JVC HD-52Z575 52" HD-ILA HDTV-ready rear-projection TV

by JVC

Product Details

• Item Weight: 85 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 121 pounds
• ASIN: B0002RQN0M
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250,102 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 8, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Enjoy the best possible picture in the comfort of your living room with the JVC HD-52Z575 rear-projection TV. Equipped with a brilliant 52-inch screen, the TV displays high-quality 1080i and 720p broadcasts when connected to an HDTV tuner, while also upconverting standard NTSC video sources to 720p resolution using Digital Image Scaling Technology (DIST). The TV also includes JVC's exclusive three-chip HD-ILA system to deliver a vivid, crystal-clear pixel structure (with 1,280 x 720 resolution) that eliminates the "screen door effect" commonly associated with rear-projection systems. Add a 3D digital comb filter for increased clarity, a four-point color management system that adjusts the colors for maximum appreciation, and Digital Super Detail (DSD) circuitry that corrects digital edges for better focus, and you have a state-of-the-art high-definition television that can adapt to future technologies and advancements with ease.

In addition to the technological extras, the TV includes a number of supporting features, such as Natural Cinema 3:2 pulldown (for converting film to video), progressive line doubling, a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, and several additional aspect modes (Panorama, Cinema, Full, and Regular) that vary the picture's dimensions depending on the user's preference. Viewers who want to further customize the picture can choose among Theater, Dynamic, Game, Standard, and TheaterPro settings, or adjust the color temperature to compensate for the room's lighting conditions. Sports fans will delight in the single-tuner picture-in-picture, which lets them watch two games at once either in a large and small inset window or by splitting the screen down the middle. The TV also lets the user freeze a picture-in-picture image for closer examination. Essentials include a sleep timer, V-chip parental control, and a multifunction timer.

The home theater experience demands a quality audio setup, and the HD-52Z575 meets these expectations as well, with dual front-firing speakers, a center channel input, advanced hyper surround sound, BBE high-definition audio, and MTS stereo decoding. The device also connects to almost any type of video component through its multiple inputs, which vary from an HDMI/HDCP digital input for direct digital-to-digital high-definition transfer; two component-video inputs for connecting to a satellite system, DVD player, or HD tuner; three S-video inputs (one front and two rear), four composite inputs (one front and three year), and one RF input. The TV's switchable fixed/variable audio output invites users to connect to a separate stereo system. The unit is also Energy Star compliant.

What's in the Box
TV, remote control, two batteries, user's manual.

Product Description

HDTV monitor (compatible with HDTV/SDTV formats -- when connected to a separate HDTV tuner -- and displays all signals at 720p) * widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio * JVC D-ILA 3-chip LCoS design (1280 x 720 pixels each) * D.I.S.T. (upconverts all video signals to 720p) *

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

116 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great picture if you know what you're doing., January 29, 2005

By 

Andy Dopieralski "Andy Dopieralski" (Bellevue, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: JVC HD-52Z575 52" HD-ILA HDTV-ready rear-projection TV (Electronics)

Quick Review:

The HD52575 is a great alternative to DLP for those who pick up on 'rainbowing' (the appearance of trailing rainbow effects caused by a color wheel). The picture quality has the potential to be excellent, however it is pretty poor out of the box. If you have a setup disk or good knowledge of home theater setup, this is hardly a roadblock. The picture is very clear and vibrant once the setup has been completed. Audio is standard for a projection TV, but most people buying this will be running through a receiver anyway. The menus are sub-par, but again, if you're all about picture this is a GREAT buy. It is also the brightest projection TV I've ever seen. It eclipses a number of CRT and Plasma displays. It could do with a few more high-def inputs, but other than that, near perfect.

Detailed Review:

The first thing I noticed when I picked the set up was how light it was. Even for a micro-display projection it was incredibly easy to lift and move. My first thought (which turned out to be correct) was that they sacrificed low-range sound by using smaller speakers and no sub. Over all the cabinet is pretty stylish. There is only a power button on the front and no hidden panel. All of the other controls are located on the right-hand side along with additional inputs. The TV, like most projections, has a warm up time. The JVC's warm up time is a little longer than most for the initial picture, but much quicker for full luminosity. It takes about 70 seconds (90 is advertised on the packed - in warning sheet) to get an initial display, with full brightness in about 2 minutes. An initial setup menu that looked about 6 years too old came up. It was a standard language/time menu. Easy enough. The first thing I did was hook up a Windows Media Center PC via a Monster HDMI to DVI cable. Initial results were not great and I have to admit I was worried I'd be making a trip back to the store that night. I grabbed Return of the King from my DVD case and threw it in the drive. Again, I was worried. The picture was artifacted and the color was good, but not great. I popped into the menu and bumbled around for a bit until I got the hang of their system. All of the menus are serially linked. That is, you have to scroll through each item to navigate. There are menu headings, but they are non selectable, so you can't even jump from one category to another. Very poor design. When I found the picture setup, I noticed that everything was set at 0 with a +-30 range. I immediately hit the Detail control and set it to -30. Anything above -30 adds artificial edge to the picture. This helped a great deal with my media center picture and I was feeling relieved. I began setting up the other controls. First I turned off all of the automatic configurations for gama, noise and color. I then worked on manually configuring the hue and saturation. The TV had very little red push (the over calibration of the red channel to compensate for the bluer grays used by most TV manufacturers these days), so tones looked pretty good. The color and tint did have to be adjusted to get true cyan and magenta (see the end of the review for what worked for me). In the setup I found that the TV had very little overdrive(how far off the edge of the display the actual picture is projected. Most sets project between 5% and 10% over the edge, causing a loss of data but eliminating black bars on smaller source), which was great. The overdrive sat at about 2.5%, which is professional grade all the way. All of my initial calibrations were done using the 'Standard' preset. The TV has only 4 memory allocations for settings, which is unfortunate. I used an RGB filter and a test pattern to verify color correctness, but for most people, eyeballing should be fine. The controls are not graduated as much as they should be (61 total settings for each control), but most people shouldn't have a hard time finding a good balance between all of the settings. After I got it set up properly, I threw Return of the King back in and held my breath. The picture was amazing! From 5' some minor issues could be seen and the MPEG2 format did show its limitations, but at 10', it was a truly great experience! I grabbed a high-definition demo from the Windows Media website at 720p and tried that. Again, the adjustments had worked and all was right with the world. I spent about 3 hours setting up my various inputs to match the quality of the "Standard" preset and I'm very pleased with the picture.

