JVC RS1/2 with Lumagen Radiance external processor

I have never been a great fan of the wildly popular JVC RS1 front projector. To my mind it was a one-trick pony. It offered world-class on/off contrast, but in almost every other area of performance—especially with respect to adjustability, arguably the area most important to calibrators—it failed to provide performance achieved by many other competitive projectors. It's gamma was too low, its gray scale controls were limited, and its color points were wildly oversaturated. The low gamma could often lead to a flat and sometimes noisy image and the oversaturated palette severely compromised the realism of the images it produced.

This subject has gotten quite a bit of attention, but it always seemed to me that most people didn't quite understand the extent of the problem. Yes, other projectors (the Sony SXRD units come to mind) had oversaturated colors as well, but what made the JVC unit unique in this regard was the sheer degree of the error, which surpassed by a good amount any previously released commercial product.

The RS2 addressed some of these problems. It offered control over the gamma and finally provided a full set of grayscale controls, while increasing the already very good contrast even more. However, the oversaturated colors were still there. In fact, if anything they were slightly worse.

Everything changed in 2008 when Lumagen released their new VXP-based flagship external processor, the Radiance. What made this product so important for RS1/2 owners (and others as well) is that it offered the first completely effective external color management system (CMS). This feature, along with its very sophisticated gamma and grayscale tools, meant that calibrators could now fully adjust out the RS-series shortcomings.

When paired with the Lumagen, the RS1 is transformed. Consider the before/after gamut pictured below.

The problem is also shown clearly when considering the color error as measured by ΔE.

As you can see, the color is completely transformed by the Radiance. The remaining errors are in low lightness for the cyan and magenta, and this could probably be fixed by a small adjustment of the main Color control.

In addition to the enormous improvement in color performance, the Radiance also greatly improved the gamma, giving the image a great deal of depth and reducing noise (This is less of an issue with the RS2, which has its own gamma controls).

The net result of all of these improvements completely transforms the image. I now believe that the RS1/2, paired a Radiance, offers one of the best images available at any price. If you can afford the combined cost, I don't believe that any better large-scale front projector image is available.