[QUOTE=johnnykretentiv]Unidirectrional bonding strip

Is that a fancy name for - Tape? :)

[QUOTE=johnnykretentiv]Unidirectrional bonding strip

Is that a fancy name for - Tape? :)

Yes Sir. I watch Toy Story A LOT. I have a two year old. :p

Unidirectrional bonding strip

The scotch brand :)

My filter is round and is smaller than the Z3's lens. The filter more that covers the portion of the lens where the light is beaming out of. I attach a small peice of tape on the top and the bottom of the filter and it holds to the focus ring.

I bought a Tiffen for $4.99 from www.henrys.com


It works great.

is the tiffen going to be better than the lee filter (because it's glass)?

I really coun't tell you that for sure. I know it works well for me. Jeremy seems more than happy with the filter he has. I bough the tiffen not knowing it was glass.

It is smaller than the lens it will not cover the whole lens but does cover the whole light beam that comes out of the lens if that makes sense.

It you want a filter that covers the whoe lens then get the 3x3.

The glass filters won't fade as quickly as the poly or gel filters. The only issue one might have with the glass filter is that it could reflect light back into the projector, causing a wierd double-image effect. However, I don't think Johnny has run into that, so you should be fine.

The 3"x3" poly filters you can actually tape to the top and bottom of the Z3's case, leaving the lens free behind it for focus and zoom adjustments. If you want to get really fancy, Lee makes a filter holder that basically holds the filter against your lens with two elastic bands. The issue with that is that you won't be able to close the front panel, whereas taping the filter on as I did lets me close the front panel when it isn't in use.

And yes, Italia... you can use both the filter in front of the lens and the line level attenuator, because they do different things. The lens filter is essentially to help filter the excess blue/light leakage out of the blacks, whereas the line level attenuator is to remove red from the color decoding.

Jeremy is right about ther reflection and double image but as long as the filter is hung flat you will have not problems. That being said the 3x3 filter sounds easier to mount and is more proven to work in this situation. I would recommend to go with the 3x3. It's just easier

Jeremy, I found a local supplier that's got a lee cc20r in, will go and fetch it this afternoon, and run a smart calibration later on.

Should I try a darker grade as well do you think?

I think a CC30R would be good to try. The 40 might cut too much overall light, but the 30 should be a nice compromise and give better black level than the 20. The CC20R appears to be Steve Smallcombe's choice for the Z2, but it doesn't look like he tried a 30. I'm sure the Z3 won't be vastly different.

I've got the 20 and 30, and will give them a run tonight and report back.

Initial eyeballing looks like it will work better with the creative cinema setting, but I will try both and compare results.

Powerful gives me better contrast with the CC20R, but Creative Cinema may be easier to nail the white balance. You might start with the settings I posted with my CC20R filter (starting in Powerful mode) and work from there with SMART III. I would imagine I'm not very close on the lower IRE's, since I'm eyeballing it. Regardless, I look forward to your results.

Steve Smallcombe said Powerful was best in his Z3 review too. Worth a shot.

I've got the 20 and 30, and will give them a run tonight and report back.

Initial eyeballing looks like it will work better with the creative cinema setting, but I will try both and compare results.

I can't wait to hear what Rone has to say. I wonder if we have a cine4home calibrated pjs and don't even know it. I bet we are darn close.

Right, smart III measurements using Jeremy's Poweful settings with CC20R, are coming in at 1005:1.

I'm having a bit of an awkward time trying to get the greyscale correct as per un-filtered figures, especially with the CC30R.

I'm going to need more time on this, I thought it would be easy, at the moment blacks are definately improved - but using Jeremy's settings we are down a little on contrast. Obviously G & B need lifting more somewhat, and this is where the trouble started.

I lifted the green quite high and then dialled in the target lux for blue and red at IRE70 - a bit of faff and they looked okay, trouble is all the greyscale between IRE 30 & 60 was all screwed.

I am having to use the main RGB controls (rather than gain, offset etc) as they lift contrast in bigger increments, but this is probably screwing things up.

Back to the drawing board tonight I think, and to go back over the SMART documents to see if I'm doing anything silly.

Just done another run, this time with CC20R - I am starting to think that the Z3 is not that deficient of RED, certainly according to my charts in SMART.

So what were are doing is effectively only lifting the B&G a little to compensate for the RED - which is not enough to gain lots of contrast ratio.

However we are getting a deeper black that's for sure, but the brightness is coming down as well due to the only marginal B&G increase.

Maybe cine4home got there increase by using the high adaptive lamp mode, which would add 250:1 on top of our 1080:1 - giving 1330:1. Close to theirs?

Any suggestions?

It isn't so much about the red deficiency of the bulb, though that's part of it; it's about the red panel clipping before the others do, which limits white level. My understanding of how you're supposed to use SMART III is that you use a color correcting filter so you don't have to drive red as hard. Since you still have some leeway with blue and green beyond that, you then raise their levels to restore color balance. That gives you the maximum white level possible without clipping. You're basically trying to max out the panels to get as much white level as possible out of them without altering the color balance. This is different from CONTRAST in the user menu, as it is a global control of all three panel gains simultaneously.

The main RGB controls for white balance are more of a midrange control, from my understanding (though their consistency depends on the gamma of each color). You should use them to balance things out around the midpoint (50IRE), then use the gains for 70IRE and the offsets for 30IRE. If none of the panels are clipping, the rest of the grayscale should line up. If you see that one particular color is not increasing equally with the others, the gamma controls for each individual color can help. You'd have to change gamma, then readjust the gain/offset controls to compensate for the change. I wish I could afford SMART III right now, 'cause this sounds like the kind of tweaking I'd really get into.

You got a CC40R? I was thinking 40 might be a bit much. I still have some room to tweak with the 20, which is why I was thinking the 30 might be better suited.

Was I anywhere close with my eyeballed settings as far as the grayscale goes? If you find a really optimal setup with the CC20R filter after you've spent some more time with it, please post the settings. I'd be interested to see if mine is fairly consistent with yours.

All in all, though... I'm not unhappy with these results. Steve Smallcombe only got a 713:1 contrast ratio out of the Z2 with a CC20R filter, so the Z3 is performing significantly better.

Something of interest from Smallcombe's site:
The key to understanding the improvement in contrast and black level with CC filters is that the black level is determined by light leaking through the LCD panels, (or internal reflections). This leakage level does NOT increase with increased panel drive levels. Now the factor of 2 attenuation of blue and green by the CC filter at IRE 0 is fully manifest on the screen leading to a factor of 2 improvement if black level and contrast.
You might think that this process might mess up the color balance at low IRE levels, but in practice it can actually help. Keeping with the LCD example for a moment, if the polarization plates for all three colors are all equally properly adjusted, one would then expect the color temperature at IRE 0 to reflect that of the source, i.e missing some red. Since the CC filter is chosen to compensate for the bulbs red shortcomings, this same CC filter can help correct the low level color temperatures as well.

Here is the SMART colour balance readout for a calibrated run without the filter using CC.

http://www.superlight.plus.com/smart.jpg

You can see from this, that the real problem is leakage in the blue panel - and the filters do help here.

Also note that the red is not that far behind the G & B at the upper regions, I would have expected a bigger gap which would mean that your filter would allow G&B to be driven a lot harder that they can before they are in the correct proportions again.

Your updated settings with filter appear to bear this out, in that your colour corrected G and B are not hugely ahead of the red settings ...

It isn't so much about the red deficiency of the bulb, though that's part of it; it's about the red panel clipping before the others do, which limits white level. "

I thought is what the deficiency of the bulb that caused the red clipping ... at least that seems to be what is said over and over about LCD projectors.

"My understanding of how you're supposed to use SMART III is that you use a color correcting filter so you don't have to drive red as hard. Since you still have some leeway with blue and green beyond that, you then raise their levels to restore color balance. "

That is correct, but I look at the otherway around, you can drive red the same as you would without filter but you can bring G&B UP to give you restored colour balance at the top of IRE, now bear in mind you have cut the lower IRE this new difference should give you increased contrast ratio.

"The main RGB controls for white balance are more of a midrange control, from my understanding (though their consistency depends on the gamma of each color). You should use them to balance things out around the midpoint (50IRE), then use the gains for 70IRE and the offsets for 30IRE. "

I wish that was the case with the controls: I would have expected it to be.

The main RGB controls on the Z3 effect the entire range of IRE, not the midpoint in big measures. The GAINs effect the entire range of RGB in little measures (smaller increments) and the OFFSETS again seem to effect the entire range with a bias towards 30 IRE. So you can see the controls are slightly frustrating to use.

"I wish I could afford SMART III right now, 'cause this sounds like the kind of tweaking I'd really get into."


That would definately be useful ... you are in the states aren't you?

Sorry my mistake on the cc40r, I got a cc30r as per your suggestion.

The main RGB controls for white balance are more of a midrange control, from my understanding (though their consistency depends on the gamma of each color). You should use them to balance things out around the midpoint (50IRE), then use the gains for 70IRE and the offsets for 30IRE. If none of the panels are clipping, the rest of the grayscale should line up. If you see that one particular color is not increasing equally with the others, the gamma controls for each individual color can help. You'd have to change gamma, then readjust the gain/offset controls to compensate for the change.

I will look at it all again tonight taking all that into account, but the problem with the RGB gains if even when the are fully maxed out (15 steps) they don't lift the B & G anywhere enough to compensate, but I will try a reading at 50IRE.

You got a CC40R? I was thinking 40 might be a bit much. I still have some room to tweak with the 20, which is why I was thinking the 30 might be better suited.

Was I anywhere close with my eyeballed settings as far as the grayscale goes? If you find a really optimal setup with the CC20R filter after you've spent some more time with it, please post the settings. I'd be interested to see if mine is fairly consistent with yours.



Actually your eyeballed settings with the CC20R filter looked better than my post CC20R Smart ones! But the point remains your changes in RGB whilst colour correcting the filter lowered contrast over the pre-CC20R settings, which I appreciate is where SMART is supposed to help.

I will give it another crack tonight.

I wonder if maybe firing off an e-mail to Steve Smallcombe about all of this might help. He would certainly know more about how to get the desired result than any of us. There has to be something simple that we're not getting. Then again, on the Z2 he said it took several runs and was frustrating, so maybe it just takes patience.

So after you get the color balance right, are you pushing the CONTRAST control up until just below clipping on the white level patterns and then rechecking brightness? I've found that I prefer DVE's grayscale sweep for that particular adjustment, because it shows an area of above-video-white next to 100IRE so you can push contrast up until the two just barely look different (which is just below clipping). With Avia you have the two moving bars, but I've found that it most matches DVE's setting if you make the right-hand bar disappear completely on Avia.

Also, are you opening up the iris any with the filter in place? I understand that the newer version of SMART III has tips on iris settings, but I didn't know if you'd changed that.

Just wanted to add a note of thanks to the guys who are working on tweaks and posting here. This is very useful and im sure there are a lot of people like myself who are not tech enough to contribute but are watching and adding settings to our Z3's. Thank you.

