JVC RS4500 (native 4K laser projector)

[AVSCraig]

I'll have more observations, notes and some lumen / foot lambert measurements later this weekend.

[DavidHir]

Congrats, Craig.  Looking forward to your further impressions even though this unit is way out of my price league.   Did you get Rosco on the walls yet?

[AVSCraig]

Congrats, Craig.  Looking forward to your further impressions even though this unit is way out of my price league.   Did you get Rosco on the walls yet?

Oh hell no - I'm so preoccupied with the new projector, I haven't gotten that far ! Plus, I had to modify my projector closet. Sort of took the wind out of my Rosco sails for right now !

[mark_h]

Lens memory works great

Last two sessions my focus has been off at the start of a session, and switching between memories does not restore it to where it should be.  Not sure why.  Frustrating to have to refocus each session.  But the repositioning works very well, if really slowly.

Dynamic laser dimming - tried Mode 2. Can't see any pumping...

You will, but whether it bothers you are not is the important thing.

[AVSCraig]

Last two sessions my focus has been off at the start of a session, and switching between memories does not restore it to where it should be.  Not sure why.  Frustrating to have to refocus each session.  But the repositioning works very well, if really slowly.

You will, but whether it bothers you are not is the important thing.

I can see it occasionally, but barely. I watched a bunch of stuff last night. At mid laser, -7 manual iris, I'm getting around 20 foot lamberts on my 16:9 screen! More to follow.

[Kris Deering]

Last two sessions my focus has been off at the start of a session, and switching between memories does not restore it to where it should be.  Not sure why.  Frustrating to have to refocus each session.  But the repositioning works very well, if really slowly.

You will, but whether it bothers you are not is the important thing.

I have yet to see anything that resembles "pumping". The only artifact I see is with mid to high bright scenes when the laser goes up a bit in brightness. It is a very quick flicker, and usually happens at scene transitions. I still only see this maybe once or twice in a whole movie, hardly intrusive. Never seen any type of artifact with darker sequences in movies.

[AVSCraig]

I have yet to see anything that resembles "pumping". The only artifact I see is with mid to high bright scenes when the laser goes up a bit in brightness. It is a very quick flicker, and usually happens at scene transitions. I still only see this maybe once or twice in a whole movie, hardly intrusive. Never seen any type of artifact with darker sequences in movies.

That's a good description - a " quick flicker ".

4K using Rec.709 looks brighter and far more realistic to me. And, now I'm using my Panasonic UB900 to upscale Blu Rays to 4K. i'm thinking that way I can use the same player and the same settings for everything. More to follow.

[mark_h]

That's a good description - a " quick flicker ".

That's enough to destroy immersion for me.  It's a compromise I'm not willing to make.   The native CR presentation benefits from constant peak highlights too.  I personally prefer that.  The laser dimming does just that - dims everything.  I wasn't aware of such obvious dimming with the mechanical DI on the Sony 1000.  I just don't think the laser dimming works well yet.  Perhaps it can be improved via firmware.

[mark_h]

4K using Rec.709 looks brighter and far more realistic to me. And, now I'm using my Panasonic UB900 to upscale Blu Rays to 4K. i'm thinking that way I can use the same player and the same settings for everything. More to follow.

All we need now is the Lumagen intensity mapping algorithm which will map the HDR metadata onto our Rec709 cubes and we get the perfect 4K displays.

[AVSCraig]

That's enough to destroy immersion for me.  It's a compromise I'm not willing to make.   The native CR presentation benefits from constant peak highlights too.  I personally prefer that.  The laser dimming does just that - dims everything.  I wasn't aware of such obvious dimming with the mechanical DI on the Sony 1000.  I just don't think the laser dimming works well yet.  Perhaps it can be improved via firmware.

I only saw it maybe 2 or 3 times during the entire movie " Oblivion " though. I saw the iris on my VW600 as often, if not more. Once again, I think screen size and manual iris settings affect this.

[ozhdht]

I spent some time Friday even doing Autocal on my Z1. I ran through all the modes I am currently using with some scope to adjust aperture and CMD on each. I haven't had an opp to sit down and look at the results but am hoping to tonight. I've essentially not done any viewing all week so it will be sort of fresh again, looking forward to it.

[AVSMike]

I am late to the party. Don't get my unit until Monday. I have everything in my room ready, so will not take me too long to get it set up. Will have to wait until my son gets home from school, to help me get it on the mount. Not about to try and  ceiling mount this beast, by myself.

