Something Old, Something New, Something Red, Green and Blue

I have this déjà-vu feeling that I've reviewed this projector before. And in some ways, I have. Much of this projector is very similar to the VW70 I reviewed last year, which itself was similar to the VW60 and the 50 and so on.

Each generation, though, has had notable and noticeable improvements, each a step up from its predecessor. The new VW85 brings us a big jump not just in contrast ratio or brightness, but in resolution.

What Blur?

Pretty much all devices that use a liquid crystal material to create their image suffer from motion blur. As in, everything that has any amount of motion seems to be of lower resolution than anything that's stationary.

This doesn't have anything to do with refresh or anything like that, but mostly with a problem called "sample and hold." I did a big article on this here. The short version is that the LCD, or in this case SXRD (Sony's version of liquid crystal on silicon, or LCOS), holds each frame of video for the full 1/60th of a second, for each of the 60 frames of video coming each second from a Blu-ray player or other video source. Your brain expects to see some motion during that 1/60th of a second, and when it doesn't perceive it, it sort of blurs the image. This is the short version; check out the 240Hz article for a better description.

So with the VW85, Sony has added their MotionFlow circuitry, which in this case is 120 Hz of SXRD goodness.

MotionFlow on the VW85 has two modes. Film Projection is a black or dark frame insertion mode. This is where every other frame is a dark duplicate. So it goes: regular frame, dark frame, regular frame, dark frame and so on every 1/120th of a second. This reduces the sample and hold problem mentioned above without the artifacts of the Motion Enhancer mode (more on that in a moment). While it works great, unfortunately, Film Projection drops the light output rather precipitously.

Film Projection Mode 1 is the darkest, with about a 60 percent loss in light as compared to when the processing is off. Mode 2 has a loss of about 25 percent, though Mode 3 is about even with Off. Mode 2 and 3 are clearly of the "dark frame" variety, using duplicates of the previous frame that are darker than their twins but not black.

I used a test pattern that is a close up of an old book. This book then scrolls across the screen. In the “Off” Mode the text was so blurred that it was unreadable. Mode 1 is a stunning improvement. The text was perfectly readable. Night and day, as the expression goes. Sadly, Mode 1 is definitely "night," as with even reasonably sized screens and a high lamp setting, the light output is way too dim to use. If you have a smaller screen (80 inches or so) this mode could work for you.

Mode 2 is not quite as sharp as Mode 1, but it’s close and the light tradeoff is more reasonable. Mode 3 doesn’t have the light loss penalty at all, implying that its "dark" frame isn't very dark. While it doesn't reduce the motion blur as much as even Mode 2, it does help somewhat and the lack of any light lost makes a compelling case for this mode. I detected the barest amount of flicker in this mode, but it was so subtle I doubt many would notice it. It’s likely this was happening in the other modes as well, but as they were dimmer overall, it was harder to see.

Now the controversial part: I despise motion interpolation. This is when, instead of inserting black or dark frames to make 60 Hz video into 120 Hz, new frames are created that are hybrids of the preceding and following frames. I think it makes film look like video, which in my book is an artifact. But with video (sports and many concerts, but almost no movies or scripted TV shows), it's OK. With Motion Enhancer set to High, as you’d hope, the motion detail is fantastic—as good if not a little better than Mode 1 Film Projection. Set to Low, it still offers good motion-blur reduction. Better than Mode 3 Film, but the unnatural smoothness in the motion isn't as objectionable as it is when set to High.

Using other test patterns, like a scrolling monoscope pattern or clips of actual video, the results varied slightly. Mode 1 was still best on the scrolling pattern, but Modes 2 and 3 created an odd halo effect. On this pattern, Motion Enhancer offered little improvement. With actual video, the halos weren't apparent, and the Motion Enhancer noticeably sharpened the image.

What this tells me is there is no single mode that fits every situation, so if you're like me and you notice motion blur, the buttons on the remote let you choose which mode you want on the fly. With this many options, you should be able to find a setting that matches whatever material you’re using.

All the Rest

Otherwise, the VW85 performs very similarly to the VW70. The color points are very close to accurate, and if you want to fine tune them even more, you can use the built in RCP (Real Color Processing). While the black level was about the same between the two models (excellent in both cases), the contrast ratio was much improved. This was mostly due to a considerable increase in light output. On a 103-inch diagonal 1.0-gain screen I was getting right around 20 foot-Lamberts, which is quite good and about a 30 percent improvement from the previous model.

The VW85 is able to pick up the 3:2 sequence with both 480i and 1080i material. Scaling is very good, creating lots of detail from 480i sources. A really good scaling DVD player may offer slight improvement on this front, but not much. There are some slight jaggies, though. Better scalers may do a better job here, but not by a huge amount.

And lastly, one of my favorite features: If you can output a 24p signal from your BD player, the VW85 will show each frame 4 times (96 Hz), removing the 3:2 judder and offering a more natural, film-like appearance. Or, if you like the interpolated frame look, you can turn on MotionFlow which will create three new frames for every original frame.

As has been the case with it predecessors, this latest projector from Sony offers tremendous performance, flexibility and features, all of which improve from its older siblings. The addition of 120Hz makes for a welcome jump in motion detail and pushes the overall image quality that much further ahead.

PRICE:
VPL-VW85: $7,999

CONTACT: sony.com/builtin