JVC DLA-X900R projector: Hottabych, pull a real Hi End out of a hair!

And why did old man Hottabych give Volka a telephone set? Black, with a heavy tube – still does not ring. And how I wanted it to ring – hello, Hottabych?!.. But alas. How could the old genie know what’s inside the machine, and why it rings… However, if I were Volka, I would ask Hottab to pull the real Hi Ehd projector – such as JVC DLA-X900R, which is cooler than any foreign car. True, to make the miracle happen, you will have to explain to your favorite childhood character something from the field of optics and physics of semiconductors. Well, I’ll try very hard, Hottabych and I will succeed!

Learn, old man!

One of us will have to become at least an academic-physicist – either the genie or me, or both at once. To cut the real Hi End from a gray hair, you really need to get used to the LCoS technology Liquid Crystal on Silicon , which is the basis of the best cinema projectors.JVC refers to this technology by the proprietary name – D-ILA Direct Drive Image Light Amplifier . Anyway, you have to understand and feel everything, you try it for yourself..

At first sight D-ILA-projector works very simply: on the one hand on a microchip the external video signal is fed, and on the other – the luminous flux from the mercury lamp. On the microchip, there is a “meeting on the Elbe” and back reflected light beams go, loaded with movie frames. On the screen we see a real movie with a gorgeous picture, like in a big movie theater with a live mechanic.

How simple it is! But I’m afraid Hottabych will hardly be able to reproduce this simplicity of Hi End. You have to get into the details.

So the mercury lamp in the projector flashed brightly. The light flux goes into the optical unit, where it undergoes a very important transformation.

Anisotropic lens system converts natural lamp light into polarized light. You could say that the lenses “squeeze” the “cream” out of ordinary white light. The old genie immediately wondered if this “cream” could not be used instead of milk cream? No, of course not. Because light “cream” is not cream at all but filtered light waves which increase efficiency of mercury lamp.

In general, the light from the lamp decomposed into polarized S and P components – the first of them absorbs all power of white light, making the flux more “elastic” and homogeneous, which in the end makes the projector image brighter and more saturated. And the more inert P-component at this stage goes out of play and is led out of the apparatus.

Optical light processing scheme

Then the S-stream goes through the dichroic prisms and for this reason is divided into the main colors of the rainbow RGB components : red, blue and green rays. Such a metamorphosis of lamp radiation is needed in order to achieve a very accurate color rendering in the image.

Let’s notice one more important property of the S-component: this part of polarized light diverges in space “standing”, that is perpendicular to horizon, and for this reason can’t “pass customs” – special PBS-prism: first time it is triggered at the entrance of the light stream on matrix, and second time – at the exit, when the modulated stream flew into the lens and onto the screen.

A very important property of polarized light: S-flows from the faces of a PBS prism can only be reflected like from a mirror, without having a single chance to escape from the projector. And thus they glorify JVC cinema projectors with the deepest blacks and as a consequence the unique contrast of a picture.

And the second, P-component, spreads in another plane – parallel to the horizon and “goes through the customs with a whistle”: the P-vector penetrates the PBS-prism in any direction, as a native key to the keyhole. To tell the truth, at the first stage when the rays just start their way from the mercury-vapor lamp to the matrix the P-flow is put out of play, but on the way back from the matrix the P-orientation of the modulated light flux brings the image to the screen..

It seems we’ve reached the first part of the journey. We have coped with the work of the optical unit in the “There” direction. I hope Hottabych won’t let me down either, and will be able to reproduce the most important technological nuances exactly as he did. And then comes the most amazing part.

Inside the matrix. ♪ Rebooting as the meaning of life ♪

So, the S-component of each color – blue, red and green, is reflected by PBS-prism and goes to D-ILA matrix, where the light flux modulation and P-component is formed for displaying the video.

And this is a true miracle, unknown to the genies of all time! In order to unravel the industrial secret, I advised Hottabych to put a small crystal – aka microchip, aka D-ILA-matrix, aka LCoS-microdisplay – on the palm of his hand, at least mentally. And look at it through a microscope.

And what the genie saw? A smooth surface, similar to a solar cell, but strictly ruled in a tiny cell. Each such cell is an independent nano-device, popularly called a pixel, but in fact the pixel is a miniature multi-layer LCoS-transistor, which instantly executes any commands coming from the video source.

All together pixels-transistors somewhat remind live pictures on the stadium field, which “draw” cheerleaders at the Olympics opening… Only the pixels “draw” their image not on the soccer field, but on the white screen..

While I was delving into nano-pixels, I was very much worried if Hottabych had gotten everything exactly right? The image quality of my future projector depends directly on the coordinated work of the pixels. And how does the nano-wonder microchip work??