No problem, Saint. I'm not as techy as I may seem, but when I get into tweaking my gear I research EVERYTHING and then noodle it through. If I could afford SMART III right now, I'd be deadly.

Something that still bothers me is that Sanyo's spec sheet for the Z3 says: "The motorized lens iris adjusts automatically according to ambient light conditions in 63 increments from 100% down to 60%."

Does that mean Sanyo is guilty of false advertising? 'Cause I can't find a single mode on the Z3 where the iris "adjusts automatically according to ambient light conditions".

No problem, Saint. I'm not as techy as I may seem, but when I get into tweaking my gear I research EVERYTHING and then noodle it through. If I could afford SMART III right now, I'd be deadly.

Something that still bothers me is that Sanyo's spec sheet for the Z3 says: "The motorized lens iris adjusts automatically according to ambient light conditions in 63 increments from 100% down to 60%."

Does that mean Sanyo is guilty of false advertising? 'Cause I can't find a single mode on the Z3 where the iris "adjusts automatically according to ambient light conditions".


As I have posted before, the more articles I read lately, the more I keep reading how the Z3 performs automatic IRIS functions and adapts to lighting, etc, etc...

How does one know for certain (other then an opinion) whether or not the Z3 does in fact utilize an automatic IRIS (or similar function)?

I think the easy answer is that you can hear the iris opening and closing. Right??

I think the easy answer is that you can hear the iris opening and closing. Right??


When you are adjusting the IRIS manually, you can absolutely hear it. So it would certainly seem logical that if it were adjusting automatically you would hear it as well. I don’t hear a thing when the PJ is on personally.

I thought two medium modes (more than theater black and less than full tilt) adjusted. I hear the fan kick in once in a while if (almost never) I use those modes. But I think the bulb is just getting cranked up and the iris is remaining the same. Either way I leave mine in theater black all the time.

I figured that the only way to make the iris react quickly if were adaptive would be to go from a 0 IRE pattern (black) to 100 IRE and listen to see if it opens and closes. I've done this with my ear next to the projector in every mode possible, and I don't hear a damn thing. And yet, I've seen several bits of product literature from Sanyo that say the iris adjusts automatically. You'd think if this was something they decided not to leave in, they would remove all mention of it from their product sheets.

Then you have Cine4Home, who report that the iris on their unit DID automatically adjust, but only in Dynamic mode and only affecting the higher IRE levels. I know this really isn't necessarily relevant to the tweaks thread per se, but it still makes me wonder whether the feature is there and we don't know how to access it. There has to be SOMETHING that gets us closer to Sanyo's 2000:1 claimed contrast ratio though, because the best settings I can find for mine only get us about half of that per ROne's testing.

This is directly from Sanyo; http://www.sanyo-lcdp.com/english/product/plvz3/plvz3_01.html


If this doesn't confuse you, nothing will. It is very contradicting.

A few highlights:

"Via remote control, you can change the amount of projected light in 63 gradations of approximately 0.6%. Contrast can thus be adjusted from 100% down to around 60%. Throughout this fine-tuning, the lens iris contracts and dilates smoothly, without noticeable jumpiness."

"The PLV-Z3 analyzes the average picture level (APL) of the screen, and controls the lamp output automatically. Users can choose from among four modes: Bright, React Image 1, React Image 2, and Theater Black. React Image 2 provides a heightened sense of image contrast, while at the same time also reducing noise. "

"Thanks to the Lens Diaphragm and SANYO's original Dimmer, the PLV-Z3 achieves a remarkable contrast ratio of 2000:1. The Dimmer measures screen brightness and automatically determines the appropriate volume of light for the lamp. This way, problems with glaring whites or murky, undifferentiated blacks are resolved, as is the problem of a "gray-black" screen. The result: a high-contrast, three-dimensional image with stunningly real blacks."

I think they're talking about the lamp modulation, not the iris. Either way, it's awfully confusing.

jeremy's settings look good on my screen... accept that for my filter free projector (filter is on it's way) i found things way to red... so i put red on -7 and i set green and blue at 0 and it looks much better now... i was having lcd buyers remorse until i made that change... my screen looked crayola-ed before the red adjustment. also, if you don't have a perfectly light controlled room, i have found jacking up the contrast to 31 during daytime view really makes a huge difference as far making the picture watchable (i have on big shaded window that lets in a fair amount of light even with the shade drawn).

i found things way to red... so i put red on -7 and i set green and blue at 0 and it looks much better now
Again, I feel the need to explain something:
Do NOT adjust the Red, Green and Blue controls based on a color picture or a perceived excess of a certain color in the picture. Those controls do NOT adjust the amount of each individual color. They are used to adjust the amount of each color that creates white. These controls are only to make adjustments to the grayscale, NOT to the color decoding, which is a completely different thing. You can crank red down all the way and it will not make a huge difference in the color of things on your screen, other than the fact that white will now no longer be white - it will have an excess of green and blue.

Sadly, there are no adjustments to reduce the amount of red in the color decoder, and the Z3 looks to have about a 10-15% surplus of red if you adjust color and tint using blue with a calibration disc (at least with component video, and it is seen primarily in how red fleshtones will appear). You have seen us talk about using a line level attenuator to alleviate this problem. I'll explain why that works in very basic terms:

For an explanation of how component video works, see this link: http://www.projectorcentral.com/component.htm
By placing a 1dB attenuator on the Cr lead of the component video cable (the red color difference lead), you are basically reducing the amount of red before it reaches the projector by about 10%. Thusly, when the projector reproduces red in the color decoder, the 10% surplus of red in the decoder roughly brings red back even with the blue level. This is the ONLY way to reduce the red push on the Z3 that I am aware of.

Halcali, jacking up the contrast for daytime viewing may seem to make things watchable, but you are likely severely clipping whites. This will make the picture seem brighter... but you're actually reducing detail. With the contrast control set to above clipping, levels of gray below white become the same as the maximum video white. Ideally, you would want to instead open the iris to allow more light to the screen or use a higher bulb mode during the day. Personally, I hit up justblinds.com for some custom-sized poly\mylar blackout shades, which worked extremely well and didn't break the bank.

There has to be SOMETHING that gets us closer to Sanyo's 2000:1 claimed contrast ratio though, because the best settings I can find for mine only get us about half of that per ROne's testing.

I think we could get close to 2000:1 if we eschew anything to do with a cinematic picture by driving RGB and contrast as high possible on one of the higher bulb settings which is undoubtedly how sanyo arrive at that figure.

For our purposes could the difference between out 1000ish CR and cine4home's be the use of the adaptive bulb settings?

What did they use?

It may well be that Cine4Home was using one of the adapative bulb settings. I don't see how they couldn't have been, considering the results you've posted. However, no one can say what filter or settings they used because they do calibrations for a business over there and don't want to give away their secret. For all we know, they might have been using a DAY-FL or 81EF filter like the Panny 700 users are toying with.

Since we're already setting contrast to just below clipping, driving it into clipping would gain no extra full-on/full-off contrast; it would simply crush white at the higher IRE levels. So who knows how Sanyo came up with the 2,000:1 contrast ratio they claim. Maybe they're measuring white with the iris fully open and then black with the iris fully closed. Or maybe their original unit DID have an adaptive iris and that's how they measured. Personally, after seeing how the adaptive iris on the Panny 700 screws up gamma, I can live without that feature.

All in all, I'm happy with the settings I posted earlier in the thread using the CC20R filter. With my high contrast matte white screen (1.1 gain, gray base), I'm getting an image that is infinitely better than the out-of-the-box settings and looks very similar to my ISF calibrated RPTV. Unless you've found any better settings so far or found that the CC30R filter calibrates out better, it's possible that we've simply reached the limits of what the Z3 can do.

jeremy's settings look good on my screen... accept that for my filter free projector (filter is on it's way) i found things way to red... so i put red on -7 and i set green and blue at 0 and it looks much better now... i was having lcd buyers remorse until i made that change... my screen looked crayola-ed before the red adjustment. also, if you don't have a perfectly light controlled room, i have found jacking up the contrast to 31 during daytime view really makes a huge difference as far making the picture watchable (i have on big shaded window that lets in a fair amount of light even with the shade drawn).

When you get that filter you will be blown away with the results. The filter makes a big difference.

Has anyone took advantage of and/or fooled around with the Capture feature of the Z3, that enables you to replace the Default "Sanyo" image at power on?

I've had this unit for 6 months and just yesterday realized the potential of this feature.

I designed a 3D image with some graphics and a "Welcome to ______ Theater" in big lettering in Photoshop, saved it as an image, burned in to a DVD, then played it on the Z3. When the image is displayed, I hit capture, and now everytime I power on the PJ (or hit the MY-P button on the remote), my custom Welcome message/graphic appears.

It really looks cool, and I'm not sure everyone is aware of how easy it is to personalize your HT using this method.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned here.

I captured a scene from Jack-Jack Attack on The Incredibles bonus disc. Looks very nice.

Okay, in my continuing need to further screw with my projector, I stopped by the photo shop of an old family friend and discussed the situation with him. I was looking for an 81EF filter, but he was out. Still, he had a box of used gel filters that I dug through. I like the results I'm getting from the CC20R filter, but I thought if I could just get a TOUCH more blue out of the blacks, I could open up the iris a bit more. So, he gave me a free Kodak CC10Y (yellow) filter to bring the blue down.

I put the CC10Y filter under the CC20R, did some more tweaking, and ME LIKEY! You have to bring up the blue and blue gain controls just a touch and readjust contrast and brightness to get the grayscale back in order, but it didn't seem to reduce overall light output enough to matter much. What it did do was make black BLACK. It seems that the combination of these two filters gets rid of enough blue for it to almost negate the light leakage from the panels. I'm still getting a high enough white level without clipping to be very watchable with some lights on, and it looks BRILLIANT with the room dark. I was able to open the iris up to -34 instead of the -38 I was at before and I still had darker black.

I saved the new settings to a different preset so I could quickly A/B the two (by sliding the CC10Y filter out and going back to Preset 1 - the settings I posted previously). By visual comparison, I definitely like this combination at first glance. I still need to spend some more time with it to be sure, but since I got the filter for free the price was definitely right. :)

i just got my 1db attenuator in today, so i will try that. i know boosting the contrast messes up picture accuracy... but it looks better when i have too much light in the room. are the blinds you are referring to listed as "room darkening" roller shades on that site?

i have a dvd player on the way that plays jpg files so i will be able to check some test patterns to see whether my misaligned green panel is tolerable or not. but i have to say picture tweaking makes a far bigger difference on the z3 than it did on the x1 (of course the z3 has more tweakability).

http://www.justblinds.com/products/blackoutshade.cfm
It's a well-made product, and they aren't kidding about it blocking 100% of light. The only light I get is leakage around the edges.

So here's the deal. My wife and I are going through basement and clearing out a bunch of stuff for a garage sale that we are going to have this weekend. Let me go back a little. My wife is an artist. I have used her opinion when it come to color and a other settings for my displays. Anyway we are cleaning up and looking through stuff from college when she finds a little 3x4 box full of contrast filters!

