UPDATE: The
JVC DLA-RS25 review has been posted!
Greetings all,
Well, it seems, as usual, despite the best laid plans, the JVC RS25 review is not going to go live tonight. Look for it tomorrow, probably late afternoon. I've hit two snags, which is delaying the review one more day:
1. My daughter Lisa, who handles all my cropping, resizing, etc. of the images that go into a review, got slammed with both homework, and the high school play she's in (which opens next week). As such, she still has about 3/4 of the images to do, but should have them done shortly after school tomorrow (Friday).
2. Sorry, taking the night off: I've got a concert tonight (had tickets since the spring) Ian Anderson. For those not familiar, he's that first class flutist and star of Jethro Tull. (Rock trivia tells us that there was never a band member named Jethro Tull.) Small venue, should be great!
Meantime, I finally got a handle on the black levels compared to the older RS20. So, since I'm behind on the review, I'll share that with you now.
Black level performance is improved. It's not improved by a lot, but the blacks are blacker. Stubborn as I am, I hate breaking out the tall ladder and bringing down my RS20 from its shelf. As a result, I didn't, and that means I couldn't do a side by side shoot between the RS20 and RS5.
What I did, instead was use the lens shift to raise the RS20's image up, so the bottom of the bottom letterbox was just above the center of the screen. Then, with the RS25 on its table, I lowered it's image so the top of the top letterbox was ust below the center of the screen. With full 16:9, the two images almost touch (but for a about 6 inches), but more importantly, with a letterboxed movie, I can see how black the RS20's letterbox is, how black the RS25's letterbox is, and I have a relatively thin (6 inch area) of true black, not being hit by either projector. To get the brightness the same, I closed down the iris of the RS25 rather significantly. I was able to get them almost identical. I set the gamma of both projectors to Normal.
The drop in blacks from the RS20 to the RS25, is slight. I would say it's definitely, significantly less change than going from the RS10 to the RS20.
Still, the improvement is there. Considering I'm not aware of any projector, from any manufacturer, at any price (ok, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist), that can match or beat the older RS20, and that the closest thing to the RS20 was the RS10, even a small improvement, is a well appreciated one. We're still a ways from the true blacks of a CRT projector, but nothing else comes close to the RS25, except the older RS20 it replaces.
There! Happy? Gotta get back to writing up the review. So, to paraphrase the well known song: "Tomorrow, tomorrow...." You'll have your RS25 review... tomorrow!" -art
