Test: Vivitek H9080FD

The world's first DLP Full HD Home Cinema Projector with LED lights

Gimmick or the technology of the future?

The traditional cathode ray tube was practically indispensable as a light source for high-quality large projections for nearly three decades.

It wasn’t until the 90s that digital projectors with LCD, DLP or LCoS technology were able to supersede CRT projectors and overtake them technically. Their high light output, brilliant colours, high-definition details and high plasticity are now able to fulfil nearly all desires.

And despite the progresses made, they have one grave weakness that does deter many people from buying: the light source. Nearly every home cinema projector has a normal mercury vapour lamp (UHP) that provides the necessary light. This gas mixture is suitable for gaining a reasonable amount of light, performs reasonably well and at the same time lasts relatively long. Current projectors achieve approximately up to 3000 hours with a 300W lamp before they need to be changed. Although this is the current state of the art, there is still room for improvement. Therefore, lamp technology loses a large amount of power from lost heat, which means the ventilation is much louder and more complex, especially when not a heavy device. Moreover, it is impossible to predict the lifetime of the bulb with absolute certainty, which is why the information provided by the manufacturer is only a guide and cannot be guaranteed in most cases. A new lamp will mean additional costs of several hundred Euros.

But the colour transmitted by the UHP lamp is not perfect: the light does not emit a very large red frequency share as blues and greens do, so if you calibrate the colours to the video standard, you will inevitably experience a great loss of brightness and contrast. Last but not least, the lamps need to be a certain minimum size, which is why projectors cannot have a very compact design. Especially when comparing competing video output devices such as flat panel screens, lamps are one of the biggest drawbacks of projectors, and this cuts the market share significantly.

But this is being worked on: in the last few years, LED technology has been affecting more and more areas of our lives. At first they were only used as signal lights in technical equipment and instruments. Now they are being installed into more and more screens, light up rooms instead of light bulbs and are implemented on the roads from daytime running lights to traffic lights, increasing safety and reducing energy consumption. With higher light output, compacter dimensions, lighter cooling and especially a longer lifespan (up to 100,000 hours), LEDs are the lighting technology of the present and the future. The obvious use for them is in large projections as a replacement for conventional light bulbs if only there wasn’t one major shortfall: light output. Until now, the small miraculous diodes were simply not able to emit enough light to illuminate a canvas of several square meters in size. After all, an average of 300 to 800 lumens is needed for home cinemas in order for the image to be adequately bright. Therefore, installing this innovative technology in projectors was seen as being a long way off, up until today.

In recent months there have been major breakthroughs in image brightness. Specialist manufacturers such as Osram, Philips or Luminus have managed to achieve outputs up to 1000 lumen in the required basic colours red, green and blue. Particular attention has been given to the "PhlatLight" LEDs from Luminus, which can be bought and have already reached market maturity. Together with Vivitek, a manufacturer and subsidiary of one of the world's largest DLP projector manufacturers, Delta, they succeeded in developing the world's first LED-based home cinema projector, which is due to be on the market this summer. We are talking about the Vivitek H9080FD.

The technical data sounds fascinating: with a light output of 800 lumens, the projector need not hide from its UHP competitors, but instead offers in return a lifespan of 20,000 (!) hours, that’s about ten times more than standard bulbs. Moreover, the power consumption of about 180 Watts is only about half the current average. Putting these practical advantages aside, the device is supposed to be able to achieve purer colours and more contrast, etc., etc.

As always with pioneering new technologies, all of this has its price: a home cinema fan has to invest about €15,000 to start as an LED pioneer in large screens. The question naturally arises as to whether this investment is worthwhile. Do LEDs really have so many advantages that it justifies the current price? And above all: is this really what the future holds for large-screen projection?

We will answer these questions in an exclusive Cine4Home special, which we will publish in three parts: in the first part, we will outline image properties of the world's first LED projector from Vivitek. In the second part we will examine the technical implementation and interior, as usual with Cine4Home preciseness. And in the third part we will show the complete test, including all criteria typical for Cine4Home.

Back to top

1. The projector

When you come face to face with the Vivitek H9080FD for the first time, you will see that it does not really fit the LED image. Instead of a compact pocket-sized projector, it looks more like a prehistoric giant:

Being 520mm x 244mm x 560mm in size and weighing about 20kg, it is not easy to integrate it into the room unobtrusively and therefore not really suitable for living rooms. However, its workmanship is technically at the highest level. The entire chassis is made of metal and provides a real high-end feeling. The ports also meet the highest demands as they can be hidden elegantly behind a flap:

2 x HDMI (1.3), 1 x Component, 1 x BNC, 1 x VGA, 1 x S-Video, 1 x Composite are available, making the projector compliant with all common signalling standards. And all jacks are of high quality and comply with professional standards.

