JVC DLA-Z1 4k HDR Projector Preview – More beautiful than in the best cinema

You need a large screen for the best movie experience. In terms of image quality, an OLED television is just about the best at the moment, but anyone who ever goes to the cinema knows that the experience of a film is simply more intense when you watch a very large screen. If you want your own home cinema, the choice for a projector with a screen instead of a large TV is obvious. In an earlier article on this subject, we saw that projectors based on the lcos technology produce the best image due to the high contrast that this technology offers.

In recent years, only Sony and JVC have released projectors based on this technique, with JVC’s d-ila models delivering the highest contrast. Sony had been offering 4k models for a while, but at JVC they were not there yet and a trick was needed to display 4k images. The panels had an HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, but by moving the image up half a pixel at lightning speed, it was possible to achieve a higher resolution. The sharpness achieved in practice with this e-shift technique was somewhere between HD and UHD.

So Sony had a clear lead in recent times, and if JVC wanted to remain competitive in the market for high-end home theater projectors, it needed a model with native 4k panels. Not keen to play second fiddle, JVC has been busy behind the scenes to not only catch up, but also gain an advantage over the competition. The result was unveiled by JVC at the last IFA: the DLA-Z1. To make the big step forward possible, a projection lamp is no longer used, but the light is generated by lasers , just like in Dolby Cinema halls .

The DLA-Z1 is a beast of a projector weighing in at a whopping 39kg. Everything about this device is big; it is no less than 72 cm long, 50 cm wide and 22 cm high. The fully motorized zoom lens has a diameter of 10cm and is made up of eighteen glass elements in sixteen groups. Of course there is lens shift and there is lens memory, so that different lens positions for various aspect ratios can be recalled automatically. The light is generated by three groups of 48 laser diodes in total, for a total light output of 3000 lumens, which should last about 20,000 hours according to the manufacturer. The employees at the show could not tell us what a new laser module costs, but with such a lifespan you can watch a two-hour film every day for more than 27 years.

Due to the high light output, the DLA-Z1 is suitable for large screens, with JVC specifying a maximum of more than seven meters diagonally, although when using such a large screen, the brightness will probably be below par. The demonstration at IFA used a Stewart Cinemascope format screen with a width of 3.2m. That is a screen diagonal of almost 140 inches. There was more than enough brightness for a nice HDR display.

JVC has previously produced d-ila projectors with 4k panels for the professional market, but the lcos chips used therein are too large for use in home theater projectors. The Z1 is the first projector to use three brand new 0.69″ chips with a resolution of 4096×2160 pixels, making them suitable for displaying professional 4k footage according to dci specifications. JVC did not want to say what the own contrast ratio of the new lcos chips is, but it is expected to be somewhere above 100,000:1. The current top models from the DLA-X series are already well above that. The contrast ratio of the most contrasting natural light situation, a clear sky with bright sunshine, is also around 100,000:1. Enough dynamic range for a convincing HDR display.

The 48 laser light sources can be dimmed super fast and even switched off completely, so that no light comes out of the projector when a completely black screen is displayed. Combined with the high contrast, the image is therefore comparable to that of an OLED screen, but much larger. This resulted in breathtaking images during the demonstrations, which looked better than those of the very best cinemas. Another advantage of the laser light sources is that there is no warm-up time and the projector starts projecting at full brightness almost immediately after switching on.

Not only the contrast is better than in the cinema; so is the color reproduction. Only blue lasers are used as light source. To generate red and green light, two of the three groups of lasers are aimed at phosphors that convert the blue light. The very pure primary colors enable an enormous color range that covers no less than 80 percent of the rec.2020 color space. This color range is considerably larger than the dci-p3 range of the cinema and is also much larger than the color range of all televisions currently for sale.