Home Theater Geeks 479: The Screening Room 2025 Projector Shootout Part 1

Summary

Detailed Summary of "Home Theater Geeks 479: The Screening Room 2025 Projector Shootout Part 1"

Home Theater Geeks episode 479, titled "The Screening Room 2025 Projector Shootout Part 1," offers an in-depth exploration of a comprehensive projector evaluation event held by The ScreeningRoom AV. Hosted by Scott Wilkinson and released on April 24, 2025, this episode brings together industry experts to discuss the methodology, technology, and initial observations from the shootout conducted in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on April 5th and 6th, 2025.

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Introduction to the Shootout

Scott Wilkinson opens the episode by introducing the topic of the day: a projector shootout organized by The ScreeningRoom AV. He emphasizes the purpose of the shootout—to provide an unbiased comparison of 4K projectors by eliminating variables and showcasing each projector's performance under controlled conditions.

[00:00] Scott Wilkinson: "In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I talk about the screening rooms 2025 projector shootout with a number of people who were deeply involved, so stay tuned."

Meet the Experts

Scott presents the panel of experts who participated in the discussion:

• John Schuerman: Owner of The Screening Room AV
• Steve Crabb: Sales and Marketing Specialist and System Designer at The Screening Room AV
• Chris Deering: Owner of Deep Dive AV and a well-known figure in the AVS forums
• Sammy Prescott Jr.: ISF Level 3 Calibrator and Reviewer at ProjectorCentral.com

Each expert brings a wealth of experience, ensuring a well-rounded analysis of the shootout proceedings.

Objective and Methodology of the Shootout

John Schuerman explains the fundamental goal of the shootout—to establish a fair and level playing field where projectors can be evaluated without the influence of marketing biases or manufacturer hype.

[05:21] John Schuerman: "The general idea with all of our shootouts is trying to set up a legit level playing field comparison where we try to take all the variables out of play, show each product at its best and let people make up their own minds..."

Steve Crabb adds that the team aimed for absolute fairness and objectivity, refraining from assigning scores to the projectors to avoid subjective judgments.

[07:05] Steve Crabb: "If you look at some of the groups and forums, you'll see massive hyperbole. This is the best thing ever, and this is the worst thing ever, and why would anybody want this? And we really try to remove all that and avoid it as much as possible and be as fair as we can."

John further elaborates that unlike speaker evaluations, projector comparisons are challenging to score objectively due to visible differences that could skew perceptions.

[07:35] John Schuerman: "...we didn't think scoring was fair. We also, this time we wanted to contextualize... how it's going to be used."

Projector Selection and Display Technologies

Chris Deering provides insights into the selection of projectors, categorized based on their price points and underlying technologies. The shootout featured both high-end models exceeding $25,000 and more budget-friendly options under $10,000.

[08:59] Chris Deering: "...we did the Epson QB1000, which was the most expensive of the first group... then we use the JVC's entry-level model, which is the NZ500... and then the Valerian Vision Master Pro 2, which is more of a lifestyle projector..."

Sammy Prescott Jr. mentions additional Epson models showcased in a separate area, highlighting their varying brightness levels.

[12:46] Sammy Prescott Jr.: "You had the QL7000, which is a 10,000 lumen projector, and you had the QL3000, which is a 6,000 lumen projector..."

The discussion then shifts to the technological differences between the projectors, particularly focusing on DLP, LCoS, and LCD technologies, and how these impact both performance and pricing.

[19:04] Scott Wilkinson: "It's called liquid crystal on silicon... more expensive."

Calibration Process

Ensuring that each projector performs optimally was crucial. The calibration process, led by Sammy Prescott Jr., involved meticulous adjustments to achieve brightness matching and color accuracy across all models.

[29:07] Sammy Prescott Jr.: "The calibration process went pretty smoothly... we brought it to the actual venue, remeasured them to make sure that they held up... we did a lot of direct uploads and custom LUTs..."

John Schuerman underscores the importance of professional calibration, especially for high-end projectors, to guarantee that each unit presents its best possible image quality.

[31:08] John Schuerman: "Every attempt was made to make each projector look as good as it possibly could."

Attendees and Event Dynamics

The shootout attracted a diverse group of attendees, ranging from local enthusiasts to participants flying in from distant states and even Canada. The atmosphere was inclusive, catering to both seasoned hobbyists and newcomers to home theater setups.

[34:19] John Schuerman: "We had people fly in from California and other places... some who had been to our previous shootout... informed enthusiasts and some laypeople."

Chris Deering highlights the preference for dark scenes during evaluations, as these are where differences between projectors become most apparent.

[35:37] Chris Deering: "Most of the time these projectors almost look, you know, exactly the same with the vast majority of the brighter to mid-tone things..."

Content Selection for Evaluation

The panel discusses the variety of video clips used during the shootout to test different aspects of projector performance, including brightness, color accuracy, and contrast. Clips ranged from movie scenes in varying lighting conditions to sports highlights and nature photography.

[44:12] Chris Deering: "...Zero Dark Thirty... Oblivion... soccer game highlights..."

