Got my Z700 last week and there was no big WoW effect after my old Z3. This pj truly need tweaking, now the black levels, shadows and colors are very nice, almost fantastic, much better than the factory settings.

You can get the color calibrated settings for Z700 from projectorreviews.com (http://www.projectorreviews.com/sanyo/plv-z700/index.php)

Here is my eco-mode setting... I used the Dynamic mode for the tweaks. I think the contrast, black levels and shadows are quite nice. Quite bright picture also. The colors are powerful but maybe some want to tweak the color settings some more..? I also try to shange the Green color to -18... maybe its better now..?


Dynamic

Brightness: +2
Contrast: -4
Color: +10
Tint: +2

R: +10
G: -14
B: -10

Sharpness: +3
Lamp control: eco-mode
Gamma: 0
Progressive: -
Noise reduction: -


Advanced menu

Iiris mode: Mode1
Iiris range: -55
Auto black stretch: Off
Contrast enhancement: Off
Transient impovement: Off
Color management: -
Dynamic gamma: Mid
Custom gamma: -

what setting do you have on the hdmi-input? normal or enhanced?

what setting do you have on the hdmi-input? normal or enhanced?

Normal

No offense but those settings look awful on my projector; way too much red.

No offense but those settings look awful on my projector; way too much red.

To much red? I think maybe the picture is to cold (blue)... Here is some comparison between my "Dynamic" tweak and the orginal factory "Creative Cinema" settings. The pictures doesn't show how big the difference is for real. In the pics it seems that some of the black shadows will be lost, but in real life i coudn't see it. My camera can not handle the black details so well. Ower all I think the picture is far more film like and the irritating picture "fog" is away.

http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_01.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_01.jpg)
"Dynamic" tweak

http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_01.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_01.jpg)
"Creative Cinema"


http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_02.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_02.jpg)
"Dynamic" tweak

http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_02.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_02.jpg)
"Creative Cinema"


http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_03.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_03.jpg)
"Dynamic" tweak

http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_03.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_03.jpg)
"Creative Cinema"


http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_04.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Dynamic_Tweak_04.jpg)
"Dynamic" tweak

http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/medium/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_04.jpg (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/992/BoB_Z700_Creative_Cinema_04.jpg)
"Creative Cinema"

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Do you have any idea of how to access the service menu? It looks like you don't have any color uniformity issues, but I do. My 1080HD has a pinkish tint all the way across the image, but only in the bottom half. Any suggestions on how to get rid of that? I see it in all picture and bulb modes.

Adrian

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Do you have any idea of how to access the service menu? It looks like you don't have any color uniformity issues, but I do. My 1080HD has a pinkish tint all the way across the image, but only in the bottom half. Any suggestions on how to get rid of that? I see it in all picture and bulb modes.

Adrian

Don't know how to fix the color uniformity, but you can enter service mode by pressing and hold the "MENU" and "INPUT" buttons on the projector for 5 seconds until the "S" mark appears on the screen. While the "S" mark is displayed on the screen, press and hold the "SCREEN" button on the remote for more than 3 seconds.

Be careful so you don't mess up something...

Hey, thanks for that info. I'll give it a try. Have you gone into this menu yet? Any tips on what to stay away from? On some pjs you can mess things up just by opening certain service menu items. I certainly don't want to do that.

In an effort to correct my bad color uniformity, it was suggested to me to do a factory reset. It actually helped a bit, but not to my satisfaction in the creative cinema mode. However, after the reset, I was able to test different modes with better results. I'm now watching the ''living' mode in economy, with the bulb in mode 1. At last, the uniformity is quite good, and I'm no longer interested in an exchange. I also found that after the reset, using a fixed iris gave good results as well. Lots to play with.

I just watched a movie on D* on the MGM HD channel. Wow, what an incredibly smooth, filmlike look with great detail. This is now one of my favorite channels.

Adrian

Yes, reddish, im guessing not all settings will work the same for all projectors. Your shots definately push the blue thats for sure, i actually prefer the image in the creative mode vs your tweak mode all but the first shot... maybe it is just your camera?

Just my experience here folks so take it for what its worth. I currently own the awesome Z5, using a Da-Lite Cineamvision 1.3 gain screen, total light control. When i first got it 2 years and 2300hrs ago, I was constantly "tweaking" it, I got fed up with it, bit the bullet and paid the money to have it ISF calibrated, OMG, the PQ difference was and is simply stunning. The fact is that a home enthusiast does not have the necessary equipment and or knowledge to get it right, too many variables, you adjust one thing , another goes out of wack...

I know its fun, but posting your settings really is of no use to anyone else, screen type, gain,size, distance, zoom, throw distance, light control etc all effect the PQ, this is why you almost always see comments such as " that looks way too red on my screen"

Anyway, if its in the budget I highly recommend ISF calibration.

Will be upgrading next year to either the Z3000 or Z700 depending on price point/performance etc.

Just my experience here folks so take it for what its worth. I currently own the awesome Z5, using a Da-Lite Cineamvision 1.3 gain screen, total light control. When i first got it 2 years and 2300hrs ago, I was constantly "tweaking" it, I got fed up with it, bit the bullet and paid the money to have it ISF calibrated, OMG, the PQ difference was and is simply stunning. The fact is that a home enthusiast does not have the necessary equipment and or knowledge to get it right, too many variables, you adjust one thing , another goes out of wack...

I know its fun, but posting your settings really is of no use to anyone else, screen type, gain,size, distance, zoom, throw distance, light control etc all effect the PQ, this is why you almost always see comments such as " that looks way too red on my screen"

Anyway, if its in the budget I highly recommend ISF calibration.

Will be upgrading next year to either the Z3000 or Z700 depending on price point/performance etc.

So true!

But some times you can get suitable setting from these tweak threads. My old Z3 was stunning after I tweaked it with the R0ne's(avs member) settings I found on this forum.

I have the Z700 and during normal use it doesn't matter what is being projected ie.. blu-ray, game or sat. Sometimes the image will go dim for a couples seconds and then bounce back. Is there anyway to correct or keep it from happening?

I have the Z700 and during normal use it doesn't matter what is being projected ie.. blu-ray, game or sat. Sometimes the image will go dim for a couples seconds and then bounce back. Is there anyway to correct or keep it from happening?

Probably it is the dynamic iris closing on dark scenes (making them even dim) and opens up again on bright scenes. That can be quite annoying. You can try to set the iris fixed at an aperture (and that is much better for my taste), or having the iris mode set to mode 1. The setting for this is under (menu -> image adj. -> advanced menu -> iris mode). You have to also make sure the (setting -> advanced menu) is on, otherwise the iris mode is not accessible. You'll need to store the setting into a user memory, otherwise it'll revert to a preset mode whenever you restart the projector.

Here is my eco-mode setting... I used the Dynamic mode for the tweaks. I think the contrast, black levels and shadows are quite nice. Quite bright picture also. The colors are powerful but maybe some want to tweak the color settings some more..?

Here is a little bit more neutral color settings... Not as warm like the calibrated projectorreviews settings but quite nice anyway and the black levels are better.


Dynamic HDMI - Normal

Brightness: +2
Contrast: -4
Color: +2
Tint: +2

R: +12
G: -20
B: -8

Sharpness: +3
Lamp control: eco-mode
Gamma: 0
Progressive: -
Noise reduction: -


Advanced menu

Iiris mode: Mode1
Iiris range: -55
Auto black stretch: Off
Contrast enhancement: Off
Transient impovement: Off
Color management: -
Dynamic gamma: Mid
Custom gamma: -

What are you using to calibrate?

My eyes only. :o

Regarding the hdmi input type setting, does anyone know if the plv-z700 is like the plv-z2000 in that hdmi normal means 0-255 and hdmi enhanced means 16-235?? If so, wouldn't enhanced be the "correct" mode to calibrate with if used for movies, tv etc?

I've been reading the Z2000 tweaks thread, since there are about 47 pages of info there. There is indepth discussion about the menu listings and picture modes that seem to be duplicated on the Z700/1080HD. I just wanted to suggest that if anyone is yearning for more tweaking info, as this thread really isn't growing very fast, maybe you want to check out this other thread. I figure that since we are dealing with another 1080p pj from Sanyo with very similar modes, why not? Does anyone see a reason why I shouldn't take advice from owners of the Z2000?

Adrian

I guess we're done tweaking, huh??

Yeah, seems that my tweaks are so perfect. :D

Well, OK.

Thuppu,

Yep, I'm liking your tweaks in dynamic mode a lot better that what I was using. Looks like a different pj. Blacks are great, and there's a lot more hd pop. I do think that the color needs more work in my setup, and I'm getting some hotspotting in skin tones and light colors. What color temperature did you use to begin with, and what about dynamic gamma?

Thanks,
Adrian

Thuppu,

Yep, I'm liking your tweaks in dynamic mode a lot better that what I was using. Looks like a different pj. Blacks are great, and there's a lot more hd pop. I do think that the color needs more work in my setup, and I'm getting some hotspotting in skin tones and light colors. What color temperature did you use to begin with, and what about dynamic gamma?

Thanks,
Adrian

Thanks. Yes I know, the colours is hard to get right with this Dynamic mode. Post your settings here when you have them done.

I don't remember the colour temp... was there a "user" setting? Have to check it some day. It must be the settings there is when you use Dynamic factory mode... maybe.

Ok, I'll check it out. Did you do anything with dynamic gamma? What is the size, color, and gain of your screen?

Thanks,
Adrian

It's on "Mid". I dont remember if it was there from the beginning.

My screen is 85" 16:9, light gray and the gain is ~0.8

Klick! (http://www.dvdplaza.fi/galleria/data/2/medium/Olohuone2.JPG)

Thanks, Thuppu.

Wow, I just cannot seem to come up with anything that looks good for color in dynamic. The skin tones are too orangy, peachy, or too red, or bluish, even greenish. I have a 98'' matte white 1.0 gain screen. Can anybody help me??

Adrian

When I tried these settings I had the same problem. The solution I rendered is- don't use dynamic:). I've been sticking with creative cinema and just done mild adjustments to brightness, color temp, etc. but I have been fooling around with iris adjustments in the service menu and I've been getting great results! My screen is 116" white 1.3 gain. I'm looking into a grey screen for better blacks but they are not terrible right now with my setup. But it is really hard to use someone else's settings, their room environment, their screen, their video source is most likely different from everyone else's. But man thuppu's screen shots look damn good in dynamic with his setup:D

Thanks, could you review for me what tweaks you are doing in the service menu? I would like to give them a try.

Regards,
Adrian

Thanks, could you review for me what tweaks you are doing in the service menu? I would like to give them a try.

Regards,
Adrian

Did you try my settings off the other thread?

okay now keep in mind this is still a work in progress, there is literally thousands of adjustments that can be done in the service menu and I have only been dealing with the iris so far. And even that is very extensive.

I tried the settings that are posted in the z700 owners thread and at first I was stunned by the black level then I tried to actually get through an entire movie and those settings are a no-go in my book! Those setting do drastically improve how dark of a black you can get, but those settings also botch your shadow detail and they make the iris incredibly noticeable.

So thanks to perttijeesus I got a link to a french translated to english forum thread for the z2000's service menu. It's slightly different but the groups and item numbers that are the same do the same things.

Okay so finally to the calibration!!!

In the service menu you push enter until you have reached group 211. The first item in 211 is item 0 which is the amount that your iris can close. I have set this item to +1 allowing the iris to close as much as it can.
Item 1 is the amount that the iris can open I set this to 420 which is no where near the full amount it can open but it is still very bright when needed.
I then skipped to item 5 which is iris speed, this is a very important setting! I thought making it faster would make it less noticeable but I've found that turning it down makes it less noticeable because its not adjusting for every little movement on the screen this is also known as "pumping". I've set mine to 35 and it has made it a lot better. There is very little noticeable pumping but it is fast enough that a big transition from light to dark, or dark to light, isn't delayed.
This brings us to item 10. I have found that item 10 is the intensity of the iris. This has a big affect on black levels and on iris pumping. I get really bothered if I'm noticing the iris all the time so I have this featured turned up quite a bit which makes the iris less of a problem but also doesn't give me the blackest blacks, but having the iris shut more still helps a lot. I have this set to 95.

With these settings I have been happy with the way the iris performs. Iris pumping is very mild, the blacks are solid, not the blackest this projector can do but it's a great compromise between pumping and blacks.

I have been doing all of my iris testing with Band of Brothers on Blu-ray during various action scenes and dark scenes. The action scenes in this show are pretty intense with a lot of movement and the iris pumping is so minimal that if you aren't watching for it, or if you aren't as picky about it as me, you probably won't notice. And the dark scenes have respectable blacks and great detail! Also minimal pumping.

Here are my normal projector settings.

Creative cinema-
Lamp A1
brightness -7 (This setting and contrast will vary depending on the screen you have.)
contrast 0
color 0
tint 0
color temp. red 0, green 0, blue -6
sharpness 0
gamma 0

Advanced-
iris mode mode 2
iris range 0
auto black stretch mid
contrast enhancement mid
transient improvement low (this feature is surprisingly kick ass!:D)
dynamic gamma low (also kick ass really helps a lot with dark detail.)

Both transient improvement and dynamic gamma can help get a great image but I've found if they are turned up a lot the feature can start to hurt the image rather than help it.

Sorry this was so long but I hope that it helps some fellow Z700 tweakers!:D

blu,

Hey man, thanks. Now finally someone is getting into the detailed service menu tweaking that I wanted to see in this thread. I would love to see this grow as large as the Z2000 tweak thread. Can you post or PM me the link that you have on the translated service menu? I would love to have that. I've had a bit more success with adjusting color in dynamic mode, but it still needs work. I'll probably go back to creative mode, like you did. However, while messing around earlier tonight I came up with some of the best blacks I've seen on this pj, and the shadow detail was still excellent. I just need help with color. I am going to try your tweaks. Do you know if there is anything in service mode that can help with color uniformity issues? I get different color tinges in different parts of the picture, unless I use a fixed iris.

Metric,

Hey there. I can't remember if I tried your settings or not. I'll look for them and try them out. Thanks.

Has anyone been watching any of the Tennis Channel HD's coverage of the Austr. Open? I'm checking it out on D* and perhaps it's my settings, but the picture is greenish, but not when I switch to other channels.

Adrian

Jedi

I haven't found anything on fixing color uniformity but I wouldn't be surprised if there is something. You should post your dynamic settings. I'm not opposed to using dynamic I've just had better luck with creative. But I'll try anything out.

