would you upgrade a VW11 to a HS20?

Jules

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I've been thinking of upgrading my PJ for a while and wondered if the HS20 at £1499 would be a worthwhile upgrade.
Would it infact be an upgrade at all?

Also,can the HS20 be used with the VW11 ceiling bracket?
 
Perhaps I should add that my VW has a CC40R filter and has been tweaked with SMART.
I don't have a DVI capable DVD player either, so I'm just curious as to:

- how much better the contrast and black level is on the HS20
- how much difference the micro lense array makes
- how much quieter the HS20 is.

£1500 isn't that much, and I'm tempted to buy anyway knowing that I could probably shift the VW11 at work for about £1000 (its only done 400 hrs).
 
reading a thread that was caomparing the hs20 to the vw12 from what I read there wasent much in it at all in terms of pq, so im gussing the hs20 would be an improvement
 
Well I'm now in a position to answer my own questions.
I couldn't resist the bargain, and now have (temporaily at least) both a VW11 and an HS20.

Firstly, what swung me to purchase was that the HS20 uses the same ceiling bracket as the VW11, the PSS610.
So I could just swap them over.
Secondly, the throw distance seems to be the same, so I don't know what all the talk of the HS20 having a long throw is all about!

Anyway, the HS20 is slightly quieter than VW11. Its not night and day but any reduction is good. The tone of the fans is very similar.

The contrast is quite a bit better. This was the main reason for wanting to upgrade and I'm glad I did. For £1500 notes this is value for money!
There's more snap, effortless contrast, more vibrant colours (particularly red, which is good thing) and with the iris shut, black levels are better too. Some shadow detail that is invisible on the VW11 becomes visible on the HS20.
Its actually made me wonder if my VW11 bias settings are up the wall... but I've never fiddled with them they can't be.
This is all comparing to the VW11 with its CC40R filter attached!

Micro lense array helps a tad, but not worth shouting about.

The only thing that I would have hoped would be an improvement is with video noise. There are some very dark scenes where a bit of noise creeps into the picture on the HS20. The VW11 is totally noise free, and in this regard it still has the edge with bright animated films like Monsters Inc.
But I wanted a PJ that delivered more snap with regular movies, and the the HS20 delivers.

Its early days I know, but I'm pretty chuffed and will be flogging my VW11 soon.

Overall, IMO the HS20 is a worthwhile upgrade from the VW11 at £1500 until 3 chip DLP's come down to sensible prices.
 
Whats the improvement of the CC40R filter compared to the filter
that comes with the Sony PJ.??
 
The HS20 does not come with a filter, but Sony make an optional filter for it which simply trims green to achieve a more natural colour.
In my opinion this is not necessary.

The CC40R filter on the VW11 cuts the blue and green light by an equal amount to help black level.
You then use the calibration software supplied with SMART to increase the individual blue and green gains to restore the colour temperature back to its original state.
The result is simply a better black level witth the same maximum light ouput at the same colour temperature.
It works because there is plenty of headroom in the blue and green portion of the lamp, but very little in red.

One thing I have noticed is that while the HS20 delivers better contrast and colour, it's definately inferior when processing S-Video signals. Component is great, but where the VW11 made a good job with SKY+ signals via S-Video, the HS20 looks a little digitised and mushy.

I'd be very curious to see a VW12. As it doesn't have the iris feature of the HS20, I wonder if the contrast and black level is as good.
 
Thanks Jules,for a very comprehensive answer.I`m beginning to get the picture :D slowly ....
cheers!!!
 

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