When you turn the projector on, one more illusion disappears: LEDs also lose a certain amount of power, which is converted into heat. Therefore they too need an effective cooling system, at least for the high performance demanded here. The cooling in the H9080FD was achieved by active ventilation using a conventional fan. Therefore, it is not very silent (28dB), even if it works quietly enough. This does not mean, however, that LED projectors cannot be fan-free in the future: Just like processors, they can be cooled passively with a liquid, so silent running is not a utopian dream. You cannot, however, expect everything at once in this generation, but the new technology needs a little time and room for improvement.

Its advantages in everyday use are already apparent. After you turn the projector on, the image appears on the screen at full brightness after only a few seconds. The LEDs do not have a long warm-up phase as do UHP bulbs. And when you turn off the projector, it is off immediately, because it also does not need to be cooled after. Therefore, we do not need to worry about any possible lamp damage, even during a power failure. With a lifespan of 20,000 hours, they will outlast about 12,000 films. Even if you watch one film every day, it would last approximately 30 years. The subject of lifespan is now banished from home cinemas once and for all and this alone consists of a price advantage of around € 4,000 - then conventional UHP projectors would need to have their lamps replaced 10 times in this period of time. This also shows that LED technology is suitable for intensive commercial use in particular.

Our list will not be influenced by the LED technology, which is why there is nothing revolutionary to report here. After all, the H9080FD has a horizontal and vertical lens shift as is standard in this price range and is available with a choice of a short and long throw lens. Therefore providing a maximum flexible installation.

Back to top

2. Operation

The menu in the Vivitek H9080FD is conservative and typical for home cinemas: all parameters for calibrating the image and installation are clearly structured over several pages.

In the third part of our LED series (projector test) we will show all of the functions in detail and how they perform. Home cinema experts will recognise certain similarities with Planar devices, even when it comes to the remote control:

The remote is a standard model, which you will also find with projectors from Viewsonic or Planar. Although it works reliably and is well-structured, it does not, however, meet our expectations for a projector in the €10,000 price range. The manufacturer should definitely improve the finish and material quality.

3. First test results

After giving our first impressions, we then get to the very core of the first part of our special, the part our readers are interested in the most: how well did the image properties fare in our test lab Apart from the increased practical benefits, are the various image aspects of a higher quality in the LED projector? Here the main findings are compact. The complete test will be released in the third part.

3.1 Gamut

LEDs have a reputation of being able to produce especially pure and vibrant colours and therefore an especially large colour space because of their narrow frequency band. Even if current film software does not support large colour spaces, this is still an increasingly important topic because more and more colour spaces are able to be used in computer and multimedia applications. A previous reference in this area is the SXRD home cinema projector from Sony based on Xenon bulbs.

The LED projector from Vivitek differs greatly from conventional UHP projectors in that no white light has to be elaborately dismantled by mirrors into its spectral components. Instead, there is a separate LED for each colour. Each LED can be produced optimally in its own frequency and therefore has an especially pure light in a narrow band. We used a spectroradiometer to see whether this is also true of the PhlatLight LEDs in the Vivitek H9080FD:

The theoretical side has not been exaggerated. The reading above shows the maximum native colour space of the H9080FD. Every home cinema fan will immediately recognize that this is an unparalleled large colour space, which no UHP-based projector can achieve.

Above: Xenon colour space and average UHP colour space

Below: Significantly larger LED colour space

The direct comparison shows that not even a Xenon projector is able to produce such a large colour space. We will show the detailed spectrum at a later date.

But you do not always need such a large colour space, therefore it is important to have several settings as well as a colour management system so that users can also make their own adjustments. The Vivitek H9080FD offers both.

You can select both the colour decoder and colour space of the projector in the picture menu. The measurement above shows e.g. the "Rec 709" setting, which is needed for HD footage. It does come close but the green is not totally perfect. If you want it more detailed, you can calibrate it yourself using a CMS and measuring sensors.

These first results show that LED technology is to be seen as a very big step forward especially when it comes to colour,. The additive colour mixture (instead of filtering certain spectral elements) brings great advantages for the basic colours and their different shades. We will go into more detail in our test, which will include picture results.

Back to top

3.2  Colour temperature

The new LED technology also offers new aspects with colour temperature. Our experienced home cinema users know that the white spectrum of conventional UHP projectors has an obvious red deficiency, so that calibrating to the 6500K / D65 video standard causes a significant loss of brightness and contrast. Only the expensive xenon-based models do not suffer from this problem, but then have the grave disadvantage of continual light loss and unaffordable replacement costs. By distributing the three LED lights, the Vivitek H9080FD behaves differently:

The reading shows that the calibration to the D65 standard is already very good ex factory. This can be further perfected using the normal RGB Gain/Bias regulator.

The interesting aspect is that by skillfully controlling the LEDs no red deficiency prevails in the spectrum. Therefore, there is no connection between a great loss of contrast and brightness and calibration. More details will follow in the third part of our preview special.