I agree that this tweak thread should get as big as the Z2000! It would be nice because not everything is the same, for example their Pure cinema is more similar to our Creative cinema then their creative cinema is to ours. The pj's are very similar but not the same.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homecinema-fr.com%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D1130%26t%3D29883778%26s tart%3D45%26st%3D0%26sk%3Dt%26sd%3Da&sl=fr&tl=en

That is the link the perttijeesus gave. On the first page that comes up it somewhat explains what the functions do, how much they can be adjusted, and what the factory start number was. That link starts you on page four but I would say the whole thread is definitely worthy of a look. I have read through it several times. I've only had my pj for a week and put 40 hours on the lamp and I've watched two movies the rest was calibration and reading this. This thread at times is a little hard to understand but there is very good info in there.

I will be watching at least one movie today I will keep you guys posted if I decided to change more iris settings.

Nice job blu. Here is one of my first custom settings I've done to my Z700. I used Creative Cinema and tried to get same colour look like Projectorreviews calibrated CC settings. But I was not so pleased with the blacks...

Creative Cinema - HDMI normal

Brightness: 0
Contrast: 0
Color: +8
Tint: +2

R: -1
G: -4
B: 0

Sharpness: +5
Lamp control: eco-mode
Gamma: -1
Progressive: Auto
Noise reduction: On


Advanced menu

Iiris mode: Fixed
Iiris range: -24 -> -60
Auto black stretch: Low
Contrast enhancement: Off
Transient impovement: Off
Color management: -
Dynamic gamma: Mid
Custom gamma: -

Thuppu,

If you change the iris to either mode 1 or mode 2 (mode 1 is in favor of brightness while mode 2 is in favor of contrast) the blacks should dramatically improve. You could also try changing the lamp mode to either A1 or A2, A1 being the brighter of the two. Have you tried your setup with the HDMI set to enhanced? I have a Pioneer Elite 05FD Blu-ray player and a PS3 and on both players I was able to get a better picture with the HDMI set to enhanced.

Also I just finished watching Eagle Eye on Blu-ray and I was very pleased with my settings in both image adjustments and service menu adjustments. The iris was slightly noticeable at times but it was very smooth and even when I did notice it, it was very easy to watch! Blacks were also very good overall!:)

I am going to purchase this projector next week and I need to know what type to screen will work best for this projector. The setup will be in the basement so I can control all lighting, I really would like to spend as least as possible (100 - 200), but if I have to to get at least average performance then I will. I must say I am rather new with the whole projector thing so excuse my ignorance.

Vinny,

Don't be sorry man that's what this forum is all about, helping each other out!:D
So welcome to the forum!

I built my screen using 3" by 1" pieces of oak from Home Depot (I think it was about $75 for all things needed to construct the frame.) I just found the size that fit my room the best and framed it all together and spray painted it flat black.

I purchased my first piece of screen material from someone on ebay (it was about $100 shipped, I don't remember the seller.) It was white with 1.3 gain. Over the course of about 3 years it had gotten touched and it was noticeable i a lighter scene. So I recently replaced it with a screen from here.

http://www.hometheaterscreens.us/index.html

To be honest I like this screen a lot! It is also very affordable. Now since I have a completely black room I am considering getting something like this.

http://cgi.ebay.com/120-GRAY-HC-movie-PROJECTOR-projection-SCREEN-MATERIAL_W0QQitemZ350130616110QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultD omain_0?hash=item350130616110&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318 %7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

This seller has an excellent ebay score and the name of his store says it all!

Oh I forgot to mention that I made my screen frame almost 4 years ago and its still holding up great!:cool:

Thuppu,

If you change the iris to either mode 1 or mode 2 (mode 1 is in favor of brightness while mode 2 is in favor of contrast) the blacks should dramatically improve. You could also try changing the lamp mode to either A1 or A2, A1 being the brighter of the two. Have you tried your setup with the HDMI set to enhanced? I have a Pioneer Elite 05FD Blu-ray player and a PS3 and on both players I was able to get a better picture with the HDMI set to enhanced.

Also I just finished watching Eagle Eye on Blu-ray and I was very pleased with my settings in both image adjustments and service menu adjustments. The iris was slightly noticeable at times but it was very smooth and even when I did notice it, it was very easy to watch! Blacks were also very good overall!:)

I use iris mode 1 with my Dynamic settings and I also try it with the CC settings, but the darks and the shadow datails are not even close to the Dynamic. I can't stand the lamp modes, the brightness vary too much... Have also done some small mods to the service menu iris settings.

I tried to do a Dynamic setting with HDMI set to enhanced and it looks good, but could't see any difference in shadow details. The enhanced mode use a colour scale of 0-255. All players(only PC's and PS3 can output 0-255) and discs(dvd/BD) uses the 16-235 colour scale so there can't be big differences in which HDMI setting you use.

Thuppu,

I don't know the reasoning but if I pause an image using either the PS3 or Elite 05FD and switch back and forth from normal to enhanced there is a very noticeable difference. I tried this with several discs and scenes all yielding the same result.

Maybe if the blacks are still unsatisfying you could look into a high contrast screen like am considering.:)

Thuppu,

one more thing about hdmi enhanced vs. normal. What would it hurt to have it on enhanced?

I have not seen it posted anywhere the projections on bulb life if you use A1 or A2 instead of economy. We have to know that bright has the shortest life and economy has the longest, but what about the auto modes? Anybody know for sure if the bulb life in auto would be closer to bright or economy?

blu,
Thanks for posting the link. You're right, there is some great info there on the Z2000's service mode.

Metric,
I tried Cameron's settings, and then yours. Both were superior in color and smoothness to my dynamic settings, though I made small changes to each. However, they don't compare to the super black levels I get with my dynamic mode. I'm hesitant to post my dynamic settings, as the colors are not right, and I don't want to mess someone else up.

Adrian

okay now keep in mind this is still a work in progress, there is literally thousands of adjustments that can be done in the service menu and I have only been dealing with the iris so far. And even that is very extensive.

I tried the settings that are posted in the z700 owners thread and at first I was stunned by the black level then I tried to actually get through an entire movie and those settings are a no-go in my book! Those setting do drastically improve how dark of a black you can get, but those settings also botch your shadow detail and they make the iris incredibly noticeable.

So thanks to perttijeesus I got a link to a french translated to english forum thread for the z2000's service menu. It's slightly different but the groups and item numbers that are the same do the same things.

Okay so finally to the calibration!!!

In the service menu you push enter until you have reached group 211. The first item in 211 is item 0 which is the amount that your iris can close. I have set this item to +1 allowing the iris to close as much as it can.
Item 1 is the amount that the iris can open I set this to 420 which is no where near the full amount it can open but it is still very bright when needed.
I then skipped to item 5 which is iris speed, this is a very important setting! I thought making it faster would make it less noticeable but I've found that turning it down makes it less noticeable because its not adjusting for every little movement on the screen this is also known as "pumping". I've set mine to 35 and it has made it a lot better. There is very little noticeable pumping but it is fast enough that a big transition from light to dark, or dark to light, isn't delayed.
This brings us to item 10. I have found that item 10 is the intensity of the iris. This has a big affect on black levels and on iris pumping. I get really bothered if I'm noticing the iris all the time so I have this featured turned up quite a bit which makes the iris less of a problem but also doesn't give me the blackest blacks, but having the iris shut more still helps a lot. I have this set to 95.

With these settings I have been happy with the way the iris performs. Iris pumping is very mild, the blacks are solid, not the blackest this projector can do but it's a great compromise between pumping and blacks.

I have been doing all of my iris testing with Band of Brothers on Blu-ray during various action scenes and dark scenes. The action scenes in this show are pretty intense with a lot of movement and the iris pumping is so minimal that if you aren't watching for it, or if you aren't as picky about it as me, you probably won't notice. And the dark scenes have respectable blacks and great detail! Also minimal pumping.

Here are my normal projector settings.

Creative cinema-
Lamp A1
brightness -7 (This setting and contrast will vary depending on the screen you have.)
contrast 0
color 0
tint 0
color temp. red 0, green 0, blue -6
sharpness 0
gamma 0

Advanced-
iris mode mode 2
iris range 0
auto black stretch mid
contrast enhancement mid
transient improvement low (this feature is surprisingly kick ass!:D)
dynamic gamma low (also kick ass really helps a lot with dark detail.)

Both transient improvement and dynamic gamma can help get a great image but I've found if they are turned up a lot the feature can start to hurt the image rather than help it.

Sorry this was so long but I hope that it helps some fellow Z700 tweakers!:D

Hi there!

BLU 1080; I'm desperately seeking info on accessing the Z2000's service menu, and asked in the Z2000 Tweak Thread, but no answer so far. Could you provide the above mentioned link? I'd really appreciate it :)

Thuppu,

I don't know the reasoning but if I pause an image using either the PS3 or Elite 05FD and switch back and forth from normal to enhanced there is a very noticeable difference. I tried this with several discs and scenes all yielding the same result.

Maybe if the blacks are still unsatisfying you could look into a high contrast screen like am considering.:)

You can not compare the pictures by only switching the HDMI mode... You need to adjust the brightness and contrast to the same for the both settings.

PS3 can output full colourscale 0-255 with games but it can't invent more colours to a BD-disc that has 16-235 scale. If you play a lot you of course should use enhanced mode. Maybe in theory there can be some colour info outside the scale, so there is nothing wrong to use enhanced mode always.

Like I sayd before, I'm very pleased with the black in dynamic mode, and the colours aren't so bad...

jumguf,

Hello I posted the link further up on the page it is the translated google link:)

Thuppu,

Alright I just did some more testing on this enhanced vs. normal hdmi mode and I have found that using my Pioneer Elite 05FD Blu-ray player and the DVE calibration Blu-ray disc that I can only get a Blacker than black signal when it is set to enhanced, and that is from a blu-ray disc not a ps3 game.

So I have concluded that if nothing else using enhanced hdmi mode will at a minimum make it easier to calibrate your brightness level.:D

Metric,

Yes, I have your settings stored, as well as Cameron's and Thuppu's, ofcourse with changes I made to suit my tastes. Your settings look great, with nice color and a smooth, film-like look, much like Cameron's. The best blacks are Thuppu's dynamic mode so far. Next, I will try Blu's service menu tweaks. If I can get the blacks in creative to look as good as dynamic, and keep nice color, that would be wonderful. I do believe it is possible. This is becoming quite a nice thread.

Adrian

Blu,

I have successfully gotten into the service menu. Wow, it was fun. Armed with the info in the Z2000 service menu link you posted, there is so much info to read and test out. I have written down all things that I've changed, which are the items that you suggested to start with. My first impression is that the picture is a lot richer, and blacks are better as well. Colors are still very good. The blacks not be quite where the dynamic mode blacks are, but the tweaking is just beginning. I seemed to notice the biggest changes after I powered down, left the house, and came back tonight. Are the changes only put in place after the unit is turned off and back on again? I say this because I did not notice any striking changes when I first made them and exited the service mode.

Also, the service menu allows you to change user modes and you can see the effect. When changes are made, do they only affect that user mode, or do the changes go across the board? If you made improvements to the iris action, why not use the economy bulb mode instead of A1 or A2? Won't the bulb last longer in economy?

Thanks,
Adrian

jumguf,

Hello I posted the link further up on the page it is the translated google link:)



Thanks Blu1080

Still, might have to buy the actual service manual, because I'm kinda curious about any kind of convergence adjustments, since my Z2000 has a slight issue with this. The link you provided doesnt seem to mention anything about this, but thanks a lot anyway for the other useful stuff:)

3h of tweaking... no colour uniformity...

Edit. New settings some posts below.

Jedi,

I am glad to see someone else besides me having fun with the service menu!:)
From what I've gathered through that link I posted is that once you press the power button to exit the service menu the settings are saved.

I am almost certain that the settings that are changed in the service menu are saved across the board. I believe those are the projectors settings and aren't to any specific mode. And I use the auto lamp settings for two reasons, I need the light (so that is a negative for eco mode), and normal has louder fan noise. So for my situation the auto lamp modes are heaven:) Over the weekend I turned the iris to fixed and cranked the dynamic gamma and auto lamp and I couldn't see any adjusting so I will keep them on:D

This weekend I did a lot of watching on the Z700 to test my settings that I posted earlier and I have made some adjustments.

First off, after all that tweaking in the service menu and fine tuning of the iris I was still noticing color shifts on bright scenes with fast motion! So I started to do some tests. First I tested the dynamic gamma and auto lamp modes to see if that was causing this. They weren't. I found that it was solely the iris. So it was back to the service menu. I had item 5 (iris speed) turned way down to 35, and it was an improvement-for some movies! The same goes for the other direction if I turned the iris up all the way it was better on some movies. So I put the iris back to the factory setting of 304 and it was great:) It is extremely watchable in all scenes, which makes me very happy:D So I have opted to put item 5 (iris speed) back to the factory setting of 304.

I also tested iris mode 1 vs. iris mode 2. I had this on mode 2 for a better contrast but after extensive testing I like mode 1 better. On an extremely dark scene there is no difference between the two. Same with a bright scene. But on scenes that are in the middle there is a huge difference! Mode 1 in a shadowy (or mid light) scene is much brighter and has better shadow detail because of it. Also as an added bonus since it is not trying constantly to get the absolute best contrast, that color shift is almost completely gone! I did iris speed tests after the switch to mode 1 and I still am sticking with 304.

Okay the last thing I changed was item 1 (the amount the iris can open) in the service menu. I had taken it down from 480 to 420 and I put it back to 480 because if I am watching a bright television show that is in the 16:9 format (lost is what I did my testing with) it looks great with the extra light output. If I put it much higher than that the whites starting blooming (which I could fix with contrast adjustments but it seemed pointless to possibly throw off the greyscale for a few extra lumens on only those types of scenes).

I took some screen shots of my setup and some with thuppu's dynamic tweak, and I was going to post them but I need a tripod. With my camera and that little amount of light every picture was blurry!:mad:

So here's a recap of the changes I made over the weekend.
-Changed item 5 (iris speed) to 304 from 35
-Changed to iris mode 1 from mode 2
-Changed item 1 (the amount the iris can open) to 480 from 420

Happy tweaking!!! I am loving this thread!:D

Seems that the red color is't quite right yet with my last settings... it gets posterized sometimes and it's often too rich. Hmm, had to adjust some more... this is a endless adventure. :D

I agree!! I still haven't got mine right on. Now I'm looking into a high contrast screen so the fun will start over again!:D

I found this link and he has some good input on the setup of the z700 especially what he says about the advanced features.

http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages_c/Sanyo_PLV-Z700.html

I want to know which item should I select in the screen menu?
full /zoom/normal/natural wide/anamorhic?

