[Editor's note: this review is excerpted from John's write-up of the 2004 Projector Expo.]

Next up was the JVC HX-1, which I thought had been calibrated by Chip before the shootout. It turned out that he had not received the codes in time to get it done, but Pete from JVC went in and tweaked the color gains and cuts to get it in line with what JVC considers its best performance.

The JVC's claim to fame is its extreme smoothness and lack of visual screendoor effect/pixelization. One literally has to get within 6 inches of the screen to see any pixels at all, which effectively makes it totally invisible from any reasonable seating distance. This accounts for the extreme smoothness and solidity of its image, without any jitter or dithering artifacts. Being a three chip design, there are no rainbows or color wheel whines to deal with, and the picture thrown on the 110" Firehawk was clean and colorful. Like the 777 and the Qualia, the image is rock solid.

Where the DILA technology could use improvement is in the area of contrast. Aaron set up the 7205 simultaneously with the HX-1 and split them across one screen during a break. The 7205 clearly had the deeper, more three dimensional image of the two with considerably better blacks. My opinion is that when JVC gets the contrast as high as that obtainable with DLP, they will have a clear winner on their hands. It was too bad we weren't able to get the HD2K in time for the show, as this could be a "holy grail" projector, with its claimed 2000:1 contrast ratio. For the time being DLP has the edge in contrast, depth, and dynamics, but DILA certainly has DLP beat in regard to smoothness and lack of screen door effect.