Sony VPL-VW85 Projector - Physical Tour 5

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Art Feierman

The VW85 is a very good looking projector physically ("wife friendly"), in almost all ways, except that it is one of the largest home theater projectors around, in the under $10K price range. The top of the projector is done in a nice, shiny, black finish with embedded blue speckles. When the room lights are on, that does add just a touch of blue to its look. Most of the other surfaces are a matte very dark gray.

Sony VPL-VW85 Remote Control

Below the navigation area are five buttons that provide direct access to some of the more frequently selected controls: Gamma, Black Level settings, Advanced Iris, Color Space, and Color Temp.

Then there's a decent space, and three more buttons. On the left, is Wide Mode, which lets you toggle through different aspect ratios, RCP, which is Sony's color management system, and lets you individually tune each primary and secondary color. Note; We do not work with this section as part of our own "basic" grayscale calibration of the VW85. Most likely, if you hire a good professional calibrator, they will adjust the individual colors, as well as the grayscale balance.

That leaves just six more buttons - actually 3 pairs of direct controls. They are Sharpness, Brightness, and Contrast.

Again, an excellent remote. It is logically laid out, the buttons have a good feel. It fits well in your hand (mine is pretty average sized), and has excellent range.

Lens Shift

The VPL-VW85 has both vertical and horizontal lens shift. Both functions are motorized, and controlled by the the remote control or the small on-board control panel

For a 100" screen, the center of the lens can be placed as high as approximately 7.5 inches above the top of your screen surface Actually Sony quotes, in their manual a maximum of 31 - 7/8 inches above the center of the screen, which is about 49.5 inches high, so top of the screen is about 24.3 inches above the center of the screen.

VPL-VW85 Anamorphic Lens

The Sony VW85 does support an anamorphic lens and motorized sled, for those wanting to go with a 2.35:1 (Cinemascope) shaped screen. This is one of those extra features that Sony has put on the VPL-VW85 to differentiate it from the lower cost VPL-HW15.