Front Projectors

Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio:12,833:1

For the picture settings used in this review, go to HomeTheaterMag.com. Except as noted, all of the measurements here were taken with the projector in User mode, adjusted for the most accurate image, with the lamp power on low, the gamma correction on Gamma 6, and the advanced iris set to Auto 1. There were about 150 hours on the projection lamp. The screen was a Stewart Filmscreen Studiotek 130, 78 inches wide, with a gain of 1.3.

The full-on/full-off contrast ratio is excellent, although it’s a bit less impressive than the contrast we measured on the VPL-VW70—a defendable tradeoff given the VPL-VW85’s significantly higher brightness. In the High lamp setting, on the same screen, in the Auto 1 iris setting, the VPL-VW85 measured 29.65 foot-lamberts peak white and 0.0022 ft-L video black, for a full-on/full-off contrast ratio of 13,467:1. This is more than twice the peak white level we obtained from the VPL-VW70 with the same High lamp setting.

With the auto iris off, in the Low lamp mode and Gamma 3, the VPL-VW85 produced a peak contrast ratio of 4,511:1 (16.24 ft-L peak white, 0.0036 ft-L video black).

The Color Tracking charts below show how well a display adheres to the D65 standard white point; the tighter the overlap of the three primary colors, the nearer the result is to D65. The Before Calibration result is for the Low 1 Color Temp setting. The After Calibration result is exceptional, apart from a small dip in the blue level in the mid-brightness region.

The CIE chart above shows the Sony’s color gamut in the Normal color space setting. Apart from slightly undersaturated green, it doesn’t get much better than this. The measured gamut nearly overlaps the black triangle that represents the HD color standard. The Wide 1 mode (not shown) produces a slight oversaturation on the red-green leg of the color-gamut triangle, and Wide 3 (not shown) pushes the entire red-green leg out to the edge of the colored region.—TJN