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BenQ LK990 First Impressions

Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #45 on: March 23, 2019, 01:42:30 PM »
Quote
I can all but guarantee its something similar to what woofer experienced before he figured out the proper settings. What you’re describing is NOT the way it should be. HDR movies is where this excels, so as I told woofer with the LK970, something isn’t right.

As I said previously, I am sure this is just with the stock HDR mode and most likely won’t be anywhere near as good as what I did on the LK970, so until I get the LK990 and figure it out if it can or can’t do the same or better, I would urge him to hold off returning it and making that decision.

Was this with tone mapping from HDR/BT2020 to SDR/BT2020? Was everything ruined by brightness matching his HDR (yuck!!!)? If all I did to the LK970 was an initial calibration, I doubt it would be what it is either and recall it wasn’t.

How am I not surprised with the result from there?

Wow, seems like a pretty desperate attempt to make excuses for the LK990's poor performance. We tried pretty much everything on the LK990 yesterday. We tried stock HDR settings, then your settings and then I calibrated it. We looked at tone mapped SDR content afterwards on top of sending it untouched HDR. We used both my HTPC wth madVR and Calvin's Panasonic UB820. What more would you like us to do, Dave? I mean, we ran the gamut here and literally tried everything we thought could help. Sorry, it CANNOT compete with the current Sony, Epson and JVC reflective-LCD projectors out there due to it's terrible contrast performance. It's horrendous by comparison as 1000:1 native would indicate. Yes, you can manipulate the gamma between black and white to try and trick people into thinking the LK990 has more contrast than it actually does, which your settings did do, but most of the time the image still looked washed out by comparison, but yes, it was better than stock HDR. And that wasn't with just dark content. Anytime there was mixed light and dark elements on screen you could see the image was lacking.

No we didn't brightness match because the LK990 doesn't allow for this if you want to use it's dynamic contrast system. For one movie clip we put the projector into Custom mode just to see how it would look if you turned off the dynamic contrast system (SmartEco) just in case someone wanted to tame the brightness a bit. We both literally laughed out loud it was so bad. To get the image to look even remotely good SmartEco NEEDS to be engaged. On top of this, the SmartEco mode's dynamic dimming is actually easy to see in it's operation. I only witnessed the JVC's working once and I was sure to tell Calvin when I saw it.

Please if you're going to try and slander me by telling others I didn't do something right during setup and comparison, have the decency to do it here so I can respond. I'm not an idiot. I know how a projector should look and how it should be setup. It's a bit ironic that last time you said it wasn't a fair comparison because the projector wasn't calibrated, but now that I have it still wasn't setup correctly because I wasn't using your settings. Well, which is it? Should it be calibrated to the same standards that the JVC is calibrated to or am I supposed to use your settings? To me, it doesn't matter what settings you're using because none of them can fix the horrendous contrast performance this machine has. It should be noted that this machine performs LESS than most other DLP projectors in this area so criticism is completely appropriate.

To be clear the LK990 is not a "bad" projector. It just cannot compete with the current reflective-LCD projectors in overall image quality. That was extremely evident yesterday. Calvin put it best. If you have poor light control or a large screen, the LK990 could be a good fit. But for dedicated home theater, with modest screen sizes, I can't recommend it. There are so many better choices out there and I don't just mean JVC projectors. For those who like DLP, I'd recommend picking up a used Sim2 Lumis. You can get them for less than a new BenQ LK970/LK990. There are great tone mapping solutions out there and great downscalers that could be used with the Sim2. I think the overall experience,  even with it being 1080p, would be dramatically better overall.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2019, 03:09:20 PM by Dylan Seeger »
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #46 on: March 23, 2019, 07:31:59 PM »
Will be interesting to see what Dave has to say if Javs, kris and Arrow all come back saying the same thing. I expect this DLP to look like all the other high lumen DLP's with good lenses. They all look great for bright things like sports, but fall apart with low ADL content. I am also curious how wide a color space it can do in HDR mode?

Added
I think Dave looks at it like we are saying the BenQ is a bad projector. That is not the case. All of the projectors at this level are good projectors. So you have to see which are the most well rounded, as in how they do with all content. 
« Last Edit: March 23, 2019, 07:41:27 PM by AVSMike »
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #47 on: March 23, 2019, 08:06:37 PM »
The LK990 has a REC2020 compatibility mode but it can only be accessed if the projector is in it's HDR mode. That can only happen if the projector receives an HDR flag. Dave is suggesting owners not use HDR mode so if they use his settings (removing the flag and using one of the other picture modes) you won't have access to it. I'm sure the others will do a more comprehensive report on how it performs in this area as they'll have a lot more time with the projector. 