Thuppu,
Are you saying that you still don't have good color uniformity, or that you have no uniformity issues now? My issues seems to be less noticeable now that I'm tweaking in the service menu.

Adrian

The color uniformity issues is gone now with the settings I posted, but I have done new ones with better red color. Had to post it soon.

I had also done some small adjustments in the service menu...

keep up the good work mr wizards! following this thread with excitement! Got my z700 yesterday..

Hi Blu,
According to the link you posted for the Z2000, the service menu changes you make in each mode are saved for that mode only. I'm guessing that it's probably the same with the Z700. This info is right on the first page of the thread. I've been doing more audio system tweaking lately. Time to get back to the projector.

Adrian

Here is new settings... After two movies it seems to be quite nice. No more hot red and the skin tones are quite natural. Hope you enjoy. :)

Dynamic - HDMI Enhanced

Brightness: -6
Contrast: +7
Color: -1
Tint: -1

R: -1
G: -24
B: -11

Sharpness: +2
Lamp control: eco-mode
Gamma: +2


Advanced menu

Iiris mode: Mode 1
Iiris range: -22
Auto black stretch: Off
Contrast enhancement: Off
Transient impovement: Off
Dynamic gamma: Low


Custom gamma

Gamma R
0 -5 -8 -10 -13 -14 -15 -14 -15

Gamma G
0 -7 -10 -15 -12 -13 -6 -4 -3

Gamma B
0 -3 -11 -14 -12 -8 -5 0 -8

Jedi,
yeah I found out that each one has it's own settings in the service menu, but I have noticed that items 0 and 5 stay the same for all and I've only noticed item 10 switching. So I don't know. I've been doing a lot of tweaking this weekend and I think I'm on to something I will post more when after I have done some more watching!:)

dnlar,

WELCOME!!! Glad to see another member of the Z700 tweak thread!:D

Metric,

Yes, I have your settings stored, as well as Cameron's and Thuppu's, ofcourse with changes I made to suit my tastes. Your settings look great, with nice color and a smooth, film-like look, much like Cameron's. The best blacks are Thuppu's dynamic mode so far. Next, I will try Blu's service menu tweaks. If I can get the blacks in creative to look as good as dynamic, and keep nice color, that would be wonderful. I do believe it is possible. This is becoming quite a nice thread.

Adrian

Im not sure what settings i posted; here are my current though:

Brightness +2
Contrast -4
Color +1
Tint +2
Red +2
Green -4
Blue -5
Sharp +3
Lamp low (cant stand the noise)
Gamma 0
Iris Mode 1
Auto black stretch off
Contrast off
Transient off
Dynamic gamma mid


Sorry if these were the ones previously posted.

This is great, guys!! Keep it coming. I'm off to a buddy's right now who has the Sharp 20K 1080p pj. I'll probably come back with my tail between my legs...

Adrian

Ok, my tail is tucked safely between my legs, as I guessed it would be. Man, that Sharp pj looks great. I could see rainbows on it if I tried, but the blacks were so dark it was scary!! I got to borrow my buddy's season 1 boxed set of Chuck on BluRay. Cool.

Adrian

I just bought a PLV-Z700 and am needing to build a screen for it. My projection throw distance is 19.5 feet, and I am planning on making a screen out of MDF that is 100 inches in diameter. For the screen surface, I plan on using Behr silverscreen paint formula, which I believe is a very light grey. Will this be a high enough gain screen? The room should be pretty dark.

I just bought a PLV-Z700 and am needing to build a screen for it. My projection throw distance is 19.5 feet, and I am planning on making a screen out of MDF that is 100 inches in diameter. For the screen surface, I plan on using Behr silverscreen paint formula, which I believe is a very light grey. Will this be a high enough gain screen? The room should be pretty dark.

For all that time and effort you will spend why don't you just buy a Da-Lite High Power 96" or 106" pull-down (either Model B or C) and either use it as a pull down or tear out the material and put it on your own frame.

They are dirt cheap.

The added gain will be so much better than a DIY painted screen.

Thuppu,

Well, I tried your new dynamic mode settings with high hopes, but unfortunately did not get the great color and skin tones that you are getting. Things are on the red side, but atleast I don't see that overburned hotspotting that I saw before. I also realize that everybody's setup needs are different. My 1080HD is ceiling mounted, shooting from about 11.5 feet back onto a 96'' matte white 1.0 gain screen. I'm in a light controlled room with dark charcoal acoustic foam covering all walls up to and around the screen, including the ceiling. My source for right now is my D* HR20 dvr, but waiting in the wings are pc sources like a MyHD tuner card and a BD drive that I've watched very little so far. I guess I'm trying to work up to the BD drive, and get the pj in prime shape first.

Is your screen grey or white? What is the gain? I seem to remember your main source being a pc, right? Hence, your choice of hdmi enhanced. My dvr also lost its ultra black dark scenes with your new settings, probably due to it being on the wrong setting for a set top box(video). I am going to keep working with things. My only complaints with the previous settings were the bad color and hotspotting. My answers may lie with going back to your old stored settings, and working with custom gamma and the color management system. No one has talked about CMS here yet, but it's all over the Z2000 tweak thread.

What is the purpose of being able to move the custom gamma graph to different parts of the screen? Does it allow you to change color/gamma in just that part of the screen?

Adrian

Well I got my PLV-Z700 in yesterday and got the screen mounted up and everything. Its a 100" MDF painted with Behr 4850 so the gain is around 1.1 I think.

Anyways, using the projectorreview settings, and watching part of Bee Movie on Bluray, my jaw was dropped the entire time. The brightness, color definition and sharpness of the picture was simply amazing.

HOWEVER, as soon as I played back a movie with real life acting, not animation, I was a bit disappointed. The black levels were simply horrible. Everything below a certain black level just looks like a shade of dark gray. Basically the picture looks great until the scene gets dark.

I went back and changed the settings to the defaults, and the black levels were much much better with creative cinema, though the color wasnt as good, and I would get the "pumping" of the iris whenever a scene would change which was distracting. The blacks were still still a single shade though.

Im thinking about going back to the projectorreview settings, but enabling the dynamic iris again. But what about the lack of shadow definition? Is there another setting to fix this?

Could someone comment on the performance of the 700 for computer graphics display. I have a need for a dual use projector in my ht. I'm concerned about clean display of small font text at native mode.

Thanks!

I guess sharpness is the most vital factor then..? I currently feed my z700 with PC alone (win xp at 1920*1080, and dvi-hdmi converter with hdmi cable) and the computer image is very sharp and "workable", even small fonts are readable. Image is also very steady and calm. I think z700 will do just fine as extra-monitor.

Jerry,

I am finding that if you use the dynamic mode as a base for your calibrations, you'll get the best black levels. Right now, mine seem to be about where my Optoma H79 dlp pj black levels were. There are some posted dynamic mode settings on this thread. Check Thuppu's. Beware, getting color right in dynamic is a bear. Also, make sure that if you're using a video source, choose normal hdmi. If the source is pc, choose enhanced. Your blacks will look weak and washed out if you're trying to watch a video source on enhanced. I'm finally getting better color in dynamic, and will post my settings as soon as I'm totally happy with them. My recent success happened after I started over at the dynamic default, then made less drastic changes to the color and tint than before. I was quite amazed.

Concerning shadow detail, I find that dynamic gamma in low use does a lot to add detail to the blacks. You can find this in the advanced menu. Maybe you should try to tweak the regular gamma setting first. This inexspensive pj has a lot of pop to it. Watching hd on D* now is looking like BDs.

Adrian

Hey , thought I'd post my HTPC w/ ATI 4870 settings. I used my Spyder2PRO. Brightness, Contrast, and RGB are for 6500k. I really didn't need to make a profile. Setting Gamma 0 seems to give a gamma very close to 2.2. Also, I used Creative Cinema as a starting point with Color Temp set to Default which givers you a color temp of around 7500k.

Brightness -1
Contrast +4
Color 0
Tint 0
Red 0
Green -7
Blue -8
Sharpness 0
Gamma 0

Mode 2
Transient Improvement Low
Dynamic Gamma Low

Hope this is useful.

Is your screen grey or white? What is the gain? I seem to remember your main source being a pc, right? Hence, your choice of hdmi enhanced.
I have light gray screen with approx. 0.8 gain. Yes, I have a HTPC but also a Denon 1920 DVD player and a Sony S550 BD player. Had to try the enhanced mode, but I find out that the only benefit you get with it is using it with your PC desktop, programs and games. All films on my HDD, DVD's and BD's uses 16-235 color scale. So if you don't play you are free to use HDMI-normal mode.

If you adjust the blacker than black and the whiter than white shades(0-255 scale) visible with your PC and testpatterns you get a terrible picture with your movies, quite tepid... foggy picture (if you can say so?).

Hey , thought I'd post my HTPC w/ ATI 4870 settings. I used my Spyder2PRO. Brightness, Contrast, and RGB are for 6500k. I really didn't need to make a profile. Setting Gamma 0 seems to give a gamma very close to 2.2. Also, I used Creative Cinema as a starting point with Color Temp set to Default which givers you a color temp of around 7500k.

Brightness -1
Contrast +4
Color 0
Tint 0
Red 0
Green -7
Blue -8
Sharpness 0
Gamma 0

Mode 2
Transient Improvement Low
Dynamic Gamma Low

Hope this is useful.

Nice! Thanks! Can you do calibrated settings with Dynamic mode?

Ok, this is great. It's been kind of quiet around here, but now things are picking up again. Thuppu, thanks for your reply, it makes sense for me to use normal hdmi. I'm a lot happier now with my colors in dynamic than I was before. Blacks are great and I don't have that milky, cloudy look in dark scenes.

Adrian

Thuppu,

Have you tried anything with the color management system?

Adrian

Nice! Thanks! Can you do calibrated settings with Dynamic mode?

I tried but wasn't able to get close to 6500k, I had to take Green and Blue all the down -30 and the temp was still over 8000k. I would lilke to try it in the service menu but don't know what the cut or gain settings are.

Thuppu,

Have you tried anything with the color management system?

Adrian

No, I haven't. I ones look in the menu, but decide to do nothing... :D


I tried but wasn't able to get close to 6500k, I had to take Green and Blue all the down -30 and the temp was still over 8000k. I would lilke to try it in the service menu but don't know what the cut or gain settings are.

Ok, it's quite a cold picture. I was surprised that you could't get even close...

Also, make sure that if you're using a video source, choose normal hdmi. If the source is pc, choose enhanced. Your blacks will look weak and washed out if you're trying to watch a video source on enhanced.


BTB and WTW are only meant for PCs because they produce output in the range 0-255 grayscale. But movies are created in 16-235 and by definition on a digital system BTB shouldn't be seen on the screen. In fact, with old CRT displays they specifically instructed you to adjust the display until the BTB bar on the test pattern just disappeared, ie: you aren't suppose to see it, because it makes the display out of specification.

If you force your device to output 0-255 and then show a 16-235 movie, it will reset true black to 0 instead of 16 and give your movie a gray haze over everything and there will be no brilliant whites possible because 255 will never appear in the movie. In this case you have told the display that black on the movie is now a shade of gray and white is also just a shade of gray, and it will dutifully do what its told. Unfortunately it looks horrible.

For digital displays of movies "enhanced" black should always be off. For PCs material, it should always be on.

Orion

Thanks for explaining so clearly what I could not concerning the hdmi enhanced mode. I now understand that enhanced should not be selected even when watching movies from computer, right?

Adrian

After having the projector for a few weeks now, I must say that I am happy with my purchase. I've gotten the black levels much better (thanks for the help everyone!) and the picture quality and color is oustanding... for the most part.

One issue I have is one that was mentioned earlier in the thread, that is color uniformity. On a pure white or gray scene being displayed, you can see a reddish tint at the bottom of the screen and a bluish tint at the top. The center of the screen seems pretty neutral. It is pretty hard to see most of the time, however, im afraid if I were to watch a black and white movie, it would look awful.

The problem seems more pronounced with the dynamic iris enabled. Disabling it seems to get rid of this problem.

Are there settings in the factory maintenance menu that can fix this?

Jerry,

Yep, I know what you are talking about. I haven't gotten an answer to that same question yet, so I don't know if there's anything in service mode that will help us. However, trying different settings posted by other owners here has helped a lot, with some adjusting to fit my own setup. My color uniformity issues are still there, but they are a lot less noticeable. Currently, I'm watching the dynamic mode based on Thuppu's settings, but with normal hdmi. I'm still working to try and get the colors right, but my blacks are killer. I also found that using the fixed setting gets rid of the problem, but I lose my great blacks in that mode.

Another thing that seemed to help was to just reset everything and start over with the factory default dynamic mode, and work from there. It doesn't make sense, but it helped in my case.

Adrian

On a pure white or gray scene being displayed, you can see a reddish tint at the bottom of the screen and a bluish tint at the top. The center of the screen seems pretty neutral.

The problem seems more pronounced with the dynamic iris enabled. Disabling it seems to get rid of this problem.



It sounds like chromatic aberration [CA] from the lens system. This would be worse when the iris opens fully on an all white display because CA is directly proportional to iris opening size. Perhaps turning the iris off, sets the iris to some medium smaller default position which of course would reduce CA.

To get red on one side and blue on the other, the lens system may not be parallel with the transmitted wave front. If so, introducing an offset in the same direction as the maximum red/blue line will make it worse one way and may cancel it the other.

Orion

Thanks for explaining so clearly what I could not concerning the hdmi enhanced mode. I now understand that enhanced should not be selected even when watching movies from computer, right?

Adrian

Yep, some people seem obsessed with being able to see BTB when watching movies. I think that comes from sources like DVE that hints that if you can't see BTB there is something wrong with your system. It's true for CRT systems, but not for digital ones.

There must be a lot of people out there thinking that enhanced means better and insisting on watching washed out movies because its, well, just better. Then to fix the washed out look, they tinker with the display until red faces and blue beards are what passes for normal. I know, because I did just that following what I thought DVE said. Of course I miss understood and thankfully read more on this site....its a learning curve.

Could someone point me to the calibrate projectorreview settings? I can't seem to find them.

Thanks!

Could someone point me to the calibrate projectorreview settings? I can't seem to find them.

