Hello everyone,
I just purchased a Runco DTV-933 projector package for $300. It includes all the parts it originally came with and there are only 1700 hours on it, tubes are in pristine condition. Projector was used in dedicated Home Theater room. I purchased it with out of testing with video input of any kind. The question is: is it normal for this projector to slowly wobble the screen vertically in menu mode with out of any inputs connected to it. I’m still waiting for cables and connectors but should be able to start setting it up this weekend. Basically I’m trying to find out if there is anything wrong with it before I will make things worse and waste my time. Also would I benefit from HDFury2 with this projector or should I save some money and just stick with older version?
Thanks.

Yes, shaking and weaving is normal, you need an input signal. Get the Fury2, it's worth the extra $$.

Read this:

http://www.curtpalme.com/CRTPrimer.shtm

and this is a pretty good setup guide if I say so myself ;)

http://www.curtpalme.com/CRTSetupGuide.shtm

It's written for an NEC XG, so some steps will not be in the 933 menu, but it will be close.

Cheers!

Thank you Curt,
As soon as I connected my input raster is steady as a rock. It appears that there is no convergence board in my unit, was this an option on Runco 933 and NEC 6PGXtra projectors? With out of it how precise can the setup be?
Does anyone have this board available for sale?
Thanks.

You probably mean the 'point' board. I've got a couple I can sell. Shoot me a PM or an email through the site below.

Also how hard should the convergence setup be on this unit? I have been trying to align this thing for 2 hours with no luck, for whatever reason I'm unable to get the corners right. Green tube is nice end even; red and blue are out alignment on the sides and in the corners. I can tell that somebody was already messing around with the magnets, could this be the problem? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Also how hard should the convergence setup be on this unit? I have been trying to align this thing for 2 hours with no luck, for whatever reason I'm unable to get the corners right. Green tube is nice end even; red and blue are out alignment on the sides and in the corners. I can tell that somebody was already messing around with the magnets, could this be the problem? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Corners are afected with pressing ctl and keystone or ctl and pincusion.This gives you other options to tune in the sides of the convergence.

Well,
I started the whole setup process from scratch, it looks like that my Blue and Red raster is not as wide as Green and convergence is not able to compensate for the difference. How do I adjust the size of the raster independently on Red and Blue tubes to much the Green one?

With amplitude. Just press clt and a color to change the amplitude for that color.

Well, finally after numerous attempts I managed to converge my PJ. Now I'm trying to setup the color balance, should I make any changes to white balance as well or this is something related to color temperature and should be left alone? It appears that this projector was originally setup by Runco so possibly white balance is correct. Any suggestions? I'm also noticing that my Red tube is brighter then the other ones, when displaying 16:9 format black bars on top and bottom have slight red tinge to it; is this normal? Thanks.

Well, finally after numerous attempts I managed to converge my PJ. Now I'm trying to setup the color balance, should I make any changes to white balance as well or this is something related to color temperature and should be left alone? It appears that this projector was originally setup by Runco so possibly white balance is correct. Any suggestions? I'm also noticing that my Red tube is brighter then the other ones, when displaying 16:9 format black bars on top and bottom have slight red tinge to it; is this normal? Thanks.

To setup the white balance you need a color meter. You can get an Eye one for about 200,- and if you follow the hcfr guide than you can make a correct grayscale. For now you can check if the grayscale is reasonable by setting the color temperature to 6500K (in the info screen) and checking if grey testimages look realy gray and not green red or blue. I would check a grey image at 30 ire and one at 80 ire if you have a testdisk. If 80 looks not grey and 30 does than you have to adjust the W levels in the kelvin menu else the B levels but this is very inacurate when you just use your eyes! But might give some feeling if the kelvin settings are reasonable.

hth

well or this is something related to color temperature and should be left alone? It appears that this projector was originally setup by Runco so possibly white balance is correct. Any suggestions? I'm also noticing that my Red tube is brighter then the other ones.