They are called Ilford Multigrade Contrast Filters. Each filter is 3x3 and has a number printed on it ranging from 00 - 04 going up in .5 units.

Anyone know what these are? I will do some looking around as I just found them and posted this message shortly after.

Hello chaps, I have been keenly following this thread and adjusting my settings accordingly with great results which have improved over XP Media Centers proprietary setup calibration for front projectors. I am now ready to get the filter (or filters it now seems!) as well.

I just wanted to ask a quick question. I have noticed that on the right side of my image I have a greeny tinge/hue and on the left side a kind of bluey tinge/hue but not in the middle. This is most noticeable on ligter image scenes.

One more question if i may, as I run over HDMI-DVI from a ATI HTPC is there any way of replicating the component red attenuation effect via PC settings?

Thank you.

I just wanted to ask a quick question. I have noticed that on the right side of my image I have a greeny tinge/hue and on the left side a kind of bluey tinge/hue but not in the middle. This is most noticeable on ligter image scenes.

My guess is the iris setting is causing the color on the left side. What do you have it set at right now?

Johnny's correct - the more you close the iris, the more of a uniformity issue you will see. I don't notice it unless I turn it down into the 40's.

Saint, there supposedly is no red push on the HDMI input, so you shouldn't have to worry about it for that. The red push seems to only be an issue with the component inputs. Still, if you're seeing too much red from your HTPC, there should be plenty of controls to reduce it (including one in the ATI control panel if I recall correctly).

Oh, Johnny... contrast filters REDUCE contrast by using ambient light to brighten black. Probably not what you want to do on a projector. :)

Hi the Iris was on 53 but I now have it at 38 and the tinging has almost gone. Thanks i was getting nervous about it being a fault. Phew!

Incidentally following Jeremy's settings a few pages back for use with filter actually gives me the best picture even though i dont have a filter yet. The picture over s-video from my cable box is approaching RPTVish and is very bright and punchy now, of all the settings I have tried on avforums and avsforums, that is definitely the best setup. Must acquire filter!

Have noted there is a CC25R filter available also made by Lee. Would it be worth trying that or should I just stick to CC20R? I dont have SMART but have good visual acuity.

Honestly, after ROne's findings with the CC30R and my tweaking with the CC10Y filter added to the CC20R, I think the CC25R would do more harm than good. The CC20R ought to improve the picture nicely.

I got the CC10Y + CC20R and tweaked them up with smart.

Here's what I found:

Really nice crisp black (for lcd), all but knocks off that blue in low IRE as per Jeremy's suggestion. Skin tones look warmer as well.

You have to lift the iris, I've gone from -52 all the way to -15 (update now at -30 21/06) , it does seem to take away the light ouput somewhat.

There is no difference in contrast: I am constantly getting around a 1020:1 +/- 20 or so, no matter what you do with the gain or contrast with filters applied. I did an experiment with SMART and lifted all the gains to max, it made not a jot of difference to white level output. So there is no way you can get more contrast with a filter at the top end, or at least I haven't found it.

Did a measurement of CR with A1 lamp mode and filters, this came to 1320:1, close enough to suggest cinema4home used this mode. But you have the drone of the fan.

My numbers (a little disclaimer, they're not fine tuned but are close to my original d65 target)

Using Jeremy's combination of Powerful lamp mode + filters CC20R & CC10Y.

C: -1
B: 0
Colour temp: start with LOW1
R: 5
G: 2
B: 1
IRIS - 30
Gain R: 6
Gain G: -2
Gain B: 0
Offset R: -13
Offest G: 0
Offset B: -12
Gammas: 0,0,0
Lamp mode: LOW
Sharpness -7
HDMI: L1

using VMR on TT 2.1 -all defaults on radeon 9600, bar SAT -48

I plugged in your settings and it worked nicely with the CC20R/CC10Y combination. However, I bumped RED down to 2 because the middle IREs on DVE's grayscale sweep were too pink for me. I'm also using about -28 on the iris with a gamma of -1. Looks really good! A slight improvement over my eyeballed settings.

I think that's about as much performance as we're going to squeeze out of the Z3. Much thanks for helping us noodle this through, ROne.

I think you're right, I don't think there is much more to go at, or at least maybe a few variations on a theme.

Last night I did a full run with the filters on to see how it checked out - SMART gave me a few tips of what to adjust and then I spot checked 10,20,40,50,70 IRE and made a few adjustments. Obviously one parameter effects the other so I need to go back through and do a full run to see how flat the overall balance is and do some fine tuning.

You could be right about that red though so maybe my last tweaks to 10,20 IRE did something to the rest ...

I also lowered the IRIS back to -30 after getting used to -15, when all my ambient light had dropped outside (I have black-out blinds but there is a bit of light leakage at the top.)

I think we should sit back and see if any other fellow tweakers can come up with anything!

Oh as an aside have you noticed that the filters help knock out VB completely?

Well, I wasn't seeing any VB at all on mine... and I've been looking for it. I do notice, however, that screen door effect seems reduced with the filters in place even when I focus as tight as I can. It's like having those filters in the optical path just slightly blends the edges of the pixels. I don't see any decrease in the clarity of the picture, so I'll take it as an unexpected benefit.

So would the following summation be true?

The filters reduce black level but do not increase contrast
They also reduce/eliminate SDE and vertical banding.
Improve colours

Is there any other advantage to using the filters?

Conor

So would the following summation be true?

The filters reduce black level but do not increase contrast
They also reduce/eliminate SDE and vertical banding.
Improve colours

Is there any other advantage to using the filters?

Conor

That's spot on - oh and the main reason to change the blue that pretends to be black to a much better black, in fact if I put my hand infront of the projector on a totally black screen and compare with the shadow, it's close enough.

I got the CC10Y + CC20R and tweaked them up with smart.

Here's what I found:

Really nice crisp black (for lcd), all but knocks off that blue in low IRE as per Jeremy's suggestion. Skin tones look warmer as well.

You have to lift the iris, I've gone from -52 all the way to -15 (update now at -30 21/06) , it does seem to take away the light ouput somewhat.

There is no difference in contrast: I am constantly getting around a 1020:1 +/- 20 or so, no matter what you do with the gain or contrast with filters applied. I did an experiment with SMART and lifted all the gains to max, it made not a jot of difference to white level output. So there is no way you can get more contrast with a filter at the top end, or at least I haven't found it.

Did a measurement of CR with A1 lamp mode and filters, this came to 1320:1, close enough to suggest cinema4home used this mode. But you have the drone of the fan.

My numbers (a little disclaimer, they're not fine tuned but are close to my original d65 target)

Using Jeremy's combination of Powerful lamp mode + filters CC20R & CC10Y.

C: -1
B: 0
Colour temp: start with LOW1
R: 5
G: 2
B: 1
IRIS - 30
Gain R: 6
Gain G: -2
Gain B: 0
Offset R: -13
Offest G: 0
Offset B: -12
Gammas: 0,0,0
Lamp mode: LOW
Sharpness -7
HDMI: L1

using VMR on TT 2.1 -all defaults on radeon 9600, bar SAT -48


Did you leave the color level at 5 or did you turn it down to 2?

As I am on HDMI, there is no color setting in the menu.

I do though, lower saturation by -45 in Theatertek.

For those using component, I'm using COLOR +3 and TINT +1. Avia says +2 on the color is right for mine, but DVE shows +3... and +3 looks slightly better to me. I give these settings only for general information, however, as these settings may vary from unit to unit. You should really evaluate and individually calibrate your projector yourself using a calibration disc, though the starting points posted here will help immensely with that.

Well i have sanyo plv-z3 and oppo dv971h dvd player. My current settings are:

connection: hdmi-dvi cable

OLD SETTINGS:
oppo: all default settings

sanyo hdmi: L2
sanyo starting preset: powerful
sanyo lamp mode: theather black
sanyo color temp: low1
sanyo iris: -53

PAL DVD setup:
sanyo contrast: +10
sanyo brightness: -16

NTSC DVD setup:
sanyo contrast: +15
sanyo brightness: -4


NEW SETTINGS:

sanyo hdmi: L1
sanyo starting preset: powerful
sanyo lamp mode: theather black
sanyo color temp: low1
sanyo iris: -63
sanyo gamma: +1

PAL DVD setup:
oppo: all defaults, brightness 0
sanyo contrast: -2
sanyo brightness: -3

NTSC DVD setup:
oppo: all defaults expect brightness +4
sanyo contrast: 0
sanyo brightness: -3

NTSC DVD setup:
sanyo contrast: +15
sanyo brightness: -4

Conrast: +15?? How the heck did you manage that?

I just installed the CC20R filter and the 1dB line attenuator last night, and recalibrated with AVIA, and in the contrast (Needle pulse) patterns, If I understand correctly, you should see both white bars moving on the lower half of the screen??...If that is correct, I have to set my PJ at -13 to see both of them.

I managed to put my fingers on the filters when "installing" them and furthermore the filters became uneven (wavy) after a short period of time causing the image to be out of focus in some places .. Are gelfilters the best possible filters or is there another cheap option? I´m not a very handy person so I have a tendensy of making a mess when it´s supposed to be simple :(

Anyway, a few pointers would be nice .. Perhaps even some images of how you guys put the filters into place ..

Thanks in advance :cool:

Anyway, a few pointers would be nice .. Perhaps even some images of how you guys put the filters into place ..

Thanks in advance :cool:

I will post some pic for you as soon as I do a better job as I am one who makes a mess of things too.

Expect to see them on Sunday. FYI - it is NOTHING fancy all I used was some scotch tape on the top and bottom.

Ok, nice .. Are you using gelfilters? I used the ones from kodak "kodak wratten gelatin filter" .. Dunno if there´s any differance in quality between those or any other brand ..

I will post some pic for you as soon as I do a better job as I am one who makes a mess of things too.

Expect to see them on Sunday. FYI - it is NOTHING fancy all I used was some scotch tape on the top and bottom.

Both my CC20R and CC10Y filters are the Kodak Wratten filters. Like Johnny said, two pieces of scotch tape do the trick for me.

You can get a filter holder from Lee that is basically a frame for the filters with two elastic bands that go around the lens to hold it in place. That would probably look nice, but would get in the way of closing the front cover.

You could also use the little card that the Z3 comes with to cover the lens that has foam on it. I would imagine it would be fairly easy to modify that to hold the filters in place. But really... two pieces of scotch tape to the top and bottom of the front housing works just fine and holds the filters fairly flat against the lens.

[QUOTE=You could also use the little card that the Z3 comes with to cover the lens that has foam on it. I would imagine it would be fairly easy to modify that to hold the filters in place. But really... two pieces of scotch tape to the top and bottom of the front housing works just fine and holds the filters fairly flat against the lens.[/QUOTE]

Now that's a hell of an idea!!!!

A weird thing is that I did just what you said and the filters were even from the start but sort of slipped closer to lens after only 1 day causing the filters to get uneven .. That is why i´m abit worried about buying gelfilters for a second time .. I´ll take a peak at the provided lens cover later today to see if I can make something work out of that..