3.3 Black level, contrast, brightness

Even though LEDs are a new light source, they are still not able to perform miracles. The native contrast is still influenced by the actual DLP Light Engine, and this is surprisingly conservative and identical to that of a UHP projector. Accordingly, the native contrast of the Vivitek H9080FD behaves "normally" - it can achieve approximately 2800:1 when the colour temperature has been perfectly calibrated.

And yet, some innovations are still exciting. Most readers will have heard of "dynamic" contrast: many projector models adapt the light flux to the average brightness of the image scene with so-called adaptive light visors, and can therefore significantly increase contrast. Good systems work without disturbing side effects. Poorly implemented systems, however (and this is unfortunately true for most) cause brightness pumps, strong dimming effects, blooming, etc. For this reason, adaptive aperture systems are controversial.

LED technology brings new possibilities: in contrast to conventional UHP lamps, they can be "dimmed" in real time. That is, you can adapt their brightness in real time to each film image. And this not only applies for white, but for each basic colour individually! This technology replaces the cumbersome aperture mechanics as the adaptive iris aperture makes way for real-time light dimming. The system provides new unimagined opportunities, which however require complex programming.

The Vivitek H9080FD has such an adaptive integrated LED controller: depending on the image content, the LEDs can be dimmed and their pulse characteristics affected. We will look into this principle in more detail in the thorough technical special (part 2). As with conventional systems, three different levels can be selected, depending on how aggressive the adaptive LED control should be: in the weak mode, the Vivitek projector achieves a dynamic range of about 10,000:1, in the stronger mode about 23,000:1 and in the most powerful mode a non-measurable "infinite contrast". This is because when the screen is totally black, the LEDs just switch off completely. This of course is simply "trickery", because when LEDs are deactivated they cannot produce a single picture pixel. Therefore, the contrast claim is purely marketing, and has nothing to do with practice.

We will reveal in detail in our complete test what possible side effects individual adaptive modes at this stage of development could have. The adaptive gamma compensation has unfortunately not reached perfection yet.

Vivitek’s H9080FD combines good contrast values with a light output of 500-600 lumens, depending on the setting and distance to the screen. The projector is therefore suitable for screens with widths up to 3m when completely dimmed, but still cannot keep up with some "light cannons". Light output has posed the greatest difficulty for LED light sources so far.

Back to top

3.4 Rainbow effect and typical DLP artifacts

Home cinema fans with sensitive eyes can breathe a sigh of relief. Not least because of the annoying rainbow effect DLP projectors have increasingly lost market share in the last few years. We are referring to the sequential generation of colour, which is responsible for basic colours flashing individually when there are rapid movements. The greater the contrast of the projectors of each generation, the more noticeable this disturbing effect was.

The only way to cure this is to increase the repetition frequency of the colours in these high areas, which makes our eyes too lazy. In UHP-based projectors, the colour wheel determines the technical maximum. You cannot rotate it at the speed you would like. Especially well-optimized models reach a colour repetition frequency of 300Hz (6 x the speed of the colour wheel), i.e., the RGB sequence runs through each video image six times. It was previously not possible to have more without supporting other artifacts (colour).

The millisecond response of the LEDs and the 3-LED technology offer decisive advantages. The mechanical colour wheel is omitted and the LEDs can be switched through at tremendous speed like a traffic light. The transitional period between the basic colours is also omitted and so a repetition rate of 900Hz (!) per basic colour is available. This is equivalent to 18 times the speed of the colour wheel and is three times faster than the best UHP competitors.

With this high colour frequency, the topic of rainbow effects with single-chip DLP projectors has been eliminated. Even if you have sensitive eyes you will not be able to make out any annoying colour flashes. The LED technology also benefits from lack of noise and false contour effects, but these have still not been completely eliminated.

3. Conclusion

In the first part of our Vivitek LED special, we have given an overview of the basic innovations of this new technology. Here already we can see the enormous potential for colour, contrast and artifact reduction. Indeed, the results of this first model have surprised us so positively that we are convinced 3-LED technology is the future of lighting.

With a lighter cooling system, less wastage, longer life, higher colour purity, compacter dimensions, less power consumption etc., etc., LEDs offer key advantages compared to UHP lamp technology, removing the last weaknesses of large projections. But all of this does not mean that the goal has been reached. Even though the Vivitek H9080FD proves that LEDs are now able to achieve good brightness for home cinemas, they can still not be light cannons. The adaptive light control and cooling also need to be optimized and then the full potential of all technical possibilities will have been tapped into effectively.

In the next part (II) of this special, we will deal with the technical setup of the projector in more detail and will show how each of the three LEDs provides the necessary light...

Your
Cine4Home Team

4. Technical data (manufacturer's specifications!)

Vivitek H9080FD

To the main page of www.Cine4Home.com

Back to top