[TonyD]

Hey guys thought I wold share some quick impressions. More to come..I've spent a few hours with it today and so far I am thoroughly impressed. Most of my testing was with rec.709 content. Tomorrow I will spend more time with UHD material. On my 10.7ft wide, 2.35 AT screen, I'm getting plenty of light.

10-12ft seems to be the sweet spot for this projector and so far, it does not disappoint. Also - fan noise has not been problem for me. More to come but so far, RS4500 is a winner.

[Ccool96]

So some initial impressions of the Z1.

Im actually presently surprised.

One issue that I had major concerns about, which has been discussed at length, is how noisy the unit it. I don't find that to be the case at all, but I'm comparing this unit to other Pro units, not to consumer grade units. Im talking about the unit at max laser power / "Turbo mode" as its been described, when the unit has been running for a while.

Yes is much louder than a RS600, and it is a little louder than my 5000ES at full power, but not as loud as my previous DPI Titan Reference. I don't find this to be a big issue, I just think its a matter of perspective. Guys who have been using big Pro-grade units would not find it to be an issue. Guys who are use to completely silent consumer grade units probably wont be pleased.

Image - No calibration done. Just out of the box settings, the unit looks really nice. At max laser power / Iris open / Natural Mode / D65 setting - I get 2671 lumens. I am running the unit at max laser / iris open currently, and it has a nice punchy image even on a 14' wide screen. This is for blu-ray SDR viewing. (Again I think this is really beyond the limit of what the JVC should be used for.)

I think the Z1 sweet spot, is going to be on screens that are in the 10'-12' wide range. This will gives you many more options in how to run the unit. Either by reducing laser power or by closing down iris some. This will also allow you to open it up more for HDR content.

The dynamic laser dimming is visible in both Mode 1 and Mode 2. There is some "Pumping" without question. Using Lawrence of Arabia, the very beginning where its just a solid black image with music playing, you can see the "Black level" of the image just going up and down, up and down. On my Sony 5000ES, this stays completely black. I think JVC can improve this, but it needs some work. There is also the issue that Kris Deering described, where there can be a quick split-second jump in brightness on certain scene changes from light to dark. Best way I can describe this, is that the Laser is just dimming almost 1/2 a second later than it should. This too can probably be fixed thru future updates.

I haven't gotten down to just comparing scenes directly between the 5000ES and the Z1, but when I compare both at "out of the box" uncalibrated modes, the JVC Z1 at max laser / iris open is basically equal to the Sony with the Laser power set at 50, on a scale from 1 to 100.

More info and screenshot to come shortly.

One other item I noticed, which is very similar to Sony units of the past. Previous Sony units like the 1100ES and the other smaller 4K units, have had issues where the Blue panel was out of convergence for the first 15 mins or so, then it would settle in.

I am seeing this exact same thing on the JVC. At power-up the Red color convergence was out. It required the Red to be moved 2 clicks down to get things in order, but after running if for about 30 mins, I rechecked the unit, and now the red was out the other direction. Resetting the red color back to "0" in both directions looked good after it had settled in.

This might also improve over time, but if not at least it seems to settle into place as the unit warms up.

[AVSCraig]

I just got finished watching the 2009 Star Trek reboot on 4K UHD Blu Ray on my RS4500. Not once did I feel this projector lacked enough contrast. I could only see the dynamic dimming misbehave 4 times in 2 hours ( mode 2 ). The secret is this projector is ideal for moderate sized screens in my opinion. My StudioTek 130 G3 screen is 128" diagonal 2.35:1. With a 13.86' throw, I'm rocking 19.93 foot lamberts with the iris at -7 at mid power! The detail and lack of picture noise on this machine is amazing !

With the RS4500, I tried the HDR preset, and I also tried BT.2020, which on my sized screen(s) is do-able. I've come to the conclusion that Kris Deering's suggestion to watch 4K Blu Rays using Rec. 709 just looks more natural. You still get the added detail and clean noise free picture thanks to 4K, and Rec 709 using the natural preset is brighter. That allows me to close down the manual iris more. I have to tell you, there were a few scenes in " Star Trek " tonight that looked damn near as good contrast wise as my RS600 ( but much better in other ways ). And the more I watch the RS4500, the more I realize I was crushing blacks a bit on the RS600. Excellent shadow detail on this projector.