Edit: BTW, one more probably major newbie question .. Because I live in sweden I mostly watch PAL dvds .. Do I need to alter the settings or are they supposed to be the same for both PAL and NTSC? :confused:

Both my CC20R and CC10Y filters are the Kodak Wratten filters. Like Johnny said, two pieces of scotch tape do the trick for me.

You can get a filter holder from Lee that is basically a frame for the filters with two elastic bands that go around the lens to hold it in place. That would probably look nice, but would get in the way of closing the front cover.

You could also use the little card that the Z3 comes with to cover the lens that has foam on it. I would imagine it would be fairly easy to modify that to hold the filters in place. But really... two pieces of scotch tape to the top and bottom of the front housing works just fine and holds the filters fairly flat against the lens.

I enterd ROne's setting, and it looks awsome, without a filter. However, my blacks are still slightly blue so I ordered the CC20R filter.

THANK YOU to both of you and Jeremy for alll your hard work and for sharing your experiences.

talking of the gel filters, when you put a cc10y and cc20r together this means you have 4 surfaces to ensure are dust free. I cant seem to clean this perfectly with a standard large lens cloth so is there any cleaning solution that you guys have used? doesnt seem to affect the picture in any event as far as i can tell.

i taped the two filters together using scotch tape then taped them top and bottom of the z3.

EDIT: best cleaning method so far is to clean with a large eyeglass cloth then use the Z3 hurricaine blower to shift the last few bits! theres still a bit there but it doesnt seem to affect picture at all any way.

EDIT 2: you can dip them into washing up liquid too for a lasting clean!

Conrast: +15?? How the heck did you manage that?

I just installed the CC20R filter and the 1dB line attenuator last night, and recalibrated with AVIA, and in the contrast (Needle pulse) patterns, If I understand correctly, you should see both white bars moving on the lower half of the screen??...If that is correct, I have to set my PJ at -13 to see both of them.

Yes thats correct.

Well i dont have any filters (yet) and i run hdmi-dvi (only usable option with oppo). I am just going to get CC20R filter very soon so i can see how much difference it makes :) Those are calibrated contrast/brightness settings in my setup.

Please help:

I just hooked my z3 up (sitting on a flat surface about 4 feet high, with the "legs" on the bottom of the unit fully extended) and i'm getting a "trapezoid" picture (wider at the top than the bottom of picture).

I don't want to use keystone to correct, but is there anything else i can do?

bmn -- In order to get a square picture, the PJ has to be level. Level your Z3, retract the legs, and either lower your screen or use the lens shift (the levers next to the lens) to move the picture up (it adjusts to one full screen height).

bmn -- In order to get a square picture, the PJ has to be level. Level your Z3, retract the legs, and either lower your screen or use the lens shift (the levers next to the lens) to move the picture up (it adjusts to one full screen height).


Thanks much, CT.

johnnykretentiv

Do you use Rone setting for your setup. I have the same source as you and I tried using Rone setting but the black on those setting go bellow video black. What is your setting if you don't mind?

Thanks

Fred

johnnykretentiv

Do you use Rone setting for your setup. I have the same source as you and I tried using Rone setting but the black on those setting go bellow video black. What is your setting if you don't mind?

Thanks

Fred

Here are the settings I use and am lovin' it

Bear in mind that I have a CC20R filter over the lens and am using a 1dB line level attenuator on the Cr component cable to bring red push to 0 (though that shouldn't affect anyone's settings). Start in POWERFUL mode and immediately turn the bulb down to theater black. User menu settings are:
Contrast -2
Brightness -3
Color +2
Tint +1
Color Temp User
Red 0
Green +3
Blue +1
Sharpness -5
Gamma -1
Iris -38
Gain R 0
Gain G +1
Gain B 0
Offset R 0
Offset G +2
Offset B +3
Auto Black Stretch On
Contrast Enhancement LV1
Transient Improvement Off


These are from Jeremy as a starter then I tweaked it for fit my room and environ ( controlled light).

Look at my THeater Site link in my sig for more details.

Later

Here are the settings I use and am lovin' it

Bear in mind that I have a CC20R filter over the lens and am using a 1dB line level attenuator on the Cr component cable to bring red push to 0 (though that shouldn't affect anyone's settings). Start in POWERFUL mode and immediately turn the bulb down to theater black. User menu settings are:
Contrast -2
Brightness -3
Color +2
Tint +1
Color Temp User
Red 0
Green +3
Blue +1
Sharpness -5
Gamma -1
Iris -38
Gain R 0
Gain G +1
Gain B 0
Offset R 0
Offset G +2
Offset B +3
Auto Black Stretch On
Contrast Enhancement LV1
Transient Improvement Off


These are from Jeremy as a starter then I tweaked it for fit my room and environ ( controlled light).

Look at my THeater Site link in my sig for more details.

Later

Thanks a lot johnnykretentiv. Will try this later ! :)

johnnykretentiv,

where did you get your 1dB line level attenuator?

I checked out your site, great job, lots of good info and pictures....

Thanks!

Corrected my oppo+z3 settings to use HDMI L1 setting for improved CR.

Here is a link witha SMART comparison of the Creative Cinema Settings none-filtered, and POWERFUL settings filtered.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1781652&postcount=276

Here is a link witha SMART comparison of the Creative Cinema Settings none-filtered, and POWERFUL settings filtered.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1781652&postcount=276


Very impressive Rone. Thanks for the info.

thus far i have not liked the picture with the ccr20 filter (too red, but i have a misaligned green panel so that might be a factor), but i can't stress what an improvement the 1db attenuator is, if you connect via component, you have to get one of these (or 2 in my case, as i am running dvd and hdtv into my projector). i am also using johnny's settings, and they look great.

thus far i have not liked the picture with the ccr20 filter (too red, but i have a misaligned green panel so that might be a factor), but i can't stress what an improvement the 1db attenuator is, if you connect via component, you have to get one of these (or 2 in my case, as i am running dvd and hdtv into my projector). i am also using johnny's settings, and they look great.

Where did you guy's find a the 1db attenuator ?

Thanks

Where did you guy's find a the 1db attenuator ?

Thanks


here you go

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=266-230

OK......I am absolutely driving myself crazy trying to decide between Powerful or Creative Cinema as a starting point. While I like the "punch" that I get from the Powerful mode, I just can't get colors to look natural. I have tried ROne's, Jeremy's and johnny's settings (and tweaked each of them a bit).

Here is the bottom line: Dark scenes look better when starting form Powerful, but bright scenes look WAY too saturated to me, and no amount of tweaking seems to change this for me.

Any suggestions?

OK......I am absolutely driving myself crazy trying to decide between Powerful or Creative Cinema as a starting point. While I like the "punch" that I get from the Powerful mode, I just can't get colors to look natural. I have tried ROne's, Jeremy's and johnny's settings (and tweaked each of them a bit).

Here is the bottom line: Dark scenes look better when starting form Powerful, but bright scenes look WAY too saturated to me, and no amount of tweaking seems to change this for me.

Any suggestions?

I experience about the same thing. I will try the 1Db atenuator with the powerfull mode to see if it correct the problem.

I just ordered one from partsexpress I don't know when Ill have it.

Thanks

Edit: And by the way the Creative Cinema as a starting is really great allready just trying things. :) :o

If starting from Powerful mode seems too blown out at the higher IREs, try Dynamic instead. You get almost (but not quite) as much brightness out of it, but dialed back slightly at the high end. I've seen several people recommend this, but I haven't tinkered with it since mine looks fantastic as is.

Thanks for the replies...fellas. I started messing around with Dynamic and I think I will end up with it as a starting point. I have a suspision that Powerful is too "powerful" for me because my screen size is small (84").

I tried LEE CC20R and CC10Y filters with rone/jeremy powerful settings with gamma 0. Normal DVE B/C calibration. Results:
- improved colors + colorization
- improved black
- less sde
- image looks really 3d now :)

Thanks for these settings.

Hello all!!!

I have seen just now this very interesting and informative thread.

I own a Sanyo Z3 since November 2004 and it is a .... "Cine4home" tuned one, and it came with a pre-installed filter.

( I live in europe and i've bought it from a shop that sell
this prj with this option)

Following are the settings pre-charged on the prj (after tuning):

- Contrast -2
- Brightness 0

- Red -2
- Green 0
- Blue 0

- Gamma -1
- Color +1

- Iris -63
- GainR -9
- GainG 0
- GainB -10

- offsetR +11
- offsetG 0
- offsetB +4

- GammaR 0
- GammaG 0
- GammaB 0

-lamp mode A1

Here there is a graph of MY Z3 before tuning (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/rgbPrima.GIF)
and here the graph after it. (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/rgbDopo.GIF)
The guy that sold to me the Z3 said that those settings are specific for each prj because
none prj was "born" identical to one other (I doubt this is completely true...).
He also said to me that he CAN'T ABSOLUTELY disclose to me wich is the
reference of the filter installed.
For this purpose this night, from home, i'll try to post an image of my filter
and maybe we can try to understand together wich kind of filter it is.

bye for the moment

elche99

Well i have to tell that i get probably extremely good cr running in low lamp (theater black) mode currently (atleast it looks that way). And colors really look amazing :) Those current filters and settings are excellent.

Hello all!!!

I have seen just now this very interesting and informative thread.

I own a Sanyo Z3 since November 2004 and it is a .... "Cine4home" tuned one, and it came with a pre-installed filter.

( I live in europe and i've bought it from a shop that sell
this prj with this option)

Following are the settings pre-charged on the prj (after tuning):

- Contrast -2
- Brightness 0

- Red -2
- Green 0
- Blue 0

- Gamma -1
- Color +1

- Iris -63
- GainR -9
- GainG 0
- GainB -10

- offsetR +11
- offsetG 0
- offsetB +4

- GammaR 0
- GammaG 0
- GammaB 0

-lamp mode A1

Here there is a graph of MY Z3 before tuning (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/rgbPrima.GIF)
and here the graph after it. (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/rgbDopo.GIF)
The guy that sold to me the Z3 said that those settings are specific for each prj because
none prj was "born" identical to one other (I doubt this is completely true...).
He also said to me that he CAN'T ABSOLUTELY disclose to me wich is the
reference of the filter installed.
For this purpose this night, from home, i'll try to post an image of my filter
and maybe we can try to understand together wich kind of filter it is.

bye for the moment

elche99


Well this is fantastic news! Can you tell us more about the filter, with some good pictures and descriptive text. Thank you.

Please notice high lamp mode A1 in that setup. Theater black is must for me.

My Z3 arrives tomorrow and this thread will be a huge help in setting it up. Going to be interesting as its trying to replace a Marquee 8500 hanging on the celing right now. Thanks in advance for all the great work in here.

