JL Audio is best known for its car audio products. But when it first showed its line of home subwoofers at a CEDIA Expo a couple of years back everyone was blown away—in more ways than one.
Hardly cheap at a mere $11,800 per pair, but a bargain compared to some of the above systems, Joseph Audio's new Perspective floor standers are an outgrowth of the company's $7000 pulsar stand-mount monitor, with an added 5" woofer in a larger cabinet. They sounded superb, with far more bass than I expected.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Bargain price for a 65-inch Ultra HD set
Good blacks and shadow detail
Impressive sound
Minus
Clips above white and below black
Odd gamma
Typical LCD off-axis performance
Wobbly stand
THE VERDICT
The JVC required considerable tweaking to get the best from it, but once dialed in, it looked excellent with 4K test patterns and 1080p Blu-ray material.
AmTRAN plans to raise the 4K Ultra HD bar by lowering the price. AmTRAN who, you may ask? Based in Taiwan, the company is a major maker of video displays, both consumer and professional, for a variety of brands, the biggest of which is Vizio. In 2010, AmTRAN licensed the JVC brand to put on its flat-screen HDTVs in North America, which are sold and marketed by its U.S. subsidiary AmTRAN Video Corporation. This is the first JVC flat panel we’ve tested since that company left the TV business a few years ago to focus its display business on LCOS projectors.
In the past few months we've seen a revolution in the video projection business. A revolution no one expected. The prices of home theater front projectors have been dropping nearly as fast as flat panel displays.
What can JVC do to top one of the best bargains in the 1920x1080 home-projector market, the widely praised DLA-HD1? Priced just a bit over $6000 at its introduction, the HD1 set a new bar for black levels from a home projector—make that from any video projector—and it had no obvious weaknesses in any other area.
Price: $4,500 At A Glance: Excellent black level and shadow detail • • Bright, crisp image • Oversaturated color
We’re no strangers to JVC projectors around the Home Theater campfire. We’ve reviewed several of their models over the past few years. I’ve been using a DLA-RS1 as a reference since 2007. It isn’t perfect—no projector is—but it does a lot right, and I’m not the only one who says so. At $6,000 when it first came out, it was one of the players that redefined value in the home projector game.
We’re now two generations of JVC projectors beyond that, and things keep getting better. For 2009, JVC offers the DLA-HD350 and the DLA-HD750, plus two exact equivalents from its pro division. We reviewed the $7,500 DLA-HD750 in our April 2009 issue and it’s a current Top Pick.
Price: $8,000 At A Glance: Superior black level and shadow detail • Accurate color • Brightness to spare
Setting the Bar Higher
Since the launch of JVC’s DLA-RS1 projector more than three years ago, consumers have anticipated each of the company’s new DLA designs. In some respects, such as resolution and brightness, JVC’s projectors have run neck and neck with their competition. However, they haven’t broken new ground. But with regard to producing inky black levels, without the help of a dynamic iris, they arguably have no equals.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Deep blacks
Exceptional resolution
Dynamic tone mapping
Minus
So-so remote control
Dense owner's manual
THE VERDICT
With its exceptional overall performance, JVC's DLA-RS1100 projector defines the law of diminishing returns where increasingly subtle improvements command dramatically higher prices.
True native 4K projectors have only been widely available — and reasonably affordable — for the past few years. Prior to that, most home projectors used a process called "pixel shifting" to produce 4K images: A 2K imaging device first presents half of the pixels in each 4K frame, shifts the image by less than the distance of a single pixel, and then displays the other half of the pixels. All of the pixels in the 4K source appear on screen — just not at the same time. The shift takes place so rapidly that it is undetectable to the human eye.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Impressive blacks
Wide color gamut
Crisp, natural detail
Minus
Not native 4K
No automated lens cover
THE VERDICT
We’d like to see JVC offer a true 4K design, rather than a pixel-shifted one, at a consumer-friendly price. But you’ll forget about all of that after your first two minutes viewing this outstanding projector—with either a 2K or a 4K source.
True native 4K projectors (those that deliver full UHD resolution to the screen with no reliance on pixel-shifting) are thin on the ground when it comes to prices that most home theater fans are likely to consider. As I write this, only Sony offers one model for as little as $5,000, the VPL-VW285ES.