Digital Cinema Comes Home
Digital cinema is the future of movies, and this future is heading toward your
living room. Movie studios, eager to eliminate the costly process of developing
thousands of film prints and shipping them to theaters for major movie release,
are seeking ways of distributing and projecting movies digitally. JVC is one of
a few companies at the forefront of this technology wave, providing theaters
with massive digital projectors that can replace film-based equipment and
produce bright, large-screen images. The company’s HD-ILA series represents
JVC’s first real effort to bring this technology to the home.
JVC’s
HD-61Z886 is a high-definition capable version of the company’s D-ILA, or
digital image light amplifier technology, which is a variation of LCoS, or
liquid crystal on silicon technology. How the technology works isn’t
particularly important (but if you want to know more, check out my primer on
page 54). Suffice it to say it is comparable to other fixed-pixel digital
projection technologies. It allows for a 61-inch image with a 1366 by 768
resolution to emit from a relatively slim cabinet, measuring only a foot and a
half deep. In the face of the release of a number of DLP-based televisions with
1920 by 1080 resolutions, this one might seem less attractive. If this is a
concern, you should check out our 1080p feature on page 36.
 |
| JVC’s new HD-ILA rear-projection TVs offer 1080p resolution, but the HD-61Z886
does a great job at 768p. In fact, this TV handles HD signals better than the
Mitsubishi display reviewed on page 81, which has a native resolution of 1080p. |
The
large-screen TV isn’t shy on features. For example, built-in analog and digital
TV tuners decode any off-air TV broadcasts you have available to you. Just
connect an antenna and you can receive free HD signals. If you subscribe to
digital cable, you can use the CableCard slot instead. Call the cable company
for an access card and connect the cable signal to the digital TV antenna input.
For those with satellite systems, you can use one of two component, one analog
RGB, or one HDMI digital video input to connect the receiving equipment. There
are plenty of connections for additional components as well, including
FireWire-equipped devices like JVC’s D-Theater D-VHS videocassette player.
Analog and digital audio outputs are similarly available for you to send
audio signals to your surround receiver. And if the TV cabinet’s sloped top
leaves you with no place to put a center speaker, you can use the set’s center
channel input, which will route the signal from your surround receiver to the
TV’s speakers (though we wouldn’t recommend this in any but the most extreme
circumstances).
Switching between inputs is regrettably less flexible. The
included remote offers but a single input button that cycles through the
connected sources––and does so slowly. You have to jump through some hoops to
get a third-party automation remote to go directly to a particular input. This
might be less of an issue if the included remote had a simpler and more
intuitive layout. It will control a couple other devices, but uses numerous
small buttons scattered in a seemingly random manner.
