The HD1 is among the first of a new batch of affordable home cinema projectors that offer support for full-HD picture resolution. But that's not all that's special about this beamer. It also boasts technology that delivers extreme deep blacks and lots of contrast visually -- both of which are holy grails of the projector world.
Priced at AU$9,999, the HD1 certainly isn't cheap, but it sports specifications that would have cost you three times as much just a year ago, so in some ways it's great value for money.
The HD1 is fairly bulky and heavy, but it's finished in a sleek piano-black coating with a stylish silver stripe down the centre.
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Design
Measuring 172mm by 455mm by 418mm, the HD1 is about twice the size of an average DLP or LCD machine and, as you would expect, it's quite heavy, too (11.6 kilograms). JVC has done its best to camouflage this bulky frame with a sleek-looking piano-black finish and a luxurious silver stripe down the centre. However, the size of this projector will still be an issue for many as it won't, for example, fit on an average book shelf. In fact, we'd say the only sensible option would be to have it professionally mounted on the ceiling, which you're going to have to budget a bit extra for.
Nevertheless, the large size does mean that JVC has been able to kit it out with a decent range of connectors on the rear. You get composite and S-video inputs for hooking up standard-definition boxes, plus a single component-video and twin HDMI sockets for use with high-definition decks.
And while many projectors come with pretty pathetic remotes, it's obvious JVC has spent time on this one. It's long and slender, yet it also has large buttons that are arranged sensibly. We also loved the built-in light sensor that automatically illuminates the buttons when it detects that the room has darkened.
Features
Setting up the projector is relatively easy, especially as JVC has kitted it out with both horizontal and vertical lens shift. Using these controls you can move the projected picture from side to side or up and down without having to physically move the projector.
The HD1 allows you to shift the picture vertically by 80 percent of the projected image and horizontally by 34 percent. It's not as flexible as the lens shift on, say, Panasonic's 1080p PT-AE1000, but it's still very useful and lets you project a straight image even when the machine is significantly off-centre from the screen. Also, the short throw lens has a 2x zoom so you don't need a massively large room to be able to throw really big images.
The HD1 has plenty of ports on the rear, including two HDMI connections.
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Once you've got it projecting straight pictures you may want to jump in to the menus to tweak the picture settings. Luckily the menus are well laid-out and easy to navigate using the remote control. There are plenty of advanced settings like colour gamma controls to allow enthusiasts to adjust the projector to perfection, but the menus are also structured so as not to be too daunting for novices.
Performance
Once you've the HD1 fully set up, the thing that really impresses is its super high-contrast ratio and astounding black levels. Most projectors in this price range use a dynamic iris that quickly closes down to reduce the amount of light coming out of the projector during darker scenes. This improves black levels, but it also reduces the intensity of brighter areas of the picture, so essentially it's a bit of a fudge.
The HD1 doesn't have to resort to such trickery. Instead it's able to achieve really deep blacks without the need for an iris, thanks to the balls-out contrast performance of its three LCoS panels (or D-ILA in JVC speak) and some clever tweaking of the lens assembly. This was especially evident when watching the opening scene of the original Star Wars movie via HD broadcast. As the bright Star Destroyer cruises across the dark background of space, neither is compromised. The space ship remains bright and vivid, while the space background is rendered as full black rather than a very dark shade of grey.
But it's not just the contrast performance that's impressive -- the 1080p resolution also means you get super-smooth images. If you feed it a good source, such as movies from a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player, you'll be gobsmacked by the amount of detail in the picture. On some projectors, you can see the individual pixels on the picture, but not on this one. Instead you get velvety images that look remarkably similar to film.
This combination of amazing picture detail and rich contrast adds up to a home cinema experience that's unbelievably close to the real thing. When we were watching Saving Private Ryan and the original Star Wars trilogy, we weren't sure we'd ever seen these moves looking so good -- even in a proper cinema.
But for all its plus points, there are also a couple of negatives. The HD1 lacks a bit of oomph in the brightness department, so to get the most out of it you'll need to use it in quite a dark room.
Also, although the pictures are very detailed, thanks to the 1080p resolution, they're not quite as sharp as some other full-HD projectors we've seen. It's not hugely lacking in this area, but the images were definitely a touch softer than on Optoma's HD81 or Panasonic's PT-AE1000.
There's no doubt the HD1 is an impressive projector for the price. Its contrast and black level performance is absolutely top-notch and really helps it to produce extremely rich-looking pictures. In fact we'd go so far as to say that it's one of the most cinematic projectors we've seen.
It's a big and bulky machine, though, so it'll be hard to place in the average home, and it's not as bright as some of its rivals. As the images aren't quite as sharp as those on some similarly priced 1080p machines, it doesn't quite get the full thumbs up.
