Sony VPL-VW1000ES review

Although content is up-scaled to fit the huge resolution, the 1.89:1 aspect ratio isn’t the usual fare for Blu-ray films, which are almost always 1.78:1 or 1.85:1. This means black bars, which don’t take advantage of all the available pixels. Despite this, all our test footage saw noticeable gains once we’d enabled the feature.

It also works for 3D content, so we tested it using our reference 3D Blu-ray disks. Thanks to the incredibly bright lamp, 3D images were bright and colourful, even after donning a pair of active shutter glasses. Crosstalk was almost non-existent, with the better definition making everything look even sharper than 1080p.

There’s no question that the VW1000ES is future-proof; 4K resolution content might be a few years away, but you’ll be ready when it appears if you buy one of these. The heart-stopping £17,000 price means this is definitely aimed at home cinema enthusiasts with bursting bank balances, but as a sign of things to come we should definitely start getting excited about 4K content coming to the home. With nothing else like it currently available, it justly earns an Ultimate award.