JVC DLA-HD750BE, Black Beauty

• "This unit is capable of delivering the most realistic cinematic experience I have ever enjoyed in my system"

• Price: €6,499

• Specialists' rating: 6

• Text: Javier GUERRA

I remember perfectly how, in these very pages, I let you all know that a JVC projector based on D-ILA technology with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels had become the most passionate item on my wish list. Those were different times: the words Full HD were not yet in use, and the most expensive projectors you could buy for home use had a native resolution of 720p and were based on a technology that, as always in these cases, has gradually become obsolete.

For me, that announcement meant something very special, since I was the owner of a venerable JVC G11, also with D-ILA technology, which had been giving me tremendous enjoyment for more than four years. The unit we present here represents at least the fourth generation since that promising announcement and, if we look back over this period, we can see how and why JVC has reached the well-deserved and prominent position it currently occupies, thanks to D-ILA technology, in the field of projectors designed to reproduce images in the home.

Although at that time, and as a result of its long experience in electronic cinema, JVC was flying the flag for LCoS projectors, highlighting among their virtues maximum color fidelity to the original, little by little it set out to make a qualitative leap that would allow it to compete on equal terms with DLP technology on the battlefield where the technology sponsored by Texas Instruments had until then been unbeatable. We are referring to the reproduction of dark scenes with a black level so solid that it could reach native contrast ratios unknown until then, while still allowing exquisite detail to be distinguished in those same low-light areas. No sooner said than done. When the JVC DLA-HD1 and its twin in the Pro line on the other side of the Atlantic, the DLA RS1, went on sale in the spring of 2007, something unprecedented happened. The success with specialist critics, the comments of the imaging gurus in the main audiovisual forums on the Internet and the countless praises their fortunate owners lavished on the machines they owned flooded the world of high-end home projection with those wonderful units. Capable of a native contrast ratio of over 15,000:1 On/Off without the help of undesirable variable-aperture iris systems, whose electronic management time and again produces a completely unnatural image, they displaced the best DLP designs from the hearts of the most passionate enthusiasts, a field in which only a few legendary brands have managed to maintain their status as true reference products.

In this magazine, we have been fortunate enough to review both the HD1 and its successor, the JVC DLA-HD100, which is still in the Japanese manufacturer's catalog and which earned our highest distinction in the form of a "Six Star Product". This spring saw the arrival of a new generation of D-ILA projectors, this time made up of two excellent units called the DLA-HD350 and DLA-HD750 respectively. Both share native 1080p resolution and a good part of the electronics and optical and mechanical elements, but if we focus on the pursuit of maximum quality, we must necessarily opt for the JVC DLA-HD750, the flagship of the Japanese specialist's home line.

FIRST CONTACT

On the occasion of the special feature on calibration we have been publishing over the last three months, I asked the magazine's management for a unit that would allow me to exploit to the full the possibilities of its user menu, in order to convey to all of you the adjustment potential of a menu made by specialists with a single aim: achieving perfection in the fidelity of image reproduction. That commendable task fell to the aforementioned JVC HD750 which, thanks to the kindness of its official distributor in Spain (Seesound), came into my hands almost three months ago. You will understand that I have therefore had more than enough time to explore the unit's possibilities in all kinds of conditions and under any circumstances. Indeed, during this period I have shamelessly enjoyed the best recently released movies, the best concerts on Blu-ray and the epic victories of Spanish soccer in high definition.

It is a robust unit weighing almost 11 kilos, with contemporary styling and very well built. The motorized lens cover is a surprise. Indeed, several of the projector's virtues lie in that lens. It is an all-glass 2x zoom lens made up of 17 elements in 15 groups, including two extra-low dispersion (ED) lenses, equipped with a mechanical iris system that can vary brightness in 16 preset steps. It also has motorized zoom and focus, as well as a lens shift system in both the horizontal and vertical planes, which consequently gives it great installation flexibility. Thanks to its wide-range zoom, to achieve an image two and a half meters wide, we can place the unit anywhere between 3.4 and 7 meters back.

A structural change in the optical system allows it to combine a significant reduction in light loss with a high-efficiency lamp, so the unit's brightness reaches a figure of 900 ANSI lumens. So we have a new optical system with an improved light source, combined with the polarizing grid that has made the latest-generation D-ILAs magical. The result: a black level hard to match by any projection system based on a light-emitting lamp, allowing it to reach a real Full On/Off contrast ratio of 50,000:1 once calibrated to the D65 white point.

Fortunately, JVC's engineering team did not stop there, and has taken full account of the wishes of the many users who demanded the ability to fully adjust the unit through a calibration system allowing the color gamut to be modified to match the standardized color spaces fully. In the last two generations of projectors, those preset color spaces, which suffered from very obvious oversaturation, had been their main handicap, as we pointed out in our reviews of them. The new HD750 is not content with solving the issue by incorporating a superb Color Management System; it also includes, for the first time in a unit at this price level, a preset memory in the menu that complies with THX certification, placing the six colors of the gamut at their proper points. We must also highlight the unit's other adjustment possibilities, which make it possible to achieve a perfect gray scale through the inclusion of the relevant controls in the user menu, but we must go further in our praise, because for the first time we can enjoy full control of the gamma curve without having to access the service menu. It can be adjusted independently for each primary color, and within each color the curve can be varied at 15 different points at 10 IRE brightness intervals along the gray scale, reaching nirvana in the darkest region (up to 20 IRE), where it can be adjusted every 5 IRE. Thanks to the quantity and quality of the controls available, we can say loud and clear that it is finally possible to calibrate a projector to perfection.

