JVC RS20

The RS20, also known as the HD-750, is JVC's latest version of their popular RS-series LCoS front projectors. The MSRP is $7500, which is similar to the RS2, the previous top-of-the-line entry in this series.

Unlike many, I was never a big fan of the RS1. Yes, it had the best native on/off contrast in the front projector market. However, it's gamma was too low. The grayscale control was 1-dimensional and thus not very effective. The image could sometimes look flat and a little noisy. The optics were mediocre. And, finally, the color was abysmal. The RS2 improved the gamma and grayscale problems, but the wildly oversaturated gamut and optics remained. In either case, in order to get what I would consider to be acceptable performance at this price point, you really had to mate the RS1/2 with a good external processor, such as the Lumagen Radiance. The RS20 has now addressed these remaining issues and improved on the already-excellent on/off contrast of the RS2.

As it stands, I cannot think of a better choice in the sub-$10,000 front projector market. The only remaining concern is that, being a 3-chip design, there is always a chance that a unit's 3 panels will be misaligned, which seriously degrades sharpness and apparent resolution. However, the is a problem endemic to ALL 3-chip designs, the JVC models included, and I have to say that the panel alignment of the unit I worked on was excellent. If you are interested in purchasing one of these I would recommend either auditioning the unit in advance or buying from a vendor who will quickly replace any unit whose convergence is out more than 1-pixel at the center of the screen.

The RS20 attempts to address the RS1/2's problem with inaccurate color in 2 ways. First it offers a 3D Color Management System (CMS) that presumably allows a calibrator to dial in nearly perfect color performance. Second, it provides a THX preset that is supposed to meet fairly rigid standards with respect to color accuracy.

Unfortunately, the CMS is something of a disappointment. It suffers from a number of flaws, including insufficient range of adjustment, unwanted interactive effects between the Brightness and Saturation adjustments, and non-linear effects at different levels of stimulus. The net effect of these issues that the CMS is simply not very useful if one's goal to is achieve an accurate Rec. 709 gamut, the standard for high definition content. On the other hand, the good news is that—after some service menu adjustments to the grayscale—the THX preset provides excellent color. It does not precisely hit the Rec. 709 standard, but it is reasonably close and an immense improvement over the RS1/2.

Another area in which the RS20 improves upon early incarnations of JVC's LCoS offerings is improved optics. I can confirm that the image thrown by the RS20 is sharp as a tack with verify little chromatic aberration, an optical flaw usually indicated by increasingly sever color fringing towards the outside of the image.

Grayscale Tracking

The RS20 is one of the best measuring displays I have have ever encountered. Looking at the measured performance I simply can find no area for criticism. let's look at the grayscale first.

Color Accuracy

As you can see, post-calibration the dE measurement of color error and RGB balance are nearly perfect. What about the primary/secondary color points?

Red is still a little oversaturated, but much less so that with the RS1/2. Otherwise, the color points are very close to their intended targets.

Gamma

And the gamma? It is an almost ruler-flat 2.3. I find 2.25 to offer a nearly ideal mix of image depth and shadow detail, so this is a little higher than I would like, but that is just nitpicking. I was particularly impressed by how flat the response was across the entire range.

On top of this nearly reference color, grayscale, and gamma response I measured the RS20's on/off contrast at a staggering 33,000:1. In fact, the black level was so low I had difficulty measuring it at all. The ANSI contrast, one measure of a display's ability to render intra-image contrast was a modest 255:1. This is a decent, if unspectacular, number. ANSI contrast is the only area of measured performance where the RS20 was less than world-class. DLP is still the king of ANSI contrast, routinely offering from between 500-800:1.

I found the experience of measuring the RS20 similar to my experience with the latest generation of the Pioneer Elite Kuro plasma. It was so good that I was unable to offer any serious criticism.

Subjective Impressions

After finishing the calibration, I sat with the client watching program material. I selected Chapter 7-8 of Mission Impossible III, as it is a notorious torture test for display processing. The image throughout was sharp, colorful (in a good way), and with a black level that seemed to reach into infinity. I enjoyed the experience so much that it was difficult to tear myself away. The image was that seductive and the experience was that immersive.

As you can probably tell from my glowing remarks, I think that the JVC RS20 is a truly great front projector. For less money you can get the RS10, which does not include the THX preset and thus suffers from the same inaccurate color as the RS1/2. The RS20 is not cheap, but if you can afford it you will be stunned by how good an image this thing can throw.