VPL-HS51A Remote, Menu System & Calibration

Remote Control (RM-PJVW100)

The Sony remote was better than many I've seen, and was hampered only by an unconventional navigational system. It had the backlighting I look for (especially in projector remotes) and the buttons themselves were well laid out and easy to use. While there were no direct input buttons (a big negative in my book) Sony provides such an easy way to auto-detect inputs that the single "Input" button on the remote was nearly as good.

I'm not sure that providing direct and easy access to brightness and contrast controls is something custom installers will want their clients to have, so be sure to immediately hide this remote and get the codes programmed into a universal remote as fast as humanly possible. For those home users who can't help but tweak those settings on the fly - Sony has dangled the carrot of customization in front of your face (these would presumably be the same people who also like to make color adjustments by eye as well). It's a wonder why there aren't also Hue and Saturation controls on the front of the remote (I mean, while we're at it why not give them a way to completely mess up the color as well as grayscale.) All joking aside, the remote has some good features including direct access to the three User settings (customizable per input), Picture adjustments, Scaling modes, Lens settings and Picture modes.

One thing that kept this from getting the "greatest projector remote of the year" award, other than the too-convenient availability of the brightness and contrast controls, was the navigational buttons. Instead of a simple quad configuration with central enter button, Sony opted for a horizontal rocker system that felt unnatural and confused the senses. Pressing the 'Enter' button was often confused with the left/right arrows in the dark. Though after some time, any remote will become familiar to the user, so this is hardly a significant issue.

The Menu System

Picture Menu
The PICTURE Menu allows users to control most of the important aspects of the projector's picture and lamp controls. This includes not only Brightness, Contrast, Color, and Hue settings, but also Color Temperature, Lamp Intensity, and the Advanced Iris. You will also be able to control the deinterlacer to favor film or video sources (we kept it on Film for most of our testing which provided 2:3 pull-down). The most accurate color temperature we found was Low (no surprise there) and Gamma correction is available in 3 flavors (we suggest leaving this off).

Signal Menu
This menu allows for adjustment of Dot Phase (RGB only), H Size (RGB only) and Shift (RGB and HDMI) as well as Wide Mode (analogue inputs only), V position (analogue inputs), and Title Area (analogue only for adjustment of subtitle location). When viewing analogue input sources, the Wide Mode feature has five modes:

• Full: pictures are displayed in their correct aspect ratio
• Normal: 4:3 source material is displayed to fill the vertical screen size
• Wide Zoom: 4:3 source material is stretched to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio
• Zoom: 4:3 material is enlarged approximately 30% to fill the screen at the loss of some top and bottom information
• Subtitle: The subtitle area is compressed and displayed at the lower part of the screen.

Function Menu
The Function menu grants access to automatic pixel alignment (APA), Auto Input Search (on/off allowing the projector to automatically grab the current active input), Standby mode (lowers power used in standby mode), and Power Saving (puts the unit into standby after 10 minutes of no signal).

Installation Menu
The installation menu is a set-and-forget menu whereby users and installers can set up the projector for front, rear, ceiling or desk mounted positions. Some projectors name these modes for easy identification. Sony chose to label them a tad cryptically as HV (flips picture horizontally and vertically), H (horizontal flip), and V (vertical flip). So, for example, if used in a ceiling mount rear projection environment, you would want to select HV.

The other menu items include background color, high altitude mode (increases the fan speed to compensate for thinner air), top panel illumination and keystone settings (which we would suggest you avoid using if at all possible). Network settings are also available but cannot be adjusted by the user.

Setup Menu
The Setup menu could almost be rolled into the Installation menu. It allows selection of the menu language system, on-screen status displays, Input A (HD15) configuration (component, computer or video RGB input), and color system (NTSC/PAL/SECAM/etc).

Information Menu
The Information page is helpful in determining the input signal (720p/1080i/etc) or if you would like to know the horizontal or vertical frequency of the input signal. It also provides access to the lamp timer to display the number of hours on the bulb and the preset memory number of the input signal. There is a chart in the user manual defining the 30 types of preset input signals - but you can input up to 20 additional types as well.

Calibration - Let's See Those Black Levels!

OK, so we've gone through the entire menu system and user controls - now it's time to see what those controls can do for the user in terms of calibration options. I was able to get 3350:1 rating using my standard configuration for front projection systems (1373:1 after calibration). This is the best reading I've gotten to date on a front projection system and shows how far Sony has come with this latest product.

The Datacolor ColorFacts software provides a CIE Chart which shows the colors for the VPL-HS51A's HDTV color reference, as well as the gamut of colors that it is capable of creating. The Sony was never able to eek out perfect ATSC color, just coming shy of the potential for red and blue, but it was able to attain satisfactory grayscale uniformity with deep black and white levels.

Here are some of the before and after measurements as shown by the Datacolor ColorFacts Professional 5.5 software:

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Sony VPL-HS51A Benchmark Score: 44 (send this projector progressive source material for best performance)

Comments on HQV Testing

I wasn't blown away by the deinterlacing of the Sony VPL-HS51A, but then again I don't generally allow my projectors to handle that in the first place, so my disappointment was generally short-lived. Sony could do to add some noise reduction to the Cineza (there doesn't appear to be any) as it would definitely help during standard definition television broadcasts which would invariably be a part of this projector's duty cycle. There are three available deinterlacing modes for the projector: Film, Progressive and Off . Progressive and Off are essentially the same as far as our testing is concerned. Film would be the mode we would recommend for anyone's use, though if you are constantly watching horizontally scrolling text over 2-3 film sources then perhaps you'd want to switch over to Progressive . I was surprised that the Progressive mode wasn't more optimized for 2:2 and mixed cadences, but Film actually grabbed onto those sequences more successfully (though not enough to pass most of them) in this mode.

Am I surprised by this performance? Not really, though it's always nice to run into a projector with a good deinterlacing and noise reduction chip. In fact some, like Yamaha's new DPX-1300 DLP projector, provide better processing than many external dedicated units. In any case, feed this projector with good quality source material and you will be pleased with the results (these tests being rendered moot).