Sony Vpl-500Es First 4K Projector With Hdmi V2.0

[gbickle1503560852]

Ok here goes. The top photo is the vw1000 with the RC turned off (basic scaling)

The middle photo is 1080p to 2160p scaling done with an oppo player

the bottom photo is 1080p to 2160p scaling done with the RC turned on. As you can see its a pretty advanced scaling method. Not your basic edge enhancement scaling here. I am looking forward to watching 1080p when I get the VW500, I think it will have a nice upscaler!

I just think its silly to say there is no improvement with 4k unless you have 4k material. 720 upscaled to 1080p looks so much better than 720 on a 720 device. If you cant see an improvement on a 100" screen with 1080 upscaled to 2160 then I suggest a visit to the Optometrist ASAP.

Edited September 7, 2013 by gbickle

[Highjinx]

All images will look truer to the original, displayed at their native resolution and viewed from the appropriate distance, if one wishes to view these image at a larger than the originally intended canvas, scaling and sharpening etc needs to applied to make it acceptable viewing.

It(scaling etc) will never be truer to the original displayed at it's native resolution and viewed from the appropriate distance.

The third image has solid lines......I wonder what happened?

From the site:

"In practice, the VPL-VW1000ES allows for one of two scaling algorithms to be used in resizing 1920×1080 video to 3096×2140."

That must be the issue........It should be scaling to 4096 x 2160 for 4K........ ...or 3840 x 2160 for UHD

Edited September 8, 2013 by Highjinx

[gbickle1503560852]

The third image has solid lines......I wonder what happened?

I think it just illustrates how well the Reality Creation Engine on the Sony can upscale 1080p to 2160p ... (even better than the OPPO 4k scaler)

[cwt]

The third image has solid lines......I wonder what happened?

From the site:

"In practice, the VPL-VW1000ES allows for one of two scaling algorithms to be used in resizing 1920×1080 video to 3096×2140."

That must be the issue........It should be scaling to 4096 x 2160 for 4K........ ...or 3840 x 2160 for UHD

Yes Highjinx in fairness to the oppo its a pain when you have 2 4k standards the sonys native res is 4096x2160 and the oppo scales to 3840 x 2160 for panels

If I had this sort of money to spend though I wouldnt settle for an e shift model ; this will have better 3d for a start if the calibrated lumens are close to the 1000es which are very good I read

[JB_2016]

Sony promotional video on the VPL-VW500ES

Cheers

[jaenschw]

Looks like a great projector!! Some great models to be released this year!

[gbickle1503560852]

Im going to be very interested in the price... true 4k, hdmi 2.0, accurate self calibration, made in Japan, cheap 265watt bulb, high brightness when calibrated. Sounds like a winner

[MLXXX]

Ok here goes. The top photo is the vw1000 with the RC turned off (basic scaling)

Gbickle, that looks like an unusual upscaling to me, if the non-upscaled version was intersecting thin straight lines [with staircase aliasing?]. But in any event it is just a geometrical pattern, not video. Most of us would not be acquiring 4K projectors to serve as giant computer graphics monitors, but for entertainment!

It turns out that the upscaling of a stationary graphic that:

(i) is perfectly aligned with the pixel grid,

(ii) has 100% contrast between adjacent pixels, and

(iii) lacks anti-aliasing that would permit the image to move slowly and smoothly in and out of alignment with the pixel grid without shimmering,

is a very different exercise to the upscaling of anti-aliased real life video. Real life video presented in a 1920x1080 pixel grid avoids 100% contrast between adjacent pixels, so as to decrease the visibility of shimmering aliases and of false Moiré patterns. (For example, see http://www.svi.nl/AntiAliasing )

That's not to say this won't be an impressive projector.

Edited September 8, 2013 by MLXXX

[mmu16]

I for one welcome Owen's commentary. Yes, its mostly academic but at least I (and many other surely) have learnt quite a lot about imaging science from the 'contrast nazi'!! Keep it up Owen!

[Owen]

Been busy for a couple of days and could not respond

I'll deal with the above photos first. The top photo is supposed to show an upscaled image, however it looks like each pixel in the 1080 image has simply been mapped to 4 pixels on the 4k display. To call that “upscaling” is real stretch, its just pixel quadrupling and results in an image pretty much identical to 1080 display. Upscaling requires filtering and resampling of the image which removes the aliasing or stepping on diagonal lines, that clearly has not happened.