BTW - Johnny - I didn't see anyone answer your question a while back about those contrast filters you found in your basement. I believe those are the old filters we used to use when exposing black and white photography prints in the darkroom back in high school. You fiddled around with the different filters over the lense of the (gosh i forgot what that thing is called that projected your negative to the photo paper...) while making a print. The higher numbered filters created a higher contrast image. You would choose the one that looked "best" depending on the inherent contrast in the negative, or the effect you were attempting to achieve.

(an "enlarger" - duh - glad I got that out of my head...)

Hello all!!!

....cut.....

For this purpose this night, from home, i'll try to post an image of my filter
and maybe we can try to understand together wich kind of filter it is.

bye for the moment

elche99

Sorry for this "auto-quote" :)

Here are the images, taken with the flash.

filter 1 (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/filterflash2.jpg)
filter 2 (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/filtroZ3-002.jpg)
filter 3 (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/filtroZ3-001.jpg)

the scratches on the filter doesn't affect at all the image quality (at least in a viewable
way)
I don't know if it is possible that someone that has in his hand a ccr20 or ccr25 filter, can say if it is the same or not.
On my prj the filter hasn't any nr or letter on it and i think it was cutted (from a larger piece) on the right measure before mounting; the only thing I've recognised for sure is that it
is a "gelatine" (or plastic) one.
Hope this help to disclose the mistery :)

bye
elche99

Sorry for this "auto-quote" :)

Here are the images, taken with the flash.

filter 1 (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/filterflash2.jpg)
filter 2 (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/filtroZ3-002.jpg)
filter 3 (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/filtroZ3-001.jpg)

the screws on the filter doesn't affect at all the image quality (at least in a viewable
way)
I don't know if it is possible that someone that has in his hand a ccr20 or ccr25 filter, can say if it is the same or not.
On my prj the filter hasn't any nr or letter on it and i think it was cutted (from a larger piece) on the right measure before mounting; the only thing I've recognised for sure is that it
is a "gelatine" (or plastic) one.
Hope this help to disclose the mistery :)

bye
elche99

Hi thanks for the pictures. Thats a very interesting way of attaching the filter. I cant see any screws though (perhaps you mean scratches?). Please could you describe the way in which the filter has been attached to the lens unit?

Also I geuss no one will be able to say if it is a CC20R unless they look at your filter compared to a CC20R. I have a cc20r and cc10y samples i can post to you free so you can compare yourself and let us know. PM me your postal address :)

If I were to guess, I'd say it was a CC20R filter... maybe a 25R, but more than likely a 20. It doesn't have the straw color that a DAY-FL filter has and doesn't appear to have any yellow to it. From the surface (and scratches) it looks almost like a resin filter that they've cut to size.

At least we know now that Cine4Home is using A1 lamp mode to achieve their 1,400:1 CR. I think what ROne and I came up with is the best we can do in theater black.

elche99----thank you for sharing that info. Now I am going to ask you a HUGE favor that will help me and many others here out.

Can you plug those settings into various "starting points" (i.e. Powerful/Dynamic/Cinema) and let us know which setting Cine4home started from to get those settings?

I know this is asking alot, but this info would be invaluable.

And BTW sainthalo........although I don't want to steer this thread off topic and into controversial waters......MY DEEPEST SYMPATHY to you for what happened in your home town today.

:( :( :(

My Z3 arrives tomorrow and this thread will be a huge help in setting it up. Going to be interesting as its trying to replace a Marquee 8500 hanging on the celing right now. Thanks in advance for all the great work in here.

BTW - Johnny - I didn't see anyone answer your question a while back about those contrast filters you found in your basement. I believe those are the old filters we used to use when exposing black and white photography prints in the darkroom back in high school. You fiddled around with the different filters over the lense of the (gosh i forgot what that thing is called that projected your negative to the photo paper...) while making a print. The higher numbered filters created a higher contrast image. You would choose the one that looked "best" depending on the inherent contrast in the negative, or the effect you were attempting to achieve.

(an "enlarger" - duh - glad I got that out of my head...)
Jeremy answered it but thanks.
Yep you are right those will not do any good for this situation.

THanks

Hello all!!!

I have seen just now this very interesting and informative thread.

I own a Sanyo Z3 since November 2004 and it is a .... "Cine4home" tuned one, and it came with a pre-installed filter.

( I live in europe and i've bought it from a shop that sell
this prj with this option)

Following are the settings pre-charged on the prj (after tuning):

- Contrast -2
- Brightness 0

- Red -2
- Green 0
- Blue 0

- Gamma -1
- Color +1

- Iris -63
- GainR -9
- GainG 0
- GainB -10

- offsetR +11
- offsetG 0
- offsetB +4

- GammaR 0
- GammaG 0
- GammaB 0

-lamp mode A1

Here there is a graph of MY Z3 before tuning (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/rgbPrima.GIF)
and here the graph after it. (http://www.geocities.com/elche99/prj/rgbDopo.GIF)
The guy that sold to me the Z3 said that those settings are specific for each prj because
none prj was "born" identical to one other (I doubt this is completely true...).
He also said to me that he CAN'T ABSOLUTELY disclose to me wich is the
reference of the filter installed.


elche99


Some interesting things in those charts and settings, I notice the BLUE at the lower end is by far the biggest problem. I think CR can easily be reached at 1400:1 irrespective of filter use with the Z3, using A1 and a well calibrated unit will be close to 1300,1400:1 before filter use. My numbers with SMART have demonstrated this.

So what can we do? Well I think that killing more of that BLUE is the key - I am going to get a heavier YELLOW filter, say a CC40Y or more just to see what it does to that bottom end.

Also why have they needed to lift RED offset, there seems to be plent of red at the bottom end?

The numbers and results we have achieved so far between us have produced a great picture and I am almost tempted to stop at this point. But I am also tempted to by a true colour measuring device such as opticONE to find out what is really going on.

The numbers and results we have achieved so far between us have produced a great picture and I am almost tempted to stop at this point.

Yeah with filters and your settings picture is now very deep and really 3D looking. I still cant believe how it can be this good :)

Yeah with filters and your settings picture is now very deep and really 3D looking. I still cant believe how it can be this good :)


How can the picture be so much better if in Rone's color chart the not filtered picture in cinema mode is better. :confused:

Thanks

Fred

How can the picture be so much better if in Rone's color chart the not filtered picture in cinema mode is better. :confused:

Well thats good question. I dont have answer to that other than difference what i see on screen. I bet Rone himself is also using filters because of this. You shoud really get filters and see for yourself unless someone here posts pics showing difference.

How can the picture be so much better if in Rone's color chart the not filtered picture in cinema mode is better. :confused:

Thanks

Fred

Because what we are seeing is subjectively better to our eyes, whilst the un-filtered smart chart may be more accurate. Herein lies the problem, do you completely trust your eyes or trust a chart? I think the answer lies somewhere between the two.

Because what we are seeing is subjectively better to our eyes, whilst the un-filtered smart chart may be more accurate. Herein lies the problem, do you completely trust your eyes or trust a chart? I think the answer lies somewhere between the two.

I understand.
I trust my eyes before the chart of course but I always have the feeling that something is wrong when I know that the chart is saying something else. :(

I'm crazy like that. ;)

I sure will get the filter soon. I was just trying to start a conversation. :D

Thanks

Fred

Spot on i think its between the charts and the eyes as is obvious from rone/Jeremy's collaborations. The more I watch the powerful preset filtered settings the more I love them. Could i just again thank Rone and Jeremy - you guys are great :)

Sorry this is a bit off-topic - could anyone who uses the UK avforums please help me out?

I need to get in touch with an avforums member called "Bogeyed" who bought some filters off me. He has paid by bank transfer and I cannot get his address or email address as I have been suspended as a member from the avforums (http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1791596#post1791596)

If you can help by contacting "Bogeyed" and asking him to to email me on sainthalo at gmail dot com with his postal address I would be most grateful.

Thank you :)

What types of screens and ambient light situations are you guys using that have a brightness setting of like -2 or -3? I got my Z3 in and am setting it up. In my light controlled room with a DIY white screen, I have to have a brightness setting of about -19 or -20 (with the iris dialed all the way down and theater black lamp mode) to get to any acceptable level of black (and to calibrate properly with Avia).

Actually, I'd say its not really an acceptable black level even then but its the best it can do. There is a very clear difference between "black" out of the projector and a portion of the screen the projector doesn't hit. Unfortunately, my DIY screen is masked in such a way that it is just a little off of an exact 16:9 ratio. This is no problem with my CRT as I can stretch the picture to fill the actual screen. With the LCD however, that's not an option.

Also, because of my ceiling mount, I have to adjust keystone. I was a bit surprised to find the keystone adjustment is digital, not optical (I guess I should have figured that out). Anyway, the effect of that is the "black" portion of the image that has been keystone-corrected out is very visible on the little bit of extra screen material I have on the sides - making dark scenes look like they aren't keystone corrected at all. I need to re-build my mask to be exactly right to make this acceptable. I also need to build a 2.35 mask because the top/bottom "black" bars really wash out the blacks in the image. I think if I can mask the bars, the image blacks will appear much more black.

Anyway, a long ramble, but I'm really interested in how you guys are getting any sort of acceptable black level with brighness ramped up as high as you report it - maybe I've got something setup really wrong... Thanks.

ebr
I have full light control and am using a Elite Screens 100" white screen. I am currently using -3 as my brightness level. I do not have Avia so my numbers may not be accurate but I sure like the picture. I did borrow Avia before I got my filters and had a hell of a time seeing the two moving bars unless I tweaked the bright really low like you did.


btw - I love your theater. Great job and you should be proud.

Also, because of my ceiling mount, I have to adjust keystone. I was a bit surprised to find the keystone adjustment is digital, not optical (I guess I should have figured that out).
The Z3 has a lens shift feature, any particular reason that does not work for you? :confused:

Johnny - if you will, try the following - put up a blank, black screen on your Z3, lens shift it a little bit up or sideways so that it misses some of your screen and turn the lights all the way down. Now, how different is the "black" out of the projector from the true "black" of the screen with no image touching it (this is the blackest you can get in your room with any projection device)?

With my Marquee, I can make the difference between the two completely un-noticable. With the Z3 its very stark, even at the best black level settings I can find. At -3 brightness its nothing I would call black at all - very washed out. But, maybe my perspective is skewed coming from the Marquee. I saw all kinds of people talking about how there was no SDE on this PJ and I can clearly see the screen door from the doorway of my theater - 20 feet from the screen - especially on high motion scenes.

Thanks for the kind words on my room - its actually the second one I've done and I will be embarking on a third within the next year (we are moving again).

htpc - I am using the lens shift feature. With my setup right now (fairly high celing and the Z3 currently sitting actually "inside" my M8500) the projector is high enough that I need both the lens shift and a tilt of the projector - thus requiring the use of keystone adjustment as well. Once I get the three-eyed monster off the ceiling, I may be able to mount the Z3 such as to not need the keystone as much, but probably won't be able to completely eliminate it without having the projector looking kind of funny hanging down so far. I still will require proper masking, however, because the "black" is so far off of real black.

It just is not fair to compare the Z3 to a CRT. At your screen size, I would suggest a gray screen or painting the Parkland with Behr Silver Screen.

