JVC NZ800 and NZ900 Features Deep Dive

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As we reported earlier this week, JVC has announced an updated models for their higher-end laser projectors, the NZ8 and NZ9. The new models are the NZ800 and NZ900 – whatever happened to the NZ80 and NZ90, we will never know!

Unfortunately, we are not yet at the point where our predictions about next-generation JVC projectors can come true, but as discussed in the article, JVC is so ahead of the curve on features that they don’t have any reason NOT to drop-feed the market with new things, resulting in a slow but steady move forward, more akin to the X-series.

In any case, these new units are sporting upgraded hardware and software to advance four major areas: screen uniformity, sharpness, contrast and brightness.

Screen Uniformity

JVC has gotten some criticism over the years for screen uniformity issues. The issue that has cropped up more often has been black uniformity. This generally manifests itself as uneven contrast, with the DILA panels having high contrast in the middle and the contrast dropping as going towards the edges of the screen. Since the edges meet in the corners of the panels, they receive a double-whammy of contrast drop and can experience as much as 2/3 or 3/4 contrast drop compared to the centre.

To be clear, not all units were showing such issues, or not to the same extent. Thankfully, laser dimming also hides the issue when enabled, as the light source is dimmed for low APL scenes or for full fade to black.

While black-uniformity issues did happen on the X series as well, they were more pronounced on the N and NZ series of projectors for some reason with more units experiencing uneven contrast on the screen.

Such screen uniformity issues likely have two main causes:

1. How the chips and especially polarisers are fixed into place. Any pressure on the edges of the chips / polarisers can cause the light to hit them at a slightly different angle from optimal and reduce contrast performance, so assembling the optical block correctly is pretty critical. Shifting the assembly line to Japan has likely allowed JVC to identify and improve such issues.
2. The evenness of the DILA chips and polarisers are another factor, so improving manufacturing can also play a role. More on this under sharpness and contrast.

The other area of screen uniformity is white field uniformity. While this hasn’t been an issue with JVC, it did crop up on a few units, mainly during laser warm-up. Otherwise, I don’t think this has been as much of an issue.

Sharpness

Another criticism that has been levelled against JVC has been a lack of pixel sharpness, whereby the pixel grid wasn’t very defined or sometimes not even visible on the screen. This is contrasted to Sony’s LCOS design whose chips have better pixel definition, and generally a sharper look.

I mentioned this in my own NP5 and NZ8 reviews. What I also covered at the time was the fact that this didn’t seem like only a function of the lens, but issues with pixel bleed.

JVC has now confirmed that this is indeed the case. The pixel bleed happens because the substrate that the DILA pixels are sitting on isn’t completely flat and the pixels are not oriented 100% perpendicular on the substrate. This creates an unevenness of how light is projected back into the light path and hits the screen. It’s kind of like shining two torchlights ever so slightly into each other so their beams merge only at the edges. Even tiny irregularities are enough to cause this, since these irregularities are amplified in the projection light-path as the image is enlarged.

To solve this issue, JVC is using an updated manufacturing process to create a flatter substrate and less “pixel wiggle” – aligning the pixels much more evenly across the surface.

The other part of this equation is actually picture processing. Sony has Reality Creation, Epson has Super Resolution and JVC uses their own super resolution algorithm called MPC (Multiple Pixel Control). The issue is that JVC’s MPC was lagging behind the two competitors.

Secondly, JVC is scaling the picture from consumer 4K to DCI 4K, which is not an even scale. This is why they implemented 8K eShiftX, because that allows for much higher quality scaling. Scaling to simply DCI 4K on a 4K panel causes a loss of fine detail, with 8K eShiftX being the workaround as you have more than 4x the amount of pixels to work with.

JVC says they have improved their scaling algorithms to achieve a much sharper image compared to the first generation 8K eShiftX. This is very much welcome, and we are eager to see how the synergy between better pixel delineation and this new algorithm catches up with Sony’s LCOS chips and their Reality Creation algorithm.

Contrast

The third area JVC is trying to push forward with is contrast. JVC says that they are improving the NZ800 with around 25% and the NZ900 with around 50% contrast improvement.

New Chips

Due to the flatness of the chips, and less pixel bleed, I actually think that local contrast will improve which will help with sharpness and contrast perception of local areas.

However, the contrast improvement for the NZ800 and NZ900 will come from the fact that the chips have a more even contrast across their surface. This means that contrast with the aperture open and the projector closest to the screen (short throw) might not look massively different, apart from a more even contrast distribution on the screen, and no bright edges and corners. This will help with contrast perception.

Zoom Range and Iris

However, JVC measures the uplift in contrast at long throw (telephoto), with the aperture fully closed and laser maxed out. This means that there is a multiplier in place.

For example, the NZ900 review units delivered to the US have around 22,000:1 contrast at open aperture (0 iris) in short throw, while the best case scenario they have around 150,000:1 (long throw, fully closed aperture, max laser). This is indeed an improvement on the specs, but only as you close down the aperture, not if you do not.

