Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Sony HW30 vs Panny AE7000 vs Epson 5010

And ultimately this is why i decided not to bother with the technology.
Couldn't stand the various faults.

I think i'm going to wait it out for OLED to go mainstream.

Those are the exact reasons that most people jumped on the JVC boat (like I did)... Better brightness and contrast than any LCD, plus no dust blobs, and it has even more flexibility than the 7000 as far as being able to save all of the motorized functions into a lens memory (I read that the Panny doesn't do the lends shift quite as expected).

No matter what, all of these projectors are really good, it just depends on what you want. I went for best 2D movie picture and flexibility, others want better 3D, and so on.

You must have put your lineup of potential wives through quite the assay.

In terms of contrast ratio and black levels, the Sony and JVC are always at the top of the list. The Sony's use a dynamic iris, where it may be distracting every once in a while. But their iris is supposed to be better than just about any other manufacturer's implementation. JVC is able to get very similar contrast ratio and black levels without a dynamic iris, which is a nice plus. For the past several years JVC has nudged ahead of the Sony in terms of professional reviews. But this year the Sony nudged ahead of the JVC slightly. I don't think that you could go wrong with either of them.

For me, when I go with a projector it will probably be either the Sony or the JVC. Contrast ratio and black levels, to me, are the most important aspects of a display to give the most life-like image quality (that is unless something else like color, for example is waaaaay off and cannot be fixed with calibration). Now having owned a Kuro display for the past several years, I cannot change this requirement when going to a projector for a larger more immerse viewing experience.

If the Sony and JVC are out of your price-range, then the Epson UB's are supposed to be close in terms of contrast and blacklevel, but a more budget friendly price-point.

Well there is the whole "big screen" experience that helps make the warts less distracting. But admittedly, I do not watch sports in the HT and reserve that for the plasma. I should have a Sony VPL VW95 next week to play with. It's motion handling is reported to be very good, so I may be able to watch the Superbowl on it.

I thoroughly researched every single one over a ten year span.
Ah good times...

How much does the custom installer charge for the hook up, setting & isf calibration excluding the projector?

I have a quote of $4.8k for RS45 inclusive of delivery, installation, setup & isf calibration. Worth it?

Professional install and calibration is a joke. I've had 3 projectors and was able to get everything set myself and looking great with just the price of a decent calibration disk. Find a calibration thread for your projector model, there are often several installers online who post their settings. Take those, apply them to your model, and use a calibration disk to fine tune the settings to your unique bulb and unit. It's easy and cheap. Plus what you consider a great picture is often different from what someone else conisders a great picture. You may like a slightly greener or redder picture, you installer may not. Picture, like sound, sound be based on your taste alone.

Not sure what the base price of the RS45 is for you. For me it was $2600. So $2200 more would not be worth it at all for me.

I agree with Bayne. There are so many setup discs out there to do what you want with a little time. Also, the RS45 won't get to a near perfect color since you would need an external CMS to get it right on the mark as the RS45 doesn't have robust CMS controls if you want to call them that.

Now, I own an RS45, but have only shot the image on to a beige painted wall, and the image was great out of the box. I see me making a few adjustments once I get it into the theater, but wow, was I blown away.

I have a JVC RS25 and was very happy with the THX colour setting and the custom one I calibrated with the Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics blu-ray disk. Then one of the installers on the AVS Forum calibration thread posted his settings for the extensive CMS the RS25 has. I entered all his settings as a base and calibrated again with the DVE disk. Wow, what an improvement. Now I calibrate those setting every few hundred hours as the bulb changes and am still blown away by the picture quality.