FWIW......I am using both Compenent inputs, HDMI and RGB and my brightness setting is different for every one.

I use an 84" Carada High Contrast Grey screen and love it. I also use a homemade masking system for 2.35 movies cuz I can't stand the DARK GREY bars.

Okay - with all the rave reviews I read, I guess my expectations just got away from me a bit. I'm sure the Z3 image will please 90% of the population. I put it up because I'm selling my house and I'm sure the Z3 image will blow away anyone who buys it.

I did build a mask as well, and the perceived black level is much better when you get rid of any screen that does not have actual image on it. Someone who hasn't sat and watched an 8" CRT for two years won't think twice about it I'm sure.

Thanks for the input.

Are the posted settings with the attenuator and filters recommended for all inputs? component, RGB and HDMI?

Thanks!

Are the posted settings with the attenuator and filters recommended for all inputs? component, RGB and HDMI?

Yes. Expect no atteuator needed with hdmi. only filters with hdmi.

A few novice questions, but first of all I'd like to thank you guys for this fantastic tweaking thread. Nice job!

1. I glossed over something near the beginning of this thread, about how firmware can affect the colour settings. I just checked and confirmed that my firmware is 1.00 (World) -- Please forgive me if I've misunderstood, but ROne, does this mean that those tweaks you posted may not even apply to me since you're using FW v.1.01?

2. I'd like to use the Powerful settings and filters that Jeremy recommended. However, my screen is a 103" SilverStar (VuTec), with a gain of ~4. How might this affect those settings, if at all?

3. Somebody (I think Jeremy) mentioned that there is no red push on HDMI input. How about the PC input? I'm thinking of just running an SVGA cable from my future HTPC, to free up the HDMI input for my cable box to use...

Please excuse my ignorance, I'm really REALLY novice at this and don't have a lot of time to experiment... your help would be much appreciated.

A few novice questions, but first of all I'd like to thank you guys for this fantastic tweaking thread. Nice job!

1. I glossed over something near the beginning of this thread, about how firmware can affect the colour settings. I just checked and confirmed that my firmware is 1.00 (World) -- Please forgive me if I've misunderstood, but ROne, does this mean that those tweaks you posted may not even apply to me since you're using FW v.1.01?

2. I'd like to use the Powerful settings and filters that Jeremy recommended. However, my screen is a 103" SilverStar (VuTec), with a gain of ~4. How might this affect those settings, if at all?

3. Somebody (I think Jeremy) mentioned that there is no red push on HDMI input. How about the PC input? I'm thinking of just running an SVGA cable from my future HTPC, to free up the HDMI input for my cable box to use...

Please excuse my ignorance, I'm really REALLY novice at this and don't have a lot of time to experiment... your help would be much appreciated.

1. I would imagine if it's the same unit the firmware will be largely irrelevent, but ofcourse unit to unit their may be differences

2. It shouldn't. Screen brightness (gain) is not the same as video level. However your iris may need adjusting to compensate.

3. There is no red push on HDMI or VGA, which is how I have run my system.

Thanks ROne. I freaking LOVE this thread. And to think I was going to pay somebody to calibrate my Z3...

BTW, I noticed that the Avia DVD on Amazon.com is quite old (1999). Is there a newer version available somewhere, or is the 1999 version still relevant to digital pj?

Several people have mentioned that starting in POWERFUL mode caused harsh highlights and that DYNAMIC mode seemed better. So last night, I fiddled with starting in DYNAMIC mode instead of POWERFUL. I used the same settings as before and just tweaked contrast, brightness and color with DVE to compensate for the difference in levels. I have to say that using Dynamic as a starting point does seem to make faces appear more natural and seems to bring out shadow detail a bit better (which I evaluated with the movie BELOW since it has lots of faces in shadows). Also, once I tweaked contrast to just under clipping, 100IRE didn't seem much different in Dynamic mode than my Powerful settings... but 90IRE wasn't as bright. That is likely the difference between the modes, since it seems to be using a different gamma curve (though Rone can probably evaluate the difference in gamma and verify this with his SMART III).

Dynamic mode defaults so that Transient Improvement and Contrast Enhancement are on. I fiddled with the TI setting, only to find that using it at all made resolution charts less smooth and produced a moire pattern on Avia's circle pattern (though it did make text more legible), so I turned TI off. Contrast Enhancement, however, produced some interesting results. It seems that what this does (and I'm guessing here) is vary black level depending on the average picture level (something that many televisions do). For instance, on Avia's black bars pattern I adjusted brightness so I could just see both bars... but once I moved to the half-grey black bars pattern only one bar was visible. On the half-white black bars pattern neither bar was visible. With CE off, the black bars remained visible on each pattern. Ultimately, I left CE on, then adjusted contrast and brightness with DVE.

I then had three saved presets: my tweaked Dynamic with CE turned on, my tweaked Powerful with CE turned on, and my tweaked Powerful without CE. Again, using the movie BELOW as well as THE INCREDIBLES, I evaluated how each handled the brightest and darkest scenes, pausing certain parts and toggling between the modes. Dynamic does seem to blow out whites a bit less than either of the Powerful modes but it doesn't seem any less bright. Once tweaked, there was only a slight difference between Powerful and Powerful with CE turned on, though you could definitely tell that CE was bringing up the lower IREs a bit in the darker scenes. All in all, I liked what Contrast Enhancement was doing for very dark scenes so I left it on. When I switched back to my HDTV feed, the difference was very pleasing. I also spun CONSTANTINE with the tweaked Dynamic settings and really liked the way it looked.

So, my current (and I think final) settings with the CC20R and CC10Y filters in place, v1.00 firmware, and 1dB attenuator on the Cr lead (only necessary if you're using component) are:
Start with Dynamic mode
Contrast +9
Brightness 0
Color +2
Tint +1
Color Temp User
Red +2
Green +2
Blue +1
Sharpness -4
Gamma -1
Lamp Theater Black
Iris -38
Gain R +6
Gain G -2
Gain B 0
Off R -13
Off G 0
Off B -12
Gam R 0
Gam G 0
Gam B 0
Auto Black Stretch On
Contrast Enhance L1
Transient Improvement Off
Overscan +6

Jeremy, I was just going to ask about your current setting after adding CC10Y filter. I just got my CC20R & CC10Y. Using ROne settings for starters, I was surprised to see better overall pq. It just seems smoother and more vivid. These filters/attenuator and coach shaker is probably the best cheapest tweak I did...money well spent.

Do you use the same settings when watching live sports in hdtv?

I did not use the scotch tape way. I had left over matting and backing boards from picture framing and I fashioned a filter holder out of it. It's not as snug as the lens protector but it holds the filter. And easy to take out without touching the filters.

I haven't seen a reason to change settings for sports so far, and I've seen football, baseball, soccer, rugby, surfing, BMX and auto racing on it in HD. I'm putting the posted settings through the ringer right now with some varying material, but I'm happy with it as is. For anyone who feels that Powerful crushes a bit at the upper IREs, Dynamic is definitely a good option.

Since many folks have been offering their setups, here's mine:

Throw distance: 14.5 feet

diagonal image (1.85 picture) = 122" (106.5" long and 59.5" height).

I'm projecting straight onto my wall, which has a light beige paint coat.

Settings are all factory pre-set, with lamp on "theater black" and picture on "natural".

That's it, and wow i'm getting a helluva picture, believe it or not.

I believe it:D. When I saw milt9's, he didn't change any settings either and was getting a great picture. He was using a 100" diagonal, 4:3, HCMW screen, partially extended (pull-down screen) to 16:9 format.

Last night I inputted the settings Jeremy has just provided on the last page starting with Dynamic preset and using the Lee cc10y and cc20r filters.

Watched Spartacus on it and also viewed various 720p wallpapers on it from my HTPC. It is very difficult to see the difference to the powerful preset settings except in light parts of the picture when i flipped between the two settings then i could see the bright parts were less intense. By my eyes the reduction was only by a very small percentage but was worthwhile. Contrast seemed to have been improved marginally as well although this may be a misperception (actually i think its the contrast enhancement in effect - have now turned it on for the powerful preset derived settings as well).

To sum up: Excellent PQ as per previous settings and definitely improved if only slightly. The Z3 is undoubtedly with these settings much better than its competition and im very glad my demo's lead me to buy the Z3.

Now to see what ROne makes of it!

Thanks Jeremy :cool:

have any of you seen VB on your Z3's? any had it initially but now its gone after a certain amt of hours? or never had it?

and where is the best place to buy the CC20R and CC10Y filters?

thanks!

I never had any VB. There is some discussion in this thread on where to find filters. I got mine a Henry's Photo in Toronto and I sure B and H Camera has them too.

I got mine from B&H. I hope they corrected the description on CC20R filter. Look at the part# instead of the description.

Does anyone besides me see shadows of bright objects shown in a dark/black screen .. When a movie starts for instance and the only thing on the screen is white text (noticed it watching the beginning of before the sunset).. I tried tuching the edge of the filters and then saw that the shadows moved .. The weird thing is that my filters seem flat and yet they still cause a "double-image" .. Has anyone experienced this? Best way to see it is like i said: a dark picture with a source of bright light ..

That's the reflection of the filter back int the lens. I had that problem bud stopped it by making the lens flush with the filter. Which filter are you using? The glass one of the gels?

That's the reflection of the filter back int the lens. I had that problem bud stopped it by making the lens flush with the filter. Which filter are you using? The glass one of the gels?

I´m using two gelfilters sandwiched together (not glass).. What exactly do you mean by lens flush?

I have the filter really close to the lens. I have 4 little rubber stoppers on the filter (mine has a metal ring on it) and have them touching the lens so there is almost no space between the lens and the glass filter that I am using. I had that problem before I moved the filter closer to the lens.

Hey gang, i added this thread to the Forum Faq. Sorry I missed it the first time around. The Z3 is actually on my short list for my next machine, so I'm paying attention ;)

Bump. I'm curious to know whether ROne was able to achieve any measurable improvement with the heavier yellow filter.

Some interesting things in those charts and settings, I notice the BLUE at the lower end is by far the biggest problem. I think CR can easily be reached at 1400:1 irrespective of filter use with the Z3, using A1 and a well calibrated unit will be close to 1300,1400:1 before filter use. My numbers with SMART have demonstrated this.

So what can we do? Well I think that killing more of that BLUE is the key - I am going to get a heavier YELLOW filter, say a CC40Y or more just to see what it does to that bottom end.

Also why have they needed to lift RED offset, there seems to be plent of red at the bottom end?

The numbers and results we have achieved so far between us have produced a great picture and I am almost tempted to stop at this point. But I am also tempted to by a true colour measuring device such as opticONE to find out what is really going on.

Sorry I've been away for a while, will see if I can get the extra yellow this week, will report back!

Does anyone know what the lumen output is using the Dynamic and Theater Black filtered settings are? Wondering which screen material for a 102" diag?

