Projector Reviews

The newest of our bunch is also the most expensive, ringing in at $6,300. It's not JVC's first 1080p projector—not by a long shot. It is, however, their first 1080p projector that doesn't require a home-equity line of credit. The case is attractive, but it's perhaps a little more utilitarian than the swoopy lines of the Sony.

In this group, the JVC has the smallest number of inputs, with one component video and two HDMI connections being the only HD choices. A PC RGB input would have been nice. The menus are fairly easy to use and offer global RGB controls. You can adjust each LCOS (D-ILA) panel separately, so, if one of them got jarred during shipping, you can get it to line back up again. The JVC is about as loud as most projectors, which sets it apart negatively in this group. The Mitsubishi and especially the Sony are very quiet. But the lower lamp setting helps reduce the noise. The remote is fully backlit and sports an attractive design. (There's a rarity.) It has discrete buttons for just about everything you'd ever want, including direct input access.

The lens-shift, zoom, and focus controls are manual. If you have someone to help you set up the projector, the manual controls are actually faster than when these functions are motorized; but, if not, it takes a lot more time.

The JVC's contrast ratio is shocking. Without the use of an iris, the DLA-HD1 has a full-on/full-off contrast ratio of 15,560:1. This is almost twice what the Sony can do with an auto-adjusting iris. The only display we've measured with a better contrast ratio was a CRT. It's downright impressive to achieve this without the numbers trickery that happens with an auto iris. Most displays don't even approach this, and it's visible on the screen. The image has a dimensionality that most displays lack. Of course, the black level is very low, as well, measuring 0.001 foot-lamberts on our 87-inch-wide 1.0-gain screen. Interestingly, the ANSI contrast ratio is 250:1. I expected it to be higher. This is on the high side for an LCOS projector but much lower than recent high-end DLP projectors.

The DLA-HD1 deinterlaces 1080i correctly, and it can reproduce a one-pixel-on/one-pixel-off pattern. In another shock, it doesn't pick up the 3:2 sequence with 1080i material. This is a shock because JVC is one of the few companies whose projectors consistently pass this test. Read my GearWorks column in this issue (page 32) for what this really means for picture quality. When you feed the JVC a 1080p/24 source, the projector converts the 24 to 96 and displays at a 96-hertz refresh rate. This can reduce the jerkiness that's inherent in the 3:2 sequence. With interlaced and progressive 60-Hz sources (like 1080i or 1080p), the refresh rate is 120 Hz. At least that's what JVC says. There's nothing in the projector that tells you it's in 96-Hz mode, nor is there anything in the manual that says this is possible. It would be nice if there were an icon or something confirming this. It's cool; why not advertise it?

The 480i processing is a mixed bag. It picks up 3:2 with 480i quickly. The waving-flag test looks good; it looks better here than with the Sony but not as good as with the Mitsubishi. The rotating-bar pattern on the HQV Benchmark disc doesn't look very good with the JVC; it has more jagged edges than with many displays I've seen recently.

All three projectors had pretty similar scaling quality, at least in terms of detail. In terms of overall video noise, the Mitsubishi has the least, the Sony has the most, and the DLA-HD1 is right in between.

The JVC's color points aren't even trying to be accurate. They're all oversaturated. The result is an image that is overly vibrant. Still, while I tend to prefer a more accurate image, the DLA-HD1's image is very watchable and never seems cartoonish or weird.

So, in the end, JVC's DLA-HD1 is great despite its several flaws. Sure, it's not accurate, but most people don't seem to care about that. Its processing, surprisingly, isn't as good as we've seen from JVC in the past. That contrast ratio, though—oh, the contrast ratio. One look at a display with this kind of black level and contrast ratio, and you'll be willing to forgive a lot of flaws. A good scaler with this projector would really put it over the top, although that would mean you'd be looking at a lot more money. With a good external scaler, it could easily compete with projectors of a much higher price. Regardless, on its own, it's still excellent.

Highlights
JVC DLA-HD1 D-ILA Projector:
• Extraordinary contrast ratio
• Exceptional black level