JVC have been the industry benchmark for projection excellence in the HD era, and they have held their place in our main theatre except for the appearance of the Meridian which was based on the JVC anyway! JVC are not a company to rest on their past reputation, and development has continued.
In recent times the mix has been enlivened by 3D capabilities, and contrast ratios have continued to climb, yielding better depth of image and differentiation of the many shades of darkness in blacks, grey and other colours. The new DLA-X90R boasts an increase in native contrast (compared to the X9) from 100,000:1 up to 120,000:1.
While you'll see no external differences apart from the model number, JVC’s two top models, the X90R and X70R, now have “4k resolution”, which means 3840x2160, double the normal HD standard of 1920x1080. How do they do this, and what does it achieve when source material is not issued in “4K”?
Essentially analagous to “oversampling” which has been used to enhance and improve CD sound in CD players, JVC’s “e-shift” technology is a means of processing the image data in a way that smooths out sawtooth edges, making them less jagged. And, just as those oversampling CD and DVD players (before Blu-ray came along) ended up performing better with the same CD and DVD sources, so JVC’s new projectors will make Blu-ray or DVD look better than it did! They might have their eye on future developments too, just in case somewhere down the track some genuine 4k sources become available. Will that be on a new optical disc? Probably not, but like HD Audio it could happen.
They have not taken their eye off the 3D ball either, with further enhancements to the speed with which left and right eye frames are sync’d, to ensure no “crosstalk” between them. New lighter glasses are part of this program.
Colour management is another of JVC’s strengths. Through facilities which it would take too long to explain here, they offer a variety of fixes: conventional and xenon-mode colour temperature settings; adjustments for screen material types; a 7-axis colour management matrix;
Industry certification includes THX 3D Display Certification and Imaging Science Foundation (ISF), the latter meaning they can be professionally calibrated to industry standards. But there’s also Auto Calibration, which after say 1000 hours of usage will restore the colour performance to as close to original specs as possible.
Pricing on these magnificent projectors will be at similar levels to where the previous series started, which is excellent given the improvements now on offer.