Bottom Line

I found it hard to love the XV-Z17000. With Blu-ray 3D, this projector looks spectacular and is one of the best going. The 3D image is bright and vibrant, something not said very often. Its 2D performance is far less impressive, easily outclassed by JVC’s 3D projectors (which admittedly won’t look quite as good with 3D). Given its idiosyncrasies, the XV- Z17000 is a hard projector to recommend outright. If you can mount it, if you want a bright (or big) 3D image, if you don’t mind inaccurate colors, if you don’t want the contrast ratio of an LCoS projector, if, if, if . . .

(test bench)

With the Movie1 mode selected, the Sharp XV-Z17000 projector measures extremely close to the neutral gray D6500 standard using the Photo Research PR-650 spectroradiometer. There are no grayscale calibration controls to speak of, only global red/cyan and yellow/blue adjustments. Initial adjustment of these only made the grayscale worse. The projector’s red color point is oversaturated, while the green color point is yellowish-green and blue is slightly cyan. Adjusting green and blue with the color management system menu option yielded mild improvements. There was no overscan present, and the projector was able to resolve a 1-pixel on/off pattern. After calibration in the Movie1 mode, the maximum light output (100 IRE full white) was 33.91 ftL with the High Brightness and Auto On iris settings and Eco+Quiet lamp mode off. In this mode, black level was 0.0026 ftL (13,042:1 contrast ratio). With Auto off, black level rose to 0.0208 while max output fell slightly to 33.75 (1,623:1). The best black level/contrast ratio combination was in Eco+Quiet mode, with High Contrast and Auto On iris settings. In this mode, black level was 0.00086 and max light output was 14.44 (16,790:1).