The Perfect Vision
Marantz VP-15S1 Additional Notes and Technical Ratings
Under the Hood | Adjustment Notes | Test Discs | Technical Ratings
Under the Hood
One of the most important features of any projector is the lens. The VP-15S1’s optics are custom made for Marantz by Konica-Minolta, and the lens has a zoom range of f:30.7 to 44.5mm. The projector is also available with long-throw optics (VP -15S1L) that has an f:44.5 to 66.75mm zoom lens. The “L” version is the way to go if you need to mount the projector a long distance from the screen.
The Gennum VXP video processor is widely considered one of the best on the market. This high-end, 10-bit chipset provides a wide range of critical functions, including noise and artifact reduction, film cadence (3:2 pulldown) processing, and much more.
One control of interest is called FRC (frame rate conversion). It can be set to Auto1, Auto2, or several fixed frame rates (60, 50, or 48Hz). There’s no way to know if a disc and player combination will output integer or fractional frame rates because there is no standard in this regard. As a result, Auto1 deals with fractional rates (59.94, 49.94, and 23.98Hz), while Auto 2 handles integer rates (60, 50, and 24Hz). If you see stuttering (frames being dropped) at one setting, try the other. Very few video displays offer this level of sophistication.
The 200W SHP lamp has an expected life of just 2000 hours; many competitors claim a 3000-hour life. Furthermore, the manual recommends replacing the lamp after just 1000 hours. This could get expensive, as a new lamp module costs roughly $500. As with any projector, keeping a spare lamp on hand is wise. A built-in timer keeps track of remaining lamp life, counting down from 2000 hours. Once it reaches the last 100 hours, a warning begins to appear onscreen, and when it hits zero (that is, the lamp has been on for a cumulative total of 2000 hours), the projector shuts down until you tell it you’ve replaced the lamp module. (Of course, you could reset the timer without actually replacing the lamp to squeeze more time out of it, but the brightness will undoubtedly decrease and the color will shift.)
Another welcome feature is four-way blanking with three memories. This is useful to trim the edges of the image to remove the digital hash that sometimes mars broadcast signals or mask the artifacts that sometimes appear in the edges of upconverted standard-def material. Note that blanking does not introduce overscan or alter the image size, which would cause picture artifacts.
Adjustment Notes
All adjustments for calibration are found in the user menu, including gamma and grayscale. Opening the iris all the way and setting the lamp to Economy mode allowed the best possible grayscale calibration, though it resulted in slightly high peak white and black levels. However, stopping the iris down to the next lowest setting caused a big drop in light levels (peak white <10fL). With these settings, the projector can easily be used with a larger screen, which would result in lower white and black levels. After calibration, the grayscale was very close to perfect with a slight deviation toward green at the very low end.
The lens is by Konica Minolta and provides excellent quality for the price point. It’s not totally free of chromatic aberrations—there was a slight outline of red about one quarter of a pixel wide on a crosshatch test pattern—but it is much better in this regard than any of the less expensive projectors reviewed in Issue 81. Color decoding appears to be off in all modes without an option to correct it, and the red and green color primaries are oversaturated. That said, color accuracy is still better than most.
The projector provides a chroma error correction (CEC) parameter that inserts a low-pass filter in the signal chain. However, this completely filters out the highest frequencies, reducing horizontal and vertical bandwidth to 18.75MHz. Obviously, it’s best to leave this control off.
Test Discs
The impact of the VP-15S1’s 48fps operation was immediately apparent on chapter 8 of the Mission Impossible III HD DVD, which begins with a slow pan across a slightly curved staircase. With a 1080p/24 signal, the bright stair edges were clean as a whistle and the long panning shot moved with fluid ease. Switching the HD DVD player to output 1080i brought the Marantz’s Gennum processor into play, and the stairs now gained a bit of wavy, pulsing distortion. Still, I’ve seen a lot worse. Besides, anyone who can pop $10K for a projector has no excuse not to upgrade to a 1080p/24-capable DVD player.
On Microsoft engineer Stacey Spears’ HD DVD test disc, 3:2 and 2:2 pulldown detection was nearly instantaneous and super clean. No clipping was apparent on whites.
On the HQV Benchmark HD DVD at 1080i, the Video Resolution Loss Test was perfect, with no flickering. The Jaggies test was smooth as glass. The Film Resolution Loss Test showed some shimmering in the finest vertical bursts. The bleachers looked fine, with no moiré.
On the HQV Benchmark DVD at 480i, the Detail Test showed a slight amount of aliasing in the highest horizontal burst. Black and white differentiation was excellent. The first Jaggies test was good, but not exceptional; the second test showed moderate jaggies. The waving flag looked good, with only slight jaggies. Overall jaggy performance at 480i is moderate.
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