The D-ILA microchip with its own three-layer “sandwich”

Each pixel in section looks like a three-layer sandwich: there is a silicon substrate at the base, a mirror layer of control electrodes on the floor above, and a layer of liquid crystals on top of everything.

JVC uses crystals of nematic type: without going into the intricacies of this physical term, let us note that its main property is the synthesis of grayscale by analogue method. That is there will be naturally many tints in all colors and the colors themselves will be practically indistinguishable from real-life ones. True, the analog grayscale, which gives a great image, loses out to digital competitors in signal response. To view movies such a “generic spot” does not have special importance, but in cool 3D-games the picture will now and then hang..

We should add that the sandwich construction of a microchip also guarantees the best possible image quality, because the sandwich has everything in it. No internal processes cross or cancel each other out like in lumen matrices: light fluxes fall on a thin and homogeneous LCD-layer from above, control commands from external signals come to the electrodes from below and everything works like clockwork.

All that remains is to understand how the frames from the video player “jump” onto the internal flow of the projector and then the copied film appears on the big screen, moreover in Hi End quality? Beautiful technology, like a magic carpet..

To rejoice for the inventors and for the owners especially future of Hi End projectors, let’s make exactly three steps and one conclusion.

Step one.When an external source sends a black signal to a particular pixel, there is no electrical voltage at all in the LCD surface. So the light S-wave, piercing the liquid crystal layer, falls on the mirror of the de-energized electrode and is reflected in the opposite direction intact – that is, in the S-orientation. And what the viewer will see? Very simple: a pixel sends a “black mark” – a dot of deep black. As we have already found out, the “customs do not give the green light”: the polarized S-flux, flying out of the microchip, can not pass on the way back through the PBS-prism and so it “flies past” the lens and the screen.

Step Two.When an external source sends a white signal to the pixel, the microtransistor behaves very differently. The S component of the light wave and this time it passes through the LCD layer and is reflected from the mirror electrode again. But this time the electrodes are energized by current, the light wave hits the torsional pressure of the electric field twice – before the reflection from the matrix and after.

There’s no way out, the polarized flux starts flipping around its axis, changing its orientation by 90 degrees on the fly: it used to be an S-plane and became a P-vector. And what will the viewer see on the screen this time?? The pixel will make a white spot whiter than the first snow, because the twisted light flux to the P-vector, like a knife in butter, goes through the PBS prism, safely gets into the lens optics and is projected on the screen.

Step three.And if the pixel receives a gray color signal from an external source, and any shade? Right, the pressure of the electric field on the light S-stream will be less, it will not be twisted to the full, some part of the light reflected from the matrix on the way back will fly by, and another part will still pass through the PBS-prism and a point with some shade of gray scale will appear on the screen. And the more colors the pixels are able to reproduce, the cooler the image of the projector will be.

And now the conclusion.Attention, forming a live color image on the screen. From the three microchips, millions of pixels reflect millions of split RGB beams into the PBS prism at any given moment, and in many different shades. In a crossed dichroic prism, those millions of red, blue and green rays merge back into a single stream of color, which beams straight into the projector’s optical system and comes out as an interesting movie with an amazing picture.

In these nuances of light and shadow play lies the most important advantages of LCoS-technology: speed and huge color palette, which are implemented in specific functions and settings projectors Hi End.

First of all, I would highlight two services: Clear Motion Drive 3 mode, which improves the transfer of scenes with fast motion, as well as the function x.v.Colour, which is necessary to reproduce a wider color space and more accurate color adjustments in different areas of the same frame.

I’m not talking about more precise color calibration yet, because by and large the function x.v.Colour is built to last – for future Ultra 4K video content. So the Hi End version won’t become obsolete for a long time to come. So, Hottabych can safely pull a hair right now..

My projector hangs by a thread..

Any way you look at it, but any genie from an ancient vessel, even if it’s caught in the Moskva River, is an oriental character. And in an Oriental bazaar, no one pounces on the first thing that catches their eye. Virtually everyone leisurely wanders around the entire bazaar and in a few places objectively haggle. Was I right to ask Hottabych to pull the JVC DLA-X900R out of the hair, and did not even haggle with anyone?

Believe me, my choice is deliberate and not to be replaced. I can lay the following explanation on the table: soccer’s Bayern has no rivals in the domestic championship, and on the European stage there is only one: Real Madrid. A similar case happened with the JVC cinema projector. There is nothing cooler inside the JVC range. And in the rest of the market in the same niche, with the same LCoS technology and at a comparable level of Hi End is only Sony.

There is only one difference between the projectors of the two honored giants of electronics: JVC uses liquid crystals with analog control in the microchip, while Sony relies on other, ferroelectric LCD-crystals, which practice digital fusion of grayscale. One of the main advantages of such crystals is faster signal response, cool toys will not hang up..

