Summary: After carefully studying the available 1080P sets, we narrowed our choice to three: the Mitsubishi DLP’s vs the Sony XRB’s versus JVC HD-ILA's.
I will tell you in advance that I was predisposed toward Sony. We've owned perhaps a dozen of their products over the past 35 years, and cannot remember even a single product failure. Nonetheless, there were issues that drove us away from Sony that I will address letter. Additionally, the very impressive “canned” Mitsubishi 1080P firewire demo coupled with strong endorsements from our local B-Screen store also encouraged us to seriously consider the Mitsubishi.
First and foremost, none will accept a true 1080P input as the current generation of HDMI inputs (with only 1 or 2 exceptions) is still bandwidth limited to 1080i. However, ultimately, the pictures on all three of these sets is so very good, that my wife and I decided that the current generation was “good enough”. Keep in mind that all three of these sets has a fill ratio greater than 90% and their pictures are noticeably free of any “screendoor” effect. You have to study these sets for a while before the differences become apparent. Note that our feeds included 1080i satellite via HDMI (which required a reset via the service menu the first day of ownership); and 480P DVD via component RGB video. Here are our conclusions regarding the JVC:
The JVC clearly has the most vivid and intense colors coupled with very black blacks. In a word, the display is Gorgeous. In fact, to some people the colors may appear too intense. However, the set (and remote) also include a function called “TheaterPro” wherein with a single push of the button, the brightness, contrast, and color intensities can be toned down to industry standard (6500) levels used by movie theaters. We find that we use the TheaterPro at night, but during the day we regularly exploit the JVC’s superior brightness and color intensity capabilities to compensate for the ambient sunlight in our family room that would otherwise wash-out many competing Rear Projection Displays. On the negative side, with some live video feeds, there was a slight tendency of the set to overdrive red (requiring manual adjustment of hue and color intensity), and occasionally a slight graininess apparent when panning light colored background scenes.
When feeding the set a progressive scan (480P) DVD , the pictures were again gorgeous. In fact, so good, that I’m not sure I’ll be willing to invest too much extra money for a BlueRay or HD DVD.
The remote is a mixed bag. I could not get the available codes to work with our DirectTV HD receiver nor our older Sony Pro-logic receiver. Additionally, key functions are somewhat scattered around the remote. On the plus side, the remote has full backlighting and easy one button access to very important functions such as aspect ratio; picture mode (intensity) and sound field. In the end, I purchased Theater Master MX500 for $99 and used the JVC remote to manually teach the special one-button functions to the MX500.
The stock sound of the built –in JVC speakers is surprisingly good (better than the Sony), and the sound-field functions are very usable including settings for talk; movies; or music. We observe that the “talk” setting does an excellent job of squelching ambient music or sound effects. Although I have excellent hearing, I have already learned that the “talk” setting can dramatically improve a viewer’s ability to hear soft speech when watching movies with difficult to hear soundtracks.
Finally, we get to the issue of “packaging”. Herein is the problem with the Sony which incorporates speaker “wings” on each side of the main cabinet that have the effect of increasing the width of the Sony to 66” versus only 57.25” for the JVC. Whereas the JVC will easily fit into a wall-unit with a 60” stand, the Sony will not. Additionally, the JVC cabinetry is a uniform unobtrusive matt black finish whereas the Sony includes a glossy black frame and silver speaker wings. Some people may prefer the looks of the Sony, but we found that the glossy trim and silver wings were distracting.
SUMMARY: All three sets had very good pictures but we believe that the Sony and JVC sets were slightly better than the Mitsubishi. The Sony and JVC sere very comparable. However, the JVC appeared brighter with more vivid colors. (Both sets seemed to display detail better than the Mit DLP.) On the other hand, the occasional slight graininess that we discerned on the JVC was not present on the Sony.
CONCLUSION: If you watch TV primarily in the dark, and the wide Sony cabinet is not an issue for you, you may prefer the Sony. However, if your set will be located in a room with ambient sunlight, and/or you are space limited, the JVC has the advantage. I believe that both are superior to the Mit DLP. Overall, our family is ecstatic with the performance of this (JVC 1080P) set.
Richard Rothschild
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