It should certainly be left alone when your projector is calibrated but i don't know if Runco does calibrate them. Curt does and if he has done your setup you should leave it alone! :-)

Grayscale is related with the electric focusing of the guns and part of it is to underfocus blue in most cases. If you have to do astigmatism or electric focus in the setup than your grayscale will be gone (but perhaps you can live with it). I have done a great deal of calibration on my own projector now and slowly you start to notice what a correct grayscale can do. The Runco 933 espescially has the color corrected hd144/hd145 and the colors get absolutely amasing. It is certainly worth to do a calibration, shadow detail also improves. I would go so far as to say that you have to start with buying a color meter if you want to do a setup or else leave it to the pro's ;-)

Here a short picture of my Runco, I'm realy glad with it but I was so lucky to get an eye one pro to do the calibration.

http://www.tipzoeker.nl/aqua2.jpg

Well redfox, it looks very good. Can you PM me with your white balance settings? What where you using for an input signal, Blue Ray? I'm also getting little bit of eye fatigue from my display, possibly from low refresh rate. I'm using the original Video Processor my PJ came with; maximum scan rate 60Hz. I hope this will improve with the better input device, higher resolution and scan rate above 70Hz. What would me the highest refresh rate I can use with 1080i on this projector?

Well redfox, it looks very good. Can you PM me with your white balance settings? What where you using for an input signal, Blue Ray? I'm also getting little bit of eye fatigue from my display, possibly from low refresh rate. I'm using the original Video Processor my PJ came with; maximum scan rate 60Hz. I hope this will improve with the better input device, higher resolution and scan rate above 70Hz. What would me the highest refresh rate I can use with 1080i on this projector?

My white balance settings are realy useless for you because they depend on the chain of equipment from source till Runco. I have a different calibration for the ps3 (that you see in the picture) and a dvd player. The settings also depend on wear on the tubes and on all the other setup parameters. When you are ready setting up the rest I would consider buying an eye one and do some calibration, it is not so difficult and it greatly increased my understanding of what projection is all about.

This picture is showing a 1080p blu-ray on a ps3 that is downscaled to 960p@60hz with a cristalio one scaler. These cristalio's do a lot for the picture quality and are nowadays very cheap in the used market. I have also run with a resolution of 1980x1024@60hz (and even 1080p) and that looked great too but I remember it becomming a little softer but I'm still experimenting for the optimum resolution. I however do see a clear difference between 720p material and 1080p material both on 960p. Most people see that difference and conclude that they need a 1080p projector. I've seen a true 1080p crt shortly and I did not get the feeling that there was much difference between 1080p material displayed at 1080p or 1080p material displayed at 960p. Resolution is only one step in the equation in my opinion.

Further I'm using a tric with the Cristalio for the hdmi protection that worked out very fine but is not mentioned a lot. Most people use hdmi as long as possible in the chain but I connected the ps3 with a hdfury to the analoque input of the Cristalio and used the analoque way through. The picture is very quiet so I don't think that I'm losing anything by using the analoque input and I think the Cristalio analoque output is superior to the hdfury but I have to admit that I should do a better comparing for that conclusion but because it looks so great now I don't even feel like trying :)

Last night for the first time I tried using my PJ with the laptop. To my amazement all the problems related to the poor colour temperature, contrast are gone. Looks like the video processor that was bundled with the Runco 933 will be replaced by HDFury. Also use of the laptop eased mu eye fatigue as well. New question is: what would be the best resolution and frequancy that will be easiest on my eyes. I easly get eyestrain, 60Hz flickering bothers my eyes and specialy in dark room. Would, lets sey 1080i at 96Hz be better then 720p at 60Hz?

1080i at 96Hz be better then 720p at 60Hz?your projector is an NEC 6PG Extra, and for some reason is isted as 50Khz scan rate when badged as a R933? I would make sure 1080i 96 isn't beyond what the machine can do? Otherwise it's a good rez assuming the scan lines don't bother you?