The Short Form

Price $3,300 / jvc.com / 800-252-5722

Snapshot

Overall, JVC's new slim HD-ILA rear projector delivers an excellent picture in a skinny, high-style package.

Plus

•Sexy, super-slim cabinet design •Excellent out-of-box color •Crisp image with good shadow detail •Redesigned backlit remote

Minus

•Bending of image near screen edge

Key Features

•1,920 x 1,080 resolution screen •Slim 10.8-in profile •Built-in HDTV tuner •Fully backlit remote •Inputs: 2 HDMI, 2 component-/composite-video (1 with S-video); RF antenna/cable; VGA PC-/composite-video •51.5 x 37.9 x 10.8 in; 115 lb

Test Bench

JVC's Theater/Low color-temperature setting delivered accurate grayscale at the dark end of the brightness range, but it got progressively bluer as the image got brighter. Service- menu calibration brought it mostly within 300 K or so of the 6,500-K ideal, although a "suck out" at 40 IRE couldn't be corrected. Blue and red color points were accurate, but green was undersaturated. The TV resolved 1080i/p and 720p patterns via HDMI and component inputs. Full gray patterns showed no hotspotting, and false contouring was minimal. But the set suffers from a notable geometric distortion in which horizontal lines in the top two-thirds of the screen bend upward at their outer edges, an effect of the concave projection mirror that can't be fixed. Full Lab Results

This set's modern black remote is an improvement over JVC's previous clunky clay-colored wands. It's refreshingly uncluttered and has a well-placed glow-button to activate the red backlight. But the most welcome additions are five dedicated input buttons. No more frustratingly slow menus or unused inputs to step through. Hooray!

SETUP The HD-58S998 provides four video presets labeled Standard, Dynamic, Theater, and Game. Of these, the Theater mode provided the best dark-room viewing experience - so good, in fact, that I watched the set for several days without feeling the need to formally calibrate it. About the only thing I did was turn down the contrast and iris controls to overcome slightly hot reds that made faces too pungent and yellow and tropical greens a bit too striking for nature.

Formal calibration led to only minor changes in control settings, and measurements revealed a reasonably accurate grayscale, though I did end up tweaking the color temperature in the service menu and never quite got it perfect (see Test Bench). But I pick nits: JVC gets credit here for delivering a preset that essentially adheres to the ideal. Another hooray!

PERFORMANCE With the JVC fully tuned, I sat back to enjoy the superb Blu-ray Disc of Casino Royale. Chapter 2, in which James Bond (Daniel Craig) engages a suspect in a thrilling foot chase through, around, and atop a skyscraper construction site in Madagascar, nicely showed off the TV's assets. It quickly displayed a wide range of natural colors, starting with the now appropriately lush foliage and the mix of skin tones in a crowd watching a pit fight between a cobra and a mongoose. The bright colors of the construction equipment and the building's steel skeleton were convincing, from the yellow bulldozers to the blue-and-white cranes to the red-brown girders.