John Schuerman notes that despite the high-definition content, sharpness differences between 1080p and 4K models were negligible, indicating that resolution alone wasn't a decisive factor for image clarity among the evaluated projectors.

[46:39] John Schuerman: "I don't think we had one comment even in this written stuff... sharpness difference which actually bodes well for Epson..."

Technical Challenges and Considerations

The team faced several technical challenges, including managing ambient light in the venue and avoiding skewed perceptions when attendees requested side-by-side comparisons. The use of highly transparent screens and controlled lighting conditions were pivotal in mitigating these issues.

[42:41] Sammy Prescott Jr.: "Because they were all reflective light. So it's bouncing off the screen to the wall in the back..."

Conclusion and Looking Ahead

As the episode wraps up, Scott Wilkinson hints at revealing the detailed results and takeaways from the shootout in Part Two. The experts are thanked for their contributions, and contact information is shared for listeners seeking further information.

[46:56] Scott Wilkinson: "...that's it for this episode. But be sure to join us for part two where we reveal what the results were of the 2025 projector shootout from the screening room AV..."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Objective Evaluation: The ScreeningRoom AV's shootout prioritized unbiased comparisons by controlling variables and focusing on contextual performance rather than scoring.
2. Diverse Technologies: A range of projector technologies (DLP, LCoS, LCD) were evaluated, highlighting differences in brightness, color accuracy, and pricing.
3. Professional Calibration: Emphasized the necessity of expert calibration to ensure accurate and fair performance assessments of high-end projectors.
4. Informed Attendance: The event attracted both enthusiasts and newcomers, fostering an environment of learning and informed decision-making.
5. Content Variety: A carefully selected array of video clips was used to test various projector capabilities, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation.

Listeners can anticipate a follow-up episode that delves into the specific results and insights gained from the shootout, further informing their home theater projector choices.

Transcript

[Scott Wilkinson]

In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I talk about the screening rooms 2025 projector shootout with a number of people who were deeply involved, so stay tuned.

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[Chris Deering]

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[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

This is Twit.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Hey there. Scott Wilkinson here, the home theater geek. In this episode we're going to be talking about a projector shootout which was put on by the screeningroom AV.com and they held a shootout with 4K projectors and it was held in Colorado springs, Colorado on April 5th and 6th, 2025. I have a number of guests to talk about it today. First up is John Schuerman, who is the owner of the screening Room av. Hey, John, welcome back to the show.

[John Schuerman]

Hi, Scott. It's good to see you. As I was mentioning earlier, I think the last in depth conversation we had was on aspect ratios. It was a lot of fun. I'm glad to be back.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yeah, I'm glad to have you back here too. Next up is Steve Crabb, who is in the sales and marketing end of the screening room and a system designer. Hey Steve, welcome to the show.

[Steve Crabb]

Hey Scott, thanks for having us. Long, long time listener, first time guest.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And happy to have you here. Absolutely. Okay, next up, we have two calibrators who were involved in the shootout. First of all, Chris Deering, owner of Deep Dive AV and an AVS forum legend. I would not hesitate to say, hey Chris, how you doing?

[Chris Deering]

Hey Scott, thanks for having me over. Also a former co worker of yours, if I remember right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Oh, that's true. We both worked at Sound and Vision maybe, or the home theater. Yeah, probably several. You wrote. You wrote and still write, I think, reviews of projectors and other AV products. So you got some deep experience here. So I'm glad to have you here.

[Chris Deering]

Thanks, guy.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And finally, we have Sammy Prescott Jr. Who is an ISF Level 3 calibrator with 15 years experience and a reviewer@projector central.com. hey Sammy, welcome to the show.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Yep, thanks for having me. I appreciate being able to join.

[Scott Wilkinson]

You bet. I'm sure glad you're here too. Okay, so let me start with John. What was the general idea behind this shootout?

[John Schuerman]

The general idea with all of our shootouts is trying to set up a legit level playing field comparison where we try to take all the variables out of play, show each product at its best and let people make up their own minds, try to remove as much bias and as much marketing. We try to remove that marketing spin that all the manufacturers give, which we understand. Sure.

[Scott Wilkinson]

All the manufacturers do it. They, you know, they do marketing hype. It's their job.

[John Schuerman]

And nobody. And all of them are all happy to say that they make the best of everything. And of course, you know, in some cases, products are roughly equivalent. And so what we did with this one here was trying to see how, how much, how well these projectors at various price points did against each other with various types of content. And again, as unbiased and as level and as controlled as we could make it.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Steve, I learned that this particular shootout was not as many are graded. So, you know, there wasn't a winner. There wasn't one with the highest score and then the next highest score and so on. Right.

[Steve Crabb]

Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things that we always try to do, which is be very fair, very objective, look at measurements and be as completely, you know, transparent as we can with the results of, of what we saw in the shootout.

[Scott Wilkinson]

But one could do that and still have a score. I mean, all the judges, whoever they were, could say, well, this one gets a 9.5, like figure skating or something like that. But you guys don't do that.

