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 June 1, 2007
JVC was the one company that seemed to be above all this jockeying. D-ILA, JVC’s proprietary take on the Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) display technology, was the darling of the Internet forums. D-ILA projectors had ultrapure colors and vanishing pixels, and JVC offered 1920x1080p resolution before their competitors were even in the planning stages. But JVC’s projectors suffered from no fewer than six dramatic deal-killers. First, you had to go to their Professional division to get one, which meant that all the little niceties that high-end buyers have come to expect -- plush demo rooms, sample loaners, free installation -- were unavailable. Second, the machines were butt-ugly boxes that looked as if designed at Soviet U. Third, they ran so hot they burned through two $600 lamps per year. Fourth, all that heat meant that they had to be cooled by fans so noisy that they inspired an entire cottage industry of hush-boxes. Fifth, JVC could never figure out how to get really black blacks on the screen. Finally, D-ILA projectors were priced very high. Still, their CRT-quality colors and extraordinary, filmlike images kept masochistic early adopters buying. Flash forward to today. With the introduction of the HD1 front projector, JVC has eliminated all six problems in one fell swoop. When was the last time any product in any industry accomplished such a thing? The HD1 is available at consumer shops, its package is sleek, it runs cool and quiet, its bulbs cost less and last longer, its contrast ratio is claimed to be a whopping 15,000:1, and its price is just $6299.95 USD. Wow! Not content to merely solve all their own problems, JVC decided to resolve a few other issues unique to front projectors. Setup is usually a big bugaboo for low-cost front projectors. Cheap DLPs are the worst, with their positioning inflexibility, but all projectors require time with rulers and shims if you’re to avoid the dreaded keystone adjustments. The HD1 can be positioned anywhere within a huge range of distances from the screen. I could place the review sample anywhere from 10.8’ to 21.8’ away from my 110" screen (although, as with any projector, the closer it was to the screen, the brighter the image). Once you’ve gotten the distance set, all you have to do is square the HD1 to the screen and get the image somewhere within the screen’s boundaries. That’s right -- just somewhere. The HD1 has enough vertical and horizontal shift to make it usable almost anywhere within the screen’s borders. The HD1 also eliminates one moving part each from LCD and DLP projectors, and thus reduces overall wear and tear. From LCDs, it was the moving iris that many use to increase contrast ratios. The HD1’s 15,000:1 contrast ratio -- its blacks are deeper than my old Runco CRT’s -- is achieved with no moving iris at all. Nor is there a DLP’s spinning color wheel -- another moving part gone, and a boon to those afflicted by the rainbow effect.
Normally, I’d buy a universal remote and hide a projector’s own dedicated remote from the non-videophiles in the house. JVC has already taken care of this. Once you’ve made all your careful adjustments, all you have to do is save them in a user-defined image profile. If someone then accidentally screws up the gamma, you just go to your saved profile and set everything back to perfect. I worked up two profiles, one for a dark room, another for the same room with a little light, and thereafter slept peacefully. But all of those are mere conveniences. What’s really important is what those crazed early adopters saw in D-ILA way back when. The HD1’s color purity is flat-out amazing, and its filmlike images are immaculate. Using well-authored Blu-ray discs was revelatory. The muted earth colors that dominate The Illusionist had vibrant detail even in the shadows. The oversaturated sunlit scenes in Babel helped make me feel the desert heat, and the HD1 showed all the cinematographer’s tricks. The NBA playoffs from our local ABC HD feed come through uncompressed from our roof antenna, and the HD1 had no problem whatsoever translating the 720p signal to 1080p. The hundreds of variations of skin tones (and tattoos) looked completely natural, and there were no motion artifacts. The HD1 took everything I fed it and acted as nothing more than a clear, clean window on the world. You can’t ask for much more than that.
The HD1 even worked the kind of magic audiophiles hear when they swap out one component and discover that the source component is even better than they thought. About halfway through the testing, I changed out my Hudson Reprographics screen. They had given me bad advice about how to clean the screen, and I ended up ruining it. The good news was that I replaced it with the gold standard of screens, Stewart’s StarGlas. Stewart designs these screens for digital projectors, and they make a huge difference. Everything I liked about the picture suddenly was better in every way, especially the clarity. The important thing to learn is that you should buy a good screen. Imagine buying a Ferrari and putting bicycle tires on it. That’s what you do when you get a great projector like the HD1 and use a substandard screen. Don’t even consider throwing its images on your off-white walls. The HD1 wasn’t entirely without fault. First, it’s a little bigger than 1080p DLP projectors. JVC has kindly placed the exhaust ports on the front, so at least you don’t have to leave a lot of room behind it, as you do with DLPs or LCDs. Because of that, the HD1 didn’t protrude any farther into the room than any other projector. Second, the HD1 costs a smidge more than the competition. In my opinion, that’s not much of a problem -- it’s worth it. I’ve just had a glorious few months trying out some of the best front projectors ever made. None offered the purity of color, freedom from visible pixels, depth of contrast, ease of setup, and transparent reproduction of the JVC HD1. It’s probably too early in the year for such predictions, but when our editors gather to evaluate which product gets a Product of the Year award, there’s a good chance I’ll nominate the HD1. …Wes Marshall JVC HD1 D-ILA Projector JVC Company of America Website: www.jvc.com
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The HD1 has one of the deepest setup
menus I’ve seen. How about five different color-temperature settings, including two
user slots where you can set each of the three chips individually? Or remote-controllable
gamma settings? Need to shift green pixel number 1920/1 to 1919/1? You can do it. Using
masking? There’s a setting to make sure you get the maximum picture. All of this and
more is addressable from the remote, and it’s all well thought out, clearly
explained, and easy to use.
