Sharpness
The JVC DLA-HD250, and for that matter, virtually all LCoS projectors
On movies the JVC looks nice and sharp. You can further enhance the appearance of sharpness with the Detail Enhancement control.
When it comes to pure digital content, like the great stuff on Discovery HD, Travel HD, or other high quality content channels, the JVC looks nice and sharp, but the sharpest DLP projectors tend to look "razor sharp" by comparison
My original DTS test disc died, for this sharpness demo, we are transitioning to a closeup of the PS3 system screen, showing the Video icon, for the future.
JVC DLA-HD250: Bottom Line Sharpness
Certainly there are sharper seeming projectors. You just aren't likely to get perfect convergence of the JVC's three panels, giving single chip DLP projectors a distinct advantage.
Light Leakage
No change here, from last year's models. This JVC projector, too, leaks light out of the lens. This is especially true if you are using a lot of vertical lens shift. There's a bright side though.
That bright spot is that while the leak covers a wide area, it's so dark as to be a total non-issue. That leakage (which is outside of the projected image area) is no brighter - less bright, than the black levels themselves, and they are darker than with any other projector. If I was still in a room with an off-white wall surrounding the screen, I would be able to spot it with a virtually totally dark image projected, and the room otherwise fully darkened. In my current room where the wall behind the screen is dark, I couldn't see it at all.
JVC DLA-HD250 Image Noise
Nothing new here. For the 3rd generation, JVC has continued with higher end Silicon Optix for their image processing. They are still using the Silicon Optix Reon-VX (the lastest version no doubt). The Reon-VX is found in a number of excellent projectors. I'm not aware of any notable flaws in image processing. Mosquito noise is just visible, in normal amounts, without the Noise Reduction engaged. I don't see a need to implement it, but that is personal taste. Performance on motion artifacts is very good. As you can imagine, the HD250 like the other JVCs easily passes all the other related related tests that we use from the HQV test disc, as that widely used test disc is put out by Silicon Optix.
The HD250 does offer a contrast enhancement feature. As would be expected, it does slightly increase the image noise when engaged.
DLA-HD250 Audible Noise
More than quiet enough. While there are quieter projectors the JVC HD250 is quieter than average, and claims a very impressive 19db noise level in low power mode. It's probably still 25 db or less with fan and lamp running at full power. The pitch of the noise is fairly average, and lower than many. Overall, having owned the equally quiet JVC RS20, audible noise has been a non-issue. In fairness, my RS20 sits on a high shelf (just over 10 feet) and about 8 feet behind me, so it's a lot further away than it would be in some smaller rooms or if ceiling mounting almost overhead. Still, while there are quieter projectors, this should satisfy all but the most noise adverse, and even those folks would have to have it placed close by before they might complain.