[Steve Crabb]

Yeah, that's very true. I mean, if you look at some of the groups and forums, you'll see massive hyperbole. This is the best thing ever, and this is the worst thing ever, and why would anybody want this? And we really try to remove all that and avoid it as much as possible and be as fair as we can. And so we'll point out, you know, if, if, if one product maybe falls a little short in one area, but we'll point out it's, it's, you know, it's objective superiority in another department, maybe. So that's, that's what we've always tried to do.

[John Schuerman]

And if, if I can just jump in real quick, too. Sometimes when we do our speaker shootouts, we do do that scoring one to 10, because those are double blind. But in this one, people were aware what they were looking at. It's just too hard to hide all those projectors and switch them. So we didn't think scoring was fair. We also, this time we wanted to contextualize, just like Steve was talking about, maybe this projector is better for this application and this one's better for that application. And if you're just doing a strict scoring thing, sometimes you can lose that context.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Good point. One of them might be better in a dark room and one might be better in a brighter room.

[John Schuerman]

Absolutely. Depends on the application. And how it's going to be used. We tried to, like Steve said, bring out all the hyperbole out of it. And this is the king of this and that. And this is not, not to knock those types of things because we've done them as well. But in this case we just thought it was very important to contextualize performance of each projector.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Well, let's go over the, the contestants, if you will. Not that there's a winner here per se, but these are the projectors that were in the shootout and were shown to people. We have a graphic that kind of shows them side by side. Chris, why don't you tell us when we see that, give us a little idea of what we're. Of what the list is here.

[Chris Deering]

Yeah. So for this event we ended up with two screens. We used some Stuart Studio tech 100, 140 inch diagonal, 16 by 9 screen. So we wanted to make sure that the screen wasn't contributing anything to the image. It's a great screen, but not one that I would recommend in very many rooms because of the, you know what it is. But it's probably the most transparent screen that there is out there in terms of like not adding anything to the image at all, so.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Exactly. I want to, I don't want to make, I want to make sure everybody understands when you say transparent you don't mean you can see through it?

[Chris Deering]

No, no, it's just, it doesn't have a, it's a Lamborian screen. There's no gain, there's no, you know, there's really not anything to it. It has a very slight amount of texture to it, but you would really have to go out of your way to see it. So. And then we divided it into groups. So we basically had two main groups, the fir and we, we categorized them kind of based on their price points.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So as we can see Here, we've got two that are over $25,000 correct, and three that are under $10,000 correct.

[Chris Deering]

So we did the, the Epson QB1000, which was the most expensive of the, the, the first group that was the more budget minded. You know, again, I always say that, you know, because everybody's budget is different, but sure, we just felt like it was probably the one that would make the most sense being compared to the other models. Then we use the JVC's entry level model, which is the NZ500. And then out of requests from a lot of the buzz that was going on and the screening room, being a dealer, we brought in the Valerian Vision Master Pro 2, which is a lot different than the other projectors here. It's more of a what I would call a lifestyle projector over a dedicated home theater projector. It's a portable unit with a speaker built into it and everything. But you know, if you look at the specs and like what the market is that they're going after, it felt like it would be a good fit for that. So could kind of see like, hey, this is getting a lot of buzz. How does it compare to some of these other ones that are, you know, more like of an entry level?

[Scott Wilkinson]

Sure. And it's the only one that's based on DLP technology, whereas the rest of them are either LKOs, liquid crystal on silicon or 3 LCD, which Epson uses.

[Chris Deering]

Yeah, it would have been great to have, you know, maybe another DLP in the mix, but there hasn't really been anything, you know, that I'm aware of that's been like a, a big entry into the market as of recently. I mean we could have even done more projectors from these brands. But we, we kind of looked at like, well, how much time do we have? What do we want to show? And really what did we show the last time? Because a lot of these projectors are just variants of things that we did a few years ago with, you know, not a lot of real big changes to them. And then on the, on the upper side, we had the opportunity to look at Sony's, you know, latest consumer flagship, the the 8100, and then compare that to the JVC's flagship, the NZ 900, which again are, you know, closer to each other in price than the other ones. So that in that comparison we only had the 2. In the first comparison we had the 3.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Well, we'll get to that in just a second. Sammy, you also had two, two other Epsons in a different room. Super bright, high brightness projectors, right?

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Correct. Yes. You had the QL7000 which is a 10,000 lumen projector, and you had the QL3000 which is a 6,000 lumen projector. But additionally Epson also brought in the QS100 and that was there more so on demo. But the one that was projecting the image mainly in that room was the.

[Scott Wilkinson]

QL7000, which is a almost $30,000 projector. 10,000 lumens.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Correct.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And that was put on a much bigger screen, right?

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Yeah, I want to say that was 180 inch diagonal screen. I also believe that was also a snowmat screen as well.

[John Schuerman]

Phantom.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

It was A Phantom. Okay, so that was a Phantom. We used the Snowmat, and it was bright. I mean, that thing can throw a ton of light. I've had it here and tested it, and it definitely shows a different application that you could use for those. Those style of projectors it's meant for. You could use it for dark room, but you could also use it in a bright room. And they have the lights on in that room.

