Black Levels and Ambient Light
Despite the lamp dimming, this Viewsonic, like almost every sub-$1000 projector is entry level when it comes to black level performance. But, there’s something else worth discussing.
The three images in this player were all taken under the same lighting conditions, over a period of a couple of minutes. I chose one of the darkest scenes we use – Katniss and Rue sleeping in The Hunger Games.
The shutters in the room for all three images are half open, plus some light from the open door to the adjacent room with it’s large skylight. You can see the ambient light easily in the first of these images.
Movie mode, Lamp on Eco: It’s worse in the right corner, but the ambient light bleeds over the entire image, blacks come out medium dark gray.
Dynamic mode, Lamp on Eco: In this combination the projected image is a good deal brighter, so that the blacks and dark greys seem much “blacker.” A far more watchable, very dark scene.
Dynamic mode, Lamp on Dynamic: The ambient light in the upper right corner is barely noticeable. Blacks seem very black. That’s simply because everything else is drastically brighter due to the huge amount of lumens.
Bottom line on black level performance. The native black levels may be entry level, but as these images demonstrate, if your projector is bright enough, the brightest parts are so bright that dark areas do not seem washed out by ambient light.
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Call black level performance "slightly better than entry level", for things like video clips that are dark.
For standard business / education content - which tends to be fairly bright, the lamp dimming will not help or not too often. Again, that is typical (and would also be true for a dynamic iris on a 3LCD projector).
The PJD7835HD exhibits typical black level performance for a crossover projector at its price/resolution. Dark shadow detail though is a cut above.
Dark shadow detail, however is particularly good. On our Bond night train scene is normally more intentionally overexposed than this image above. I can say that when viewing it, there was plenty of dark detail in the shrubs on the right, behind the tracks, and in the woods.
HDTV and Sports
Bright! 3500 lumens is a whole lot of white lumens. Single chip DLP’s in general, and that includes this Viewsonic, tend to come up short a bit on color lumens, so that in overall cutting through ambient light capability, the PJD 7835HD won’t match a 3500 lumen 3LCD projector in high ambient light, but should be overall more in the range of a 3LCD projector rated about 20% less bright. Oh, it’s whites will have more pop but the reds will, in the brightest mode tend to be too dark, red wine like, and yellows have too much green in them. No surprises. Just for conversation sake, I did a quick side by side between the PJD 7835HD and the recently reviewed Epson HC1040 rated 3000 lumens. I’d give the Epson a modest edge in terms of sheer cutting through ambient light abilities, (but in fairness, the Viewsonic has more features).
Watching sports in brightest modes in my own home theater at (100" diagonal) proves to be rather dazzling, even with the shutters open, and all the rear lights on. With shutters half open, on a sunny day I can watch a good looking picture with virtually no evidence of that ambient light, when it the brighter modes at full power. Even Eco mode, combined with Movie does great at 100” diagonal. Check out our video on a Bright Room projector in our living room., which will give you some idea of what this projector should be able to do under different settings.
Watching GameMix using the Viewsonic resulted in almost all of the small text (scores, ticker) in each of the individual 8 games on at once, being readable.
Bottom Line On Picture Quality
You can expect some very respectable picture quality in the bright modes, and even better in ViewMatch, Standard and Movie modes, skin tones can be excellent.
The PJD7835HD should meet the needs of most business and education users, unless they have needs calling for highly accurate color, in which case, the Viewsonic is capable, but not in its brightest modes. Did I mention it has all the necessary menu controls for a full calibration if needed?
Besides the color, the overall image is nicely sharp for a single chip DLP – in that no projector holds perfect sharpness from center to corners, but this Viewsonic seems a little better in this regard than the average sub-$1000 projector.
