2019 Sony 4K Projector Owners Thread

[Dylan Seeger]

Sony US sent me a Sony VPL-VW695ES. I've recently been recruited by hometheaterreview.com to write reviews for them. So while I technically don't own this unit, I thought we should open a separate thread for those who own or are thinking about buying a 2019 Sony 4K model. My review of the 695ES will be posted there eventually and I will link to it here.


Sony sent it to me in this custom road case.  Unfortunately, like with the arrival of my JVC DLA-RS2000, I'm stuck at work for the evening and won't be able to look closely at this unit in my dedicated theater until later.

2019 Sony 4K Projector Owners Thread

[Dylan Seeger]

I was able to quickly throw an image up on the wall at work and I noticed right away something different. I can't 100% confirm until later when I have it in my dedicated theater, but it seems (on this unit anyways) the issue with posterization has either been dramatically reduced or eliminated completely. If this is true, I will finally shut up about this issue. I'm sure people are sick and tired of it. Things are looking positive though.

[AVSCraig]

Nice ! I'm looking forward to this review. 

[Dylan Seeger]

Regarding banding/posterization issues. I can confirm, now that I've had a look on a proper screen, that it's mostly gone. I'm talking 95/100 performance now. Seeing how I only have this one unit to base this off of I can't say for sure if my unit is an outlier or if this is common performance among the entire 2019 line up. However, this is only with a UHD signal being sent to the 695ES. Sending 1080p shows a ton of banding still. 

2019 Sony 4K Projector Owners Thread

[stridsvognen]

Just mounted a new 270 / 295 on my 110" scren this aftenoon, and been playing with some mixed content after a fast calibration.The projector is ok, and image much cleaner than previous Sony projectors i have seen, but with a CRT projector hanging the black level of this thing is horrible, measured a fast 6500:1 on off contrast,the black level is around my usual 5% ire level, it makes dark scenes in Blade Runner 2049 compleetly washed out. and its not bright enough to make HDR content pop.


Lens is not amasing, ok ish ill say, and motion is fairly bad comming from CRT, but compared to other digitals i guess its ok. 180P upscaling is far from impressive, seen edge ringing, wich should not be there, will have to trow up some testpatterns of various kinds later.

Thats my first impression, unless there is a magic button on this projector i have missed i doubt it will see much action in my HT in the future.

[Dylan Seeger]

My suggestion would be to have Reality Creation enabled, but have the resolution and noise filtering settings set to 0. This should remove any ringing that you're seeing.

If you want excellent motion, you're going to need to move to a DLP projector. With 24p content, the response time of the DLP mirrors is fast enough to fully resolve the amount of motion resolution that 24p can capture. But you're not going to get the type of contrast performance that Sony and JVC are capable of. I'm actually surprised you went with a Sony instead of a JVC considering you're used to CRT levels of black.

[stridsvognen]

I have everything turned off, and indput lag reduction on.


Been fiddeling a bit more, was using the OPPO 203 and a Apple TV4 4K wich was a total disaster of hdmi handshake issues and HDR hickups.


So turned to the OPPO 103D and uses its upscaling, wich i find better than the 203, shifted the convergence alignment a bit, not the zones just the center adjustment, wich lined it up nicely all around, not sure whats enhanced HDMI, Sony is not clear about that in the manual, so set it to Normal, and will say i now have a very nice image.


Ill say its not a 4K HDR capable projector, it will display it sure, but i prefer the HD Blu Ray upscaled, will give the Panasonic tonemapping a go at some point see if it can save the day, but ill think its simply not bright enough to make for a good HDR presentation, as it needs to much tonemapping/ convertion.


It will most likely be sold again after a while, its just to make some updated A/B comparison to the CRT, last Digital was the Sony 40ES wich was god awfull, and before that the JVC RS50, wich in many ways was ok, except extreme gamma drift, short lived lamps reversed capasitor on the IR board and at 1400 hours a dead balaster.. So never realy forgave JVC for making that piece of junk, and beeing to arogant to call them back and correct the hickups.


I would not mind to get my hands on the JVC RS2000 for a test spin at some point, except im not really willing to flush that kind of money down the drain again, so will most likely wait for the replacement in a few years and see how these new models keep going.


There is alwas someone who will buy a Sony with a few hundred hours on it for ½ of new price.

[Dylan Seeger]

Going from an RS50 to a new RS2000 will be a HUGE jump in overall image quality. So much has improved since then. The 695ES I currently have for review is a big step up from the bottom end 295ES model as well. More contrast and more lumens. It throws a very nice image. If it weren't for JVC, I'd own the 695ES. Sony has pretty much fixed the biggest issue I used to have with their 4K models which I discussed above. It's either this or Sony cherry picked this unit to send to reviewers.

[stridsvognen]

I see there is still no way of getting rid of the distortion to the luma test patterns, and its very sensitive to contrast adjustment, guess thats SONYs touch to the image wich they will never let go, its not as bad as earlier SONY projectors i have seen, but it will not do a 1:1 pixel resolution without some color graduation issues.


As i have it setup now the main issue is black level, a manual iris would have been nice, the way contrast adjust the light output, and not the white clipping and i calibrated it at a 70 setting it would be possible to put contrast to 100 and close a iris down to get the same light output, and lower black level a bit, but i doubt it would make much of a improvement, the native contrast is simply a joke.
And guess a good DLP would fo just as good or better.


Brighter images looks nice and fairly clean, not to much banding or artifacts, i still not put it true the low level banding torture test, but it seems to hold up fairly ok so far, looking the gray ramp that also seems to be depending on contrast setting, so im sure you can find some setting where you have horrible banding at at some level, so give the gray ramp a shot to see where it freaks out.

[AVSMike]

Go into the service menu and turn item 21 off. Wil help turning off the auto zone alignment.

[Dylan Seeger]

As Mike mentioned if you go into the service menu there is a setting you can disable that should remove most of the artifacts you're seeing. The pink and green banding is caused by the factory set zone convergence correction software. I posted detailed instructions on how to disable it here:

https://discuss.avscience.com/index.php?topic=1369.msg6348#msg6348


If you want a more fully featured projector (with iris control, better contrast, more lumens, ect) you'll need to step up to the 695ES. As I mentioned before, though, coming from a CRT you might have better luck with a JVC projector (even an eshift model) as that will have a dramatically darker black level like you're used to.

[stridsvognen]

Thanks, ill try turn that off, makes sense that its a zone convergence issue. might also fix the uniformity issue that i seen on a full white.


Im surprised how transparent it is, and sensible to source devices, and got it to look quite a lot more natural than the ones i seen on demos.


Have a feeling it will go well with the Xbox One

[stridsvognen]

Did the service menu correction, sadly it changed nothing, it looks the same, so if its a convergence thing they change the way that works in this model.

[stridsvognen]

I checked today, the zone convergence still works, even its set off in the service menu.
Is there any extra grayscale controle in the service menu somewhere, a 11 point grayscale adjustment would be sweet.


I doubt there is any way of getting the sony panels to resolve 1:1 it got the typical color shift, and its changing with contrast, from what i have been reading the 4K JVC have that under controle.

[Dylan Seeger]

I know this sounds obvious, but you've disabled the zone convergence correction in the regular menu as well, correct? Even with both off, there will still be some color banding and posterization issues. I don't think this can be completely eliminated unless Sony does a complete overhaul to the hardware. I hope to see this next year. Their model number naming scheme indicates this might happen next year. Where do they go from the 295 and 695?