I have had a MITS HC-1600 for a few weeks and I love it... without tweaking it that much it is throwing a really great picture in my dark room from about 15 feet away ceiling mounted.

I do have pretty good eyesight and about the only real thing that I occasionaly notice are what I could best describe as 'dancing pixels'.

First, I suppose I need someone to tell me what to call this so we can be on the same page.

When I see it is almost exclusively in light colored scenes.. for example I was watching the BD "Bullitt" and in a scene with a skyline of san francisco, if I looked at the sky closely I can see the pixels dancing or jittering slightly.

If the screen is fulled with darker material such as a close up of a face in an airport scene, I can not see the jittering.

I am wondering what are the causes of this and some remedies. I know to some degree because I have an entry level projector this may never be perfect, but I am pretty sure there are some things I can do to help it...

Will an eventual move to a 1080p projector help?

Is my screen somewhat at fault? I honestly do not know what the material of my screen is and would like some help figuring that out.. maybe that is for another thread. It's a da-lite model c but I got it used and do not know what material is used. If I look closely it looks something like a screen door, it's white, and also looking closely it does have tiny glimmery bits mixed in to the coating.

Are the dancing pixels caused mostly by film grain? I suppose watching something like Wall-E would let me know that for sure.

I'm wondering if adjustments to brightness/contrast or sharpness could affect this also? I did calibrate with an avia disc although I found it somewhat difficult to do it according to their specs (Sharpness ended up at +5 from a range of -5 to +5 which is what best matched the desired test pattern)

Thanks for any suggestions

Sounds like the high sharpness could be causing it. What is your Brilliant color set at? BC causes a good bit of artifacts if set too high.

Probably Dithering , which is present on just about any DLP projector . Goes with the technology even though there are some units out there that make it very difficult to detect .

If your screen has 'shimmering' then it can also contribute to the effect ( sounds like you might have one of the older glass bead screens ) . The HC1600 does not require a high gain screen so you might have better luck with a different screen material .

A bad HDMI cable/connection can cause a digital shimmering effect by where random pixels will dance and flicker as they lose & regain signal .

The media itself can be the culprit as well , not all media is created equal .

The fact that the HC1600 is also a fairly high lumen unit with a slower color wheel can make the dithering/shimmering effect more pronounced .

- Jason

Probably Dithering , which is present on just about any DLP projector . Goes with the technology even though there are some units out there that make it very difficult to detect .

If your screen has 'shimmering' then it can also contribute to the effect ( sounds like you might have one of the older glass bead screens ) . The HC1600 does not require a high gain screen so you might have better luck with a different screen material .

A bad HDMI cable/connection can cause a digital shimmering effect by where random pixels will dance and flicker as they lose & regain signal .

The media itself can be the culprit as well , not all media is created equal .

The fact that the HC1600 is also a fairly high lumen unit with a slower color wheel can make the dithering/shimmering effect more pronounced .

- Jason


Thanks to both of you for the suggestions!

I am anxious to try these out latery tonight.

Note: Can you reccomend a good screen for me in the range of $300-$500?
Note: I can't use a fixed screen in my current room. But a tensioned screen would be nice as I can see some waves in my current pull down. Also, powered would be nice but optional.

Also I am currently using component cables.

I may try and find a very bright shot in a film and use it to test.. maybe see if pausing it stops the dancing or not.. would assume it did.. although something else occured to me with the glass beads in screen and that is if my AC were running and the projector were ever so slightly vibrating I wonder if and how much jitter that might create.

In my opinion most likely causes of pixel shimmering in bright areas like the sky are in order of most to least likely.

If the pixel shimmering continues when you pause an image it could be one of the following causes - screen, brilliant color, cabling.

1) The screen, if it is high gain - has glass beads or silver in it. Caused as the beads or bits of silver catch the light.

2) Brilliant Color processing on a projector with a white segment on the color wheel, like the Mitsubishi 1600. The point a which the white segment starts to be used and is spatial or temporal dithering to add a little brightness. Most likely in some shades of mid to high tones. Turn Brilliant Color to 0 - off and see if it stops.

3) Analogue cabling like the component cables being used. If they have poor sheilding, or are near other cables particularly power cables, or are looped. Noise may be present usually as shimmering lines moving across the screen rather than individual pixels. This is most noticeable on large expanses of the same reasonable bright - low saturated color, like the sky.

If it stops when you pause an image it could be one of the follow the causes - Mosquito noise, Film grain.

4) Mosquitto noise due to poor MPEG compression in the source, if the shimmering is around high contrast areas, this can be more visible if the sharpness is set too high. May be reduced by mosquito noise reduction on the player.

5) Film grain in the source, not likely in bright scenes, unless artificially added by the film maker, more likely in dark or indoor scenes. Again more visible if sharpness is set too high. May be reduced by frame noise reduction on the player.

I do not agree that a slow color wheel gives inherently more dithering. My understanding is that it gives less, as the dlp chip has more time to produce the shades of light, so less need to resort to temporal or spatial dithering. A white segment in the color wheel does inherently cause more visible dithering and is more common in low speed dual purpose projectors.

I do not agree that cheap hdmi cable cables cause more pixel shimmering. Faulty cables or very long cable runs 10mtrs+ can I have read cause sparkles across the whole image.

Have you actually calibrated the projector and player?

This is the cheapest thing to try first before you spend money and/or heaps of time on more complex 'fixes'.

Quite often the types of effects you are experiencing can be the result of incorrectly calibrated Brightness/Contrast/Noise Reduction etc.

There is plenty of advice on AVSFORUM and on the internet about calibrating your equipment. (A good place to start would be to seek advice in the AVS forum for your particular projector.)