schnitty Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 On Monday I will be doing the rounds to demo the following projectors: JVC X35, Sony VPL HW50ES, Epson 9100, Sim2 Crystal Cube and Panasonic AE8000 While some of these aren't the latest, latest models it should give me a reasonable representation of models from those brands. I have quite a few blurays so clearly can't take them all to demo so what would you guys recommend me taking to test these units out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juz Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 Hi Schnitty, May I suggest The Matrix, Super 8, Pirates of the Carribean, Prometheus any outer space film Alien etc The Fifth element, Transformers. Regards, Juz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oztheatre Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 Take anything that you're familiar with and avoid animated stuff where possible, but don't take too many you might upset the store owners wasting their time given you're not buying 5 projectors, 4 will miss out. Casino Royale has a great mix of fast and slow motion, facial closeups, good colours - ocean, sky, fire and explosions, good examples of contrast and shadow detail, even Craig's stunt double is clearly visible - and that's all in the first chapter. That's all you need imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
709er Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 I've always worked on the premise that you take your worst Blu ray or even DVD as well as your best (save that for last). Take a disc that's in black and white too -also observe the PQ without sound. Take the same discs to each demo. Don't let the "awesome" PQ discs and the AQ of the merchant's sound system "cloud your judgement Good Luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schnitty Posted December 13, 2013 Author Share Posted December 13, 2013 Cheers for the tips. I reckon I have shortlisted it to the following: Sin City - Not only do I love this movie and have watched it several times so am familiar, it is a pretty dark movie so will highlight black level performance Planet Earth / Life - Great quality production and good for colours Casino Royale - as suggested Others on the possible list Avatar - may not need to take it as most places probably already have it as their demo disc Inception Limitless Pans Labyrinth Transformers would be good but I don't own it. I may after Christmas Ruled out: Matrix - There is purposeful green hue to the matrix films that will make it hard to judge colour accuracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schnitty Posted December 13, 2013 Author Share Posted December 13, 2013 Take anything that you're familiar with and avoid animated stuff where possible, but don't take too many you might upset the store owners wasting their time given you're not buying 5 projectors, 4 will miss out. Casino Royale has a great mix of fast and slow motion, facial closeups, good colours - ocean, sky, fire and explosions, good examples of contrast and shadow detail, even Craig's stunt double is clearly visible - and that's all in the first chapter. That's all you need imo. Yeah I agree, I don't want to be a time waster. Fortunately I am able to demo the five projectors across three shops so won't be too bad and I have a standing relationship at one of the dealers where I have purchased stuff previously. I think I will limit it to only a few discs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cashflag Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 I second SIN CITY for black levels. Also maybe certain scenes of PACIFIC RIM. Would be good to test a dark 2.35:1 movie, too (the letterbox bars being an onscreen indicator of absolute black). ALIEN and PROMETHEUS were good suggestions. Have fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barco Cine 9 CRT Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 I havent seen alot of those movies, but i reckon 2012 is worth a look, from the car to the airport scene and light plane flight, birds flying and hot rock dropping.... I too found colour representation in Matrix movies abit off toward green bias. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackman1503561291 Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 (edited) Oblivion........ I agree but now I have one better. My demo movies are 1/ Avatar 2/ Prometheus 3/ Pacific Rim 4/ Oblivion 5/ Now the best of the best has to be Elysium. Those shots of the space craft were stunning on a 100 inch Hecto display. Edited December 16, 2013 by Blackman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackman1503561291 Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 I just noticed that Elysuim was Mastered in 4K expanded colour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timhet1503564719 Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 When comparing the projectors one after the other, it will be important to know if they are all calibrated. The Sony for instance will look more accurate than the JVC if they aren't calibrated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schnitty Posted December 16, 2013 Author Share Posted December 16, 2013 When comparing the projectors one after the other, it will be important to know if they are all calibrated. The Sony for instance will look more accurate than the JVC if they aren't calibrated. I demoed them yesterday and did ask that question. Only one location had their projector professionally calibrated. The rest were either using the Reference in case of Sony or other best modes. The JVC has been "calibrated" by eye. I think the grey screen they were using had more of an affect though because they also had an Epson where I was looking at the JVC and the Epson too didn't look right from what I had seen elsewhere. The two that impressed me most were the Sim2 and the Sony. I am leaning to the Sony because of price and better blacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owen Posted December 18, 2013 Share Posted December 18, 2013 If calibrated the same projectors will look very similar, the differences will come down to things like contrast, how visible the pixel structure is, motion and maximum brightness. Although brightness differences have to be very large to be noticeable without side by side comparison. Probably the most important aspect or performance to get right when comparing different projectors is gamma, even small differences in gamma will result in a noticeably different picture. Choosing one projector over another because you prefer its gamma setup is a bit silly as just about all good projects have 10 point RGB gamma adjustment so you can adjust in the look you want. Unfortunately its all too easy for sales staff to make one model look better than another in a demonstration, just a few clicks on the remote changes the look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schnitty Posted December 18, 2013 Author Share Posted December 18, 2013 If calibrated the same projectors will look very similar, the differences will come down to things like contrast, how visible the pixel structure is, motion and maximum brightness. Although brightness differences have to be very large to be noticeable without side by side comparison. Probably the most important aspect or performance to get right when comparing different projectors is gamma, even small differences in gamma will result in a noticeably different picture. Choosing one projector over another because you prefer its gamma setup is a bit silly as just about all good projects have 10 point RGB gamma adjustment so you can adjust in the look you want. Unfortunately its all too easy for sales staff to make one model look better than another in a demonstration, just a few clicks on the remote changes the look. I think you give sales guys too much credit, more often than not they are inept and the knowledge you have often eclipses theirs. It is more likely due to the fact that they haven't set anything up and are just running whatever default settings. In this scenario projectors with good settings out of the box will look better. The place where I saw the JVC it is their bread and butter and they push that projector over others so I would have expected that they would have it setup well. Unfortunately they didn't. It wasn't the deciding factor in the end, probably the deciding factor for me was that the Sony has the highest calibrated brightness at around 1000 lumens. In my environment that is going to work best as my room is multipurpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owen Posted December 18, 2013 Share Posted December 18, 2013 In this scenario projectors with good settings out of the box will look better. I'll put a different slant on that. The projector with the setup you personally prefer will look best to you, be it accurate or not. The point I was making is you can get pretty much whatever look you like with most projectors simply via adjustment. The JVC's have a rather dark setup by default, probably to emphasis blacks and contrast. I'm not a fan of the default setup but its easy to change to whatever look suits. You cant go wrong with the Sony, and I'm sure you will be very satisfied with it. Beautifully smooth LCoS image with good contrast, brightness, 3D performance and the best motion interpolation in the business. The Sony's dont get much attention on this forum, considering their performance that makes little sense. Maybe its a price thing as the LCD's and most DLP's are cheaper, but they are not competitive for performance IMHO. The JVC's are only ahead for contrast, and for a lot of content the contrast advantage wont be that noticeable, so unless contrast is a high priority the Sony's are the top pick IMHO and should get the attention and sales they deserve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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