Mike's Notes: Grayscale calibrated pretty well, with an average Delta E of only 1.3. The RGB balance was also pretty good, other than a spike in Red at 20 IRE. Adjusting Gain has a greater effect on the total IRE range than it should, whereas Offset has less of an effect on upper IREs. So, if you adjust Gain, then compensate for the adjusted gain effect with Offset, it works out pretty good. As Animation (the brightest mode) is only 81 lumens more than THX mode, there’s no need for a quick cal of a “bright” mode.
Typical of JVC projectors, gamma was too low in any of the presets (Normal was the high with an average gamma of 2.14), so I used the custom gamma. The custom gamma started with the Normal preset, but I dropped the numbers -15 from 5 to 75%, -10 at 80% and -5 at 90 and 95%. This results in a pretty smooth gamma with an average of 2.20. Luminance tracking is quite good as well.
The standard color gamut is decent and doesn’t have the oversaturated green that prior models had, but the secondaries are all off a little in hue.
Fortunately, the CMS works quite well and I was able to dial in the colors pretty well. Overall, colors look very good.
Art's note: Future subscribers, starting in 5/13 you will be able to view the CIE charts, and get our settings from calibrating the individual primary and secondary colors with the CMS, plus Mike will have additional commments related to that extra calibration work).
The Calibration page provides the settings we used and report on. That includes basic settings as well as gain and offset for the grayscale balance.
JVC DLA-X95R Sharpness
The JVC DLA-X95R starts out "typically sharp" for a 3 chip or 3 panel projector. All else being equal, single chip DLP projectors have a sharpness advantage as they don't have to align and converge separate Red, Green, and Blue light.
But this is JVC with their "4K" e-shift technology, which I discussed on the first page of this review. While I don't buy into their marketing of 4K, e-shift2 definitely is a player when it comes to providing a sharper seeming image.
Not surprisingly the DLA-X95 seems to be at least as sharp as any other 3 panel/3chip type projector I've seen, at least if we exclude some many times the price 3 chip DLP projectors (with optics that probably sell for more than this projector). Even when using e-Shift2, though, the JVC is no match for the true 4K Sony, when both are handling 1080p images.
For your consideration, our usual close up images:
JVC's own focus screen for the power lens, also makes for a good indicator of sharpness: Looking at the larger version of these two, may drive you crazy. Differences are hard to spot. Your initial reaction is likely wrong. The first image is with e-shift on Film, and it's turned Off on the second. After you've stared at these a while, you come to the realization that e-shift on isn't adding detail, only the "feeling" of more detail.