[Scott Wilkinson]

In fact, we have a photo from the event in that Epson room. Graphic number two. We can take a look at that, and you can see that the image looks great and there's still plenty of light on in the room. Yeah.

[John Schuerman]

It was actually brighter in the room than that picture makes. It looks like, I think was the exposure setting on how bright that screen was.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right, right.

[John Schuerman]

Yeah.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Taking a picture of projected images is not easy.

[Chris Deering]

Yeah.

[John Schuerman]

No, Chris. Chris, all of us are kind of against the idea. We had a lot of people asking about, are you going to live stream this? And there's all kinds of problems with that. The cameras bias things. You're evaluating a display on another display. We just did not want to do that. So the pictures we're sharing here, we always had that caveat. Please don't make critical judgments about picture quality.

[Chris Deering]

From a picture.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yes.

[John Schuerman]

That you're sitting here.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Absolutely right. Absolutely right.

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[John Schuerman]

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[Scott Wilkinson]

So here's a question for anyone who cares to answer it. Of the projectors in the main room, if we look at graphic one again, we will see one of the things I put in that little table was the advertised peak light output. And we can see it goes from 2000 to 3400 lumens. So let's call it more or less roughly equivalent. The prices are anything but. Why such a huge range in prices?

[John Schuerman]

Well, I think I can start out by saying that. I mean, jvc, using an example, jvc, anybody who followed us from our last shootout, and there's quite a few people who were interested in this one who were attended the last one or were aware of it, JVC kind of dominated that original shootout, and we wanted to see how the other manufacturers had kind of caught up. We'll obviously talk about that in part two. And jvc, as you go up the line, you get more and more and more brightness, and you also get the ability for more and more contrast and you get the ability for more and more or more color gamut coverage. So those are the differences. You go up Epson, it becomes that brightness game. Right. As soon as you jump up that 30,000, you're looking at eye bleeding brightness. And I don't mean that as a derogatory term.

[Scott Wilkinson]

No.

[John Schuerman]

For the application, it looks amazing.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Sure.

[John Schuerman]

And then on Sony, it's a similar thing. As you go up, you get greater brightness, you get better. Well, I'm going to ask Chris that one. Or Sammy. The Sony lineup, once you get to the 6100, 8100, I think is roughly equivalent in terms of gamut and contrast. It's mainly a brightness difference. Is that right?

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Yeah. The only difference is that you get live color with the 8100, where you don't get it with the 6100. But outside of that, in terms of gamut coverage, you're basically just getting additional brightness.

[Scott Wilkinson]

What do you mean, Sammy, by live color.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

So they have a feature in the 8100. There was also in the 7000 as well, where basically skews. I don't want to say skew. It skews the gamut coverage saturation as well as luminance. So if you turn this feature on, you're going to get a little bit more saturation and you're going to get a little bit more color luminance throughout the entire gamut. So Think of it as like a color booster, for the lack of a better word. And that's only on the 8100 or Bravia 9 or the 7000, in this case, the 8100.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. We have to say that the Sony has sort of changed its nomenclature a bit. This. This 8100 that you saw is in their new Bravia projector line. They also have a new Bravia TV line.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Yes.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And the Bravia 9. I don't recall whether they call it the Bravia Projector 9 or the Bravia 9 Projector. One of those, to distinguish it from the Bravia 9 LCD QLED TV is in their new nomenclature.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

And I think they also apply it to their sound bars as well.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. Yeah.

[Chris Deering]

Chris, can you bring up the spreadsheet again and we can kind of go over. I think you're. I think you're kind of addressing the disparity in prices versus the light output.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Correct.

[Chris Deering]

And I think a lot of people, I, again, on AV boards and stuff, they. They don't understand why you see these kind of discrepancies. So maybe it's a good time to kind of highlight it.

[Scott Wilkinson]

I would love it if you did.

[Chris Deering]

Yeah. So let's just start at the bottom of the list. So you had the valerian at 3,000 lumens and $3,000. So I've seen this complaint from quite a few people that they're like, well, how is it the DLPs can have, you know, 3,000 lumens at such low price points where if you're trying to get a 3,000 lumen, say like a JVC or a Sony, you know, you're up into the 20,000 range. The thing here is that. Well, there's multiple things that kind of come to mind immediately. One is that it really comes down to the display technology. So dlp, you know, has been around in the market for a long time, developed by Texas Instruments. So that right there saves money. And the reason I say that is because any manufacturer, Valerian, BenQ, you know, Barco, you know, any. Any brand that sells DLP projectors, they're not developing these chips. So Texas Instrument is the one that's manufacturing these chips. And a lot of times, a lot of these projectors are based on basically an OEM light engine, where you're. You're basically buying a kit and then you're taking. You know, they might change some things that have to do with some of the features here and there, or they build, like a chassis around it and then put their own lenses on it. But if you think about the costs involved with, you know, that technology, TI has already developed the chip. They've developed, you know, how it works with the image processing chip that it's driving it. All those costs are not there. You're just buying. You're saying, hey, I want this chip and, you know, this driver, and then that's it.

[Scott Wilkinson]

There are no development costs for the manufacturer.

