Hello everyone. Trying to migrate over to this more sane forum than the other. I received a "infraction" for stating the Roxie was acting like a petulant child the way he was responding to people providing contradictory information about what he spouts off about the RS4500 as gospel. Appears I have been locked out of that thread as well. I assume this guy goes to the mods over there asking for disciplinary action against people whom challenge his actions? Truly comical!!! Glad I find you guys over here!
The funny part is not one JVC owner has said anything bad about the 885es at all. I personally as I am sure all of you do as well hope that it's a fabulous projector b/c the more quality options the better for everyone in this as a hobby or making a living. I was a SONY owner and now I am a JVC owner and I will never be loyal to one brand over the other, only what suits my needs best given the options present. My Sony 665es served me well however there were many things that I didn't like about it. I had horrible focus uniformity, poor pixel alignment and after 500 hours a noticeable lamp flicker that wouldn't go away. My DI locked up and had to be replaced and the lens position memory became deficient to the point that I had to over correct in the last direction of adjustment b/c once saved to memory and recalled it would shift about a 1" past were you set it. Sony came out to look at it and acknowledged it as faulty however told me that it could not be fixed under warranty b/c int was "within" the tolerances set forth but Sony. My dealer made it right for me be giving me a credit, but that left a bad taste in my mouth. When it came time to move to a laser projector I was open to anything and now after doing my own research I own the RS4500 and am thrilled to death so far!
I have seen the 885 and it is an impressive machine, I highly doubt it has new panels as Sony would have advertised it hard if it had. But if it has it might be good news in the degradation/banding/pozterisation departement. Contrast wise the 885 is not even close to the JVCs and dark scenes look quite washed out compared to a RS540/640 other than that it is a very good machine, but it is highly overprised for its performance here in Norway and the same goes in the uS I think. Laser alone is not worth it...
I was talking to Javs last night via email and I told him that the photos posted by Arrow of the 885ES look unbelievably good. I even compared them to the source frame and the 885ES looks remarkably close to the source. Supposedly the 885ES has "new" SXRD panels, though I've only heard this unofficially, but if that's true they may have fixed some of the issues I've had with SXRD projectors in the past. I would gladly own an 885ES if it indeed has new SXRD panels. It was the only thing holding back SXRD before this IMO.
I saw the 885 (760 here in the UK) and other than black level/contrast it looked better than the mid level JVC and Epson LS10500 we were comparing (all calibrated and often on split screen for direct comparisons). We used the Oblivion interrogation scene to test the DL/DI of the three pjs and the Sony didn't do anything unusual at all, whereas the Epson and JVC washed out Cruise's face for a moment when the scene changed back from Freeman. We also saw the custom uploaded HDR curves on both Sony and JVC so both looked much the same with the same amount of flexibility there as far as I could tell. The Sony is of course much brighter (only on a 3m wide scope screen using the zoom method), and even with the laser at minimum was still pretty bright (we didn't measure it though).With previous 4K Sony's I'd occasionally see some scaling/stepping artefacts but saw none this time. The alignment in the service menu had been turned off so no obvious banding was visible. The JVC still has some image noise and the difference between it and the two laser based pjs was obvious when sat 2.4m back from the 3m screen (approx 2xIH).JVC still had the best contrast and black levels of course.No idea if the panel degradation issue still exists or not on the Sony, but this pj looked pretty darn good and overall better than both the Epson and JVC, which I guess it should considering the price difference (still around 2.5x more here in the UK than the other two pjs).
Thanks for your thoughts. It's good to hear Sony is making some steps forward. Though I would say the price of the 885/760ES in the UK seems to be more reasonable than it is here in the US. I suspect if sales don't meet expectations we may see a price drop early next year. I know there have been many people vocal about the price difference. It's almost $10000 cheaper in Europe to buy this projector.
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