Thanks!

http://www.projectorreviews.com/sanyo/plv-z700/performance.php

I think Orion is right about my problem being chromatic aberation in the lens system.

I did some testing with my HTPC. I created several pure colored bitmaps and displayed them full screen. When I would set the iris range to 0 and fixed, and used the 255,255,255 white bitmap, you could see a tiny bit of color abnormalities in the corners. It isnt too bad though, and while watching something you probably wouldnt notice this. However, as soon as you start adjusting the iris values into the negative, you start to see more and more shift in the red and blue spectrum. By the time you get to -63, the center of the screen is clearly blue and the top and bottom red. I am going to take some screenshots with a camera this weekend to demonstrate, but I am starting to think I received a bad unit. Though realistically, if the iris were at -63, the scene would probably be very dark anyways, making it harder to see this.

Can anyone else with the color ununiformity issues try the same thing and see if the same thing happens?

I purchased the PLV-700 a couple of weeks ago. I'm coming from the Mitsubishi HD1000(a great little pj), and the Sanyo is definitely a cut above. I'm very pleased with the settings I'm using. I don't have access to the pj right now, but from memory I'm using Creative Cinema with the Iris in "fixed" mode. Contrast is +4, brightness is -7. Color temperature is Low 2 with the bulb in A1 mode. Blu-ray looks unbelievable; I can't believe the texture and detail that can be seen in 1080p. Upconverted SD(via the PS3 and a Toshiba HD DVD player) looks very good, especially with beautiful transfers(such as the recent Columbia MICHAEL POWELL COLLECTION).

I'm very happy with this pj so far; it was a steal for the price.

Ok, this is great. It's been kind of quiet around here, but now things are picking up again. Thuppu, thanks for your reply, it makes sense for me to use normal hdmi. I'm a lot happier now with my colors in dynamic than I was before. Blacks are great and I don't have that milky, cloudy look in dark scenes.

Adrian

Post your setting. :P

Hi, Because of the enormous abilities of the lens, you have lots of chances in positioning de Z700 in whatever place in the room in front of the screen. How do you correct the the diference in size from top to bottom or right to left?
There is this trapezoid effect and no correction?
It surprise me, because I did have the Z5 that have vertical keystone.
There must be a way to correct this. I will apreciate any sugestions.

Best Regards

Yep, I have a small problem with that. I probably need some help from an installer to make sure that the pj is exactly level and ''squared up'' with the screen, huh? Maybe the screen is off too.

I will post my current settings later, I'm not home now. I have actually abandoned the dynamic mode and gone back to creative, based on Metric's settings I think. I just couldn't get colors and skin tones to look right in dynamic. I have sacrificed some black level and the iris pumping is worse, but the color uniformity seems much better somehow. Colors look very good, and I managed to get rid of the dull, hazy look that first turned me off in creative.

I also noticed that my lens focus was off when I switched over to the pc for watching the BD drive. The desktop revealed that the icons on the lower right side of the windows taksbar were out of focus, but everything on the left side was sharply in focus. I first thought that something might be wrong with the lens, but then I started working with the angle of the pj and the focus. I was able to come up with good clarity all the way across the screen. What helps is to open a window with text and then just drag it around the desktop looking for blurry sections. It was hard to notice that my lens wasn't focused properly when I was watching just video material, but switching to pc showed me a lot. If you are able to check this with a pc, it is well worth it. The resulting image clarity and sharpness is unbelievable. You will not be sorry.

Adrian

Happy news for me. At first I correct the angle to the screen with the adjustable feet, and I did have the trapezoid effect in the screen.
But last night I level down the adjustable feet, and then I used the Vertical lens shift ring, that move up the whole lens, not just the tip of the projector.
And the image went up without distortion.
Problems may differ from one situation to another.
In any case thanks for paying attention to my requirements.
Projector is unvelibable. Image is so good , that last night I watch the bluray of Police in B.Aires, it was incredible, like having Sting at home.

Best Regards

Thank you so much for posting the service menu instructions.

I had my projector calibrated very well but was a bit disappointed that I had to use the iris in fixed mode (even mode 1 was too disturbing and shiny items in dark scenes didn't come out bright).
Now I am tweaking the 0-item to find the best value for how much the iris is allowed to close. Even using a small range in a tweaked A1 mode is an improvement that is worth the "risk" :)

Thank you so much for posting the service menu instructions.

I had my projector calibrated very well but was a bit disappointed that I had to use the iris in fixed mode (even mode 1 was too disturbing and shiny items in dark scenes didn't come out bright).
Now I am tweaking the 0-item to find the best value for how much the iris is allowed to close. Even using a small range in a tweaked A1 mode is an improvement that is worth the "risk" :)
I have a Z2000 but I guess it's the same with a Z700.
Before adjusting items, be sure the iris range is set to zero and use a bright picture or a 75 IRE pattern to display.

Item 0 : is how much the mechanics of the iris can close, on the Z2000 the right value is around 50, under this value blacks are not better and the iris is oscillating because it goes too far to close creating delays.
Item 2: Reaction time between two scenes, the shorter the better
Item 3: Reduce the noise when the iris goes to the lower or the higher position
Item 4 : Increase speed reaction
Item 5 : This will reduce the noise. It's the speed reaction between two levels of brightness. On the Z2000 a value around 8 is the best compromise, lower, no noise but the speed is too slow, higher it's too noisy.
Item 6 : Is the delay when brightness is changing, lower it will reduce the noise but increase the reaction time.
Item 10 : On a dark scene, this will set the maximum value of the iris closing, set too high the blacks will be too bright, set it to zero.
Item 1 : On a bright scene, it will set the maximum opening, reduce a lot than increase the value till the image gets not brighter.

Hope this helps.

Gerald,

This is great info, thanks. Do you know if there is a menu item that deals with color uniformity, since using the iris in some modes can cause color shifts in different parts of the picture on the Z700? Do you know how the different bulb modes affect the bulb life? I'm currently using economy mode, but wouldn't mind going to one of the auto modes if I don't lose too much bulb life. So after spending the money for calibration in fixed mode, you decided to start using the iris again?

Guys, I apologize. I promised to post my settings recently, but got busy and now I'm away from home again. I'll get on it.

Adrian

Gerald,

This is great info, thanks. Do you know if there is a menu item that deals with color uniformity, since using the iris in some modes can cause color shifts in different parts of the picture on the Z700?
I've never heard about a menu item for managing color shading correction and I didn't know the iris could have some influence on color uniformity.

Do you know how the different bulb modes affect the bulb life? I'm currently using economy mode, but wouldn't mind going to one of the auto modes if I don't lose too much bulb life. So after spending the money for calibration in fixed mode, you decided to start using the iris again?
Use of the bulb:
Full or A1:100%
A2:85-90%
Eco:around 70%

I didn't spend any money in calibration:), my PJ is just set to my tastes, in a near future I will buy a probe, I want to do it by myself to understand how it works.
In the beginning I used the closest mode out of the box to a D65 calibration, Pure Cinema missing on Z700 and modify some settings. I had to tweak the iris because it was pumping, noisy and gave grey blacks, I played black and white movies to check the improvement, the best DVD for testing was Renaissance (http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7431204).

I am thinking about getting this PJ ... I currently have a 92-inch diag screen and the present PJ is mounted at a distance of 14 ft from the screen ... with zoom set to 1X.

Doing some quick research, it appears that the Z700 at that same location will result in zoom of 1.3X.

Perhaps I am still stuck to ancient logic ... but I thought zoom was bad for PQ ... and I really worked hard to ensure my last PJ could be used with a zoom of 1X.

Can someone enlighten me on this ... does zoom > 1X impact PQ ?

I am thinking about getting this PJ ... I currently have a 92-inch diag screen and the present PJ is mounted at a distance of 14 ft from the screen ... with zoom set to 1X.

Doing some quick research, it appears that the Z700 at that same location will result in zoom of 1.3X.

Perhaps I am still stuck to ancient logic ... but I thought zoom was bad for PQ ... and I really worked hard to ensure my last PJ could be used with a zoom of 1X.

Can someone enlighten me on this ... does zoom > 1X impact PQ ?

If I'm not mistaken, zoom = brighter image, telephoto = dimmer image.

I have used theese "Bran´s" Brilliant Cinema settings for a while now and have been very pleased with it... http://www.dvdplaza.fi/forums/showpost.php?p=1194737&postcount=42

I use a white screen, gain ~1.3.

I only did some small modifications...

Brilliant Cinema

HDMI setup: Normal


Brightness: 0
Contrast: +5
Color: 0
Tint: 0

R: 0
G: 0
B: 0

Sharpness: +2
Lamp control: eco-mode
Gamma: +2
Progressive: -
Noise reduction: -


Advanced menu

Iiris mode: Mode1
Iiris range: -20
Auto black stretch: Low
Contrast enhancement: Mid
Transient impovement: Mid
Color management: -
Dynamic gamma: Mid
Custom gamma: -

Thanks Thuppu. I'll give this a shot.

Adrian

Those settings kick ass for me! i just made brightness +1

Added pics, crappy over exposure from iphone camera.

Well ok, I did finally get around to trying Thuppu's new settings. I think they are fantastic, just as Metric does. They have provided the most hd clarity and pop I've seen on this pj yet!! Detailing on surfaces like skin and things with bumpy texture is crazy, and looking at hair is cool too. Like Metric, I made a small adjustment for myself. I like to see good dark blacks, and the initial settings had the lightest, greyest blacks of all my user presets. I bumped the brightness down to -5 and things looked better. I would love to see these settings on a nice grey screen, which is the next thing I need to get.

My screen is a DIY Parklands Plastics shower panel you can get at Home Depot for about $25. The duller side yields about 1.0 gain, and it's simply tacked onto my wall with dark material around it on all sides. The idea came from a buddy who found thus in the screen forum. Yes, mine shows buckles, so I know that I'll have even better clarity when I get a real screen that's tensioned for good flatness. I have been checking out some inexpensive fixed grey screens in the $200-350 range on ebay and might go with something like that soon. I want flatness and a better black than what I'm seeing on my white screen.

Most likely I'll continue testing with Thuppu's recent settings, but here are some numbers I came up with last night(using just my eyes, mind you) while using the Natural mode as a base. I got tired of not seeing good skin tones in any of my factory or preset modes, and I kept getting a kind of solarized orange effect in faces in certain scenes. This is mentioned by some on the Z2000 tweak thread. I do think that skin tones do seem pretty good in Thuppu's latest numbers. So here are my ''natural'' settings. For me, the blacks and skin tones are a bit better, but the hd zing is better with Thuppu's.

Natural mode
hdmi normal

Brightness -8
Contrast +2
Color 0
Tint -7
C. Temp. High1
red -4
green 0
blue +5
sharpness 0
lamp economy
gamma +3
prog. auto
noise red. off
iris mode mode 2
iris range -30
auto b. stretch mid
cont. enh. off
trans. imp. low
color man. -
dyn. gamma off
cust. gamma -


I just went back and forth between my natural settings and Thuppu's, and as I said before, for me the skin tones and blacks are better in tweaked natural mode in my theater. I can also see that whites are a bit warm in Thuppu's numbers on my pj. They may not be for anyone else. I'll be working to even up the 2 modes. Man, this fun. Let's keep the tweaking going.



Adrian

We had to thank DVDPlaza member Bran for the nice settings...

It is very difficult to adjust the picture with your eyes only. The eyes is very easy to trick, they easily become accustomed to the new colors. Been there done that. :p

I tried jedi35's setting last knight... I did get quite bad color uniformity with it. The blacks are blacker than than with the Brilliant Cinema but you loose a huge amount of shadow details. The pic tone is also quite cold but it's a matter of taste. Quite same problems that was with the Dynamic settings...

My screen: white high gain

Im running grey screen; why i bumped brightness up +1 - i hadnt used my projector in a couple of months but now i feel the upgrade from the aw15 was worth it.

Thanks Thuppu for trying my natural settings. I have grown displeased with the results I got after continuing to test with the brilliant mode. Sorry, I don't have any calibration equipment. I have to do everything by eye for now. This natural mode seems greenish to me now. I am curious as to why the iris causes bad color uniformity. Using one iris mode over another should not cause color problems. This might be a design flaw or maybe just a defect in some units, huh? Not that it needs saying, but we're not going to see exactly the same results when we plug in each others' numbers. How dark or bright black is, as well as shadow detail will vary greatly. Perhaps we should always keep that in mind when we evaluate someone else' settings. :-)

Metric,
Tell me more about this grey screen of yours. What is the gain? Fixed, motorized or pull down? Man, I'll bet your blacks are great.

Adrian

I'm interested in this projector and have a quick question:
on the screen shots I have seen here and on the site projector reviews, the images all seem to have a white layer on them and colours slightly washed out. Is this just an impression or is it a characteristic of this projector?

Hey guys, I just upgraded from the Z4 to the Z700 a couple weeks ago, but have been in the process of moving so I haven't had time to begin the HT until this weekend. One quick question, it accepts 24p from a compatible player, correct? If so, does it automatically recognize the signal and adjust accordingly for the signal? I read the manual and looked at reviews but couldn't find a definitive answer.

I am going to start with Thuppu's settings then calibrate from there. I'll post mine when I'm done... I can't wait to see how this sexy beast looks!
Brilliant Cinema

HDMI setup: Normal


Brightness: 0
Contrast: +5
Color: 0
Tint: 0

R: 0
G: 0
B: 0

Sharpness: +2
Lamp control: eco-mode
Gamma: +2
Progressive: -
Noise reduction: -


Advanced menu

Iiris mode: Mode1
Iiris range: -20
Auto black stretch: Low
Contrast enhancement: Mid
Transient impovement: Mid
Color management: -
Dynamic gamma: Mid
Custom gamma: -

steebo,

The pj will simply recognize the 24p signal when it is correctly fed. I have an ATI 2600 videocard in my pc, along with a BD drive. When I select 1080p@24 as the output resolution, the pj reflects shows that in the pj info menu.

Hey guys, I just got a new screen!! It's the Saardia 92" Fixed screen with the Gray Magic II material( 1.0 gain). You can find these on ebay as well as saardia.com, and they are pretty inexpensive. I going to write more about it later, but so far, I can tell you that I'm sure that this screen has changed my life. The picture looks that much better, but there are some issues that need to be resolved. Will write more soon...