Breakdown

Picture:

Initially very poor. The detail seting on the TV is over-weighted. Turning it to -30 is the only way to eliminate all artificial edges. Color is OK, but can be improved. Brightness needs to be toned down and contrast adjusted to acheive the best picture. There is no true gray temperature, only high and low. Low allows for a more accurate color representation, however many people are now used to the bluer gray tones so it's up to you. The dynamic settings can really mess up a good DVD when they start over correcting, but they can be turned off. Very low overdrive means you're getting the most information from your media. Over all, befor adjustment *** out of 5 stars and after, ****1/2 out of 5 stars.

Sound:

Passible mids and highs. Very minimal lows. I didn't spend much time on this since I run through an external receiver. One neat feature is the ability to use the TV speakers as a center channel. They are more than capable to drive voice and it's a good way to get a more true-to-theater audio experience. *** out of 5 stars.

Setup:

Setup is a pain. The menus are not intuitive nor are they complete. The visual style of the menus are about 6 years out of date at best. * out of 5 stars.

Other:

One complaint I read about the TV was fan noise. It is definitely present, but mostly unnoticable in a large room. There is not enough polution to be an issue.

Viewing angle is very high for a rear projection. The horizontal angle is very wide and the picture can be seen very well by everyone seated in a standard room. To preserve the intensity of the picture while keeping the viewing angle wide, it has been narrowed slightly on the verticle plane. Standing next to the TV, the picture is noticably dimmer, however as soon as you get your eye level below the top of the set, the picture jumps to life. The ammount of light driven by the set is amazing. But because of that, you do want to have some ambient light in the room.

Value:

A very good value when compared to competing technologies. High picture fidelity and low entry cost make this TV a great value. **** out of 5 stars.

Tech Info:

Here are the settings I used on the HDMI input to get a truer picture:

Tint +1

Color -8

Picture +8

Bright -27

Detail -30

Temperature: Low

All automatic settings OFF.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible picture after professional calibration, March 22, 2005

By 

Jeremy Cole "just buy it already" (Brighton, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: JVC HD-52Z575 52" HD-ILA HDTV-ready rear-projection TV (Electronics)

I've had this tv for 3 months now and love it. Out of the box picture was pretty bad but after tweaking for a couple of days i got it tollerable. Just last week i had a pro calibration. It cost 400 bucks but was worth every penny. Alot of people don't know that every tv, especially big screens, should be calibrated. I won't go into great detail (google television calibration) but the correct color temperature for a tv is 6500 degrees. This tv before calibration was 15000 degrees. That basically means whites look blue and flesh tones look green. All tv manufacturers set the color temps very high from the factory because it "looks" better to us initially and could possibly give them more sales just from the customers first impression on the sales floor. It took about 3 hours for the calibration and all I can say is WOW! The picture is now literally stunning. One more thing, I see alot of people are really annoyed by fan noise. I hear the fan of this tv about 1% of my total viewing time and it doesn't bother me at all.

If you have this tv or any big screen television you really should have a calibration done. I see alot of reviews of people saying the picture is great but they don't mention having it calibrated. If you think it looks great now imagine what it would look like after a pro calibration.

PROS:

Looks great on or off

Easily viewable in a sunlit room

Good sound

Beautiful picture quality

No screendoor or rainbow effect

Lots of inputs

Great value for a superior technology

CONS:

Menu system could be better

Must spend extra cash for calibration (true for every television though, and worth it)

Great looking stand from JVC is extra $500

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond DLP - next generation TV, September 26, 2004

By 

Donald R. Floyd (NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: JVC HD-52Z575 52" HD-ILA HDTV-ready rear-projection TV (Electronics)

I was impressed with this TV's picture in the showroom - I thought it was better than DLP sets (i.e. Samsung) and similar to plasma sets that cost 2-3x more. But I was a little reticent to purchase this TV due to the fact that its relatively new (released July-04) and there is not much critical feedback. I ended up purchasing the TV from Amazon and its been great. Check out AVS forum for detailed discussions about this TV and the technology behind it.