[Chris Deering]

Exactly. And now that's scaled. You know, TI is making that same chip for, you know, a multitude of applications. So they're selling these chips in, you know, huge numbers. Okay. So Epson can also do kind of a scale because they're pretty much the only manufacturer out there anymore that does anything with lcd. And obviously LCD has been around for a long time. So now they're in the business of like, okay, well, we can spread that cost over the fact that we sell to churches and schools and all these other things. There's, you know, again, those chips can be used in a lot of different applications, but they are the only ones making their projector. You know, like, nobody's like, OEM their projector and putting a different label on it. Where in the DLP world you'll see a lot of projectors that's like, oh, wow, like, that looks exactly the same as this other brand that has, you know, the same one. So it's a. Again, they're buying an OEM and then kind of working on it right now, dlp, when you start talking about the Sony and the jvc, you know, they're making their own chips at this point.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So which is slightly different technology. It's called liquid crystal on silicon. And it's. It takes light and reflects it through an LCD panel.

[John Schuerman]

Correct.

[Scott Wilkinson]

It's a little bit different and probably more expensive.

[Chris Deering]

Yeah, it's kind of almost a combination of the two because you are using still kind of like an lcd, but you're also doing reflective light. The other problem is is that, as most people know, you know, SXRD and L cost. The two, you know, Sony's is xs, sxrd. L cost is what JVC calls theirs. Yeah, they have a much higher native dynamic range than what you get from DLP and lcd. That's kind of been their, their bread and butter in terms of like they're point. Well, that also costs them a ton of light. So what happens is, is you have basically an efficiency rating when it comes to these technologies. So how much light that's getting onto the chip, that's then going out of the lens. Right. So if I have to pass it through something. How much is that taking away from it?

[Scott Wilkinson]

How much are you losing? Yeah, correct.

[Chris Deering]

Well, with dlp there's almost none because it is a pure reflective technology that's just coming basically in and out, right? So you don't need to have a big light source to generate, you know, the light that you need to get through it. Which is why you, you could see these really compact designs that have high output, you know, everywhere. Right now with deal with LCOs and SXRD, you know, JVC has basically stated that they're like about a 50% ratio. So if you're going to do a 3,000 lumen projector, you technically need a light source that's putting out 6,000 or more lumens and then you have to have the heat dissipation for that light. So like, yeah, things like that. So now you have a bigger chassis, you have to worry about cooling. And again, all of this is done internally. JVC isn't selling JVC projectors to brand X and Y so that they could put their name on it and things like that. Now they try to spread their market out by, you know, in the terms of jvc, they're using their simulation market. So JVC is one of the major manufacturers of simulation projectors that are used for flight simulators and things like that. So they're leveraging that market to help with this market. They can, you know, put their R and D costs into that because they have more than one market to kind of sell to. And then obviously Sony, you know, has, you know, they're just such a huge company to begin with that I'm sure they can leverage it, you know, across multiple different things. But that's really where that comes from. How efficient the light engine is and how much cooling and stuff is involved with it is completely different. When you're talking about a DLP versus an LCD versus an L cost projector and then who's doing the R and D and the development of the chip. In the case of dlp, all of that's off the table. You're just buying a package from Ti so you can spend more of your money on other things where JVC and Sony have to build everything that you see in there from the ground up.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yeah, so, well, that explains that. Thank you, I appreciate it. John and Steve, I want to ask you a somewhat related question, which is why put super expensive models like those top two with and compare them, if you will, the, the over $25,000 models in the same shootout with the under $10,000 models, well, they were separated out.

[John Schuerman]

So we did that. We didn't compare the 25,000 plus to the. The 10,000 and under leak. So we would wanted to get a good overview. And like I was mentioning before, like JVC and Sony, they have those steps as you go up. So it didn't seem to make sense to us to test those middle models because we can kind of extrapolate from the two extremes, the low end and the high end. And so anybody wanted to see how the high end units would do, they got to see that. And anybody who wanted to see how the lower end units would do, get to see that. And then if they wanted to, if they had their budget hits in the middle, we can talk about. Here's the benefit that the middle model brings more brightness, better color gamut, coverage, more refined image, better lens, you know, so we had, we could extrapolate by having those extremes.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Okay. Okay, Steve, tell us a little bit about the physical setup. What were your source devices? Did you run everything through a switcher? I assume all the projectors got the same signal.

[Steve Crabb]

Yep, yep, exactly. So like Chris said, we had the two Stuart Snowmat screens, and then we set up two tables with the groups of projectors so that we could switch back and forth. And then we had a Kaleidoscape Stratos as one of the sources so that we could have a set of scripted clips rather than handling disks. But then Chris also had a little bit of source material that he wanted to pull from a disk. So we used a Sony UHD player for that. So those sources went into a 4 input, 1 output switcher, and then that went into a 1 input, 4 output. Can't say the word. Splitter. Yep, exactly. And so most of the projectors were seeing the same signal all at the same time simultaneously. But if we were, you know, if we were testing one group, the other group of projectors was turned off, and then we would just. Chris. Chris would play a clip and then we could switch from one projector to the next on the fly.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Very good. Now, all the projectors were calibrated, I believe, and we have a couple pictures of. Of at least Chris doing that. I think. Sammy, you were involved in that as well, right?

