JVC DLA-RS6710, RS67U, X900R Picture Quality 2

Dark Shadow Detail

The JVC overall does very well, but not the best.  With Mike's settings there's a touch of crushing of the darkest grays, which can be seen in the Bond night train scene and other dark images, including the overexposed and gray scaled sleeping scene of Katnis and Rue from The Hunger Games.

These images were taken before I reduced the gamma from 2.4 to 2.2 (as mentioned elsewhere). That lower setting probably helps but only a small amount.  As a result, based on Mike's calibration I'll score the JVC as very good at black levels, but not very top tier.  Hey, guess what, you might lose a tiny amount of detail, but that will have the offsetting benefit of giving dark scenes even more pop.  Even my Canon 60D dSLR may be contributing to this in the photos, as the JVC has more dynamic range than any other projector around (claiming a native On/Off contrast ratio of 150,000:1). With iris, JVC claims 1.5 million:1!!!

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Bottom Line on dark shadow detail:  Good for a projector in the over $5000 range, but could be a bit better.  A relatively minor flaw in that I could take this combination of black levels and dark shadow detail and live pretty happily ever after.  That slight crushing may also, however, come into play with the oversaturated look on some very dark objects on very dark scenes, as after a point they go to black.

The images - following a series of the JVC's dark images are some competitors on the sleep scene with Katnis and Rue.  In order:

JVC DLA-RS6710, Sony VPL-VW1100ES, Epson LS10000, Sony VPL-VW600ES, Sony HW55ES, BenQ W7500, the sub $2000 Optoma HD161x, and a side-by-side of a previous generation of JVC's the RS95 vs. RS35 (earlier versions of the 6710 and 4910).

Keep in mind that when you have awesome black levels, near blacks are much darker than with a projector with much brighter blacks (and therefore much easier to see near blacks).  That is, many very low cost projectors easily show very dark detail simply because its much brighter.

JVC RS6710 Handling of HDTV and Sports

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The images above were taken using Stage mode for the football images.  The rest were shot using the calibrated User mode.

E-Shift3 was on for all of these images.

The sports looked great, with my only complaint being that the 4K projectors out there, and the Epson LS10000 (also using pixel shifting) all appear slightly sharper than the JVC, even with the e-Shift pushed to a setting of 64 up from the default of 50.  (I consider that about the same as using 4K-3 on the Epson LS10000, but the Epson does have the sharpness edge in that comparison.

Colors in Stage mode are vibrant, and pretty accurate, more than enough for sports or viewing sitcoms.  As for my music concerts, the lighting there always has an affect, so again, no issue with Stage.  But, when you want the most accurate color - i.e. the Victoria Secret images, and some other skin tone related, the calibrated mode is best, if you don't need that extra punch.  In a pinch, Animation mode, with High Brightness color temp, gives you more lumens without too much loss of color accuracy.  It's not as bad as some maximum brightness modes where I like to use the expression "break glass only in case of emergency - such as way too much ambient light. Still, Stage has the pop that really can make a visible difference, at little overall cost.

Overall Picture Quality

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For this section I've provided a mix of 1080p (Blu-ray), 1080i (HDTV), and 4K source material.  The last 3 images are using 4K content.  E-shift is engaged for all.