This has been a good week. I just took delivery of my first Marantz VP11S1! For those who are unfamiliar with it, this is Marantz’s latest single chip DLP projector. It uses the new .95” 1080p true HDTV resolution chip from Texas Instruments. It retails for $19999 and is shipping now!

The unit was sent to my main warehouse instead of my location (mistake on my reps part). But as soon as it arrived there, I drove the 45 minutes each direction to pick it up. Like a kid in a candy store I am. The box is roughly the same size as the older VP12S4 series (720p from Marantz) came in. However, this unit definitely has more heft to it. I don’t like to say that the weight has anything to do with the quality in general, but I rarely, if ever, find a hefty projector that is poorly built. This definitely applies to the Marantz. After opening the box, I lifted the well packed (double boxed-I love that) unit out. It was solid as a rock. There is no flimsiness whatsoever. In fact it felt like a piece of molded steel or something. I did not want to drop this on my foot. Along with the unit, was a small accessory pack which included the power cord (standard IEC), thick manual, remote, batteries and a small 1/8” headphone to female RCA (adaptor for use with either the triggers or IR inputs). More on that later…

Besides the new 1080p chip, this unit boasts some other great features. It uses a 200watt/2000 hour lamp and is capable of decent level brightness, adequate for most theaters with controlled light. It also uses the latest VXP Gennum based processing, which is state of the art and capable of scaling virtually any source to the proper resolution this unit requires. The color wheel this unit has is redesigned as well. It uses new filters and a 6x speed which they claim dramatically reduces the potential for rainbows. I cannot comment on whether it will work for those typically sensitive, but I can tell you that I usually can find rainbows if I want to, and I found I couldn’t with this one. Take that for what that is worth. The unit does have an iris, but it is not dynamic. Rather it is a simple 2 mode adjustment, choosing between higher lamp output and higher contrast. This is good for the end users who are not techies, yet may have different viewing habits depending on what they are watching. In addition, the unit has an economy mode for the lamp which helps increase potential lamp life, but it does diminish the output. I will note that though the unit had about average fan noise, when in economy mode it drops quite a bit more, to a low drone. The remote control is plentiful on functions, and backlit, but I found the buttons were a tad small for my fat fingers. Not a big deal if you plan to use a master control, but when doing projector calibrations and such, I found it a bit tough to negotiate, especially under low lighting conditions. The optics that Marantz puts into their projectors are among the best. They are not a lens company, and they recognize that. So they teamed up with Konica-Minolta some time back who designs and makes the lens for them. This has proven a good relationship because the optics are extremely sharp. More on that later… The unit has lots of connectivity on it, including 2 HDMI, 2 component and the standard analog connections. In addition, there are 2 trigger outputs and IR in and out. Of course as with any projector of this caliber, RS232 is standard. Oh, and I can’t forget this…lens shift. In fact, lens shift galore! -85% to positive 165%. This is the most lens shift I have seen on any projector which will make installation very flexible.

Well enough of my rambling…on to the good part…the testing. I first turned on the unit and plugged in my pattern generator. I tend to not throw a picture until after I tweak it, as I like to make sure my first impression is the best it can be. I fired it up, and brought up the menu. I went to do the basic contrast, brightness, etc….but everything was blanked. Hmmm…. checked my connections and was getting a picture no problem. I checked my resolution, that didn’t do anything. Then I remembered that the Marantz comes from the factory on a “Default” mode. Everything is grayed out. I changed that to “User 1”, and voila. I only mention this for you DIY people so you don’t get alarmed when this happens to you. I should also mention there are a few preset modes, but in addition there are 10 user definable modes for those who want lots of setting capabilities. I continued with my adjustments and took some measurements. I have listed the results below, but as always, take them at face value. The calibration of this unit I found quite easy, although it wasn’t all that accurate out of the box (which was suprising considering the level of this unit). I definitely had to do a good amount of adjustment to get it to where it needed to be.

Onto the picture… I have always thought of Marantz’s projectors as being among the best, and this does not disappoint. You have just about everything on this unit that you’d want from a good picture standpoint. First off, contrast. The on/off contrast rivals among some of the highest units I have seen (without DI). In addition, the ANSI contrast was quite good so you have the best of both worlds. Some projectors have decent contrast levels, but they accomplish it with higher whites and raised blacks. Not the case with the Marantz. The black levels were extremely deep. This allows the projector to do really rich colors, in addition to performing well with darker movies. No gray blacks here. Now, often the projectors (especially DLPs) with the deep black levels tend to bury the detail in the darker scenes. It is often difficult to accomplish the darkest darks, while still maintaining detail. The Marantz did very well with this, especially considering how dark the blacks were. There are several gamma adjustments ranging a variety of levels. Because of this, I was able to adjust the gamma such that even with the darkest scenes I was able to accomplish good shadow detail. As an aside I found the “Theater” mode was best overall for movies.

The brightness on this unit was decent…I would say about average for a single chip DLP. I measured out about 15.5 fcd at the highest level (after calibration). On the screen size I was using, that is about 496 lumens. This was at the highest possible lamp power while sacrificing some contrast. You can see more specifics about this below in the measured specifications. Though this is plenty of brightness for an average sized screen, it would not be adequate for a large (say over 120”) screen, nor a room with ambient light in it. I use a Vutec Silverstar (I like a really vibrant image), and with this combo, it had plenty of brightness, even with some bias lighting in the room.

On to the colors… I found the color accuracy on this unit very good. Though I don’t have the equipment to do measurements, by eye, it looked spot on. Note: You have seen in my reviews I usually use the same material. This is done for more accurate comparisons. In addition, I know the material very well so I can compare with various units from memory. Moving on. It had plenty of saturation, but didn’t tend to look “fake” like I have seen on some projectors. What I mean by that is they looked rich, but not overly so such that you could tell it was digital. In fact the colors looked similar to what CRTs are capable of. This is a direct result of 2 things. First, the processing will help a lot with saturation. Second, the color wheel helped. As I mentioned earlier, the unit has new filters which allow for deeper, richer colors (also helps with dithering).

The menu system of the Marantz is fairly well laid out. There are lots of adjustments in the user menu (you can do everything there). The unit has noise reduction, chroma delay, RGB adjustments, etc… There is plenty to get it looking how you want. The only thing I found a bit difficult to work with was the menu selection. Instead of a “enter” and “exit” button, the unit uses the cursor controls to select, adjust and return. It was a bit strange to get used to, but I found it wasn’t too bad after playing with it. In addition to all the menu adjustments, the remote has some quick access controls on it. These allow you to do the standard stuff (aspect ratio, menu, power, etc…), but some other things like “black level expansion”, etc…

Ultraviolet

More shots:

Incredibles

HDTV (DVHS) pictures:

Fast and Furious