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Yes. Yeah.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So here's a picture of you guys doing some calibration ahead of the actual event. And there was another picture that I don't know who took these pictures. This one has a nice view of the screen and also of the computer with some of the results of the.

[John Schuerman]

Calibration and that one's much more reflective of what the room actually looked like because again, you get that, oh, look at all the ambient light in the room. That's the exposure of the camera.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Exactly, exactly, yeah. So, Sam, how was the calibration process? Did it go pretty smoothly?

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

It went pretty smoothly. So, like in that picture there, for instance, Chris was taking the readings and I was controlling the projector. And basically that's kind of how we did a lot of it. Some of it was done off site ahead of time, and then we brought it to the actual venue location, remeasured them to make sure that they held up. If they didn't hold up, then we basically did them again. And we basically just went through SDR doing brightness matching. So that was completely as close as we can get. So some might be like 104 nits, some might be exactly 100 nits. And then for HDR, we just did full out. But in that case, we are doing, we're working on The Epson, the QB 1000 in that one picture, and we just use different processes. So for instance, we had to do a lot of different things that most people probably would not normally do with like, say, for instance, the Sony.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Like what? So trade secrets here, maybe.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Kind of. So basically what we did with the Sony is we ended up going in and loading a custom 1D LUT to the actual projector itself. And after we did that, we then ended up going through and using Projector Calibrator Pro to get it closer. Because if we had have just left it as is, it wouldn't have been representative of what it could be. So we did those two things and then we still went through and calibrated it afterwards. So we did a lot of stuff like that. We did a lot of direct uploads and custom luts for the JVCs. We did that for the Sony. We used a lot of the web GUI control for the Epsons. And then for the Valerian, we just went through and used the user controls that were available to it.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So this, by the way, is a good example of why when you're spending that kind of money on a projector, you want to hire a professional calibrator. I have always said this. You know, if you're buying $100 TV or $200 TV, there's no point. But if you're spending this kind of money, you really want to hire a professional calibrator who has all these tricks in their toolbox.

[John Schuerman]

Yeah, we of course are big believers in that.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yeah.

[John Schuerman]

Chris, And Sammy's involvement. I just wanted to piggyback what Sammy just said. Every attempt was made to make each projector look as good as it possibly could. Like some of those samples were manufactured samples that have been shipped around. So we wanted to try to get them looking as good as possible.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Sure.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Yeah. The Sony required a lot of tricks.

[John Schuerman]

But I don't know how much of that is. Again, it was a sample that was then shipped around and so.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. It might have, might have needed some extra care.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Yeah. At least you know, you weren't getting.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Golden samples like some reviewers get.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Right. Yeah. You're going to come across sample to sample variants. That's unavoidable.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Exactly.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

So you have to account for that. And then you also have things just in regards to the room itself. So you, you have to contend with a lot of different scenarios. But I mean, for the most part that was a sample that was, you know, lent to us that who knows what it could have been through. So we just wanted to make sure that it was correct.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So. So who were the attendees who, who came to, to, to look at these and share their opinions and.

[John Schuerman]

Well, I think that was probably most of what I was. While these guys were sweating trying to get all this stuff set up. I mean I, the amount, like I said, like Sammy said, they were setting up all these projectors, pre calibrated them and in many cases had to calibrate them again at the other venue. While they were doing that, I was trying to do promotional stuff. So on Facebook and AVS forum, I put out a call to whoever wanted to come. We had some people fly in from California and other places and in one shootout we did, we had people come in from Canada. Wow. So we've had people come in from all over because they want to see these things side by side and under controlled circumstances. Again, that's how we, how the screen room kind of made its name, the controlled circumstances conditions part of it. So it was people we didn't charge for the shootout so anybody could come. So we had probably 10 to 15 people at various times each day. So probably 30 people total over a couple of days. Some, like I said, from far away, many from local, some who had been to our previous shootout. But these were mostly, most of them were like I would call informed enthusiasts that were, you know, there were some complete lay people there too. But there were also people that kind of knew what they, at least they thought they needed to look for. I think it was eye opening and we try not to be snobs at all at these things, we talk very casually and try to take the time to explain the stuff and easier to understand terms without talking over people's head or talking down to people. At least that's our goal. Hopefully people feel that way.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Well, I hope so too. And here we've seen a couple of photos from, from the event of some of the attendees. And this is with the lights on in the room.

[John Schuerman]

Yes.

[Scott Wilkinson]

I was also happy to see at least one woman there as our, our hobby is mostly men.

[John Schuerman]

Let's face is, it was an 80 20. So we had a fair number of women there, which we were happy to see.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Oh yeah.

[John Schuerman]

Often they have sometimes the most perceptive comments.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Oh, no kidding. Wow, that's great.

[John Schuerman]

I would say especially when we do the audio test because hearing tends to be better.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Race the rudders.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Raise the sails.

[John Schuerman]

Raise the sails.

[Chris Deering]

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger, wait.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Is that an enterprise sales solution?