Who knows, maybe Calvin's unit was an under-performer and the units the others get will perform better? I didn't get the chance to measure the projector at the opposite end of the zoom range so there's the opportunity for more contrast there, but I doubt much. If this unit had, say, 2500:1 or a bit more, I think it would have looked a lot better. But at this level of image brightness I'd say it's extremely hard at this price level to get this much contrast from DLP.
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #48 on: March 24, 2019, 12:16:43 AM »
Wow, seems like a pretty desperate attempt to make excuses for the LK990's poor performance. We tried pretty much everything on the LK990 yesterday. We tried stock HDR settings, then your settings and then I calibrated it. We looked at tone mapped SDR content afterwards on top of sending it untouched HDR. We used both my HTPC wth madVR and Calvin's Panasonic UB820. What more would you like us to do, Dave? I mean, we ran the gamut here and literally tried everything we thought could help. Sorry, it CANNOT compete with the current Sony, Epson and JVC reflective-LCD projectors out there due to it's terrible contrast performance. It's horrendous by comparison as 1000:1 native would indicate. Yes, you can manipulate the gamma between black and white to try and trick people into thinking the LK990 has more contrast than it actually does, which your settings did do, but most of the time the image still looked washed out by comparison, but yes, it was better than stock HDR. And that wasn't with just dark content. Anytime there was mixed light and dark elements on screen you could see the image was lacking.

No we didn't brightness match because the LK990 doesn't allow for this if you want to use it's dynamic contrast system. For one movie clip we put the projector into Custom mode just to see how it would look if you turned off the dynamic contrast system (SmartEco) just in case someone wanted to tame the brightness a bit. We both literally laughed out loud it was so bad. To get the image to look even remotely good SmartEco NEEDS to be engaged. On top of this, the SmartEco mode's dynamic dimming is actually easy to see in it's operation. I only witnessed the JVC's working once and I was sure to tell Calvin when I saw it.

Please if you're going to try and slander me by telling others I didn't do something right during setup and comparison, have the decency to do it here so I can respond. I'm not an idiot. I know how a projector should look and how it should be setup. It's a bit ironic that last time you said it wasn't a fair comparison because the projector wasn't calibrated, but now that I have it still wasn't setup correctly because I wasn't using your settings. Well, which is it? Should it be calibrated to the same standards that the JVC is calibrated to or am I supposed to use your settings? To me, it doesn't matter what settings you're using because none of them can fix the horrendous contrast performance this machine has. It should be noted that this machine performs LESS than most other DLP projectors in this area so criticism is completely appropriate.

To be clear the LK990 is not a "bad" projector. It just cannot compete with the current reflective-LCD projectors in overall image quality. That was extremely evident yesterday. Calvin put it best. If you have poor light control or a large screen, the LK990 could be a good fit. But for dedicated home theater, with modest screen sizes, I can't recommend it. There are so many better choices out there and I don't just mean JVC projectors. For those who like DLP, I'd recommend picking up a used Sim2 Lumis. You can get them for less than a new BenQ LK970/LK990. There are great tone mapping solutions out there and great downscalers that could be used with the Sim2. I think the overall experience,  even with it being 1080p, would be dramatically better overall.

If your definition of slandering is telling the truth, so be it!

Why did you use a 2.3 gamma when my settings clearly call for 2.8?

Why not come to the other forum with your “facts”?.......oh yeah. :-\

I am done with you, Dylan. I used to have respect for you. Your knowledge is there, your ethics aren’t.

Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #49 on: March 24, 2019, 12:23:46 AM »
If your definition of slandering is telling the truth, so be it!

Why did you use a 2.3 gamma when my settings clearly call for 2.8?

Why not come to the other forum with your “facts”?.......oh yeah. :-\

I am done with you, Dylan. I used to have respect for you. Your knowledge is there, your ethics aren’t.
We did use your 2.8 gamma. The 2.3 gamma was used when we watched tone mapped content after we were done using your settings.

How can it be telling the truth when you weren't actually there to see what we did? How can you know things weren't set up correctly? So yes, I do call it slander. We tried your settings verbatim and the projector was calibrated to the same standards as the JVC afterwards. Neither of these things changed the overall quality of the image enough to give the RS2000 serious competition. 
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #50 on: March 24, 2019, 12:30:21 AM »
We did use your 2.8 gamma. The 2.3 gamma was used when we watched tone mapped content after we were done using your settings.

How can it be telling the truth when you weren't actually there to see what we did? How can you know things weren't set up correctly? So yes, I do call it slander. We tried your settings verbatim and the projector was calibrated to the same standards as the JVC afterwards. Neither of these things changed the overall quality of the image enough to give the RS2000 serious competition.

I don’t really care.  Those that know, know.  Enjoy your projectors Dylan. 

Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #51 on: March 24, 2019, 12:36:29 AM »
Thanks, Dave. Keep sharing those HarperVision settings. ;)
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #52 on: March 24, 2019, 12:41:44 AM »
Goodnight, Dave.
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #53 on: March 24, 2019, 02:27:34 AM »
Dave was right. I didn't use the gamma of 2.8, I used 2.6. I'm just remembering now. I couldn't use 2.8 because 2.6 is the highest gamma setting that the LK990 has. All other settings were the same as Dave's. Even so, we thought the image looked a bit cooked/contrasty with 2.6 and I think if it had a 2.8 setting it would have made it look a little more cooked. This was not the reason the image looked washed out. If it were that same issue wouldn't have been present after calibration when viewing SDR. It was the limited dynamic range having only 1000:1 native contrast brings. 
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #54 on: March 24, 2019, 12:16:54 PM »
Dave was right. I didn't use the gamma of 2.8, I used 2.6. I'm just remembering now. I couldn't use 2.8 because 2.6 is the highest gamma setting that the LK990 has. All other settings were the same as Dave's. Even so, we thought the image looked a bit cooked/contrasty with 2.6 and I think if it had a 2.8 setting it would have made it look a little more cooked. This was not the reason the image looked washed out. If it were that same issue wouldn't have been present after calibration when viewing SDR. It was the limited dynamic range having only 1000:1 native contrast brings.
Even $100K DLP's we've seen in the past have the same problem. Nothing new to see here, unless you need a good sports projector. These would be perfect for a sports bar / open room commercial application, or maybe a church too. Since those aren't exactly bat caves. You would probably never see the lack of native contrast. But the brightness could be used in those settings. 

Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #55 on: March 24, 2019, 03:33:48 PM »
It's unfortunate that DLP has taken a step backwards in this area. It used to be king for contrast in the digital world.
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #56 on: March 25, 2019, 07:30:45 PM »
I spent the last several hours at Calvin's house. We plugged in Dave Harper's settings. Color was way off but they did subjectively improve the image's dynamic range over the stock HDR settings. I calibrated the LK990 after this. D65 greyscale was easy to calibrate but color proved more difficult. I was able to get it reasonably accurate, but not as accurate as the JVC. Someone on the other forum mentioned he had similar issues trying to calibrate citing the laser light source and/or the menu controls as the issue not providing linear color output/change. I'm sure with something like a lumagen you could calibrate to perfection, but with the built in controls it's difficult. Gamma was good. I chose the 2.3 gamma setting and it tracked very well. It didn't need any adjustment.


Contrast performance didn't improve. Overall, the image just looked washed out by comparison to the JVC with most content. Bright content looked excellent on the LK990 though. Input lag was measured in a 64.5ms. The RS2000 was 41.1ms without the low lag mode engaged.

FYI, low lag mode on the RS2000 doesn't really do anything other than disable CMD and grey it out. If you had clear motion drive off, then that's as low lag as the RS2000 gets. So your 41ms measurement was basically taken with low lag mode on. Enabling the log lag mode would not have resulted in lower lag in your case.
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #57 on: March 25, 2019, 08:48:02 PM »
FYI, low lag mode on the RS2000 doesn't really do anything other than disable CMD and grey it out. If you had clear motion drive off, then that's as low lag as the RS2000 gets. So your 41ms measurement was basically taken with low lag mode on. Enabling the log lag mode would not have resulted in lower lag in your case.
Yes, I'm aware of that. I should have explained more, but that's why I quoted input lag without the Input Lag Reduction mode enabled.
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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #58 on: March 26, 2019, 05:12:18 AM »
Another perspective...

Rich from "Oz Theatre" Screens here in Aus...

Just for reference  he has had "3" N7 /RS2000 s .. of the 3 two were faulty!


I took delivery of my new 990 today. This thing is off the wall!

Clarity like you've never seen! Like a giant OLED screen. Pixels far left, far right, top, bottom.. I counted them all too..

I've barely touched any settings at this early stage. Cinema mode. pulled the colour down, used a 2.6 gamma, that's it. Every other setting is out of the box.

Camera - galaxy S6 phone, about 4 or 5 years old from memory. no tripod, no calibration. The sky in the first image is not that saturated on screen, it's my crappy phone camera. So these images are not for evaluation like Woofer and Javs do, just more of a 'look at this' projector.

130" 16:9 screen (165" scope screen)

Anyone saying they dislike the image this thing throws is either blind or has some other problem. Seriously.

The lens shift is rock solid and the unit is very easy to focus and zoom to the right size. Changing for scope takes about 30 seconds, but that will get quicker. dials are above head height so a bit of stretch. 

Can't wait to see where this can be taken with calibration. incredible projector.




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Re: BenQ LK990 First Impressions
« Reply #59 on: March 26, 2019, 05:22:45 AM »
RE Above...

Some private correspondence with Rich...

He is "Astonished"  at the "Clarity/Sharpness" of the LK990 ....best he has seen on ANY projector...and he has seen a few!

It has exceeded his expectations by a fair margin..

Matthew ( Javs) will have his LK990 sample on the 9th for a couple of weeks...then i get to play with it..:)

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