The second Oppo upscaled image has genuinely been upscaled with filtering and resampling, the diagonal lines are smooth as they should be. However, the Oppo is using a lot of low quality sharpening as evidenced by the double edges or halos, particularly evident of the text (Diag).

The third image showing Sony's supposedly “special secret source” upscaling yet looks the way any properly upscaled image should look, a $30 PC video card can do that so its nothing special, and the Oppo image would look the same if it was not over sharpened. Sharpening and scaling are normally totally separate operations so Oppo seem to have applied excessive sharpening deliberately, unless its adjustable and cranked up to high in this instance.

The next issue is the inappropriateness of using PC generated test patterns to evaluate performance of a display used for video.

As MLXXX intimated, ALL digital video MUST be low pass filtered to eliminate aliasing and Moiré. Single pixel wide full on - full off transitions therefore cannot exist in video content captured from the real world (digitally sampled) if a quality image is required. All you would get with a pattern like that captured with a camera is a grey blur in stead of a black pixels next to white pixel.

A single pixel wide black line would be captured as a blurred grey line spread across several pixels with the centre darkest pixel being only a pale shade of grey not black.

The MTF of video is around 0.1 or 10% at the pixel level so video can NEVER have the visible resolution the pixel count would suggest.

Info on MTF here:

http://www.normankor...orials/MTF.html

And here:

Note that the blurred lines on the right hand side of these diagrams have an MTF, of 0.2, double that of video at the pixel level (or spatial frequencies equal to the pixel grid). This gives you some insight into how blurred video is at the pixel level.

The higher the spatial frequency (finer the detail) the lower the MTF and the lower the contrast of the detail. Without high contrast (high MTF) we cant see detail at a normal viewing distance, its just a grey blur.

My last point is the clincher. I view a 100” screen from about 3 meters for a 43 degree viewing angle, same as a 130” screen viewed from 4 metres. This seems to be more than most people use yet I don’t see any stepping or aliasing on curves or diagonal lines with a 1080 JVC projector, everything looks very smooth and non digital.

Each pixel is about 1.1mm square on the screen yet at my 3 metre viewing distance yet I cant see any the jagged edges when viewing video.

If I adjust the size of the images of the Sony screen captures (above) in my browser on my PC monitor via the Ctrl + and Ctrl – key combinations so that each pixel in the pictures is about 1.1mm square, as is the case with my projector screen, and view my PC monitor from 3m I cant see any jaggies, the top (supposedly scaled) image looks just as smooth as the super upscaled Sony 4K image.

For those who use even more modest viewing angles a 4K screen for 2K Bluray is even more pointless.

Anyone see any jaggies in this screen capture of the domed building from the Bond film (top image from post No 27), upscaled via Sonys dumb as dog sh!t "upscaling", same as displaying 1080 natively ? I sure dont.

It's a problem that doesn't not need fixing unless you have a MASSIVE viewing angle. Even if you do, 2k source is going to look like a blurry mess no matter what you do at that screen size - viewing distance.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Owen

[Brad Cl]

Owen, do you use a PC for image upsampling and sharpening?

If so, are you willing to share the details of what you do?

Brad

[mwd]

ffdshow for Windows is very good for sharpening and upscaling. It is in continual development so you may need to keep an eye out for updates. Need to do lots of research on the settings needed to get the best out of it lots of info flying about. I have had very good results at computer screen sizes but on a big screen should be phenominal.

BTW it is freeware.

Edited September 12, 2013 by mwd

[sero]

from memory owen started his own thread about it and posted up all his settings and programs he used.

[gbickle1503560852]

Try out Splash Pro http://mirillis.com/en/products/splashpro.html ... Using Detail Boost on 7 for 720p video and about 3 or 4 for 1080p I have found it to have excellent results. I would be interested to see how it compares to the Darbee's hardware solution.

[Owen]

Owen, do you use a PC for image upsampling and sharpening?

If so, are you willing to share the details of what you do?

Brad

Yes, and in a way known one had before. I originally came up with the upscaling with sharpening followed by downscaling approach 10 years ago and used it to improve DVD quality on large screens. I still use the same system today for Bluray and have yet to find anything that works as well.

Other than a recode to take advatage of multi core CPU's, and fix a colour bug, the functions I use in FFDShow have not changed in 10 years. The filters under the "Sharpen" tab should be avoided as they do what your projectors internal sharpen filters do, which is ugly.