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[Scott Wilkinson]

Now. Among, among the activities there, Chris gave a presentation. We have a picture of that. And Chris, what were you. You were sort of setting the situation up, setting the scene, as it were.

[Chris Deering]

Yeah, I tried my best at the beginning of this to, to basically convey as much bias so that the people that, the things that I really wanted to, to show as the best were the best. No, in the beginning, it was basically just a rundown of like, this is the way that we're going to run it. These are the reasons why we're going to run it. I, this is the second event that I've done with the screening room. It's been, it's been nice to have the, the time and the resources to be able to do something like this. And, and you know, not every dealer out there does stuff like this. A lot of times you just see like, oh, we're just gonna open them up, put them out, you know, put them on a table and show them and things like that. Where the, the care that's good that goes into this really makes a huge difference, I feel. But I, I talked about the fact that, you know, we weren't going to show side by side images. A lot of people, you know, even at the event were like, well, why not just show it side by side? It shows more of a drastic difference between the two. And there is merit to that. I mean, Again, like, no matter how you're going to do these, there's going to be people that have opinions on how you should have done it or not, of course. But I truly believe that when you're talking about judging images, you know, when we're watching something in your theater room, your living room or anything like that, you're only watching one image at a time and your perception of that image is based on just watching one at a time. I've seen so many people over the years that I've done this here, even at my theater, theater in my house, or at other places where they'll look at a projector or they'll bring their projector to because they want to compare it to something I might have and they'll say something along the lines of like, oh, well, my, my projector doesn't look like that. As soon as I put it side by side with something else, oh, you must have changed something. But the, the problem is, is your perception of that image now is skewed because you're looking at another image next to it. And, and what I wanted to be able to achieve was just saying that, look at, I'm going to show you an image, you know, like let's say a two minute clip or a one minute clip and then I'm going to show it to you on the next one and then I'm going to show it to you on the next one. And if in that time, you know, you watching that subjectively, you don't really notice any difference between the two. The odds are the difference between the two isn't enough to really merit it. It. Now if you start seeing, you know, clear differences between the two, then you probably have enough difference between them. But if I put two images side by side, you start seeing the things where, you know, one, any kind of differences are, are a lot more obvious than they would have been if you just saw one or the other. But you also start seeing things that are just things you, you can't control. So at, you know, Sammy and I did the calibrations on these and we tried our best to get them as tightly calibrate as possible. But in calibration there's always error. So you know, if you have a red, green, blue based, you know, visual system, you know, you know, coming out of the projector and they are all at the same, you know, close to the same error rate, well, one could be erroring closer to blue than red, but they still have the overall same error rate. So then you could have two images next to each other, where one's a little reddish, where one's a little bluish. And people like, well, I don't like that one. It's, you know, like, you know, brand X is always kind of blue and I don't like blue.

[John Schuerman]

Blue.

[Chris Deering]

I'd rather it be red. Well, I can make that one look red and I can make that one look blue. We didn't perceptually match the errors. We just, you know, calibrated them too and tried to get as low as errors we can. So we didn't want things like that skewing that. But at the end of every session, so when we got done with like the, the lower end models or the higher end models, you know, we went through, you know, a script of sorts of all this different material. At the end, we would open it up and say, hey, we'll use the next, you know, 15 minutes to any request for a side by side. You know, you want to see this projector versus this one. If they were in the same group with any of the content that we watched. And I think everybody here would be in agreement that 99.9% of the time that that happens. It's always the dark material. It's always people asking to see like the torture test of like, you know, the super dark material. Because, because in general, most of the time these projectors almost look, you know, exactly the same with the vast majority of the brighter to mid tone things where people really see the dramatic differences between them at the lower end so they tend to concentrate like, oh, I really want to see how much. And then it's even really more apparent depending on, you know, which display you were comparing to another.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Sure.

[Chris Deering]

I think the only time we actually did a side by side of brighter material or mid range material was when and we actually forced that. You know, John had asked to do a bright clip comparison between two of them and I did kind of more of a mid tone clip just because it was like, again, everybody always just picks the dark stuff.

[John Schuerman]

And those were illustrative of concepts too. Chris. It was very important or very valid points that we're making about what was going on in those two things when we, when we did our own side by side.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

You're usually not going to see most of the things that people will see in a vacuum. You would never notice it. You would actually need to have something that is side by side and you would have to start pointing things out or know specifically what you're looking for.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

But like Chris said, if you don't notice it just by going from A to B to C. It doesn't really merit enough worth to like for you to actually notice it because it's so small, you would only notice it outside of a vacuum.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. We have a couple pictures. Just wanted to show everybody. Again, these are photos from the event. So here people are looking at one of the screens and you that on the left and you can see the right screen is dark and you guys put a curtain between them, which is a good idea. Black curtain. And then in the next one I don't see. You don't see the left screen in this one, but it's dark and you can see people are looking at the right side screen. And then finally, as Chris said, when, when you, when somebody said, okay, what would you like to see side by side in the next graph? You can see that, that they showed that. And here's an example of why a photograph isn't a good idea to evaluate image quality. Because these two images look different. I'm sure they didn't look that way in the room.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

Right. That's another reason that you don't want to show both at the same time. Because even though they were kind of in their own little cove.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yeah.

