I've been reading the recent Sony and JVC shootout thread hosted last month. I noticed that John Schuermann mentioned that the JVC did not have it's dynamic iris engaged. So it baffles me that they used it on the 385ES but not the JVC. I just want to mention this because a lot of people have said that the Sony and JVC did not appear any different (mostly) when it came to subjective contrast performance. Well of course that was going to be the case when the DI was engaged on the Sony but not the JVC. Here's the post where he mentioned that:http://www.avsforum.com/forum/24-digital-hi-end-projectors-3-000-usd-msrp/2937682-great-jvc-vs-sony-projector-shootout-dec-9-10-no-price-talk-please-15.html#post55342984It would be nice if someone could mention this glaring mistake in that thread so the comparisons made can be put into proper context. I also did not see any mention about whether or not if the projectors were brightness matched. I'm guessing they were, but I feel people might have gotten the impression that the Sony 385ES can be just as bright as the JVC. The 385ES is at a huge disadvantage when it comes to contrast and brightness (and color gamut). Its just odd to me that they let this DI mistake slide through. I think it was a little unfair and gave the wrong impression about contrast differences. In the past I would have said brightness matching should be done, but now we live in a world where HDR performance is important. For HDR comparisons the projectors shouldn't be brightness matched , but rather put in their respective brightest modes to properly compare relative HDR performance.
Dylan-Looks like JAVS and I both mentioned your observation so we'll see (i didn't see his post until after I sent my reply). Oh well
Thanks for asking. I feel it's kind of important to know this information especially when people might be using it to make a decision on what projector to buy. It would be interesting to know if the JVCs manual iris was used to level match the 385ES in terms of lumen output. If this was done as well (when comparing HDR) the results of the shootout are difficult to take seriously. And I say this already knowing most people preferred the JVC anyways. And I think this is what happened too because several people have said "the images looked indistinguishable from one another". If the JVC were set to peak brightness, the JVC would have looked distinctly different with all content and definitely better when viewing HDR. If the JVC weren't handicapped in both brightness and contrast I think the results would have been even more in favor of the JVC.
Not brightness matching them is one of those " damned if you do, damned if you don't " type of things. Brightness matching with the use of the manual iris does have the potential to give the JVC better native contrast.
As someone who was there, I can assure you the 385 and 640 both had the dynamic iris disabled on Sunday. If I am not mistaken they were brightness matched by Gregg.
The thought was that they could emulate a 285ES with the 385ES if they disabled the DI. That part I understand, but since all JVCs have a DI why wouldn't it be on all the time? And not to beat a dead horse here, but why on earth would you want to brightness match the 385ES for HDR? I mean..the whole point for HDR (and what might make one projector better than the other) is to have as much brightness as possible. The JVC has the capabilities to be about 140% brighter than the Sony. That can make one hell of a difference with HDR. Enabling the DI and putting the JVC in it's brightest mode would have trounced the 385ES.
I can't speak for this shootout and brightness matched, but I had a 640 and a 385 in my personal room at the same time and the 385ES measured as bright as the 640. When I got a 2nd 640 to test the 640 was just a little brighter, nowhere near close to 140% brighter. I am not a novice, I had everything setup correctly. The correct options set, etc... The 385 measured what people were saying it would while the 640 was not near what I saw others get.. Maybe I got two under spec units, even had brand new spare bulb to test.
The 285ES and 385ES calibrate to just over 1200 lumens. The JVC 640 should be about 500 or more lumens brighter. I've read that some of the 6xx JVCs were hitting over 1800 calibrated lumens. Zombie10k's RS600 for example is capable of this. The 285ES I had here and calibrated (and other reviews) corroborate this. There were some early run JVCs this year that weren't hitting the peak brightness that they should have been. I wonder if the JVCs you saw had this issue as well. I think Javs had one of these units. I did a shootout in my own theater between the RS420 and 285ES and the brightness difference was extremely obvious.
Yes it should be and I really stopped following the brightness discussions but I know that it seemed like a few of us had lower samples than previous models.
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