While it's no secret that prices keep dropping on flat-panel TVs, the good value and excellent picture quality offered by microdisplay rear projectors continue to drive innovation in that category. Case in point: the new JVC HD-58S998 58-inch HD-ILA 1080p HDTV, one of a new generation of "slim" rear projectors. The front-to-back depth of this LCoS-based HDTV measures an astounding 10.8 inches, and although it's not the first trimmed-down RPTV to hit stores, JVC's design is unique.
Cosmetically, the effect is something special, especially combined with the super-thin black bezel around the screen that gives the TV a floating effect. Then there's the high-tech blue power indicator with its rippled rectangular lens and light-up JVC logo (fortunately, you can reduce the brightness or turn it off in the TV's menu).
The primary jack pack is placed on the right side-panel of the TV's shallow, rec-tangular cabinet — again, to facilitate wall mounting — and hidden by a lid that preserves the seamless look. Here you'll find two 1080p/60-capable HDMI connectors and two ganged component-/composite-video inputs, plus an RF input for the built-in tuners. The front convenience input, meanwhile, features a VGA computer connector, for once placed up front where it rightly belongs.
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The Short Form
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| Price $3,300 / jvc.com / 800-252-5722 |
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Snapshot
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| Overall, JVC's new slim HD-ILA rear projector delivers an excellent picture in a skinny, high-style package. |
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Plus
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•Sexy, super-slim cabinet design •Excellent out-of-box color •Crisp image with good shadow detail •Redesigned backlit remote |
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Minus
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| •Bending of image near screen edge |
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Key Features
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•1,920 x 1,080 resolution screen •Slim 10.8-in profile •Built-in HDTV tuner •Fully backlit remote •Inputs: 2 HDMI, 2 component-/composite-video (1 with S-video); RF antenna/cable; VGA PC-/composite-video •51.5 x 37.9 x 10.8 in; 115 lb |
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Test Bench
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JVC's Theater/Low color-temperature setting delivered accurate grayscale at the dark end of the brightness range, but it got progressively bluer as the image got brighter. Service- menu calibration brought it mostly within 300 K or so of the 6,500-K ideal, although a "suck out" at 40 IRE couldn't be corrected. Blue and red color points were accurate, but green was undersaturated. The TV resolved 1080i/p and 720p patterns via HDMI and component inputs. Full gray patterns showed no hotspotting, and false contouring was minimal. But the set suffers from a notable geometric distortion in which horizontal lines in the top two-thirds of the screen bend upward at their outer edges, an effect of the concave projection mirror that can't be fixed. Full Lab Results |
SETUP The HD-58S998 provides four video presets labeled Standard, Dynamic, Theater, and Game. Of these, the Theater mode provided the best dark-room viewing experience — so good, in fact, that I watched the set for several days without feeling the need to formally calibrate it. About the only thing I did was turn down the contrast and iris controls to overcome slightly hot reds that made faces too pungent and yellow and tropical greens a bit too striking for nature.
Formal calibration led to only minor changes in control settings, and measurements revealed a reasonably accurate grayscale, though I did end up tweaking the color temperature in the service menu and never quite got it perfect (see Test Bench). But I pick nits: JVC gets credit here for delivering a preset that essentially adheres to the ideal. Another hooray!
PERFORMANCE With the JVC fully tuned, I sat back to enjoy the superb Blu-ray Disc of Casino Royale. Chapter 2, in which James Bond (Daniel Craig) engages a suspect in a thrilling foot chase through, around, and atop a skyscraper construction site in Madagascar, nicely showed off the TV's assets. It quickly displayed a wide range of natural colors, starting with the now appropriately lush foliage and the mix of skin tones in a crowd watching a pit fight between a cobra and a mongoose. The bright colors of the construction equipment and the building's steel skeleton were convincing, from the yellow bulldozers to the blue-and-white cranes to the red-brown girders.
The 1080p screen delivered sumptuous details, such as the subtle red-paisley swirls on Bond's gray cotton shirt as he rides the back bumper of a van, and I could see the small cuts and blood stains, and the fine blond hairs, on the back of his hand. Reproduction of blacks and shadow detail was very good, too, as in a scene a few moments later where a worker in the local embassy reaches for a panic button under the lip of his desk as Bond shoots the place up. I could clearly discern the pearly grain in the dark wood, despite its being cast in shadow in a room lit only by sun from the windows.
HD broadcasts looked superb, as on the HDNet show Get Out: Hot in Miami, for example, a travelogue hosted by two buxom models whose unscripted narration was so vacuous I could feel the air rush from the room whenever they spoke. But the eye candy was absolutely stunning, including fine details such as the blonde highlights in the brunette's hair and the fabulous reds, greens, and pure whites of their swimsuits (not to mention their varied skin tones) when the girls and a couple of Miami Heat cheerleaders take a ride on a Cigarette boat. Good-quality 480p fed to the TV from DVDs, such as the Legends of Jazz series, looked crisp and suffered only minimal noise, though the set's noise reduction didn't do much for 480i broadcasts.
Despite so much good coming from the HD-58S998, I did discover a notable problem with the set's picture geometry. I noticed early on that the grid lines in onscreen program guides, which should have been perfectly horizontal, were bending up slightly at the outer left and right edges of the screen. This effect started about a third of the way up from the bottom and worsened until leveling off a bit near the top of the screen. JVC sent along another sample of the TV that exhibited the same behavior, and the company confirmed that the distortion — a side effect of the concave mirror — appears to be in all current samples and can't be adjusted out. Fortunately, it's virtually undetectable when a program fully fills the screen from top to bottom. On the other hand, it's fairly obvious on program grids and whenever there are horizontal graphics near the top of the screen, as with the onscreen scorekeepers for sports events. It's also visible on letterboxed movies, where the bottom edge of the top bar bows downward as it meets the image.
BOTTOM LINE The HD-58S998 58-inch slim HD-ILA 1080p HDTV delivers accurate color, sharp picture detail, and solid blacks right out of the box, all in a striking, slender HDTV with a price that hammers any flat panel close to its screen size. Prospective buyers will have to decide for themselves whether this set's slick, sexy form factor is a reasonable tradeoff for its unusual bending distortion. Meanwhile, I'm hoping JVC can tame this issue in its upcoming 65-inch slim model and in future generations, thereby offering a perfect (okay, near-perfect) RPTV.
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