Here is a link to my FFDshow settings on AVS forum. There are many guides to the set up of FFdshow and I recommend you use it with Media Player Classic HD as the player.

http://www.avsforum....0#post_22447894

The video card you use does make a difference to the result as it handles the down scaling. I find best results have always come from decent Nvidia cards (not base models). Intel integrated graphics does not cut it, the result is soft.

You can adjust the amount of Luma and Chroma sharpening to taste, and use "Multiply by" 2.000 if your CPU is too slow to handle 300% upscale.

For smooth Bluray playback make sure the video cards output is set to 23.94Hz.

If you are expecting a dramatic change to the picture from my process forget it, the result is very subtle and non intrusive as it should be. It does not attempt to turn the video into something its not, which is always detrimental in my experience. What you will get is a cleaner, smoother and slightly sharper image with more pop and visible detail, but without the normal negative side effects of conventional sharpening as used in your projector.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Owen

[BladeRnR]

More info on the VPL-VW500ES

Pricing appears to be $10,000USD according to the link.

Blade

[Quark]

1700 lumens sounds promising - hopefully this is with the auto-calibration engaged.

[Highjinx]

The JVC that has eshift also has other enhancements. That said I am still happy with my RS60.

But you missed the point about Reality Creation I was making. If as you suggested, it is the RC processing that is making the Sony 4K look better than the JVC why does it not do the same for Sony's 1080p model (which as I've mentioned looks less impressive than JVC)

JVC have a 4K e-shifted to 8K consumer projector coming soon acording to AVS

[gbickle1503560852]

"When we moved on to upscaled Blu-rays the Reality Creation engine really came into its own, taking full advantage of the higher resolution panel to deliver images that you would almost believe were native 4K"

Very promising first impressions / review from AV Forums ... Sounds like the up-scaling to 4k is a winner

[dyates69]

Ouch. Someone's quoted Owen on AVS. Now that's embarrassing!

[Highjinx]

Owens correct.

Scaling does not add detail, Owens upscaling>sharpening>downscaling adds pesudo detail, which to some 'enhances' the image, Sony's RC is possibly similar as is Darbee.....no difference to someone cranking up the bass on their audio system because they like the effect.

[gbickle1503560852]

Owens correct.

Scaling does not add detail, Owens upscaling>sharpening>downscaling adds pesudo detail, which to some 'enhances' the image, Sony's RC is possibly similar as is Darbee.....no difference to someone cranking up the bass on their audio system because they like the effect.

Pseudo or not. It's still. "extra detail" so Sony are within their rights to claim this in their blurb (ie not false advertising). Steve Withers from AV Forums was very impressed with the 1080p to 4k Upscaling with Reality Creation turned on. I guess he was just being taken in by a pseudo effect being the rank amateur he is .

[Highjinx]

Pseudo or not. It's still. "extra detail" so Sony are within their rights to claim this in their blurb (ie not false advertising). Steve Withers from AV Forums was very impressed with the 1080p to 4k Upscaling with Reality Creation turned on. I guess he was just being taken in by a pseudo effect being the rank amateur he is .

The Sony nor Owen are creating any 'real extra detail'...as one would have found in the scene when the capture was made......let's not forget, the reviewers are paid employees and the revenue comes from advertisers.

[gbickle1503560852]

The Sony nor Owen are creating any 'real extra detail'...as one would have found in the scene when the capture was made......let's not forget, the reviewers are paid employees and the revenue comes from advertisers.

1) Sony never said the word "real" ... So they aren't claiming that, but I have seen the VW1000 in action and the 4k upscaled image looks spectacular in my opinion

2) Every owner I know of the VW1000 is sufficiently impressed with the 1080p to 4k scaling to the point where the detail enhancement is a welcomed addition. Many of them have 150" screens where you can really tell the difference.

So you are saying Steve Withers actually saw some crap upscaling from the Sony and he is lying about his impressions?.. ok... got it

Anyway I'm excited by the VW500 ..I need 4k now!

Edited September 15, 2013 by gbickle

[Highjinx]

Not at all...I'm sure the scaling is very good perhaps SOTA as far as consumer products go.....but these 4K projectors will only come into their own when native 4k source material is about.

Currenty the promised 'upscaling' land making source 1080p better more detailed is marketing speil to move 4K projectors in the absence of 4K source material. As soon as 4K source material is available...the RC/MCP will take a back seat.....and will gather dust....possibly bull dust!!