Moe

i have been watching this thread, and help me to pick the Z3 over 700 Panny.
i receievd my Z3 monday, wow, very happy.
i have tried all the suggested Settings.
jeremy's powerful settings so far, are the best.
I'm from Australia,
I am trying the Dymanic settings tonight,
trying to find the CC filters is more difficult here.
Looking forward to see what else you guys come up with.

GezzaZ3

i have been watching this thread, and help me to pick the Z3 over 700 Panny.
i receievd my Z3 monday, wow, very happy.
i have tried all the suggested Settings.
jeremy's powerful settings so far, are the best.
I'm from Australia,
I am trying the Dymanic settings tonight,
trying to find the CC filters is more difficult here.
Looking forward to see what else you guys come up with.

GezzaZ3

There's very little in it between dynamic and powerful to my eyes but i think dynamic is slightly less harsh in bright areas so personally I have stuck with that :)

Send me a PM if you cant find the colour correction filters over there and I will send you some from London.

Hi Sainthalo,

What happened to Rone and Jeremy??

Why did this thread stop, did they go some where else???

It was just getting interesting.

I have sent you a PM.

thanks

gezzaz3

I don't know about Rone, but my last settings with the filters are pretty solid for me... so I've stopped tweaking and watched a buttload of movies. Just spun Sin City last weekend, and was awestruck by how good the picture was. Rone was still going to play with stronger yellow filters, so I'm waiting to see what he comes up with.

Hi Jeremy,

Can you tell me what is the purpose of overscan?

I'm not sure what it does or what it purpose is.

I have just purchased a DVD Upscaler so, i am interested in what 720P & 1080i looks like.

I believe some dvd players push green, so finding the right dvd player, is also a task.

would i still see a beinfit using only the CC20R or do you need both red and yellow. i'm finding yellow very hard to get in Australia.

I am asking Saithalo about the Filters.

did you just tape the filters on??

thanks

Gezzaz3.

Can someone post pics of how they put the filters ?

Where can i get those filters for cheap ?


b&H is out of the 3x3 and 4x4's Lee brand


Thanks !





Several people have mentioned that starting in POWERFUL mode caused harsh highlights and that DYNAMIC mode seemed better. So last night, I fiddled with starting in DYNAMIC mode instead of POWERFUL. I used the same settings as before and just tweaked contrast, brightness and color with DVE to compensate for the difference in levels. I have to say that using Dynamic as a starting point does seem to make faces appear more natural and seems to bring out shadow detail a bit better (which I evaluated with the movie BELOW since it has lots of faces in shadows). Also, once I tweaked contrast to just under clipping, 100IRE didn't seem much different in Dynamic mode than my Powerful settings... but 90IRE wasn't as bright. That is likely the difference between the modes, since it seems to be using a different gamma curve (though Rone can probably evaluate the difference in gamma and verify this with his SMART III).

Dynamic mode defaults so that Transient Improvement and Contrast Enhancement are on. I fiddled with the TI setting, only to find that using it at all made resolution charts less smooth and produced a moire pattern on Avia's circle pattern (though it did make text more legible), so I turned TI off. Contrast Enhancement, however, produced some interesting results. It seems that what this does (and I'm guessing here) is vary black level depending on the average picture level (something that many televisions do). For instance, on Avia's black bars pattern I adjusted brightness so I could just see both bars... but once I moved to the half-grey black bars pattern only one bar was visible. On the half-white black bars pattern neither bar was visible. With CE off, the black bars remained visible on each pattern. Ultimately, I left CE on, then adjusted contrast and brightness with DVE.

I then had three saved presets: my tweaked Dynamic with CE turned on, my tweaked Powerful with CE turned on, and my tweaked Powerful without CE. Again, using the movie BELOW as well as THE INCREDIBLES, I evaluated how each handled the brightest and darkest scenes, pausing certain parts and toggling between the modes. Dynamic does seem to blow out whites a bit less than either of the Powerful modes but it doesn't seem any less bright. Once tweaked, there was only a slight difference between Powerful and Powerful with CE turned on, though you could definitely tell that CE was bringing up the lower IREs a bit in the darker scenes. All in all, I liked what Contrast Enhancement was doing for very dark scenes so I left it on. When I switched back to my HDTV feed, the difference was very pleasing. I also spun CONSTANTINE with the tweaked Dynamic settings and really liked the way it looked.

So, my current (and I think final) settings with the CC20R and CC10Y filters in place, v1.00 firmware, and 1dB attenuator on the Cr lead (only necessary if you're using component) are:
Start with Dynamic mode
Contrast +9
Brightness 0
Color +2
Tint +1




Color Temp User
Red +2
Green +2
Blue +1
Sharpness -4
Gamma -1
Lamp Theater Black
Iris -38
Gain R +6
Gain G -2
Gain B 0
Off R -13
Off G 0
Off B -12
Gam R 0
Gam G 0
Gam B 0
Auto Black Stretch On
Contrast Enhance L1
Transient Improvement Off
Overscan +6

Hi all,

I had a question,

why does the Z3 only put out 1400 contrast after Major Tweaking, if it states 2000.

Is there an industry standard for measuring Contrast.

If so, how do they claim 2000: 1 when out of the box it is 1100:1.

Why not put 3000:1 if it can't be reproduced it's a lie.

Sad fact. people buy on specs, i know i did, seeing 2000:1 Vrs 1300:1 help me choose the Z3.

I am very happy with the Z3 and as soon as i get my filters, i will be much happier.

GezzaZ3

I bet I could get to 2000:1 by starting with powerful, leaving the lamp in high mode, opening the iris all the way, turning contrast all the way up and turning brightess all the way down :).

FWIW, I copied Johnny's settings (including the filter) but started from Dynamic and I am DONE tweaking. My screen is an 84" Carada High Contrast Grey. The Powerful setting was TOO BRIGHT.

I just got my Z3 this weekend (upgraded from my Panny 75u). Can anyone post their preferred settings for Component NON-Filtered? I have tried some of the setting in this thread, but most are for HDMI or Component with filter. Is anyone getting a nice contrasty picture without filter?

Don't get me wrong, I see excellent improvement in all areas from my 75U, and with a good transfer DVD or HDTV, the picture looks awesome, but so-so transfers (like The first Harry Potter movie) look bad in many of the darker scenes. I have been using this movie to try different settings. If I can get this transfer to look good, everything else should look even better.

I am running a Panasonic S97S via component cables with 480p output.

Thanks,

Rob

Hi Rob,

I have tried all the setting, also without Filters.

I have settled on Jeremy, Starting with Powerful.

Why do run at 480P when you could upscale to 720P or 1080I?

you would have to use a HDMI cable,

I have just Purchased an Upscaler dvd player, I'm hoping for better results also.

I am also trying to contact Sainthalo regarding the Filters.

Thanks

GezzaZ3.

I've had my Z3 for about a month but I've been unable to get aroudn to running Avia on it until last night.

Its in a totally light controlled room using component and I started with creative cinema, theatre black. I left the iris at the default (-30 maybe?).

The following settinsg were changed:

contrast: +9
Brightness -2
sharpness -2
color +7

Then here it gets scary

The red push is 25%!

I am looking for suggestions to get this down without screwing anything else up.

Thanks for the replies!

I do not have a long enough HDMI cable right now, and I am switching component through my receiver. I had read that going HDMI over component is not that big a difference in many cases.

I will give your setting a shot Frank although contrast of 9 sounds high, but I wil ltry anything since it is new.

Thanks,

Rob

Other then B&H who else sells these filters ? B&H are out of stock for the cheaper stuff...

I really dont want to pay more then 12 bucks for a filter.

Hello,

I'm sorry for coming late to this party; I'll be brief.

Is the upshot of this (excellent) series of settings and recommendations that, if I get the 1db attenuator (I use component), the referenced Yellow and Red filters (tape them in front of my Z3 lens), and start with the settings below (or similar ones), I should see a big improvement in contrast and color?

Is it that simple?

Thanks,

Tiger

Several people have mentioned that starting in POWERFUL mode caused harsh highlights and that DYNAMIC mode seemed better. So last night, I fiddled with starting in DYNAMIC mode instead of POWERFUL. I used the same settings as before and just tweaked contrast, brightness and color with DVE to compensate for the difference in levels. I have to say that using Dynamic as a starting point does seem to make faces appear more natural and seems to bring out shadow detail a bit better (which I evaluated with the movie BELOW since it has lots of faces in shadows). Also, once I tweaked contrast to just under clipping, 100IRE didn't seem much different in Dynamic mode than my Powerful settings... but 90IRE wasn't as bright. That is likely the difference between the modes, since it seems to be using a different gamma curve (though Rone can probably evaluate the difference in gamma and verify this with his SMART III).

Dynamic mode defaults so that Transient Improvement and Contrast Enhancement are on. I fiddled with the TI setting, only to find that using it at all made resolution charts less smooth and produced a moire pattern on Avia's circle pattern (though it did make text more legible), so I turned TI off. Contrast Enhancement, however, produced some interesting results. It seems that what this does (and I'm guessing here) is vary black level depending on the average picture level (something that many televisions do). For instance, on Avia's black bars pattern I adjusted brightness so I could just see both bars... but once I moved to the half-grey black bars pattern only one bar was visible. On the half-white black bars pattern neither bar was visible. With CE off, the black bars remained visible on each pattern. Ultimately, I left CE on, then adjusted contrast and brightness with DVE.

I then had three saved presets: my tweaked Dynamic with CE turned on, my tweaked Powerful with CE turned on, and my tweaked Powerful without CE. Again, using the movie BELOW as well as THE INCREDIBLES, I evaluated how each handled the brightest and darkest scenes, pausing certain parts and toggling between the modes. Dynamic does seem to blow out whites a bit less than either of the Powerful modes but it doesn't seem any less bright. Once tweaked, there was only a slight difference between Powerful and Powerful with CE turned on, though you could definitely tell that CE was bringing up the lower IREs a bit in the darker scenes. All in all, I liked what Contrast Enhancement was doing for very dark scenes so I left it on. When I switched back to my HDTV feed, the difference was very pleasing. I also spun CONSTANTINE with the tweaked Dynamic settings and really liked the way it looked.

So, my current (and I think final) settings with the CC20R and CC10Y filters in place, v1.00 firmware, and 1dB attenuator on the Cr lead (only necessary if you're using component) are:
Start with Dynamic mode
Contrast +9
Brightness 0
Color +2
Tint +1
Color Temp User
Red +2
Green +2
Blue +1
Sharpness -4
Gamma -1
Lamp Theater Black
Iris -38
Gain R +6
Gain G -2
Gain B 0
Off R -13
Off G 0
Off B -12
Gam R 0
Gam G 0
Gam B 0
Auto Black Stretch On
Contrast Enhance L1
Transient Improvement Off
Overscan +6

Hi Sainthalo,

What happened to Rone and Jeremy??

Why did this thread stop, did they go some where else???

It was just getting interesting.

I have sent you a PM.

thanks

gezzaz3

tis summer and the outdoor beckons!

i am going to photographic shop today to get filter cc20y. although like jeremy i am happy, and i suppose the z4 is only around the corner. on top of this films seem to be losing momentum at the mo. other than assanination of richard nixon ive not seen anything good.