Adrian

The new screen is incredible in lots of ways. I was using a DIY setup before with a Parklands Plastics vinyl panel intended for use on the walls of showers. The screen forum guys here discovered that the matt side of the panel produces about 1.0 gain. This has been my screen for the past couple of years or so. I wanted to get a screen that enhances resolution and improves the black level and contrast of the Sanyo, something that shows off what a 1080p pj could do. It has always bothered me that my plastic screen had buldges, keeping me from getting the best focus and resolution. After looking around a bit I came across these inexpensive Saardia screens on ebay. You can get them as fixed, pulldown, tab tensioned, or electric. The material I chose is what they call Gray Magic II, which is an upgrade to the original Grey Magic material that you can find reviewed on Projector Central. They looked at a handful of screens under $500 and compared them to a couple of expensive high end screens, like the Stewart Grayhawk. They didn't care for this original material very much, claiming that it lost about 30 % brightness compared to the Stewart, and the white were greyish. Blacks were deep, however. They also didn't like the thinness of the black border that framed the screen.


The new material addresses all these issues, according to the CS rep I spoke with. The screen seems plenty bright even in low bulb mode. Blacks and contrast are killer, really. The 92" size is slightly smaller that what I had before(about 98" diagonal), so the image was expected to look a bit more compact and sharp. I was not prepared for the improvements I got. My image now is looking more and more like a 92" plasma, with lot of HD pop and resolution. This might be a welcome trade off between screen real estate and image clarity. I was thinking about sending this one back and going for the 100", zooming it back a couple of inches, but I don't think I'll do that now. Watching hd on D* is really fun now, and BD is mindblowing.

Here are some issues that I'm having: 1)I can't seem to get the 16:9 image to fill the screen properly. When I get the image extended to the top and bottom of the frame, the sides fall short of the border. When I manage to get the sides right, the top and bottom spill over too much. This leads me to believe that this screen is not in a true 16:9 format. It must be slightly more narrow. I get the same results with hd from pc sources and D*. I haven't tried SD dvd yet, but it probably won't be any different. I will check with the company about this. How could they put out something like this, after having a review from PC, and knowing full well what the measurements should be.

2)There are some blotchy grid-like patterns in some section of the screen material. It looks like the screen might have been resting on something with these patterns and it got pressed into it. The screen has been up for a few days now, and the blotches are less noticeable then before, but I can still see them in the image, especially in solid bright colors. There are also some random lines here and there that can be seen, but they are lessening as well. They company has suggested that I try some low heat wet ironing on the opposite surface with protective cloth for a few minutes. I'm not thrilled about having to take the screen down to do this, but I'll have to try their ideas before I can request a replacement.

3)There are 2 corners of the screen that show small ripples in the material, right at the border of the frame. I am certain that my buddy and I tensioned everything properly when we put the screen up, but yet the ripples are there. So far, it hasn't been a huge issue, since the sides of my image don't actually reach as far as the corners, strangely. One of my main goals in getting a fixed screen was to have a perfectly flat surface for my image. Not good. It took the both of us to get the tension rods properly placed over the buttons that stretch the material over the frame, especially at the corners. We were sure that something pulled that tight would be flat and trampoline-like. Perhaps taking the material off and trying again would give better results.

4) Having a grey screen means that some serious color work has to be done. The color shifts towards grey and blue, making things much cooler than they should be. Skin tones are greyish, but I did expect this. I haven't done anything to correct it yet, other than switching from dynamic mode back to creative, which gave me better color on the old screen. It's nice to be able to stay in creative mode and get good deep blacks without that hazy look. This is an issue that should be able to be solved without too much fuss.

5) The installation on the wall was problematic. We found that the wall, which was the wall between the house and my covered garage, did not have studs. There is plaster, then concrete cinder blocks. We used concrete screws, but were only able to get the top 2 screws to hold firmly. Essentially, the screen is hanging from the top screws, with one of the lower corners lightly secured. My buddy will come out on another day and try a different approach, using strips of wood glued and drilled into the wall, and anchoring the screen supports into the wood. That should work.

Even with these issues, I think that it was a good idea to try and get a better screen for this pj. It feels like I have given myself a new pj now. The 3-D effect really comes out on a flat screen. It also looks like a veil has been removed between me and the picture. Once the issues are resolved, I'm in for some serious hd enjoyment. Sorry for the crazy long post, and yes, I should be checking with the screen forum about all this.

Adrian

Hello all,
First post, first projector.
Got it one month ago. After the initial joy, it seems the focus is not easy to adjust. I adjust it, and the very next day, I need to do it again.
Something related to heat, I read somewhere...
But yesterday trying to adjust the focus the best my eyes allow I came very close to the screen, and discovered that the white letters (I was in the video menu of my TVIX-6500A) had a blue shape above and yellow below.
http://img196.imageshack.us/my.php?image=convergenceissue.jpg
Is this a convergence issue? Can anyone let me know if there is anything I can do to correct that? I was using 1080p/ hdmi/ enhaced.
I wish I had discovered that in the first 7 days, but I was soooooo impressed by the 100" screen...

Hello, I have had this projector for a while now and love it. The only issue I have is that it seems shift the projected image on its own...meaning I align the image to my screnn using the dials on the side and lock them in. I watch a movie or whatever, then come back the next day or so...and the image is slightly shifted to the left and down (facing the screen)....I have re-aligned many times and had the same thing happen....any ideas?


TIA!

Mine does not have that issue. It stays the same I left it a month ago.
Good luck.

My pj doesn't seem to lose focus or screen position inbetween uses. However, I have noticed that the lens produces a softer focus on the right side of the screen. This is the case at all times. Nothing I have tried in terms of careful focusing, lens shift, or alignment seems to help. The screen is flat, finally. Besides, could any slight differences at the screen cause what I'm seeing?

Adrian

My pj doesn't seem to lose focus or screen position inbetween uses. However, I have noticed that the lens produces a softer focus on the right side of the screen. This is the case at all times. Nothing I have tried in terms of careful focusing, lens shift, or alignment seems to help. The screen is flat, finally. Besides, could any slight differences at the screen cause what I'm seeing?

Adrian

Have you tried to turn the PJ a little bit? If it's tilted according to the screen..? The lensshift can also be the reason. Have you much horizontal correction in use?

BTW thanks for the screen review. :)

Hey man,

Sorry that I've been so out of touch. I wasn't sure if anyone payed much attention to my screen review. You are the only one who's commented on it. Thanks. I should have updated the review by now, as a few things have changed for the better. Yes, I have tried tilting the pj, but it had no effect. I have to use the lens shift since my mount is very close to the ceiling. I would have to either have to buy a new ceiling mount in order to test this(which is not out of the question, I have been wanting a better one that puts the pj in the center of the screen), or I could shelf mount it behind me. It would have to project a little further to the screen, but hopefully I won't lose too much brightness with this screen material. This project will have to wait, as I'm heading out of town to my summer job in MI this weekend. I won't be back until sometime in August. Bummer...no HD for awhile!!

Generally, I've been doing much more watching than tweaking lately. I think that is a good thing, and it must say something about the pj/screen combo. I had a buddy over who has that killer Sharp 20K dlp pj recently, and he loved it. Also, a fellow AVSer came over(he has the Z2) and he said that I sent him home with his tail between his legs. His image could be sharper, but he doing 140". Wow!! Wimbledon tennis starts up this coming week, and it kills me that I won't get to watch it on my setup.

Adrian

Wow, looks like I was the last one to post in this thread awhile back. I'm finally back home after teaching in MI for 6 weeks. The first thing I did, without even turning the pj on, was to take it down from the ceiling and shelf mount it behind the couch. Unfortunately, the distance was too far to get the proper image size on my screen. I couldn't zoom it down small enough for the 92" screen. I then built a temporary support column directly behind the couch that was close enough to get the right image size, and it allowed me to have the center of the lens even with the center of the screen. My goal was to eliminate all lens shift.

The results: uncanny...un-frikkin'-believable!! Every aspect of the image is improved. First off, the focus issue I had is gone. I have very sharp focus all the way across the screen. Lens shift was messing with my focus, probably because I had to use so much of it. The image seems about 30% sharper overall. It also seems to be about 30% brighter. As a result, contrast and perceived black levels have gone up. The picture seems brighter, with blacker blacks. I'm getting much more of the 3-D effect, and colors are richer and have a lot more pop. Blues and greens are just lovely. Very candy-like. The image is not only sharper, but smoother at the same time. Not a dullness, but there is a silkiness to skin tones and surfaces that should appear smooth, that wasn't there in this degree before. The image has a more canvas-like look. I also had an issue with the iris that caused a slightly different color hue in the top and bottom sections of the picture. This seems to be gone. I'm only using iris mode 1, so I have to test this in mode 2 as well, to see what happens when I go for even blacker blacks.

I am very pleased with this simple solution. I had no idea how much the lens shift feature was taking away from my image enjoyment. Now, the big problem is how to live with the new pj position. The support column is right in the middle of the traffic lane I use to get to my front door. Anyone who comes into the house will have to turn sideways and try to slip behind this structure I've built. It cannot stay like this. It's going to get bumped or knocked over for sure. What I'll try to work on is coming up with a way to suspend the pj a bit more over the couch(and my head), thus freeing up the traffic lane. The pj is about midways between the ceiling and the floor, so a pj mount would have to be extremely long to handle this...and then it might be quite shaky. I may look into using hooks and chains to suspend a shelf that the pj can sit upright on, if I can get it level enough. I'll have to be careful not to bump it, but I trust myself more than visitors.

If you are using lens shift to a significant degree, I suggest that you come up with a way to see your image without it, and then you may find that you like it so much you might find a way to keep from having to use it. I'd love to hear from someone else who's willing to test this. It's great!!

Adrian

FWIW, concerning keystone. I found that if the 700 is level and the screen plumb front-to-back, that with the projector mounted at a height equal to the very top of the screen there is just a little bit of vertical keystone. By re-positioning the bottom of the screen out from the wall a bit, the keystone disappears. The screen's no longer perfectly plumb front-to-back but that's not noticeable. Also may help to use the feet to raise the front of the projector a bit and use a little more downward lens shift. But by all means don't aim the projector down as that makes a lot of keystone (wider at the bottom of the screen). My sceen is 98" diag and the projector is around 10' back.

Don't think I like the idea of mounting the projector at the middle of the screen, though -- if it makes the picture better, I'll never be able to try it. It'd be sitting on top of my head. But now you've got me wondering...

Yeah, personally I don't understand how I got these results. This is not a zero offset pj, so I don't know why the pj is level and shooting a very nice image into a flat screen about 12 ' away. It doesn't make sense. All I know is what I see. It's certainly not ideal to have the pj so close to my head. I wouldn't have chosen this had I not seen the results. Too bad you're not able to try this just to see what it looks like. We all have to make setup decisions based on what we can live with. I wish you all the best in acheiving what you need. I just wanted to point out that I agree this is not a convenient choice. There's no argument there.

Adrian

Ok, wanting to try something new I thought I would try try the brilliant cinema settings and also some service menu settings. With a few days of testing, it just feels worse than dynamic, even though it seems to handle dynamic gamma better without burning everything red. Here are my current dynamic settings to try out. My screen is a somewhat grayish DIY one, but not a very dark gray. So colors will most probably have to be tweaked from these. Oh, and I'm using hdmi enhanced mode, but with full 0-255 data from the pc and ps3, so it shouldn't make a difference.

Dynamic mode

Brightness +3
Contrast -4
Color -5
Tint +2
C. Temp. User
red 0
green -5
blue -9
sharpness 0
lamp economy
gamma 0

iris mode mode 2
iris range -25
auto b. stretch off
cont. enh. off
trans. imp. off
color man. -
dyn. gamma low
cust. gamma -

and also in the service menu, item 0 set to +1

For daytime viewing I'm using the same settings but with
iris range = 0 and dyn. gamma = off, for low light,
and iris range = 0 and dyn. gamma = high, for lots of light.


Also, it seems that not all service menu items can be the same as on the plv-z2000, as not all of the item numbers listed by GeraldB37 seemed to exist.


Edited: Had way too much red

To be clear, what was your edit about? What had way too much red? The brilliant cinema test settings or your dynamic settings? If it's dynamic, is it before or after your posted numbers.

Concerning my recent lowering of the pj to something close to the center of the screen, I do think that there is a slight upward slant that allows the picture to fit on the screen. However, I moved the pj back a little further for logistics, and I may have lost some light output, but the black levels improved even more. The picture is slightly too big for the screen, as I'm getting some image hangover at the top, but I'm living with it right now to enjoy the great blacks. I'll fix it later.

Adrian

It was in the dynamic settings. The settings are basically what I went back to, with some changes, after messing around with brilliant cinema, and I just posted them as they were. Red was really at a very high +15. Then, I just had a look at what the XBMC test patterns looked at and realized that in the test with a gray blinking circle, inside a white box, inside a black area, the gray circle was very red. Setting red to 0 made it gray.

The strange thing is that there was not really that big of a difference with red at 0 or +15 when looking at actual video or other things.. It would seem that the image becomes too green or too blue a lot faster when increasing them, compared to adding more red.

The dynamic mode really is a strange one, but it really does appear to have highly superior contrast compared to the other modes, also I seem to get whites to look whiter more easily on my screen compared to brilliant cinema. The gamma curve is probably somehow off a bit in the mode though, but I don't have the equipment to investigate it properly.

Btw. I'm testing out some custom gamma settings grabbed from the plv-z2000 tweak thread for the dynamic mode:

R: 0 -1 -2 -1 0 0 0 0 0
G: 0 +1 +3 +1 0 0 0 0 0
B: 0 +1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Seem to be better than the defaults.

I am trying to decide between the z700 vs the z3000. The review about the z700 sounds pretty good but it did say a throw distance of 10-15ft with a 100" screen (I am assuming diagonal). I am thinking of going minimum 112" or whatever. Can this pjector handle it?

I know absolutely nothing about this stuff. I just was introduced to this home theatre phenom very recently. Now I am in research mode...

I'm projecting a 110" screen from about 4 meters, and it could go bigger. Still the I think the price of the 3000 has gone down, so It might not be as easy a decision as it was when I got the 700..

I own the Z-700 and I would take the 3000 over it for the remote zoom and focus.

I own the Z-700 and I would take the 3000 over it for the remote zoom and focus.

I guess you move your projector around a lot? Because I don't really see that much value in remote zoom or focus when my projector is mounted to the ceiling and I never touch it. But if I was moving my projector from room to room fairly often, I can see why remote zoom and focus could come in handy.

