I am using the Sony VW 40 and I have noticed on some scenes with shadow, I get a sort of Artifacting (looks like flickering gray pixels), I am not really sure how to describe it. I was wondering if this was on the bluray disc or is it due to the projector itself.

Keith

Have you set your black and white levels using a test disk (like HD DVE)? Without a test disk you can have the brightness (black level) too high and this will enhance any artifacts in the shadows. It may be the source of course but it's always a good thing to set the levels correctly and then you know it's not your settings causing it. Sometimes using a different gamma can help too.

Gary

Which disc? I've had my VW40 for a few weeks and haven't noticed anything like that. Just watched Sin City (not Blu-Ray of course) and I'm sure any problems with dark scenes would have shown up.... ;)

A lot of movies have a hard time compressing dark areas, and in some cases the noise and macro-blocking is very visible with a projector. Are you sure the noise you see is not in the source?

Well after I asked you about this, I saw something similar (I assume?) last night. Watching the film "Bubble" on HD DVD, and there was one dark scene with some posterization that was noticeable. Didn't seem to be anything to do with the iris as it showed up whether that was on or off. Maybe it's the source? I haven't seen it in any other material yet.

Several things can cause this to appear. I would examine the projector brightness, gamma and gray scale tracking. It can also be source related.

I tend to see it more on Bluray, but this is my biggest gripe about HDM in general right here.

Dark scenes, film grain and needed compression is a bad combo..... Makes me want to stick with SD-DVD everytime I encounter it.

My bulb only has around 25 hours on it, could that be a factor? I do plan to do a more thorough calibration soon.