The Sony VPL-VW60 is a Full HD, DLP projector, available since autumn 2007 and currently selling for around 3,800 GBP.

Reviewed by Florian Friedrich on January 28, 2010

Rich contrast.
Easy, versatile installation.

Poor interlaced-PAL processing.
Occasional lack of finest details.
Some blur during fast motion.

Sony’s ‘black pearl’ impresses with enormous contrast and a fascinating, cinematic picture. It’s therefore easy to forgive small weaknesses in PAL de-interlacing and the slight trailing effect. The score nevertheless has to reflect the device’s shortcomings, but don’t get us wrong — this is one excellent projector.

Most important connections:

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Features

Improvements here since the last version include the introduction of special filters in the beam’s path to increase the contrast (we’ll discuss these later). The innovative electronic convergence correction, which you’ll find in the “Panel Alignment” menu, allows you to shift each primary colour by up to two pixels. Correction is purely digital — that is, it doesn’t shift the projection panels — and achieves an accuracy of 0.1 pixels. While this won’t replace a perfect mechanical convergence correction, it’s still highly effective. And it’s nothing to be scoffed at; the so-called “Ruby” projector, the VW 100, suffered convergence problems and even showed offsets of as much as several pixels in some test patterns. The newly introduced correction setting is therefore a real blessing and works astonishingly well.

Also astonishingly good is the improved automatic iris in the lens; this varies the light output in accordance with the picture’s contents. At the same time, a gamma correction adjusts the brightness levels in the picture so that the picture impression barely changes. Sony’s trickery for improving contrast is some of the best on the market — but you still occasionally notice the effect. In our tests, we spotted it on scene changes, camera pans, or changes from a bright to a dark image, for example. At the time of testing (early 2008), the only system that could do better was the automatic iris in higher-end Panasonic LCD projectors.

One real novelty: The remote control allows complete lens adjustment. The motorised zoom (1.8x), focus, and vertical lens shift make positioning the projector extremely versatile. And instead of constantly dashing over to the screen to check the sharpness, you can simply stand right in front of it and adjust the setting with the remote control. But the crosshatch test pattern that the menu offers for lens adjustment displays too briefly.

On top of all these features, the VW 60 provides improved “Image Director” software, a new picture format setting for use with anamorphic lens attachments, and extended HDMI communication using the CEC protocol. If, therefore, you switch on a connected Sony Blu-ray player, the projector springs into action and switches to the corresponding input.

Operation

The remote control offers numerous direct buttons for adjusting the picture settings, giving the Sony an accessible feel. The user therefore almost never needs to trek to the depths of the on-screen menu, since the controls for brightness, contrast, colour space, colour temperature, iris, and other important features stand constantly at the ready on the handset.

Despite this, calibration of the projector is a relatively involved process: Instead of making a single, useful preset available at all times, the device uses a total of 20 user-memory locations for different types of input signal. So, once you’ve found the ideal settings for you Blu-ray player using a test disc, you’ll have to write them all down and enter them all again for signals from an HDTV set-top box.

On top of that, the settings are never ultimately safe — any change to the picture settings immediately overwrites those stored in the currently selected memory location. At least for the presets you can use the remote control’s “Reset” button to recover from larger catastrophes.

Buttons on the side of the projector allow the user to control the device’s basic functions.

Light and Colours

Although highly pure, the primary colours fail to match the relevant studio standards.

With its 200-watt lamp, the VW 60 manages to combine a large, neutral light output (in the “Low” colour-temperature setting) with excellent blacks and highly pure primary colours. But a few of Sony recent devices have failed to use these pure primary colours to display standardised colour spaces precisely — and the same is the case with the VW 60. Even the “Normal” colour space is way too large.

Additional colour spaces for the “709” and “601” standards therefore remain on our wish list for future models, as does a calibration-friendly colour-balance menu, which is a common feature these days (RGB gamma, offset, and gain). Nevertheless, with the colour temperature set to “Low”, the VW 60’s colours form an excellent basis for home cinema.

Especially in bright scenes, the picture shows exemplary uniformity. But our VW 60 showed slight green colouration in the centre of fully white test patterns. Brightening in the corners of dark images was only slightly visible, similarly to that in LCD projectors of the same age, such as the Sanyo Z-2000. But both effects are only really visible to the trained eye, using the relevant test patterns — they won’t disturb your viewing in normal film pictures. Black-and-white scenes, such as the opening to “Phantom of the Opera” look neutral on the Sony, showing no colouration, although measurements showed tiny colour deviations in dark areas of the picture.