However, possibly due to having even contrast performance on the panels, the contrast actually increases much more quickly as the aperture is closed. Therefore, with these new units, it will probably pay dividends if the aperture is closed even just 3-5 clicks. Since they have more brightness to play with, this can increase contrast while still keeping a bright image on screen. But don’t expect visibly improved contrast numbers with the aperture fully open.

Now funnily enough, I think the NZ800 will have somewhat more contrast with the aperture fully open. This is because the NZ900 has a larger zoom range and can be put closer to the screen, as well as zoomed out more, so the contrast range is also different. I think this is where the 50% contrast increase comes versus the 25% contrast increase for the NZ800, as the panels aren’t massively different. We certainly haven’t seen evidence of “binned parts”. Most NZ units have a contrast range between 20,000:1 to 28,000:1 in wide angle and iris fully open. My own NZ8 has 26,000:1 with iris fully open closest to the screen, for example.

Deep Black

The last piece of the puzzle for achieving better contrast is in the new Deep Black function for Frame Adapt HDR. As I have alluded to this time and again, both Frame Adapt HDR and the Lumagen play near blacks for HDR a bit too bright. I have created custom settings for the Lumagen at the time to change how near-blacks were displayed, and I pulled down brightness a few clicks on the NZ series to get black levels look perceptually correct.

The issue with decreasing the brightness slider (black level) on any projector is that it ends up crushing shadow detail. But since JVC doesn’t offer any gamma controls for HDR at all, there wasn’t any other option.

Now JVC has created the Deep Black function to get the gamma to come out of black slower and therefore play the HDR tone-curve much more closely near black. This is a much welcome addition.

I actually wish that JVC would update the current NZ series units with this addition, as it cannot take much processing power, and it was something seriously missing on the previous generations. After all, NZ8 and NZ9 will not be on sale anymore and the potential new customers will be from the X series and N series customers, so this addition is unlikely to cannibalise sales. The hardcore enthusiasts will upgrade – Deep Black or no Deep Black on current units.

Brightness

JVC is also increasing brightness on the new units. The NZ800 receives an 8% brightness increase from 2500 to 2700 lumens, while the NZ900 a 10% increase from 3000 to 3300 lumens, bringing it in line with Sony’s XW7000ES which has 3200 lumens.

However, we need to remember that the Sony XW7000ES is still brighter in practice, as Sony can achieve around 3000 lumens fully calibrated to 6500K, while the NZ900 can achieve around 2550 lumens fully calibrated, so that’s still a 450 lumens shortfall. One saving grace is “light recycling”, as lower APL scenes receive a 10% boost in brightness to around 2800 lumens. That’s only a 200 lumen shortfall with 3x the contrast.

A welcome addition is a new Vivid mode, which aims to achieve 2700 lumens with great colour (or 2970 lumens with light recycling). It will be a little bit colder with more blue, but that is generally not noticeable. This is what Epson does with its dynamic mode, so Vivid might be a mode out of Epson’s playbook. This mode will be great for watching sports or TV even with some ambient light on.

NZ800 Brightness

Since we don’t have any published numbers for the NZ800, let’s extrapolate from the NZ8 and this NZ900 review done by Projector Central. I have provided some preliminary numbers below.

Picture Mode	Current NZ8 at 100% White	Current NZ8 at 10% White	NZ800 at 100% White	NZ800 at 10% White (With Light Recycling)
Natural / HDR	2000 lumens	2200 lumens	2160 lumens	2376 lumens
Vivid	N/A	N/A	2270 lumens	2497 lumens

So with the Vivid picture mode, the NZ800 would increase to just shy of 2500 lumens for most content finally, which would put it very close to where the NZ900 is at 100% white fully calibrated. That is pretty great performance.

If you’re in the market for a JVC projector, and you’re in Australia, Richard at https://www.projectorscreens.com.au is a friend of ours. He usually gets the first round of units and is excellent at dealing with returns if needed. Tell him we sent you!

Closing Thoughts

These units are a small but welcome improvement in performance. Instead of adding tons of new features, JVC focuses on refinement.

The only feature we lament is the use of the P3 cinema filter still resulting in 30% of light loss. However, I am more than certain that JVC is working on a blue – red laser unit that solves this issue. It just might not be ready for prime time yet. This is why I think that these units are only a mid-cycle refresh and we might see new units with brand new designs within the next 24 months.

Additionally, there are rumours that there is at least one new lower-end unit – most likely the replacement for both the NZ7 and NP5 – that has a brand new design to lower the cost of entry for laser. If I had to guess, it could be a 1080p laser unit with eShiftX to bring it up to 4K, just like Epson’s design, in a chassis similar in size to the X-series. This would have the advantage of high on/off contrast without further investment into R&D and manufacturing processes. After all, the X series was much lower cost to manufacture than the new units.

If I had to guess, the new unit might omit FPGAs and might actually use a DSP for a slightly less advanced DTM, which would further lower the cost. Brightness might be around 2200 lumens, and pricing around the same as the NP5.

FPGAs are very handy when lots of processing power is needed and the algorithms are still work in progress. However, JVC’s DTM is now mature enough that a custom DSP could be developed for lower cost. After all, the FPGA coding has all the necessary information / modelling to fabricate a DSP for mass-manufacturing. But alas, JVC might not go this route. We are eagerly awaiting what they have in store.