Aspect ratio zoom to adjust for black bars and also TV borders with distortion on edges, vibration from floor joists causing need to adjust focus.

Those three reasons, nothing to do with moving it around :)

Jeff

Jedi,
yeah I found out that each one has it's own settings in the service menu, but I have noticed that items 0 and 5 stay the same for all and I've only noticed item 10 switching. So I don't know. I've been doing a lot of tweaking this weekend and I think I'm on to something I will post more when after I have done some more watching!:)

hi there!

i begun messing with the service-menu settings on my new z-700, carefully writing down all the default values, but i realized too late, that item 10 in group 211 differs in every image mode. so i only wrote down the default value of "creative cinema" mode. could anyone of you be so kind and post the default values of all image modes (brilliant cinema, creative cinema, living, dynamic, etc.) in the service menu group 211 / item 10 ?

or is there any way to reset the service menu entries to their default values?

many thanks in advance!

I've had a Z-700 for a couple of months and here's what I've done (so far). I used the Spears & Munsil test disc, primarily the PLUGE, Contrast, HD Color Bars, Sharpness and Clipping patterns. I haven't been in the service menu at all.

I used Enhanced for HDMI setup as Normal totally clips white/black (PLUGE, Contrast & Clipping patterns).

Image Mode:
Pre-defined modes - These tend to severely clip white & black (Clipping pattern) plus have excessive edge enhancement (Sharpness pattern) so I avoided these.
User Images - I set up one starting with Natural as the base adding the following changes...

Image Mode Adjustment:
Brightness - -6 gave best results on PLUGE & Contrast patterns.
Contrast - +1 helped on Contrast & Clipping. Any more clipped white too much.
Color - 0 using HD Color Bars.
Tint - Left at 0.
Color Temp - Default looked best to me.
Red/Green/Blue - Left at 0. Anything else seemed to tint the image too much one way or another.
Sharpness - Left at 0. Anything minus was too soft, anything plus added ringing.
Lamp Control - Used Eco. Others gave too much fan noise. My room can be made completely dark so I don't need a lot of light output.
Gamma - Used -1 which gave deeper blacks without losing detail. More minus lost black detail. Any plus washed out the image.
Advanced menu:
Iris mode - Mode 2 looked best to me.
Iris range - Used -30.
Auto black stretch - Off.
Contrast enhancement - Off.
Transient improvement - Off.
Color management - Left alone so far.
Dynamic gamma - Off. Other values really clipped white (Clipping pattern).
Custom gamma - Used (Lo) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -8 0 (Hi) for Red, Green & Blue. This helped a lot on the Clipping pattern. But I had to keep the three colors the same setting or it added tint to the image (especially noticeable on the Contrast pattern).

At first I wasn't too pleased with the black level on this, but it's pretty good now with these settings.

I don't know if anybody is still interested in this thing but since it's still available and since the equivalent 1080P model is really cheap on closeout, I'll post my settings. It seems you can get much better black level than I thought possible with a bit more adjusting, and no service menu changes needed.

Forget my previous post. I never could get satisfying blacks starting with any mode other than Dynamic. So I used Dynamic as the starting point and when done saved it to one of the User modes. Dynamic has a horrid greenishness and way too much intensity but that can be overcome.

I used the Spears & Munsil test disc as before and the same patterns. I just eyeballed the results, so I have no idea how (in)accurate the color is but it no longer looks tinted one way or another to my eyes.

I'm connecting it via HDMI and no picture adjustments were done in the player.

Image menu
Select Dynamic, then make the following changes...

Setting menu
HDMI 1 setup = Enhanced

Image adj. menu
Brightness = -6
Contrast = -1
Color = 0
Tint = 0
Color Temp = Low 2, then change R/G/B...
Red = +6
Green = -14
Blue = -10
Sharpness = +1
Lamp Control = Eco
Gamma = +1
Advanced menu
Iris mode = Mode 2
Iris range = -30
Auto black stretch = High
Contrast enhancement = Low
Transient improvement = Off
Color management = n/a
Dynamic gamma = Low
Custom gamma
__Lo_______Mid________Hi
R: 0 +1 0 -2 -3 -3 -5 -5 -6
G: 0 +1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6
B: 0 +1 0 -1 -1 -2 -4 -5 -6

I'm interested! I picked up one of the clearance ones today at Best Buy and can't wait to get home and fire it up. I will give your settings a try. Thanks for taking the time to post.

Matt

You might try it like this instead. It looks a little better than before. I think the trick is in the Custom Gamma settings. A little too high on one or too low on another and you get an unevenness that doesn't look natural. I probably still don't have it ideal.

Image menu
Select Dynamic, then make the following changes...

Setting menu
HDMI 1 setup = Enhanced

Image adj. menu
Brightness = -5
Contrast = -1
Color = +4
Tint = 0
Color Temp = Low 2, then change R/G/B...
Red = +4
Green = -12
Blue = -10
Sharpness = +1
Lamp Control = Eco
Gamma = +1
Advanced menu
Iris mode = Mode 2
Iris range = -30
Auto black stretch = High
Contrast enhancement = Low
Transient improvement = Off
Color management = n/a
Dynamic gamma = Low
Custom gamma
___Lo____ ___Mid________Hi
R: +0 +1 +1 -3 -6 -6 -6 -6 -6
G: +0 +1 -2 -3 -3 -4 -5 -6 -6
B: +0 +0 +1 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -5

Changing the Custom gamma can require compensating adjustments in Brightness, Color, etc.

I see that these are still available, and at a pretty good price now, so no harm in one last post.

It looks like the only way to the best black level is to include a service menu adjustment in the settings. I first reset everything with Factory default in the Setting menu (note that this does not reset any service menu changes). The five User Image modes all appear to reset to the equivalent of Brilliant cinema.

Only Natural ever gave an image I even half-way liked even after tweaking so I just forgot about the others (Brilliant cinema was always to reddish, Creative cinema was always too dull looking, Natural used to be too washed-out, and both Living and Dynamic were always too glaring and too greenish).

So I made these adjustments in the various user menus...
Picture adj.
Overscan: 0
Screen
Full
Input
HDMI 1
Setting
Advanced menu: On
HDMI1 setup: Enhanced
Fan control: Normal (otherwise too loud)
Image
Natural
Image adj.
Brightness: -7 (using PLUGE test pattern)
Contrast: -1
Color: 0
Tint: 0
Color temp: Default
Red: 0
Green: 0
Blue: 0
Sharpness: +1
Lamp control: Eco (others were all too loud)
Gamma: +2 (improves low level detail)
Advanced menu
Iris mode: Mode 2 (darkest of the modes)
Iris range: -30 (don't see any difference between the values so far)
Auto black stretch: Low
Contrast improvement: Low (any higher lost low level detail)
Transient improvement: Off (anything else produced ringing)
Color management: n/a
Dynamic gamma: Low (improved low level detail, but any higher messed up bright detail)
Custom gamma: n/a
Store: User 1

After saving, press MENU on the remote and then press USER button to select User 1 image mode.

The service menu change is to one of the Iris parameters. I don't know what its specific function is but it makes for a darker image. So here's how to change it...
1) On the top of the projector, simultaneously press MENU and INPUT, holding for several seconds until the letter "S" appears in the upper left corner of the screen, then release the buttons.
2) Before the "S" disappears in a few seconds, press SCREEN on the remote, holding until the service menu appears in the upper left corner of the screen.
3) The service menu should indicate User 1 image mode is active.
4) Press no buttons on either the remote or the projector except as directed in the following steps.
5) The first group showing in the service menu is group 0. Press OK on the remote to go to the next group. Press OK repeatedly until you get to group 211.
6) The first item showing in group 211 is item 0. Press the Up arrow (directly above OK) to go to the next item in the group. Press Up arrow repeatedly until you get to item 10.
7) Item 10 has different values for the different image modes, from 0 up to +100 (0 giving the blackest image). Press Left arrow (directly to the left of OK) repeatedly to lower the value of item 10 down to 0.
8) Press ON/STAND-BY on remote to save the change and exit the service menu.

If you ever want to restore the original values to item 10 of group 211, they are:
Brilliant cinema: +40
Creative cinema: +50
Natural: +100
Living: +80
Dynamic: 0 (which is why in previous tweak posts Dynamic always yielded the best black level)

So that's it for the PLV-Z700 for me. Not a bad projector for the money, and I can finally be reasonably satisfied with the black level.

Just picked up one of these at BB and reading this thread for info. I just wanted to say thank-you to everyone for posting their settings. I haven't set mine up yet but when I do I will try some of these out. I hope this projector lives up to my expectations, which are not too high. I am replacing a Mit hc1500 dlp pj. I use the projector for gaming and movies. No TV.

The biggest drawback to the Z700 is washed-out blacks. But do the service menu change to group 211 item 10 and it's a night and day difference. Then you can do whatever suits your tastes in the user menu.

If you ever want to restore the original values to item 10 of group 211, they are:
Brilliant cinema: +40
Creative cinema: +50
Natural: +100
Living: +80
Dynamic: 0 (which is why in previous tweak posts Dynamic always yielded the best black level)

Does changing item 10 of group 211 change all of the modes at once or do you need to enter the service menu with each mode selected to change that particular mode?

For example: I enter with my last used mode as USER1, the value of item 10 will only change for USER1 and not effect any of the pre-set modes like Creative cinema?

I'm supposed to receive the Z700 tomorrow via UPS and I'm trying to get an idea of some settings to try out. Thanks! :)

hms,
Never went into a service menu before. Is it easy to reset if I screw it up?

The biggest drawback to the Z700 is washed-out blacks. But do the service menu change to group 211 item 10 and it's a night and day difference. Then you can do whatever suits your tastes in the user menu.

In the service menu did anyone write down their Group 211 Item 0 value? I'm pretty sure I screwed up to begin with and pressed right 2 times instead of up, giving a value of 34, so I pressed left two times and set the value back to 32.

Can anyone confirm that 32 is the default value for Item 0? Thanks.

When I changed 211 item 10, it allowed me to change each mode separately without changing the others, but then next time I checked the service settings, all modes had item 10 set to 0, even the presets which I hadn't specifically changed. So I wouldn't play around with service other than group 211 item 10 - you could make an unrecoverable mess.

I can't see why anyone would want a value above 0 for item 10 even if they're watching with all the room lights on - above 0 always looks washed-out on the blacks. So I have no intention of ever going back to a non-zero value for any mode.

There's no mass reset or factory defaults for the service menu that I know of, so beware. If you stay out of other groups and navigate only with OK and Up (or Down) arrow, you'll be OK. Then only press Left (or Right) arrow when you've reached group 211 item 10. Then get out of the service menu before you have a chance to do any damage.

I have no idea what the other service menu groups do, or even what the other group 211 items do. I deduced that item 10 controlled black level because Dynamic mode had 0 and also had the blackest black. Natural mode had the highest value of all the preset modes at +100 and also the most washed-out black.

Group 211 item 0 has a default of of +32 for all modes.

I looks like service group 211 item 10 allows the projector to display black as dark as the projector is capable of. Unless there's other service menu items that no one knows about yet. But I'm not going to try to find any.

When I changed 211 item 10, it allowed me to change each mode separately without changing the others, but then next time I checked the service settings, all modes had item 10 set to 0, even the presets which I hadn't specifically changed. So I wouldn't play around with service other than group 211 item 10 - you could make an unrecoverable mess.

I can't see why anyone would want a value above 0 for item 10 even if they're watching with all the room lights on - above 0 always looks washed-out on the blacks. So I have no intention of ever going back to a non-zero value for any mode.

There's no mass reset or factory defaults for the service menu that I know of, so beware. If you stay out of other groups and navigate only with OK and Up (or Down) arrow, you'll be OK. Then only press Left (or Right) arrow when you've reached group 211 item 10. Then get out of the service menu before you have a chance to do any damage.

I have no idea what the other service menu groups do, or even what the other group 211 items do. I deduced that item 10 controlled black level because Dynamic mode had 0 and also had the blackest black. Natural mode had the highest value of all the preset modes at +100 and also the most washed-out black.

Group 211 item 0 has a default of of +32 for all modes.

I looks like service group 211 item 10 allows the projector to display black as dark as the projector is capable of. Unless there's other service menu items that no one knows about yet. But I'm not going to try to find any.

Thanks you, thank you . :) I can finally put my mind to rest about item 0, I thought it was 32 but wasn't 100% sure. Thanks again.

I plan on staying out of the service menu now that I've adjusted item 10, your right, it is a bit scary in there. :D

I am coming from a Sanyo Z60 720p projector and the 1080p difference is amazing! I think the most noticeable thing I've seen so far is the 24 fps. I've never watched a tv or projector with 1080p24, Band of Brothers on Blu-ray was amazing last night. The pans are so smooth and the end credits are solid with no jitter, I'm loving this thing! :D:D

This is my first projector but I'm pretty sure this isn't normal. When the picture has a lot of white in the background it acts like it cannot process it and starts to flicker pretty badly. Is there something I can do? I have tried it on all of the image settings and some of you guys settings as well, but the flickering and cutting out is still there during bright and/or white scenes.

Thanks in advance for helping

I had some flickering in ECO lamp mode, running few hours in full mode cure this.

For those having alignment (convergence) issues, methinks the following items of the service menu may help:

Group 101:
item #0 (DXOut_R): initial value = 17 (0-1023)
item #1 (DXOut_G): initial value = 17 (0-1023)
item #2 (DXOut_B): initial value = 17 (0-1023)

Unfortunately I think that these are for the horizontal alignment. I have not been able to find the equivalent items for the VERTICAL adjustment (DYOut_R, DYOut_G and DYOut_B) in the service manual.

Cheers.

In the service menu did anyone write down their Group 211 Item 0 value? I'm pretty sure I screwed up to begin with and pressed right 2 times instead of up, giving a value of 34, so I pressed left two times and set the value back to 32.

Can anyone confirm that 32 is the default value for Item 0? Thanks.
Group 211 (Lamp Iris)
Item #0 (Lamp Iris Close Limit Value): Initial Value = 32

I know about group 211 and have changed item 10 to get better blacks. That's the only thing (so far) that was able to make black level acceptable to me.

Something to adjust convergence might be helpful. I assume that these items just shift the image on the panel one way or the other?

Anything else useful in there?

Did the service menu tweak and while it does make a sizable improvement on black levels, it also appears to have added some black crush.

I'll see if it is something I can tweak away just viewing some calibration patterns...

