Overall Color & Picture Quality

Posted on February 10, 2010 By Art Feierman

Wow! Wow! and for good measure, Wow!

The JVC DLA-RS35 works for me. Color is excellent – there’s more variation in color from one movie to the next, or to TV, than the RS35’s color, (when properly set up), deviates from the ideal.

I have always had but two noteworthy complaints about the JVC LCoS projectors. They have been: They could be a bit sharper, that is, comparable to some really excellent single chip DLP projectors.

And “brightest” mode could stand to have an extra 400 – 600 lumens to give us large screen owners some breathing room.

Well, the RS35 doesn’t not help out one bit with my second wish, but it definitely hit the bullseye on the sharpness aspect. The essentially perfect convergence, and slight tweaking of the JVC’s sharpness related controls – Sharpness, and Detail Enhancement result in result in more perceived sharpness.

Crisp and Clear. I’m just loving the small but noticeable difference when switching back from my RS20 and this RS35. It’s just enough that that extra crispness makes the image seem “razor sharp”, even when watching a full 128″ diagonal image at less than 12 feet. Nice!

A friend of mine was by. (Showed him the winning performance of the Woman’s Freestyle Figure Skating – breathtaking), and he and I watched the 3rd and overtime periods of the US – Canada Hockey final. Hey you Canucks! Congratuations! Great hockey game. Savor it! See you in 4, if not sooner.

I said this about the RS25 compared to my RS20, “Overall there’s very little difference between the JVC DLA-RS25, and the older DLA-RS20. I’m not sure how much of the slightly greater “pop” the RS25 has, is due to the older lamp in my RS20, or how much is due to the slightly improved, and truly unmatched black levels. Ultimately, though, the RS25 does look, overall, both extremely similar, and slightly better, than the RS20. Not a great difference, but at this level, any real improvement is always appreciated, in the quest for perfection.”

OK, the RS35, by definition is going to be at least as good as that RS25, and likely at least a tiny bit better at everything. That puts the RS35 at the top of the food chain, for projectors in the $10,000 or less range. Not much surprise though.

Darker and very dark scenes, of course are a real strength of this JVC RS35. With its advantage over all other projectors (except maybe a good RS25), in terms of blacker blacks, and the fact that unlike almost all other projectors, which rely on a dynamic iris for excellent blacks, the JVC does not. That means darker images are not being compressed. With dynamic iris designed projectors, for an iris to close down, those small bright areas also have to be dimmed or the iris can’t close down at all.

With the JVC, the whites are just as bright on an otherwise extremely dark scene, as they are on a full daylight scene. Projectors with DI’s just can’t claim that, and it does make a real and easly visible difference. That’s obvious everytime I do a side by side shoot with one projector with Dynamic Iris, and the other, without.

And here are a few more images, the two from Dark Knight, followed by two from an old favorite movie of mine: Blazing Saddles, plus a few assorted scenes from movies and digital video sources:

The very bottom line on overall image quality and color: It doesn’t get much better than this. Rich, very accurate colors, good saturation, and those superb, unmatched blacks, plus a lot of lumens for movie viewing, pretty much insure a great viewing experience, and one that can handle a larger screen too.