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JVC DLA-RS1 1080p Home Theater Projector Review – General Performance 4

Posted on October 11, 2013 By Art Feierman

JVC DLA-RS1 Lamp Life and Replacement

JVC rates the lamp life at 2000 hours, whether in Normal or High mode. This isn’t really surprising to have one rating for both modes, for the RS1 only reduces brightness by 15% (most projectors drop it 20 – 25%) in its low power mode (Normal).

JVC DLA-RS1 Projector Screen Recommendations

Well you could buy a Firehawk screen. Certainly the Firehawk paired beautifully with the JVC RS1. Truth is, however, it is likely to be a room generated decision. The black levels are so low compared to anything else, that you certainly don’t need the High Contrast gray properties of the Firehawk and similar screens to lower black levels.

For most people, therefore I would recommend a white surface screen, with a little gain – 1.1 to 1.4, to maintain a wide viewing angle, and provide a very slight boost to brightness.

My testing room’s 106″ Carada with Brilliant White surface paired with the JVC looked phenonmenal, and would be an excellent choice, whether larger or smaller.

 

Going top of the line, Stewart’s Studiotek 130 (considered by many to be the industry standard), has a 1.3 gain, and is overall similar to my Carada. The Studiotek may well be the ultimate screen for the JVC, for theaters and rooms with dark walls, and no ambient light issues, in particular, but more than suitable for most rooms. The high contrast gray surfaces instead, like my Firehawk, Da-lite’s Da-Mat, or Elite’s HC gray, should be considered if you have side ambient light issues.

Io love the JVC on my Firehawk however! Stunning doesn’t even begin to desribe it on dynamic images with lots of dark areas, as are common in Space Cowboys, X-men: The Last Stand, Phantom of the Opera and so on.

JVC DLA-RS1 Measurements and Calibration

As noted earlier, the JVC needs almost no adjusting. To maximize performance on movies, combining the Cinema preset, with a Color Temp setting of Middle, and you are pretty much set, with the color temperature only slightly above the ideal 6500K. However, doing a grayscale balance, fine tunes the projector even more. Here are the numbers:

Color Temp setting
Cinema – Middle, fan on High Default
Brightness 761 lumens
100IRE (white) 6689K
80IRE 6620K
50IRE 6664K
30IRE 6690K

Note that all measurements were within 70K of each other – and I’m pretty sure that’s the closest grouping I’ve ever seen, before adjustments.

To reduce the color temperature slightly, I simply adjusted the Blue offset to -6, not touching Red or Green. That yielded:

Color Temperature Slightly
100IRE 6569K
80IRE 6525K
50IRE 6538K
30IRE 6549K

That’s extremely close to perfect. Based on the amount of shift the -6 Blue resulted in, I ended up setting the Blue offset to -7 instead of the -6 for the rest of my viewing, although I didn’t bother to remeasure (that change should drop each by about another 20K).

Contrast and Brightness on my test unit were essentially dead on, I made no changes.

The only other change I made was to Color (saturation), which I changed from default of -5 to -7, a very, very slight amount. Of note, preferred saturation will likely vary slightly depending on the properties of the screen, whether your walls are light or dark, etc.

Natural Mode produced a grayscale measurement of 6406K with default settings and lamp on High Power.

Dynamic mode measured 7671K with default settings and lamp on High Power. That cooler color temp is more suitable for TV/HDTV and sports in general, than either Cinema or Natural settings

JVC DLA-RS1 Image Noise

The RS1 relies on Gennum processing, and Gennum has been highly regarded for several years. Gennum is probably best known for handling the processing in the Marantz projectors, but can also be found in other projectors. That includes the outboard processor box for the competing Optoma HD81.

Noise levels were from acceptable to very good across the board. I ran the new HQV 1080p test disk and the JVC performed very well, with no issues worth reporting. Upon close inspection of large stationary bright images, you can make out a little noise, but that is typical, and not likely to ever be noticed unless you are looking for it.

The JVC has DNR (dynamic noise control) on the main image menu, but I never felt the need to use it.

Time to move on, next is the warranty page (the only pages in my reviews that take seconds to read, not minutes, and following that, the Summary page.

JVC DLA-RS1 1080p Home Theater Projector Review – General Performance 3
JVC DLA-RS1 Projector Review – Warranty