To test deep blacks, I enabled DBLE and played around with even more settings, including those for noise reduction and sharpness. My favorite sci-fi film for testing deep blacks is The Creator, particularly an early-morning scene in the movie. Every television and projectors with poor contrast and brightness renders this clip as washed out, but the Titan Noir Max made the blacks and dark grays look rich without a hint of poor contrast, helped mostly by the dynamic iris and DBLE.
That said, the Titan Noir Max didn’t pass every test with flying colors. Avatar: Fire and Ash looked more lifelike and colorful on the Epson ProCinema LS9000, which uses a high-end lens that does a better job with focus across the entire image. While the Titan Noir Max still looked phenomenal, bright, and colorful in a scene with whale-like creatures on a sunny day, the LS9000 beats it in terms of pure resolution and extreme focus. That particular scene looked roughly the same on the Leica Cine Play 1 as the Titan with vivid colors.
And then I started testing in a brightly lit room. Many projectors, including the Leica Cine Play 1, do not perform well in a bright room. The Titan Noir Max was still impressive during battle scenes in the movie War Machine on Netflix, especially when the action is outdoors. I also watched Unbroken and the colors were still vivid and not washed out. However, in the darkest scenes of the movie Awake, which takes place at night, the picture quality was not great. Both Awake and Tron: Ares looked spectacular in a dark room, but washed out in a sunny room.
Glorious for Gaming and Everything Else
I was mostly sold on the picture quality in a dark room but wanted to test the dynamic iris even more. That’s where the game 007: First Light on the Xbox came in handy. There’s a mind-blowing section late in the game on a boat with colorful flowers that looked eye-poppingly real at 120 inches on my projector screen. The max size for this model is 300 inches, or big enough to project onto a double stall garage door. I didn’t try that because, at 18 pounds, the Titan Noir Max isn’t that portable.
The colors adjusted lightning fast in a nighttime segment during First Light, changing from bright sun to misty clouds and a few darker shadows. The Titan Noir Max constantly and instantly adjusts for these tonal variations. You can hear the iris adjusting faintly if you enable that feature, which I enjoyed but others might find irritating. With all of the gunfire in the game or during a chaotic movie like Hoppers, you won’t ever hear the iris.
Photograph: John Brandon