After doing the service menu change, I still had to drop Brightness in the user menu down to -7 to get black good enough. But that did loose some low level detail. Setting Gamma to +2 and Dynamic Gamma to Low helped that quite a bit. These settings seem to be pretty good for blacks since I can see the levels you're supposed to on the Spears & Munsil test disc. So I'm still using the settings I posted on 12/27.

After doing the service menu change, I still had to drop Brightness in the user menu down to -7 to get black good enough. But that did loose some low level detail. Setting Gamma to +2 and Dynamic Gamma to Low helped that quite a bit. These settings seem to be pretty good for blacks since I can see the levels you're supposed to on the Spears & Munsil test disc. So I'm still using the settings I posted on 12/27.

I'll have to give that a try. Just messing around by eye measurement using digital cable as a source (far from the best) using any of the dynamic or other "enhacement" methods had poor results IMO. They would crush blacks/detail, etc.

The settings I have for now are fine since most of my watching has been TV content which doesn't tend to be too dark; the contrast level is actually quite pleasing. On movies/darker content the crushing is a bit obvious, there's just no shadow detail.

Of course I've been spoiled by my Samsung plasma, but I'd be happy if I wound up with a picture quality similar to the Sony RPLCD I used to have (Grand Wega 42a10). Right now the Sanyo looks like the Sony did before I calibrated/tweaked it.

Must be the similarities between lcd projection technologies and the standard factory settings that are used to help combat the shortcomings in lcd projection...

I have to use Enhanced rather than Normal in HDMI setup or else detail at both ends is lost. Also setting advanced menu Contrast Improvement and Dynamic Gamma above Low loses detail. And I also have to start with Nautural image mode or the colors and contrast are off and pretty much impossible to make look good, although Brilliant Cinema with adjustments to Red/Green/Blue to get it less reddish might also be OK (haven't tried that yet).

Hello everyone,

i posted this already one a few big german boards (sorry for my english by the way) but i didn't get a answer for about 2 weeks now so i hope to get a helpful answer here.

I live in a shared apartment and together we bought a PLV-Z700 like 1 year ago. And a few days ago one of us surfed the internet and found out that its possible to increase the image quality by entering the Service Mode. He tried it out (without asking me :mad:), but it seems he really didn't know what he was actually doing there so now everything is totally wrong adjusted.

The picture is very, very dark and i fear that theres something wrong with the fancontrol (hope you know what i mean) also.

I had a long call with a sanyo service-employee and he said the service mode data are different for every single device but there are quite close so i could use the standard data from any other z700 to at least make things work again properly.

So i ask you: Is anyone willing to send me his standard data from service mode? If things work again, i'm willing to send you a few us-dollars per PayPal. How does that sound?

Thanks in advance!
chico-ist

Probably hit the left/right arrow buttons not realizing that that was changing the settings. I'm going to check out the horizontal alignment items soon (posted 3/1) and will then write down all my values. I'll then post the works here. Hopefully that will help you. Might be a couple of days, though.

That'd be awesome! In the meantime i was able to get a excelfile which has listed all the Standard-Data for No. 0 but not for the other No. in each group. I checked my Service Mode but there were only a few Data changed, maybe one or two and it didn't solve the problem. So there must be something wrong in the other No.!

My question is: Do you write down the Data for all No.? Take your time, i already search for a solution since weeks, a few days more won't kill me.

PS: If someone needs the excelfile just say it. I check the thread every day.

I tried Group 101 Items 1-3. It does indeed shift the image horizontally, separately for R, G & B, but it's way too course to be of any use. So forget that one, it can't be used to compensate for any LCD panel misalignment (which isn't really noticeable from viewing distance anyway).

I've written down all the service menu values and will put it into a file which I'll attach a little later. The values seem to be the same for all the image modes, but there's too many groups/items to check each one. So I only have the values for my preferred user mode.

There are different Data for each Image Mode in Service Mode?? Oh.. well, i don't think there was something changed in the other IMs in my case. I think it was Brilliant Cinema when i turned it on yesterday evening, i didn't know you could switch between the different Modes in Service Mode, i thought it'd just show you the Mode which is active right now and was set up in user settings.

What Image Mode is it in your case?

Here's the service menu settings. I had it as a spreadsheet but can't attach those so converted it to text.

I started with Natural then saved to one of the User modes after making adjustments in the user menu. Mainly lowering brightness a bit.

The only thing I changed in the service menu was Group 211 Item 10 which greatly improves black level. I was able to change it individually for each User mode and left the preset modes (Brilliant Cinema, etc) alone. You can press IMAGE MODE PRESET & USER to switch while in service menu. However, when I exited and later came back into the service menu, Group 211 Item 10 in all image modes was reset to my changed value.

I was willing to change Group 211 Item 10 across the board because I don't like washed-out blacks in any mode, and they were originally quite washed-out in all but Dynamic. But I'd be really careful about changing anything else.

Man, you're the best! Everything works again now! It took some time to check every single value but it was worth it and im sure it took you many hours to write down all this stuff. If there's any chance i can say "thank you" let me know ;)

Picked up the PLV-1080HD last month and I love it

Picked up the PLV-1080HD last month and I love it

the more I use it the more I enjoy it. Can't wait to project it onto a proper screen instead of a (not-even-straight-white) painted wall.

Here's everything I've found useful for adjusting the PLV-Z700 (or 1080HD) for a better picture without having it professionally calibrated or buying calibration equipment. These steps were done in the order shown...

01) Mount the PLV-Z700 level, don't angle it up or down.
02) Connect the BD player via HDMI.
03) Make sure the player is passing enhanced signal so you can see blacker-than-black.
04) Set MENU > Setting > Advanced menu = On
05) Set MENU > Setting > HDMI 1 & 2 setup = Enhanced
06) Set MENU > Screen = Full
07) Set MENU > Picture adj. > Overscan = 0
08) Center the image on the screen using only the Lens Shift controls keeping the Z700 level.
09) Correct any keystone distortion by angling the top or bottom of the screen out from the wall a bit. Use a test pattern like Spears & Munsil Image Cropping for this.
10) Focus the Z700 so you can see the individual pixels as sharply as possible when up close.
11) Store each of the PRESET image modes to a different USER image -- Brilliant Cinema to User 1, Creative Cinema to User 2, Natural to User 3, etc. (e.g., MENU > Image > Natural, back to Image adj. > Store > User image3 > Yes).
12) Get out of MENU before continuing...

13) Steps 14 thru 26 enter the service menu to set black level darker -- there's no other way to do it, and if you don't do it you'll never get decent blacks.
14) On top of Z700 case (not on the remote), press MENU + INPUT at the same time holding both down together for 5 seconds until "S" appears on the screen. Then do the next step before the "S" disappears...
15) On the remote, press SCREEN holding it down for 3 seconds until service menu appears.
16) The remaining buttons to be pressed are all from the remote only...
17) Press OK repeatedly until you reach Group 211.
18) Press Up or Down arrow (directly above or below OK, either will do) repeatedly until you reach Item 10.
19) Press USER (under IMAGE MODE) until it says User 1 in the service menu.
20) The original value for Item 10 for User 1 should be +40. Press Left arrow (immediately to left of OK) repeatedly until value reduces to zero.
21) Press USER again until it says User 2, then press Left arrow to reduce value from +50 to zero.
22) Repeat this process for User 3, 4 & 5, reducing all to zero. User 3 original value is +100, User 4 original is +80 and User 5 is already zero.
23) Make sure service menu stays on Group 211, Item 10 or you will have messed up.
24) If you mess up the service menu, a file of the original settings is attached.
25) Press ON/STAND-BY to save changes and exit the service menu.
26) Make sure the service menu display no longer shows on the screen before continuing...

27) I never liked the image based on Creative Cinema (too dull and lifeless), Living (too garish) and Dynamic (worse than Living), so all adjustments from here on are for User image 1 (from Brilliant Cinema) and User image 3 (from Natural). All settings following are the same for User 1 and User 3 except where noted. 1 & 3 look a little different, but I haven't decided yet if I prefer one over the other.

28) The remaining settings are all under MENU > Image adj. (anything not mentioned wasn't changed from its default value)...
29) Brightness = -7 for User 1 and -6 for User 3
30) Contrast = -1
31) Color = 0
32) Tint = 0
33) Color temp. = Default
34) Red = 0, Green = 0, Blue = 0 (you might want additional adjustments here)
35) Sharpness = +1 (0 is a bit soft, +2 and up add increasing ringing)
36) Lamp control = Eco (the others are a bit too noisy for me)
37) Gamma = +2 (any higher loses detail in light/dark areas)
38) The next settings are under Advanced menu...
39) Iris mode = Mode 2 (seems to give better blacks than the others)
40) Iris range = 0 for User 1 and -30 for User 3
41) Auto black stretch = Low (I don't see any difference between the choices)
42) Contrast enhancement = Low (higher loses detail in light areas)
43) Transient improvement = Off (anything else adds edge enhancement that really looks bad)
44) Dynamic gamma = Low (higher loses detail in light/dark areas)

I thought I'd make one last post here putting it all together for those who might buy from the last of the stock on these now that they've been discontinued. It's actually better than its reviews, none of which altered the black level in the service menu, and black level has always been one of the main complaints against it.

Have any of you played with the Color Management System of the plv-z700?

Is it easy to use with a color meter light the i1 Display 2?

Thanks!!

the more I use it the more I enjoy it. Can't wait to project it onto a proper screen instead of a (not-even-straight-white) painted wall.

dido

A moment of silence as this thread passes away.

A moment of silence as this thread passes away.

nooooooooo

Looks like the next tweak is a new projector. Someday.

I am aware this is an old thread but I have an issue to address and I'm hoping someone has done this adjustment.

The bottom right corner of my picture is up two inches from the screen and the bottom left is down two inches below my screen.

The top is level and I understand in the service menu there is a keystone adjustment.

Which setting is it that I go into to adjust this?

Jeff

Jeff,

I have a Sanyo z3000 that has similar optics to your 700. Your problem sounds like you need to adjust your horizontal lens shift. The easiest way to fix this is as follows:

1. Horizontally shift the aim of your projector toward the narrow end of the image (In your case to the right) until the top and bottom edges of the picture are parallel. Don't worry about the picture being off center.

2. Now use the horizontal lens shift wheel on the side of the projector to center the picture on the screen.

Tada!

Dan

I am aware this is an old thread but I have an issue to address and I'm hoping someone has done this adjustment.

The bottom right corner of my picture is up two inches from the screen and the bottom left is down two inches below my screen.

The top is level and I understand in the service menu there is a keystone adjustment.

Which setting is it that I go into to adjust this?

Jeff

I've never seen any mention of keystone adjustment in the service menu. But digital keystone correction is a bad thing. If it really is keystone distortion, it should be fixed optically (lens shift maybe) or by repositioning, re-aiming or re-leveling the projector.

Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated.

I have tried the shift on the side and there is no way it is making a difference.

Top left corner of projected image is square to my screen, top right as well.

Sides are aligned and parallel.

Bottom right corner is bang on the screen edge as well.

Bottom left projects onto the 2" velvet border and overhangs that edge by a total of 3 inches too low from the screen edge.

Cables are top of the line, cable box has a wave to the lines on the channel guide that matches the effect of the image overlap, as in the lines projected dip.

Go into the menu and pull up the calibration image with yellow lines and blue background....lines dip and wave.

Wondering if the unit is fubar....if there is no service menu adjustments it just might be.

Jeff

Screen frame warped? PJ not aiming straight? PJ too far off center? PJ too high? Been in the service menu for something else?

Screen frame warped? PJ not aiming straight? PJ too far off center? PJ too high? Been in the service menu for something else?

Screen is Elunevision electric it looks perfect to me, the PJ is dead on to the screen for center like within an inch and only been in the service menu for your adjustments HMS :)

Now too high? Hmmm

9 foot ceiling, 14 foot throw, 120" screen, PJ mounted on 8 inch steel mount.

I had the same setup on a 106" without issue, but stranger things have happened.

I just can't see it only effecting that 15% of the projection area.... I'm stumped.

Jeff

Try skewing the screen by pulling one of the lower corners out a bit, or pushing it back a bit if possible. Might need someone on each corner.

Thank you thank you!!

These settings have injected new life into my 1080P!!!!

thanks so much!

I never got mine fixed, no idea what the issue is, I just know it ain't right.

Sucks, but oh well.

Jeff

what issue are you still having? I am somewhat of a novice but I have had this PJ for 2 years...I different set of eyes may help!!!

I never got mine fixed, no idea what the issue is, I just know it ain't right.

Sucks, but oh well.

Jeff

Jeff,

Let me try once more. It sounds like you are having a problem aligning the image to your screen. From the description in your previous post your image looks like this (if you back off a little on the zoom)

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196403&stc=1&d=1294028283

I'm assuming you have the projector mounted at approximately the height of the top of the screen. If you adjust the aim of the projector (physically turn the projector) toward the right, the bottom edge of the screen should straighten out like this:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196404&d=1294028283

Don't worry that the image moves off the screen. You need to get the top and bottom edges parallel. Once you've done that, use the horizontal lens shift knob (item #9) on the side of the projector to move the image back to the center of the screen.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196405&d=1294028283http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196411&d=1294029452

Hope that helped.

Dan

Looking up Elunevision electric, it seems to be a drop-down screen. Perhaps when lowered it doesn't hang perfectly straight making one lower corner slightly nearer the lens than the other, hence the distortion. Re-angling the PJ as per Dansyacht and/or re-angling the bottom of the screen (my previous reply) should fix it.

I have a fixed-frame screen mounted on a wall with the PJ on a wall-mounted bracket on the opposite wall. I had a bit of similar distortion at first and fixed it by slightly re-angling the PJ and also using some spacers on the mounting screws on one corner of the screen to get the two squared up.

Jeff,

Let me try once more. It sounds like you are having a problem aligning the image to your screen. From the description in your previous post your image looks like this (if you back off a little on the zoom)

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196403&stc=1&d=1294028283

I'm assuming you have the projector mounted at approximately the height of the top of the screen. If you adjust the aim of the projector (physically turn the projector) toward the right, the bottom edge of the screen should straighten out like this:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196404&d=1294028283

Don't worry that the image moves off the screen. You need to get the top and bottom edges parallel. Once you've done that, use the horizontal lens shift knob (item #9) on the side of the projector to move the image back to the center of the screen.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196405&d=1294028283http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=196411&d=1294029452

Hope that helped.

Dan

Dan I appreciate the info and when I turn the projector I still get the same shape on the screen as you posted in the first picture.