Contrast

But we also measured phenomenal contrast values: Even with the picture set up for the home cinema, the maximum contrast — with the influence of the automatic iris — reaches 11,000:1. This was a record-breaking value at the time of testing (early 2008). The in-picture contrast, on which the iris has no effect, still measures 2,400:1, a typical value mid-way between the ANSI and On/Off measurements.

The brightness, at 600 lumens in the normal lamp mode, is excellent, meaning the projector is suitable even for screens wider than 2.5 metres. Sony has designed the device’s presets to be more user-friendly than those of the VW 50, which needed professional calibration using measurement devices to achieve optimal results.

The tricks that manufacturers use to optimize brightness and contrast in home-cinema projectors are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The diagram below shows the path of light in Sony’s VPL-VW 60.

Beginning at the 200 watt UHP lamp, the beam initially contains the full spectral composition of the three primary colours red, green, and blue. The blue, green, and red wavelengths are first separated by ‘dichroic mirrors’, mirrors which only allow a certain range of wavelengths to pass and reflect the rest. Special optical filters increase the purity of the colours before the primary colours each hit the relevant SXRD projection chip. A prism then combines the three beams into an image.

Newly designed contrast filters sit immediately in front of the three projection chips. These make the rays of light travel parallel to one another, reducing the amount of scattered light, since this produces weaker blacks and, therefore, poorer contrast ratios.

Picture Quality of Standard-Definition Signals

With lower-resolution or even interlaced signals, the VW 60’s quality drops. Films in interlaced-PAL format (576i) show obvious comb effects on moving edges and visibly stepped shading. There’s also picture cropping (overscan) on the right and left sides of the picture, even if you switch the “Over Scan” setting off. Projectors such as the Marantz VP-15 show much more attention to detail here, and even the much-cheaper Sanyo PLV-Z 2000 performs better. If you’re planning on buying the VW 60, therefore, we also recommend buying a DVD player with decent HD up-scaling.

Picture Quality of High-Definition Signals

Films from Blu-ray discs deliver breathtaking, highly cinematic pictures. Letterbox bars on 21:9 films show how much the contrast has improved — both subjectively and in terms of measurements — since the earlier VW 50 model; with the picture set up correctly, the bars barely remain visible. You’ll still benefit from using manual, vertical screen masking (blackdrop), but the picture also looks very contrast-rich with normal 16:9 projector screens — most LCD projectors cannot compete. DLP projectors with Full HD resolution, however, are often a touch better.

Potential remains for improvement in future models: Despite problem-free 24p playback from Blu-rays, the Sony only resolves highly detailed pictures perfectly if they’re static or only moving slightly. Scenes with fast motion and lots of detail, such as the camera pans past skyscrapers in “Spider-Man 3”, lead to slight blur. If the camera stops moving, the detail improves significantly. Sony quotes a reaction time for the SXRD panels of 2.5 milliseconds, the blur could instead be a result of the video processing. Here, the VW 60 uses the Bravia engine also found in Sony TVs. The even more powerful “Bravia Pro” processing first appeared in the VW 200, which was released a few months later.

HDTV test patterns from the test disc “DVE High Definition” showed that the video processing occasionally produced edge-ringing even with the sharpness turned down to minimum. Fine white lines on a grey background cast a slight, dark shadow, and there’s a lack of detail contrast in black-and-white checkerboard patterns with one-pixel-sized squares. But because film pictures are more forgiving than such highly critical test patterns, and because these small shortcomings are less apparent at normal viewing distances, you won’t notice the errors in practice. Cheaper LCD projectors such as the Panasonic PT-AE 2000 or the Sanyo PLV-Z 2000 produce at least the same amount of detail contrast; in the DLP sector, every model we’ve seen is superior.

Still, the VW 60 scores highly in animation films such as “Ice Age 2” on Blu-ray, producing extremely full colours and rich contrast. The pixels are very close to one another (fill factor: 90 %), meaning there’s no irritating screen-door effect. Also impressive was the Adam Sandler film “Click”, whose picture was both cinematic and convincing.

Ideal Settings

Picture Mode: User

Contrast: Maximum

Brightness: 44

Colour: 50

Hue: 50

Colour Temp.: Low

Sharpness: Minimum

Cinema Black Pro: Off

NR: Off

DDE: Film

Black Level Adj.: Off

Gamma Correction: Off

These settings apply to realistic playback of HDTV/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations might necessitate slight adjustment.