Monday, February 20, 2006

Sony VPL-VW100 Review Part 2

Tom Norton of Guide to Home Theater finally published the second part of very much anticipated Sony VPL-VW100 ( aka Ruby ) LCD Projector review. The delay was caused by missing colorimeter which was apparently sent for repair so Thomas was not able to complete the full formal review of the projector. I think it is good since VPL-VW100 was destined to stay "under his supervision" for longer than expected and basically underwent a real world test. I was expecting more problems to be seen but luckily nothing major has been observed. The only problem was problematic power on due to a safety switch in case some nut would attempt to power up the projector with top cover on. Note, that this a pre-production unit and such problems will not face us. Even if they do, it will be covered by the warranty.
In my opinion, Tom's adjustments with gamma did not really make a difference compared to what Sony has out of the box. Charts at their web site actually show that.
Comparison testing has been done with Yamaha DPX-1300, a native 720p DLP projector. According to Mr Norton:
I've only spent time (just a few hours, so far) with one other projector that will give this one a serious run for its money. At a notably more expensive $12,500 the Yamaha DPX-1300 offers more light output (if you open up its manual iris, and admittedly I'm also viewing the Yamaha with a new lamp), more accurate color points, more adjustability, cheaper replacement lamps, and a somewhat sharper image. Yes, the latter observation sounds odd when you consider that the Yamaha has a lower native resolution (1280x720), but the apparent resolution enhancement might be due less to the Yamaha itself than to its Silicon Optix scaler—the current hot ticket in that department.
I have compared Yamaha DPX-1300 with Dwin TransVision 4 and myself prefer DWIN's picture. Actually, everyone in the darkroom shared the same opinion. The reason I bring this up is as much as Sony VPL-VW100 is praised to be the perfect projector, it is not the projector to go neck to neck with DLP's DarkChip 3 ( TV4 is a DC2 in fact ). If not the comparison, I would trust that Sony's projector is the best out there given that its black levels are second to none. But no, DWIN is the winner at the moment in all aspects - picture quality, high brightness, contrast ratio, and much less price.

Related: Sony VPL-VW100 Review Part 1
Source: Guide to Home Theater
Product Page: SonyStyle

Posted by Mike at 6:26 PM
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