Turning the projector doesn't adjust the shape it looks exactly like your first post no matter how much I turn it.

It leads me to believe I have an issue inside the PJ itself and for that I was hoping there was an adjustment.

:(

Jeff

Looking up Elunevision electric, it seems to be a drop-down screen. Perhaps when lowered it doesn't hang perfectly straight making one lower corner slightly nearer the lens than the other, hence the distortion. Re-angling the PJ as per Dansyacht and/or re-angling the bottom of the screen (my previous reply) should fix it.

I have a fixed-frame screen mounted on a wall with the PJ on a wall-mounted bracket on the opposite wall. I had a bit of similar distortion at first and fixed it by slightly re-angling the PJ and also using some spacers on the mounting screws on one corner of the screen to get the two squared up.

I am open to anything, but I looked at the screen and it is flush with the wall on both bottom corners and azbout 1/2 an inch away equally on both tops corners.

I'm stumped....

Thanks for the info though guys.

Jeff

Don't rely on the measurements. Grab one of the lower corners of the screen and pull it out from the wall a bit leaving the other lower corner in place. See if that changes anything. If not, then I'm stumped too.

Don't rely on the measurements. Grab one of the lower corners of the screen and pull it out from the wall a bit leaving the other lower corner in place. See if that changes anything. If not, then I'm stumped too.

I'm stumped too. They must have repealed the laws of optics up there in Canada. I just misaligned everything on my setup to match what Jeff says is his problem and verified my instructions worked. Don't know what else to add.

Dan

It certainly sounds like misalignment between PJ and screen. What about taking it down and projecting from a table on to a wall? Trying different distances, varying zoom and lens shift, angling side-to-side, tilting up-down, to see if the distortion is always present. If it is, then... beats me.

I wish I had an answer.

I'll try again this weekend

I bought a extension style projector mount and I'm dropping the projector a foot down to see if that helps, then I'm moving the projector so the lens is square to the screen and aligned dead center.

If this doesn't help I'm done and I'll mount 32 inch LCD TV's on a shoulder harness :p

You said you had the same setup on 106" screen without issue? I assume you mean with the same projector? Then there shouldn't be anything wrong with the projector. Is zoom or lens shift near the limit?

Well here is the answer

I bought the Sanus projector mount for $135 and used the extension in box to drop the projector lower than the original mount I had while using the 106" screen.

I centered the lens to the screen as opposed to the projector, which moved the lens about 6" closer to center. The drop in the new mount lowered the PJ about 10 inches lower and.............

To quote Borat " Great success! "

I thought that something got shifted inside the PJ when I did the room construction and to be humbly honest I think I had the PJ to far to the right causing the issue, so no amount of turning it as suggested was fixing the issue.

By lining the lens to the center of the screen I noticed an instant difference!

You guys have the patience of saints and I really appreciate all of your efforts.

Thank you very much!

It's perfect and I am in love with my Sanyo all over again.

Jeff

Now this thread can fade away and we can start thinking about our next projector.

Nooooooo......

You're right. The next one is a long way off for me. And I do have one more thing...
Using the Spears & Munsil test disc I couldn't get the brightness setting quite right on the pluge pattern. Either just a little too bright or a little too dark using the PJ controls. But setting brightness & contrast down a notch on the BD player gave the right level. That may seem obvious, but apparently not so obvious or I'd have done it long ago.

Reading the recent comments about changing the angle of the pj relative to the screen has given me the best focus that I've seen for my unit. I've always had a problem with one side of the image being sharper than the other. This would shift from the left side to the right, depending on which side I concentrated on. That in itself should have told me that nothing was wrong with the pj, but I could never seem to get it right. I guess you guys motivated me to hang in there and keep at it til I got good results. It's subtle, but the right side of the pj is angled a bit closer to my 92" grey screen than the left side. Thanks, I feel like I have a new pj.

Now, on to the next issue. My Sanyo has developed a problem where the left third of the picture has a reddish cast, and I think the right third may be slightly too blue (I may be wrong about the right side).
Is this an alignment issue, or does it sound like the panels are going bad? Do you think there is any adjustment for this in the service menu? What kind of damage might I be looking at if this has to go in for service? My warranty was up in November. Thanks.

Adrian

Chances are you pj needs servicing. But before you contact Sanyo you might want to try the cleaning procedure for the RGB panels.(Manual page 45+) I'd also pull and inspect the lamp. Make sure the light path is as clean as possible.

Dan

Just bought one of these last month. Installed it on the ceiling. Lens shifting down and to the left.

And all is well!!!

This is a big upgrade compared to my old BenQ unit (800*600) in image quality. I am happy with Creative Cinema out of box.

I mounted a motorised screen in front of my TV. During the day, it's TV. At night, switch to projector. Brilliant!

p.s: I don't understand what people mean when they say "improving" black levels. Seems to me the blackest any projector would output is the same level as the ambient light in the room. So to improve "black levels", one should just make sure all lights are turned off, and curtains are shut. No?

Even in a completely dark room blacks don't look dark enough - more dark gray than black. If you have a calibration disc the pattern for brightness will show this. In order to get black looking blacker you have to lower the Bright setting in the menu a bit. But even that isn't quite enough which is why the service menu tweak.

If you look at a disc with scenes in space (like any Star Trek) and then switch from one picture mode to another you can see that Dynamic looks darkest and Normal lightest in the black parts. But Dynamic doesn't look so good in other respects since it's designed for viewing with some lights on in the room. I thought that Brilliant Cinema or Normal looked best except for blacks, hence the service menu tweak again. Creative Cinema looked kind of film-like but also seemed kind of dull to me.

I found the service menu tweak for black level (it's actually an iris setting) to be well worth doing but you can pretty much ruin the projector in service mode if not really careful.

Everything worked great except step 21 - the projector would only let me set the value to zero for user image 1 and user image 3. I could see User image 2 but then it would automatically switch to Natural - so now that I think about it I may have only done user image 1 and Natural. Any idea why?


Here's everything I've found useful for adjusting the PLV-Z700 (or 1080HD) for a better picture without having it professionally calibrated or buying calibration equipment. These steps were done in the order shown...

01) Mount the PLV-Z700 level, don't angle it up or down.
02) Connect the BD player via HDMI.
03) Make sure the player is passing enhanced signal so you can see blacker-than-black.
04) Set MENU > Setting > Advanced menu = On
05) Set MENU > Setting > HDMI 1 & 2 setup = Enhanced
06) Set MENU > Screen = Full
07) Set MENU > Picture adj. > Overscan = 0
08) Center the image on the screen using only the Lens Shift controls keeping the Z700 level.
09) Correct any keystone distortion by angling the top or bottom of the screen out from the wall a bit. Use a test pattern like Spears & Munsil Image Cropping for this.
10) Focus the Z700 so you can see the individual pixels as sharply as possible when up close.
11) Store each of the PRESET image modes to a different USER image -- Brilliant Cinema to User 1, Creative Cinema to User 2, Natural to User 3, etc. (e.g., MENU > Image > Natural, back to Image adj. > Store > User image3 > Yes).
12) Get out of MENU before continuing...

13) Steps 14 thru 26 enter the service menu to set black level darker -- there's no other way to do it, and if you don't do it you'll never get decent blacks.
14) On top of Z700 case (not on the remote), press MENU + INPUT at the same time holding both down together for 5 seconds until "S" appears on the screen. Then do the next step before the "S" disappears...
15) On the remote, press SCREEN holding it down for 3 seconds until service menu appears.
16) The remaining buttons to be pressed are all from the remote only...
17) Press OK repeatedly until you reach Group 211.
18) Press Up or Down arrow (directly above or below OK, either will do) repeatedly until you reach Item 10.
19) Press USER (under IMAGE MODE) until it says User 1 in the service menu.
20) The original value for Item 10 for User 1 should be +40. Press Left arrow (immediately to left of OK) repeatedly until value reduces to zero.
21) Press USER again until it says User 2, then press Left arrow to reduce value from +50 to zero.
22) Repeat this process for User 3, 4 & 5, reducing all to zero. User 3 original value is +100, User 4 original is +80 and User 5 is already zero.
23) Make sure service menu stays on Group 211, Item 10 or you will have messed up.
24) If you mess up the service menu, a file of the original settings is attached.
25) Press ON/STAND-BY to save changes and exit the service menu.
26) Make sure the service menu display no longer shows on the screen before continuing...

27) I never liked the image based on Creative Cinema (too dull and lifeless), Living (too garish) and Dynamic (worse than Living), so all adjustments from here on are for User image 1 (from Brilliant Cinema) and User image 3 (from Natural). All settings following are the same for User 1 and User 3 except where noted. 1 & 3 look a little different, but I haven't decided yet if I prefer one over the other.

28) The remaining settings are all under MENU > Image adj. (anything not mentioned wasn't changed from its default value)...
29) Brightness = -7 for User 1 and -6 for User 3
30) Contrast = -1
31) Color = 0
32) Tint = 0
33) Color temp. = Default
34) Red = 0, Green = 0, Blue = 0 (you might want additional adjustments here)
35) Sharpness = +1 (0 is a bit soft, +2 and up add increasing ringing)
36) Lamp control = Eco (the others are a bit too noisy for me)
37) Gamma = +2 (any higher loses detail in light/dark areas)
38) The next settings are under Advanced menu...
39) Iris mode = Mode 2 (seems to give better blacks than the others)
40) Iris range = 0 for User 1 and -30 for User 3
41) Auto black stretch = Low (I don't see any difference between the choices)
42) Contrast enhancement = Low (higher loses detail in light areas)
43) Transient improvement = Off (anything else adds edge enhancement that really looks bad)
44) Dynamic gamma = Low (higher loses detail in light/dark areas)

I thought I'd make one last post here putting it all together for those who might buy from the last of the stock on these now that they've been discontinued. It's actually better than its reviews, none of which altered the black level in the service menu, and black level has always been one of the main complaints against it.

I was able to set group 211 item 10 to 0 for each user mode but after I got out of service menu and came back in later, this setting was at 0 even for the preset modes. So it was 0 across the board. There may be something else about saving settings in service menu we don't know about. Since I didn't like anything with this item set above 0, it was OK by me to have it 0 in all modes.

I've since given up on all but Brilliant Cinema and Natural as the starting point for the user modes. So I've got User 1 & 2 based on Brilliant Cinema and User 3, 4 & 5 based on Natural. I couldn't watch with them set based on the other preset modes - too dull or too garish.

I'm also thinking that it might be a bit better with Auto Black Stretch, Contrast Enhancement & Dynamic Gamma set to Off.

Having an interesting green spot problem. At screen distance it's a faint green blob. Much easier to notice when you place something closer, I used a vertical blind due to it's proximity and relative white-ness.

I will be following page 45 of the manual to open and clean with the provided dust blower...wish me luck.

Can't find Z700 on Sanyo's site anymore so it must finally be discontinued. But I've still got mine and will for some time and I'm probably not the only one. So here's some better settings than what I had before. If anyone's still interested...

1) Still have service menu group 211 item 10 set to 0 for all modes. This is necessary to get acceptable black level. If you don't do this you'll want a newer, better projector.
2) BD player picture settings (brightness, contrast, etc) are all at 0. Player needs to pass blacker-than-black.
3) Input is HDMI.
4) User menu "Setting": Advanced menu = On, HDMI 1 setup = Enhanced, HDMI 2 setup = Enhanced.
5) User modes saved from Preset modes: User 1 from Brilliant cinema, User 2 from Creative cinema, User 3 from Natural, User 4 from Living, User 5 from Dynamic.
6) User menu "Image adj" set to these values for User modes 1 thru 5:
Brightness = -7 (-6 for User 5) (to keep blacks from being washed out)
Contrast = -1
Color = 0 (+3 for User 4, +8 for User 5)
Tint = 0
Color temp = Default
Red = 0
Green = 0
Blue = 0
Sharpness = +1 (lower too soft, higher adds ringing)
Lamp control = eco (others are too noisy)
Gamma = +4 (+5 for User 3, +3 for User 5) (to preserve low level detail)
Advanced menu:
Iris mode = Mode 2 (better blacks than others)
Iris range = 0 (-30 for User 2 and User 3)
Auto black stretch = Low
Contrast enhancement = Low (Med & High lose detail in bright areas)
Transient improvement = Off (anything else adds ugly ringing)
Color management = no changes
Dynamic gamma = Low (Off looks too dull, Med & High lose detail)
Custom gamma = no changes (I tried many variations in this but what made an improvement in one respect degraded in another, so best left alone in my experience)

I prefer User 1 (warmer) and User 3 (cooler). User 2 looks smooth but a bit dull. User 4 and User 5 don't look good for movies in a darkened room but might be OK for TV when there's ambient light.

I used the Spears & Munsil test disc for this. The black levels on the Pluge pattern are better with these new settings than they were with the old settings. Likewise the Contrast pattern shows better black detail than before without lightening up the entire image.

thanks for continuing to post settings hms. I'll try them out.

Got the dust blob out by following the instructions in the user manual. Quite easy and only took about 5-10 minutes.

The main difference from what I had before is a higher setting on Gamma. Good to know it's that easy to get the dust out.

While my latest settings gave good looking results on test patterns, after watching some movies I wasn't satisfied. The higher gamma gave detail but black suffered. So I lowered gamma and upped contrast a bit. Seems better. All settings the same as above but:
Contrast: +3 (0 for User 5)
Gamma: +1 for User 1 & 4, 0 for User 2 & 5, +3 for User 3
Looks like you just can't get black its best without sacrificing something else. So it's back and forth until you get somewhere in the middle that you can live with. I may not be quite there yet.

Hellow from Moscow. Privet. How are u. Kak dela. I love your country.
I need your help. I have a very good projector Sanyo plv-z800. But i have same troubles and i need to enter in secret service menu. Tel me plz combo buttons. Peace from Russia and Putin.

Look back in this thread to #194. Steps 13 thru 26.

This might not be the right thread for this but I figured you are all PLV-Z700 owners. I am looking for someone who has an old lamp housing they're not using anymore and wouldn't mind parting with it.

My lamp recently blew and I ordered just the replacement lamp (not the lamp with the included housing). I waited till the new lamp came in before I removed the old housing/lamp from the projector. Apparently the old lamp actually exploded and I have a small pit in the glass lens on the front of the housing. It's still usable for the time being but I'd like to get the glass replaced sometime soon. So I actually just need the glass lens from the front of the housing not the whole housing.

Anyone have an extra housing? Thanks in advance!