“Imagine price isn’t an issue”
FOR Stunning 4K HDR and Full HD picture; easy to set up AGAINST That price
JVC is no stranger to producing class-leading premium projectors. The Japanese company has produced a stream of them over the years, and we’ve used a fair few as reference products over that time. But nothing we’ve seen from the company so far has been as ambitious as the 4K HDR DLA-Z1.
While both those technologies are firmly embedded into the world of televisions, the combination is still a relatively rare thing in the world of proper home cinema.
All the 4K projectors we’ve reviewed until now have been premium devices costing thousands, but even by those hefty standards the JVC is priced in a different league. This is a cutting-edge unit at a cutting-edge price.
Light years
The Z1 uses three 4096 x 2160 D-ILA panels with a light engine based on JVC’S proprietary Blu-escent laser projection technology. It uses blue laser diodes to offer 3000 lumens brightness and 20,000 hours of operational life. That’s well beyond the bulb life of a typical projector. D-ILA is a kind of hybrid of DLP and LCD technology and JVC (along with Sony with its SXRD iteration) has been using it for years.
Just as important as the projector technology is the lens system, and here JVC’S engineers have refused to compromise. The lens assembly is an 18-element affair with a 100mm diameter. It’s designed to reduce colour distortion to a minimum while maintaining transparency.
As far as HDR goes, the Z1 can process the recently introduced Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) alongside the more established HDR10 standard.
The nature of the beast
This JVC is a huge beast. It’s about the size of a suitcase and, at 38kg, weighs as much as one lined with lead. The connections are simple. There are two HDMI inputs (HDCP 2.2 compliant), an RS-232 port and an RJ45 connection, both for home integration. It’s relatively quiet too, being rated at a low 25db even with the fan running.
You would imagine a projector such as this would be difficult to set up, but that isn’t the case at all. Provided you can cope with the bulk and put it in a sensible position relative to the screen, the rest is straightforward.
Motorised lens shift, zoom and focus makes positioning the image a breeze, while the clear menus make optimising it fairly easy.
However, we suspect few customers will actually want to install this beast themselves. At this level, it makes sense to get the selling dealer to do it.
Glory days
Once up and running, this JVC is an astonishing performer. We dive straight in with the brilliant 4K Blu-ray of the BBC’S Planet Earth II and love what we see. Bold, richly textured colours collide with the crispest edges and sharpest detail we’ve seen from a projector. The disc is beautifully shot and the Z1 is talented enough to show it in all its glory.
”This JVC is an astonishing performer. Bold, richly textured colours collide with the crispest edges and sharpest detail we’ve seen from a projector”
”The projector copes well with a rich colour palette, subtle details and fast motion. It’s an image that is good enough to transport us into the film”
It handles the subtleties brilliantly, not just low-level details, such as the texture of a humming bird’s wings or the nuances of a frog’s skin, but in the way it renders small changes in light. We can’t remember seeing a display that gives such an impression of depth on a 2D image – thank the superb way it renders changes in shading.
Contrast is rated at what is essentially a meaningless Infinity:1, but there’s no denying it’s superb, delivering bright and dark elements in a single frame superbly. By all but OLED TV standards, black levels are excellent. They don’t sacrifice much in the way of shadow detail in the darker scenes in the process either.
Rich colour palette
A move to standard Blu-ray isn’t the letdown it could have been. The format’s lower innate resolution (compared with 4K) is obvious in the slight blurring of detail and lack of crispness, but the Z1 has a fine internal scaler that still makes the most of things.
We watch Scott Pilgrim vs The World and like the way the projector copes with the rich colour palette, subtle details and fast motion. This is the kind of image that is good enough to transport us into the film, and never jars with
The JVC DLA-Z1’S talents also extend to Full HD content shortcomings in format or its resolution. It’s a stable and secure picture, keeping a track of movement without obvious blurring or judder.
All-round ability
If you want 3D, you’ll have to spend extra for the optional glasses and transmitter. However, when the outlay is so hefty anyway, it shouldn’t be hard to get a dealer to chuck them into the deal.
If your viewing habits take in large doses of standard definition source material, the DLA-Z1’S talents are far less obvious. Still, watching Stoker on DVD we find it produces a relatively clean and crisp image with a surprisingly low level of picture noise considering its 4K capability. Colours look convincing while motion is pretty surefooted too.
There are cheaper Full HD projectors that do as good a job with this format. Standard definition material will never provide a great platform for a top-end projector to show off its talents, but the JVC at least proves its all-round ability.
Finest image
Let’s imagine for moment that the £35,000 price tag hanging off this JVC isn’t an issue. What you’re left with is a projector that produces the finest image we’ve seen in our test rooms. Consider us tempted.