BenQ W20000 Impressions
Well....no real in-depth impressions just yet. I just wanted to let everyone know I have the W20000 inhouse and will be working with it over the next few days/weeks. I have the JVC RS-2 as well so it should make for a good comparison if the BenQ is not scared. I will say I will not start a flame war over these 2 though. I have had a great deal of experience with the BenQs from the 8720 on forward so I am hoping they are going to have a winner here. My schedule is very hectic over the next few days so don't expect alot here immediately. You can ask questions as well but I cannot promise answers to them all.
I will be calibrating the unit immediately and working in the ISF Menus and Service menus to see if I can really get the most out of this machine. It looks very competent. My immediate impressions were that it and the JVC are very different animals. The BenQ is very very sharp. It almost looks as if it has the old SDE compared to the JVC. This is not a bad thing but the pixels are definitely much more evident. You can see individual dimples on each mirror better than I could with the 10000. This sharpness translates to more evident noise in the picture though. I am not sure about this as I have only viewed it with HD and many scenes looked absolutely stunning whereas some looked very grainy and noisy. This could all be in the compression from DTV tough.
Most are going to want to know about the blacks and I can't really say for sure on those. I do now in fade to black scenes, you could see the iris clamp down and the screen really was very black, even moreso than the RS-2 by a good bit.
About the iris. I watched it closely and never once saw it in action in regular viewing. I could only see it on a completely black screen as it closed down completely. It seems to not be very agressive. I also caught just a few glimpses of what I thought was dynamic gamma working. This was where the scene was fairly dim and areas of the picture became clearly brighter as the camera panned. Not sure here again though as it may have been the telecast. So blacks look good initially and intrascene contrast looks outstanding. I think the lense has been improved/altered and this is contributing here.
A few negatives though. The PJ will not accept 1080p24hz as of now unless forced. So if you have a PS3 or the like you are fine. I know many have reported this and I found it to be true. I have already reported this to my contacts at BenQ and requested a firmware update. It is just a bit noisier than the 10000. It is on par with the JVC but just a different sound.
Overall, it is a good machine and I look forward to calibrating and tweaking it to see what I can get out of it. I will post again when I can.
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Eric Awtry
Dream Theater Consulting