Projector Reviews

What I've offered here is only a summary of the RS1100's most important controls. I'd say consult the Quick User Guide that comes with the projector, but it's extremely basic. A lot more information is provided in a downloadable, 100-plus page manual, but brace yourself for a deep dive — it's more than a little dense. The good news is, there's no harm in experimenting with the controls, though once you arrive at a satisfying set of adjustments for SDR and HDR, I strongly recommend jotting down every setting so you can recreate that grouping if you hit reset or are tempted to do further experimentation (an occupational hazard for videophiles!).

The RS1100's remote control, for me, was a mixed bag. The lettering is clear and its backlighting is good, but the buttons are all flush with the main surface, making them hard to locate by feel in the dark. The handset is also smaller than the remote for my DLA-RS540 projector, which also gets in the way of smooth operation. Interestingly, the RS540's remote worked fine on the RS1100.

Setup
Testing was conducted using a 96-inch-wide, 2.35:1 Stewart Filmscreen StudioTek 130 screen with a gain of 1.3. The projector was located 15 feet away on a sturdy shelf that sits high on the back wall of my room. I used Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray discs for all of my subjective evaluations.

Even directly out of the box, pre-calibration in the manual aperture (iris) lens setting produced SDR/HDR images that were nearly faultless. After some minor, subjective tweaking, I seriously doubted whether a full SDR calibration was even necessary but I did one anyway. All of my white-balance (Color Temp) measurements produced Delta E figures that that were well under 4.0 and only a few exceeded 3.0. Individual color-management (Color Profile) results were also noteworthy with Delta E numbers all falling below 3.0. (A Delta E of 3.0 is widely considered the point below which any deviation from ideal will be invisible, though some experts put the number at 4.0). Not surprisingly, the visible change from pre-calibration to full calibration was nil (see Test Bench), but it's worth pointing out that this may or may not be the case with all samples. (Note: Don't attempt to calibrate in either of the Auto aperture settings; they produced very odd results in measurement, though not in actual viewing, due to their dynamic nature). With the lamp set to Low, the peak white level for SDR measured just over 25 foot-Lamberts (ft-L). 

Moving to 4K Ultra HD/HDR, the RS1100 doesn't approach the HDR brightness achievable on a good flat-panel TV, but this is a limitation of all current projectors. And while HDR is far more limited on a projector than on a direct-view TV, the projector can make valuable use of the wide color gamut offered by most HDR source material (DCI-P3 in a BT.2020 window).

I took more than a few liberties in setting up the JVC for HDR (see Test Bench). Despite this (or perhaps because of it), the JVC's HDR performance was consistently impressive and, on the best material, compelling.

HD/SDR Performance
On a broad range of SDR and SDR/HDR program material, the results were exceptional.A Knight's Tale is not only a cracking good story (despite it's...um...interesting music) but one of the better-looking SDR discs in my collection. From the period costumes to the gritty (but not too gritty) medieval jousting scenes, every detail was clearly rendered by the JVC, with warm skin tones and superbly natural color throughout.

The exceptional 2008 HBO miniseries John Adams was similarly spectacular. As a TV production it offers numerous tight close-ups, revealing (but not overdoing) every facial detail from whiskers to untamed hair peeking out from the stylish wigs seen in the early episodes — wigs that appear go out of style about halfway through the series. The environment here is heavily into shades of brown, except when Adams and Ben Franklin bring their diplomatic skills (or lack of same in the case of Adams) to the French court before many in that court would later lose their heads (not shown!).

Far more colorful were two underappreciated Disney animated features from the early to mid-nineties, Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Both are personal favorites and full of brilliant color. The latter may be the darkest Disney production in memory, sticking relatively close to the original story until the inevitable Disney-fied ending. It also gives the villain the most striking scene in the film—something about a fireplace! Both discs were so spectacular on the JVC that I don't recall them ever looking better or even as good.

It will come as no surprise to JVC observers that the RS1100's blacks were superb. No, not as visually deep as an OLED flat-panel TV, but well beyond the capability of our color meter to measure. JVC's reputation for great black levels is secure here.

UHD/HDR Performance
The computer-animated Trolls World Tour may be less interesting in its story than the clever original, but it's loaded with some of the most brilliant colors you'll see from any HDR source. The reds, In particular, jump out at you immediately, and here that's obviously intended. There aren't any truly dark scenes here, but the overall punch and contrast was outstanding.

Tangled is one of my favorite animated titles, and though it is not as grippingly colorful as Trolls, it is certainly a better story and a first-class transfer. But it was on Tangled that I noticed my only real quibble with the JVC; images looked softer in the Frame Adapt HDR (dynamic tone mapping) mode than with the direct HDR10 setting. This wasn't overtly obvious, and most folks won't notice it immediately, but since Frame Adapt only struts its stuff intermittently where needed, I did most of my serious viewing in the HDR10 setting. I'm admittedly a glutton for detail as long as it's not overdone. (For more thoughts on why the JVC's clarity might differ in the two modes, see my blog post "Home on the High Dynamic Range" on soundandvision.com.)

Of course there's more to video than animation. Dune (Part 1, 2021) lacks the bright, punchy colors in the above titles, but that's by design. From the blindingly bright sands of Arrakis to the gloomy interiors early in the film, the atmospheric monotones looked even more impressive on the RS1100 than they did when I first saw them in a Dolby Cinema theater last fall. Blacks were less amazing in HDR than in SDR (not unusual), but still effective.

Conclusion
I still love my three-year old JVC DLA-RS540, but in a world where premier TVs up to 85-inches diagonal (74-inches wide) can compete with a new projector, choosing between the latter and a BIG-screen TV is harder than it once was. But 74 inches is a far cry from the 96-inch width of my own screen, which many projector enthusiasts would consider "small!" There's still plenty of room for a great projector like the JVC DLA-RS1100 to thrive. Its performance more than upholds JVC's well-deserved reputation in the home projector market.