Which option is better for users? Not even physicists can make up their minds about this. Absolute draw. But someone is a fan of Bavaria, and someone is a fan of Real. Personally, at this point in my life, I choose the JVC analog signal processing. Why? Ask photographers: why they return to the usual 35 mm film? Photography, you see, is silkier and softer in halftones. So, Hottabych didn’t even bother with his oriental bazaar..

I have other trump cards up my sleeve that are subject to mandatory copying in the process of pulling the projector out of the genie’s hair. I won’t go into details and explanations, but I’ll give you a concrete list

First.I want the new 6th generation D-ILA processor. Compared with the previous lens, its advantages are shown in Figure 1. If you enlarge the microchip thousands of times, the pixels on its surface will resemble a ceramic tile with extremely reduced joints. Minimum pixel gaps are very, very cool! Because the working surface of the imaging matrix becomes even larger, surpassing 95 percent. And that means higher brightness, finer and smoother adjustments of tones and colors, higher resolution and near-absolute blacks with near-perfect contrast. No pixels and grids on the screen! The screen can be mistaken for an open window..

Second. I want a 4K projector for the price of an ordinary one. The new e-shift 3 technology does just that, transforming a high-quality 2D Blu-ray into 4K by an elegant hardware-software shift in the optics. The image quality and visual detail is close to Ultra HD resolution. At the same time, thanks to the visual absence of a pixel grid, at the same viewing distance the picture resembles a “film” image in terms of smoothness of transitions.

You can see the beauty of this technology at a glance in illustrations 2 and 3. The idea is that each modulated beam of light on its way back from the sensor is “multiplied” into clones: there was one subframe and the lens gets four more. The secret of the cloning lens is that it “copies” the original sub-frame and shifts the copied layers by 0.5 pixels on all four sides. As a result the pixel density in the picture increases by 4 times and the resolution becomes 4K.

I personally watched the video material in this artificial 4K – amazing effect! A virtuoso vision trick! However, e-shift III technology has a couple of limitations: it does not work with 3D recordings, and the signal from the source has to be Full HD and without flaws, otherwise artefacts will pop up on the screen in 4x form..

Third. I want a new polarizing coating on a PVS prism Though Hottabych and I have not become optical physicists, but in the process of literacy clearly understood the importance of polarizing ordinary white light to send the most powerful S-component of light waves to the matrix. The brightness and contrast of an image without polarized light from a lamp will simply be a failure.

So, Japanese chemists have established the production of polarizing film based on new polymers, which are even more “cream” of the flow of light than in the projectors of previous generations. Brightness, contrast, color reproduction and tones have been given another scientific and technical boost.

Fourth. I want the updated Multiple PixelControl technology. To put it simply, this technology has always been able to make a pretty sweet deal out of a pirated copy of a pretty decent piece of video content. And now it has an “autopilot” mode: “Pixel Control” analyzes different parts of the frame for brightness, color, shades, and corrects the failed areas by itself, and separately in the foreground and background.

Interesting technology, working in three stages. First, the video signal is captured in a single frame and projected onto an LCD monitor for analysis. For the “diagnosis” is involved expanded area of 21 x21/ At the first stage, the system seems to lay out a more detailed, but “not finished” picture of the increased number of pixels. The image got noticeably larger, the only thing left is to “tint” it properly.

So at the second stage the 8-band color analyzer is switched on. It contains three base RGB colors and some mixed colors, making the image quite real and natural: these are magenta, yellow, gray-violet, pale blue and black. The main goal of this step is to determine which colors to “refill” and into which pixels already laid out in the enlarged picture.

The third stage is, in fact, an artist with a good taste and sharp eyesight: first he goes over the background and makes a final show of the blue sky and cumulonimbus clouds, for example, and then moves on to the near background. If, say, the face lacks natural shades, the system will instantly identify the right pixels and tint them so that after the “makeup” there will be visible powder dust on the spout..

On the screen we will see very sharp, well-processed image with lots of natural color tones and shades. The color reproduction is actually amazing! No matter what types of scenes flicker on the screen, the updated Multiple PixelControl on autopilot instantly “skimmed” them and raised them in color and resolution to the level of 4K.

…That pretty much ends the list of must-haves for my future projector. Don’t think that I’m being unreasonable in giving up a bunch of other services and settings that are unique to the real Hi-End. They have all been tried and made a real furore among movie buffs.

The problem is that at the most interesting place, when in some couple of paragraphs the genie would have pulled a real premium projector out of a hair, that’s when I… woke up. Hottabych is gone. The fairy tale is over again. And the desire for Hi End remains.