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

You still have it bound because it's all reflective light. Right. So it's bouncing off the screen to the wall in the back. Back to the screen. So like when we were calibrating, for instance, you could have one screen completely off. We could have a 10 window of say magenta up and that far left screen is looking magenta. So you're going to contaminate the other wall. Right. So you're going to contaminate the other screen if you showed both at the same time anyways.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Point.

[Steve Crabb]

And then, and then you'd introduce even more error if you try to take pictures or video of it because now you have a camera where you've got to pick something to white balance against so that you could end up with two displays that look very different. Maybe one looks like it's a little pink and one looks like it's a little green, but in reality. And the differences between the two are accentuated even more.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. So you were talking earlier, Chris, about some of the clips that you use and I just wanted to identify some of them. The ice scene from Alpha must have been a very bright scene, right?

[Chris Deering]

Correct. Yeah, we, we tried to get a really good balance of material from really bright, punchy color, you know, things to kind of a mid range, you know, your, your average kind of content to A couple scenes that were extremely dark.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So like for example, the dark one Night Helicopter raid from Zero Dark Thirty.

[Chris Deering]

Correct.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And one of the dark scenes from Oblivion. Tom Cruise movie, his first meeting with Morgan Freeman in the cave or in the, in the building somewhere really dark. But also that movie has some really bright scenes.

[Chris Deering]

Yeah, we did use another sequence from that because that was our only high definition clip. We actually used the HD version of that movie. Oh. So we did a sequence where he's sitting on. Again, like I, I tried to use some content that people have used before. The Zero Dark 31 we had. John and Steve had been at a local Sony demonstration and they had used that clip specifically. So I picked that one as the dark one because Sony had used it in the past. So it didn't look like I was trying to, you know, skew like, oh, like, you know, these people would never use that clip. Well, they, they use it in their own demonstrations. Yeah. And then the Oblivion clip, I just, you know, knew that that had some really br sequences that people use where he's sitting on the mountain and he's like watering that little flower. I've seen that one used plenty of times. So I use that one. And then the dark clip. And then I also did an assortment. We, we had at least three different clips in there that really are not representative of anything people would watch unless you just like watching YouTube clips. But we used. Sony had provided a drive that had some stuff. So we used one that was like highlights from a soccer game. And it was shot, you know, with cameras where it's super sharp, lots of col. Really bright. There was a clip of Rio, Rio de Janeiro during Carnivale. And then we used the Peru clip that has been used by Sony, JVC and everything else. It was actually on a JVC HDR disc, but it's, it's a third party content that they license. And I've seen other ones use it, which again looks a lot like what you see when you go in like Best Buy or whatever. And they always have these like really bright, super sharp, you know, nature photography stuff that again, doesn't look like anything but itself. But I thought that that would be nice for if people were trying to compare bright, really sharp stuff to see like, oh, does these 1080p E shift projectors look as good as the native 4K projectors? Or hey, I've heard the JVCs aren't as sharp as the Sony's. Or I've heard the, you know, the single chip DLP is super sharp and these are going to look dull. You know, you would have content that would hopefully bring that out if, if people noticed it. And I don't even think anybody commented on anything it had.

[John Schuerman]

I don't think we, I don't think we had one comment even in this written stuff that people submitted or even at the show, a sharpness difference which actually bodes well for Epson because the epson is a 1080p pixel shipper. So is the DLP.

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So.

[Chris Deering]

So is the DLP.

[John Schuerman]

Don't want to jump ahead too much?

[Scott Wilkinson]

No, no, no. We're going to get to the results in our in part two, which in fact, I think it's about time to, to mosey on for now. So let's, let's pick this up in part two when we will talk about the results of the shootout and the takeaways after two days of viewing. For now, I want to thank you all for being here. John Schuerman, owner of the screening room [e-mail] screeningroom AV.com that'll be in our show notes. Thanks so much for being here.

[John Schuerman]

Oh, had a good time as usual.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And Steve Crabb, sales and marketing and system designer at the Screening Room. Thank you.

[Steve Crabb]

You thanks Scott.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Chris Deering, owner of deep dive AV professional calibration consulting and [e-mail] diveav.com. that'll also be in the show notes. Thanks, Chris.

[Chris Deering]

Thank you so much, Scott.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And Sammy Prescott Jr. A professional ISF Level 3 calibrator. Where can folks find you online?

[Sammy Prescott Jr.]

You can reach me through projector central.com like you have a contact us. You could reach me there and also reach me through the screening room. I'm listed on there as a partner.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Very good. Great. Well, that's it for this episode. But be sure to join us for part two where when we reveal what the results were of the 2025 projector shootout from the screening room AV. Now if you have a question for me, please send it along to HTGWIT tv. I will answer as many as I can right here on the show. And as you know by now, all Twitch shows, including home theater geeks, are available for free on YouTube but with commercials. If you want to go ad free, join the club. Go to Twit TV Club Twit to sign up and get all of our content add free. Until next time, Geek out.