Thats the current situation, that has not been an issue until recently, so yes if you want something to scratch your itch right now SONY might be the only one who can deliver. If we wait a few months you might find thats different again.
Thanks Stridsvognen and for your other technical comparison posts. Some of them caused some of my significant concerns but I appreciate the under-the-hood detail.
I had already been waiting far too long to pull the trigger on an upgrade.
I can't remember the last time I bothered firing up my Epson 9200 since getting a 65" 4K HDR OLED TV 2 years ago as my mind wouldn't let me do 1080p SDR just to get a 120 inch image when almost everything I watch has a 4K (Dolby Vision) HDR source.
The N5 & N7 were also in my shortlist and I had concluded that they were technically better machines but I didn't like the extra cost to add 3D and I knew the extra few pounds of weight would make me paranoid that the peerless mount wasn't up to it (although it is still within 3kg of the peerless' weight handling claim).
But even when they were available, the N5 would come in at £6800 (inc 3D) so £900 more than I paid for the Sony when I was already stretching to go above a £5k budget.
Firstly, no projector can do HDR 'properly'. They dont have the zonal/pixel level contrast control or brightness required.
The best you can do if you want HDR to look A1 on your projector is to either:
1. Buy a Lumagen
2. Use HDR/SDR BT2020 conversion on your source device(s)
3. Buy an HD Fury Vertex 2 or similar to make use of LL Dolby Vision.
Yes I was expecting to have to live with the reduced dynamic range of projection HDR. The only thing I've tried watching on the Sony so far is HDR and I must admit, out of the box, it is much worse than I expected.
Sat down to watch the latest series of Lost In Space last night which has some amazing visual production quality and ended up switching back to the TV as the Sony image was so dull. Like the entire image was dulled just to hit a small specular highlight in each frame. (Conversely, there was one very dark scene where I was amazed by the shadow detail in the dark rocks!)
I'm not scared off yet though. I realise there's a ton of things to tweak and a Vertex 2 might be in my future if I can find a definitive guide from someone pairing it with this Sony.
As for panel alignment, it is something that needs paying attention to but it is entirely adjustable by you, the end user. No 3 chip device will ever be spot on out off the box, but it is correctable.
Leave the unit on for an hour to warm up properly and then use the panel alignment to match the red green and blue up.
I also gave this a go last night but I ended up putting all my adjustments back to 0 because even with my eyeballs 30cm from the screen I couldn't be sure anything was bad enough to need moving. And when moving for one element you notice, you end up knocking off another element on the other side of the screen.
I know we've got zone adjustment options but I remember from doing this on my Epson that once you do zone level adjustments you are forcing the processing algorithms into pixel level scaling which removes the 1-to-1 pixel mapping and reduces resolution. Whereas moving the entire image is just that, moving the entire image so you may lose a bit of edge resolution but it is still 1-to-1 pixel clarity.
I assume the same applies to this Sony and any projector doing software based panel alignment.
I've had my 590 for around 6 months now. STONKING machine. I paid 6k for mine and never regretted it for a minute. It's taken a bit of getting the settings right but it's a MAJOR step up from my Epson 9300. Enjoy your projector and stop thinking about what you could have had if you waited. It's a fabulous machine!
Thank you. Hoping I will feel the same after going through the settings pain barrier.