JVC DLA-X55R Home Cinema Projector – Review Summary 2

3D on the JVC DLA-X55R projector

Sadly, this JVC projector lacks the native brightness to do really vibrant 3D on larger screens.  Sorry, but most should consider this JVC to be a projector fine for “fooling around” with 3D, but if you are really into 3D, the brightness will likely disappoint.  I was rarely satisfied with brightness over 100″ diagonal.

On the brighter side, though, 3D picture quality is noticeably improved over last year’s JVCs, which were pretty weak compared to the competition in terms of crosstalk, etc. This year 3D looks pretty good to me, in terms of a smooth image without obvious crosstalk issues.  The controls allow you to adjust 3D, including one which controls image brightness.  Expect more crosstalk in the brighter end of the range, but even at it’s default setting in the middle, the JVC looked real good watching Hugo, Spiderman and others.

Overall Brightness:   This projector is supposedly (like the X35) based on last year’s X30R (aka RS45).  Thus, it was a surprise to us, that the DLA-X55R doesn’t measure near as bright as the RS45 did back in 1/2012. That is until I realized that the X55R, like the more expensive DLA-75R and DLA-95R, JVC only claims 1200 lumens (the X35 specs 1300 lumens).  This JVC X55R measured 703 lumens calibrated, which is slightly less (about 5%) than the X70R tested last year (which measured 748 calibrated)!  Of course there will be some small fluctuation in brightness from unit to unit due to lamp variation.  This projector was measured with less than 50 hours on the lamp.

In these images, like with many others you can pick up that slight yellow caste that was still left after Mike’s calibration.  (More tweaking likely could get rid of it, but possibly with other trade-offs.)

Still, when watching this projector, most of us will be perfectly happy with the color, and the shadow detail, and definitely with the blacks!

The Very Bottom Line on the JVC DLA-X55R Home Theater projector