated to my room, plus the lumagen HDR settings haven't been dialed in just yet, but we both agreed that high lamp with the current settings was probably too bright for my room, therefore we settled on low lamp for the testing, where again, with a new bulb and calibration would most likely still see it brighter than the Sony even on high laser. This is a bit of a game changer for me as I cant live with the high lamp noise.
We also managed to get the throw ratio to fit by utilising the full 4k panel, this isn't something i've done before and certainly isn't one for the purists, but this meant I could easily fit the screen in and also pull the projector forward from the back wall to give some breathing space. After doing this, we couldn't see any obvious side effects to the image.
In terms of the films we tested, overall it was very close on each film clip, the JVC's better blacks did stand out in Super 8 (we actually thought Super 8 was 4k the image was so good on both projectors) and Avengers infinity war, with this in particular looking fabulous, basically looking like a giant OLED. Interstellar we both felt the Sony looked slightly better on, with slightly more depth and pop to the image, but then switching the JVC into high lamp (its been calibrated for HDR in this mode) really brought the pop back to the image resulting in it being very close, strangely the space black scenes looked very similar on both projectors, proving that the Sony's ANSI contrast is actually very good.
Hans Zimmer was again very close, the JVC did produce better blacks, but image noise was also more noticeable on this (the jvc and lumagen both had various sharpening settings on such as eshift, sharpness and darbee - these are likely fighting against each other), the Sony smoothing it out slightly better. Both looked superb though.
Some further testing on the JVC on some known torture scenes for the Sony (not many of these, 3-4 i've come across in a 2 years), where the JVC handled them perfectly. This being a very slight banding and posterisation issue with the 760, no such problems with the NX9.
The zappiti menu looks much sharper through the NX9 lens, blacks also become quite addictive, flicking through some challenging scenes that can trip up auto iris', we didn't see an issue with any.
Conclusion:
Both excellent projectors, my room is the perfect environment for them to do their thing, fed with the ACE zappiti and lumagen 5348, both projectors kick out absolutely stunning images. We both agreed that if I was to swap these out part way through a film, most people wouldn't notice the difference between them.
I'm going to continue with the NX9 in place for the next few days, trying not to concentrate on the fan noise before likely purchasing a new bulb and getting
@Gordon @ Convergent AV over for a proper calibration, with HDR set for low lamp. My gut feeling is by doing this, the nx9 will pull clear of the 760 overall.
After the first couple of clips, Justin did point out like I did yesterday, the image is great, but its still the audio and the quake that really sets my room apart, great pictures are now easily achieved from pretty much any OLED, but getting audio like I have is a science and alot of hard work (and money!!!)
Hope you enjoyed the mini review, completely impartial and very honest.