VIEWING TESTS

Thanks to the new lens fitted to our guest, the JVC's images have gained slightly in sharpness over its predecessors. Panel alignment on the unit tested was as good as could be expected, but even so there was a slight misalignment of less than one pixel, which falls outside the adjustment range of the menu responsible for that task. If we are being demanding, we would have liked the option of adjusting misalignments smaller than one pixel, but for the moment this is something not seen in the home market, and the demanding professional market has to differ in some way. In any case, at a normal viewing distance the image offers top-level sharpness, close to the best single-chip designs, while retaining the very cinematic smoothness that JVC projectors display as a house trademark.

The video processor has also been replaced compared with the HD100, which used Gennum's VXP; this time the competition's model, Silicon Optix's HQV, has been chosen. Deinterlacing and scaling, with both standard-definition material and high-definition signals, are top-level, with no artifacts of any kind visible, even in the most challenging scenes.

Thanks to the unit's extraordinary native contrast, we can afford to raise the gamma curve to a setting of 2.5 without losing shadow detail. In this way we get an image with a depth hitherto unknown in fixed-matrix digital projectors, allowing it to rival the sacred monsters of the CRT projection era, but offering much greater brightness in a more affordable, manageable and quiet unit.

I could list a thousand and one virtues in addition to those I have already told you about, but I prefer to sum them up in just one. This unit is capable of delivering the most realistic cinematic experience I have ever enjoyed in my system.

If you can live without the extreme sharpness of the best single-chip projectors and the price of this projector fits your budget, do not hesitate to put it at the top of your list of candidates.

CALIBRATION AND ADJUSTMENTS

Despite all the functions implemented in the unit's superb user menu, and as we described in the latest installment of the calibration article, which you can read in this same issue, there are occasions when the adjustment range of each of the controls may not be enough to fully correct the unit's gamut, thus preventing a deltaE deviation of less than 5 for each point of the color triangle. If you look at the photo of this unit's CMS that appears in that article, you will see that the maximum adjustment value for the color saturation parameter reached a maximum of -30. Thanks to the good work of the brand's engineers, a firmware revision is now available for the unit that makes it possible to achieve a perfect gamut under the chosen video standard. As proof, here is another photo of the same menu, but updated to version 1.1, where you can see that this time the adjustment range reaches a value of -60, so there is no longer any obstacle to achieving an extraordinary gamut that sits perfectly on the chosen reference, with a deltaE deviation of less than 3 for all colors. This firmware update also solves the poor sensitivity of the remote control sensor, making menu navigation much faster.

As for adjusting the gray scale and gamma curve, suffice it to say that exactly the same level of precision is obtained, with a deltaE value of less than 2 across the entire gray scale between 20 and 100 IRE with a gamma value of 2.4. A more than good solution for starting to enjoy the HD750 until a thorough calibration is carried out is to choose the THX mode in the user menu, which comes very close to the theoretical ideal, albeit with a gamma correction value slightly lower than desired.

Once perfectly calibrated, the Full On/Off contrast measurement yields a stratospheric figure of over 47,000:1, bearing out the data the manufacturer gives in its specifications.



WE LIKE

- Menu with every calibration option there is.

- Highly accurate THX mode.

- Very high contrast giving remarkable image depth

Very high value for money.



COULD BE IMPROVED

- Video noise.

- A true reference lens would make it perfect.

JVC DLA-HD750BE, Black Beauty

Specifications

PANEL SIZE 0.7" x 3 (16:9). RESOLUTION 1920 x 1080 p. PROJECTION SIZE 60-200 inches. LENS SHIFT FUNCTION +/-80% Vertical and +/-34% Horizontal (motorized). BRIGHTNESS 900 lumens. NATIVE CONTRAST RATIO 50,000:1. VIDEO INPUT SIGNALS 480i/p, 576i/p, 720p 60/50, 1080i 60/50, 1080p 60/50/24. CONNECTIVITY PC input, Digital: VGA, SVGA, XGA, WXGA, WXGA+, SXGA, WSXGA+, WUXGA. Analog: VGA, SVGA, XGA, WXGA, WXGA+, SXGA, SXGA+, WSXGA+. Video input terminals (rear): HDMI 2 (ver.1.3), Component 1 (RCA), S-Video 1 (mini DIN), Composite 1 (RCA), PC 1 (15-pin D-sub), Control terminals RS232C 1 (9-pin D-sub), Trigger 1 (mini jack). NOISE LEVEL 19dB (in normal mode). POWER REQUIREMENTS AC 110V-240V, 50/60 Hz. DIMENSIONS 365 x 167 x 478 mm. WEIGHT 11 kg. DISTRIBUTOR SeeSound (935443778).

Price: €6,499