Sony VPL-VW1000ES Projector – Physical Tour 2

OK, that’s a good selection to give you a proper feel. Missing are many more menus, including the Gamma menu.

Note that with Image Director software, and your computer, you can further customize the gamma controls.

Let’s look at 3D menus: Yes, the Picture Mode menu in 3D looks exactly like the 2D version, except for the addition of (3D). All modes are useable for 3D.

There is a 3D menu for settings, which gives you control over glasses brightness, and the depth adjust control (depth control is very interesting, but I mostly avoided it, finding the default works better than alternatives I tried).

There’s greater info on these menus, of course, in the Sony user manual.

Sony VPL-VW1000ES Remote Control

Sony offers up an excellent remote control for the VW1000ES projector.  It is a larger remote, reasonably backlit in blue.

The Light on button is on the top left, with the input selector in the middle and the green power button on the right.

Let me stop to say, that for a dark remote, this one is relatively easy to spot in a dark theater, unlike, for example, my Sony PS3 remote.

The next bank of buttons (3 rows of 3) offers you a discreet button for each of the 9 “color” modes.

Next are three buttons across for lens control:  Focus, Zoom, and Shift.  Selecting any of these brings up a green grid to help out with focus, and placement of the image.

Just above the middle comes the navigation area.  The four arrow keys are “surrounded” by three buttons – the top left is Position, top right Reset.

You’ll find the Menu button right below the down arrow.

The next bank of nine buttons are mostly image features with one button access, including: Aspect ratio, CFI, 3D, Color Space, Color Temp, Reality Creation (2K – 4K upscaling), Gamma correction, Black level adjust and Advanced Iris.

Finally, near the bottom, three pair of rocker switches for Sharpness, Brightness, and Contrast.

Click Image to Enlarge

Sony VPL-VW1000ES Lens Throw

The VW1000ES projector’s motorized 2.1:1 zoom lens offers a tremendous amount of placement range. Very few projectors offer this much zoom (2.1:1, or 2:1).  If you are using a standard 100″ diagonal HDTV shaped, 16:9 screen, you can place the projector as close as 9 feet 9 inches, or as far back as 21 feet, 2 inches.

Of the almost 200 hundred home theater projectors we’ve reviewed, the only other player to sport a standard lens greater than 2:1 (and also 2.1:1 like this Sony) has been Epson.  I guess you could say that this Sony has more placement flexibility than basically any other projector on the market (unless of course, there is a full selection of interchangeable lenses.  This Sony’s 2.1:1, however, should work fine in just about any but the strangest laid out home theaters.

VW1000ES Lens Shift

VPL-VW1000ES Anamorphic Lens, Lens Memory

The VPL-VW1000ES, of course, supports using an anamorphic lens. A motorized sled for the lens can be controlled by the Sony’s 12 volt trigger. This allows you to go with a true Cinemascope shaped screen (such as 2.35:1).

The Sony VPL-VW1000ES offers a full Lens Memory setup. This will allow you to go with that 2.35:1 (or 2.40:1) “Cinemascope” width screen. With Lens Memory, once it’s set up, when you want to watch a widescreen movie, then simply at the touch of a button, the image will zoom out (larger image) to fill the entire width of your 2.35:1 screen. At the same time, (the Sony has digital image shift and motorized lens shift), the image will adjust to be properly filling the screen vertically with just the information from the movie, with the letterboxing overshooting the screen. With the Sony’s great black level performance, you are only likely to really notice the letterboxing if your front wall around your screen is white or near white, and you’re watching a very dark scene.

Alternately, when it’s time to watch some “standard” 16:9 content – including HDTV, and most animation films, the lens will return to the setting for watching in a 16:9 aspect ratio, keeping the whole vertical image within the screen height (constant screen height), which results in the letterboxing on the screen, to the left and right of the 16:9 image.

If movies are your primary reason for owning a projector, then for most, it does make sense to have the largest screen size when viewing movies. With the standard 16:9 screen, though, movies – due to their letterboxing, are a smaller area, than HDTV.

Remember, that while most movies out there are widescreen,

With the VPL-VW1000ES, you have two ways to go “widescreen” – either use the lens memory, or go with a full anamorphic lens solution.

Now its time to talk picture quality…