JVC recently announced six remarkably good home theater projectors. Three of these projectors are part of JVC’s Procision series, and include the DLA-NX5 ($7,500), DLA-NX7 ($10,000) and DLA-NX9 ($23,000). The other three models are part of the Reference series and include the DLA-RS1000 ($8,000), DLA-RS2000 ($10,500) and DLA-RS3000 ($23,500). The DLA-NX5 and DLA-RS1000 models offer all the same features, the main difference is that the Reference series DLA-RS1000 offers one additional year of warranty. The same is true for the DLA-NX7 and DLA-NX9 models, and their Reference series counterparts.

I had the opportunity to see demonstrations of the DLA-NX5 and DLA-NX9 models at the Toronto Audio Fest this fall and I was incredibly impressed with how far JVC has been able to advance picture technology over the last few years. You can read my impressions about both models at https://novo.press/toronto-audio-fest-2018-part-2/.

What I didn’t know at the Toronto Audio Fest is that a few weeks later JVC would invite me to their new home theater demonstration room at their headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario. And please don’t be jealous, this home theater wasn’t built only for the members of the media. Starting in 2019, JVC will allow consumers to book appointments for personal demonstrations!

When I arrived (last week), I was met by three members of the JVC team, beaming with excitement to show me the newly built home theater space: Francisco Lacey, National Sales Manager, Adam Orrico, Assistant Manager, Corporate Communications, and Ian Graham, Technical Support, Sales & Marketing.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

The demonstration room measures 17′ wide x 28′ long and is equipped with comfortable home theater seating for a party of six. The back of the room has a large metal structure capable of housing up to four projectors at a time, so that comparisons between different models can be made on the fly. At the time of my visit, the new JVC DLA-NX9 / DLA-RS3000 8K/e-shift projector provided the on-screen action.

The front of the room is adorned with a Stewart Filmscreen projection screen which can be adjusted with the press of a button on the remote to display a 118-inch picture (16:9 ratio) or a movie theater-like 148-inch picture (2.35:1 ratio). Seeing the black borders of a screen adjust automatically never gets old!

Of course a great projection picture is only a part of the recipe for a proper home theater. The sonic presentation inside this room comes courtesy of an awesome 7.2.4-channel Atmos setup, which employs Anthem electronics and Paradigm speakers. The audio stack houses an Anthem MRX-1120 AV receiver, Anthem MCA 325 3-channel amplifier, Oppo UDP-203 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player, an Xbox One X and a PC. The speakers include the Paradigm Prestige Series: 95F towers and 55C center channel at the front, four 25S surround speakers and dual 1000SW subwoofers. There are also 4 Paradigm CI Elite Series E80R in-ceiling speakers. The only thing that I couldn’t spot was a beer fridge… then again, it was only 1:30pm.

With Ian Graham in the driver seat, the four of us spent nearly an hour watching clips from various 4K movies and video demonstration materials. This allowed me to evaluate the picture performance at a much deeper level than I had a chance to at the show several weeks earlier. Ian also provided a great commentary as he changed up the demo material, sharing insights about the technology and features employed by the JVC DLA-NX9 / DLA-RS3000 projector. His movie selection span the same specimen that you would find in my Blu-ray collection at home: Star Trek: Into the Darkness, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, Blade Runner, John Wick and The Revenant.

The lights dimmed gently… and the entertainment hit the screen. The picture here was nothing short of stunning and truly one of the best pictures I have ever seen in a home theater setup. The colors were bright, rich and lifelike. The picture resolution was unbelievably sharp. What made the picture so darn good? The DLA-NX9 offers a native contrast ratio of 100,000:1 (or 1,000,000:1 in dynamic mode) and a high 2,200 lumen output. This gives the picture a near real-life contrast, which combined with the high brightness results in truly realistic on-screen images. The projector’s 8K/e-shift technology allows it to achieve 8K-equivalent resolution (8192 x 4230 pixel) that presents viewers with unrivaled picture resolution. The resolution and picture details were as good as I’ve ever seen from any projector. The pixels are so densely packed, your eyes won’t be able to distinguish them at a realistic viewing distance from the screen.
All of these factors combined to produce a picture with incredible, almost 3D depth. This resulted in a remarkably immersive, “almost there” experience when watching forest and nature scenes filmed from a bird’s eye view in The Revenant. These winter forest scenes looked so natural, they jogged my adventurous snowmobiling memories from last season.
Various scenes from Star Trek and Blade Runner were painted on the screen with hyper details. I could easily see individual hairs on people’s heads and truly appreciate the uniqueness of the skin texture of the various alien characters.

This JVC projector offers an advanced feature called Auto Tone Mapping which reads metadata from video content and automatically adjusts the picture settings to be as intended by the content creators [based on the mastering information project’s HDR10 content]. Ian explained that this feature is still in its infancy but Apple has already began rolling it out in all of its content on the Apple TV 4K.

Ian also demonstrated to me the difference between watching content in the BT. 2020 standard versus the HDR10 standard, which you can change on the fly [with the projector remote]. The BT. 2020 mode produces a picture that’s approximately 30% less bright but results in a more movie-like picture, which I preferred.

These are very exciting times for movie buffs and if you’re thinking of installing a home theater there’s absolutely no question that you should see one of the numerous JVC projectors in action. The JVC DLA-NX9 / DLA-RS3000 retails for $23,000 but JVC has much more affordable options for smaller wallets too.

For more info about the JVC DLA-NX9 / DLA-RS3000 8K/e-shift projector and other models, I encourage you to check out http://ca.jvc.com/projectors

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