Has anyone noticed their lens shift "wander" over time?

I have my Z3 mounted on my wall and i'm not sure if it's the actual lens shift mechanism that moves about a 1/2" over a few weeks period or maybe my apartment walls are flexing as the temps warm and cool. I love my Z3 but I have to admit I think the lens shift mechanism (at least on mine) is of poor design. You have to move it and then back it off as it tends to jump. This has probably been rehashed a million times elsewhere, but the "wondering" issue is strange for me.

Has anyone noticed their lens shift "wander" over time?

I have my Z3 mounted on my wall and i'm not sure if it's the actual lens shift mechanism that moves about a 1/2" over a few weeks period or maybe my apartment walls are flexing as the temps warm and cool. I love my Z3 but I have to admit I think the lens shift mechanism (at least on mine) is of poor design. You have to move it and then back it off as it tends to jump. This has probably been rehashed a million times elsewhere, but the "wondering" issue is strange for me.

You are not alone. My lens shift moves up and down by itself every week, and I have to grab a chair and adjust it (it's ceiling mounted). It's probably my ONLY gripe about this projector. The lens shift is by no means precise. I hope Sanyo addresses this with the new Z4.

Mine does that too but it only takes me 10 seconds to adjust it anyway. I have to get up to open the cover anyway so I just adjust it while it is warming up. No big deal.

How can I determine which way to move my projector so I can use as little lens shift as possible? I read that using the shift can make the corners out of focus and that is the problem I am having. If I focus it to the bottom left, the top right goes out of focus and vise versa.

I've centered it as much as I could but am I must be still off. I use it with my HTPC a lot which is why I can tell it's out of focus in the corner(s).

my lens shift and zoom are rock steady... i dont close the flap though and it is shelf mounted rather than ceiling.

How can I determine which way to move my projector so I can use as little lens shift as possible?
Well when the center of the lens aligns with the center of the screen.
Just measure it with a pencil and measuring tape. :)

Well centering it more didn't help with my focus problem. Still can't focus it so the top right looks sharp without having the bottom left look blurred. =/

100% Sharpness on the whole image is very hard to achieve on any Z3 I would guess.
Impossible on mine. My right corner is kinda fuzzy.

I just learned to live with it.

Be sure the axis of the lens is exactly perpendicular to the screen and that the screen is perfectly flat.

Ah, must be my DIY screen causing the problem then.

Anyone of you tried LEE filters made of polyester. Is it recommended ?

I use them, they're okay but do scratch easy.

Anyone recommend a good online store to buy these filters? B&H seem out of stock..

I use them, they're okay but do scratch easy.

Ok thanks ! :)

Anyone recommend a good online store to buy these filters? B&H seem out of stock..

I think it's backorder. :(

Thanks

Well I ordered the 2 filters from B&H.. The more expensive Kodak ones since the Lee were out of stock. Really hoping my blacks get black and not dark grey they currently are.

Those who have tried this, what were you results like? What screen do you have? I'm using a DIY 103" stretched Blackout Cloth.

I'm holding off on watching Sin City until I have these filters...

Well I ordered the 2 filters from B&H.. The more expensive Kodak ones since the Lee were out of stock. Really hoping my blacks get black and not dark grey they currently are.

Those who have tried this, what were you results like? What screen do you have? I'm using a DIY 103" stretched Blackout Cloth.

I'm holding off on watching Sin City until I have these filters...

I got the Lee one from the store today. I will test it out probably after work. I got a DIY white painted hardboard wich is about 95-100" Ill post back my impression tomorrow.

I can't wait to see the difference ti makes. :)

I got the Lee one from the store today. I will test it out probably after work. I got a DIY white painted hardboard wich is about 95-100" Ill post back my impression tomorrow.

I can't wait to see the difference ti makes. :)

I just install the two filter.
It's a nice improvement but not that much.
I'm a bit disappointed actually. :o

Maybe after some more tweaking...
It still worth it. But I was caught up in the hype and got a little too excited I guess. :)
One thing that it does improve or should I say reduce is the Screendoor effect and the vertical banding. So just for that alone it's good.

My filters smudge into eachother even though I have kept my fingers of them .. Is this a normal problem or are my filters in poor shape perhaps? This seems to affect my picture quite abit as it becomes more blury .. I´ve added a picture of the filters in my gallery .. I would appreciate some comments

I just install the two filter.
It's a nice improvement but not that much.
I'm a bit disappointed actually. :o

Maybe after some more tweaking...
It still worth it. But I was caught up in the hype and got a little too excited I guess. :)
One thing that it does improve or should I say reduce is the Screendoor effect and the vertical banding. So just for that alone it's good.

I don't see any screendoor or vertical banding as it is, hopefully I didn't waste my money.. Did it improve your blacks much as Jeremy said it did for him?

Mine sure did, the blacks are black now, not blue blacks,

the only thing i have noticed is the blue sky is now a bit dull, but the sharpness and black level is awesome.

I'm still waititng for my atenuator to arrive, as i do see the push on red.

But big improvement on HD-TV also,

did you guys also follow the tweaks that Jeremy did last.

GezzaZ3.

I don't see any screendoor or vertical banding as it is, hopefully I didn't waste my money.. Did it improve your blacks much as Jeremy said it did for him?

Seem's to me that it improve it a bit but not that much. Don't expect it to be ink black. This is a LCD after all.

It's still worth it like I said. Just not as impress as I thought I would be. That's all.
It picture was good before anyway.
For the price of the filter you have a nice little improvement, so where can you go wrong ??

Thanks

I have just worked out why my blue skys are a bit washed out. I project onto a painted wall, classis cream, i got a a4 piece of paper and held it up, WOW, the clouds looked really white and the sky looked really blue.

So now i have to get a screen, here we go again, Fixed, manual, Electric, White, Digital grey, Screen Goo, Screen Gain, ect, ect.

Can someone point me into the right direction.

I have a Dark DVD room, no ambient light. i only watch movies at night, i also have 100% blockout curtains.

i want approx 92 or 100" screen, Ebay has them for around $450AUD electric 1.2gain 100". But i hear they can suffer for ripple and bend forward.

So any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

GezzaZ3.

I have just worked out why my blue skys are a bit washed out. I project onto a painted wall, classis cream, i got a a4 piece of paper and held it up, WOW, the clouds looked really white and the sky looked really blue.

So now i have to get a screen, here we go again, Fixed, manual, Electric, White, Digital grey, Screen Goo, Screen Gain, ect, ect.

Can someone point me into the right direction.

I have a Dark DVD room, no ambient light. i only watch movies at night, i also have 100% blockout curtains.

i want approx 92 or 100" screen, Ebay has them for around $450AUD electric 1.2gain 100". But i hear they can suffer for ripple and bend forward.

So any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

GezzaZ3.

You could try to buy the purest white you can find and try to repaint that over your classis cream.

I painted a piece of hardboard with pure white and the result is very good.

thanks

meh I just got my filters today.. After about 2hrs fiddling with it, I must say I am not impressed. Change in black was barely noticeable.. I prefer them off, at least I don't have focus issues. Projecting my HTPC through the filter showed how bad the focus was with these on. Couldn't get it crisp with adjustments either. Not only that but it seemed to make the top middle of my screen brighter than the rest

Hi Spyguy,

you say you are using a DIY Screen,

what is it? could that be your problem?

Also how did and where did you fix the filters and what kind did you get?

Did you have the yellow then the red? also, most of the tests refered to a dvd player or HD STB, i don't think anyone has tired a HTPC.

I have noticed a hugh difference on HDTV, DVD clearer more detail, but not wow.

I have just done some research on Screens, WOW,

You have glass beaded, Matte, Screen goo,

I project onto my painted wall, unfortunately it is classic cream, i have notice a slight washed appearance, so i am looking at the best option.

remember you paid a lot for the projector, so you need a good screen.

I will try to help you if i can, but we all have different expectations and not to mention equipment.

GezzaZ3.

It's a stretched blackout cloth screen.

I fixed the filters on as Jeremey suggested, using masking tape... I even purchased the same kind as he. Yes, both yellow and red.

It seemed like my filters started to warp (From the heat?) after some use, making it even harder to get a good focus.

I'm going to flatten them out again and see if I can mount them on better. Any suggestions?

Hi Sypguy,

Where did you get the blockout cloth screen?

What is the screen Gain, can you borrow a normal screen you could test.

Or do what i did, i stuck 20 A4 pages on the wall with blu-tack, wow what a difference, the sky was a deeper blue and the clouds were a brighter white.

I have mine just tape on the top and the bottom as does everyone else.

I noticed something weird last night on mine, i call it the halo effect.

My dvd player runs at 575P, and i see a slight halo around people, now i paused the screen and removed the filters and it was still there.

I tested it on standard TV using the Set top Box, it was there also, i then switched to HD TV which is 1080i, and it was gone.!!!!!!!!!! and i must say a beautiful picture.

It mainly appears on a close up with a bright background.

Any help, or is it just the Z3, i had a similar problem with my Plasma (LG) TV it couldn't handle a Progressive signal, it would only accept Interlaced. I had it confirmed from the Head Guy it was not able to accept a P signal and retuned it for a credit. This was 3 years ago.

I was just wondering if the Z3 handles a 720P and 1080I better than 575P and 576I.

any ideas,

I not that picky, but when i see something, you know it's there and it spoils your movie.



GezzaZ3.

the halo for me was caused by the cable type..... I started out for the first 3 days with composite (waiting for my component cable) and the components just sharpened everything up considerably (especially looking at credits etc). Now I am on to a HDMI cable and everything is even sharper.


but back on subject about the filters. I have the lee filtersand I havent had the best luck with them yet either..... at first I had reflections so to say where if there ws something brighht in the middle of the screen, I would see a little bit of brightness at the top of the screen.... I managed to get rid of that but now, the left side of the screen is noticably out of focus compared to the rest of the screen. These gel filters are just so wobbly I dont see how you can keep them flat...... anyhow havent been able to play with it the last 2 weeks due to putting in the bar and for some reason I want to keep the dust out of the pj.... I didnt notice very much of a change either but I have a feeling it may just be my DIY screen....... just a parland plastics creation.

It's a stretched blackout cloth screen.

I fixed the filters on as Jeremey suggested, using masking tape... I even purchased the same kind as he. Yes, both yellow and red.

It seemed like my filters started to warp (From the heat?) after some use, making it even harder to get a good focus.

I'm going to flatten them out again and see if I can mount them on better. Any suggestions?


I got the red Kodak filter (trying to decide if I should bother with the yellow) and have taped it so it's hanging over the lens. I don't see any focus issues or warping of the filter. I don't even see a difference if I wiggle the filter around. I could get up close and compare with the filter on and off, but I think I'd rather not have something else to nitpick. I do close the door when it's not in use so maybe that keeps it flat.

There was a post earlier from someone who bought a pre-calibrated Z3 that had the filter installed in the lens somehow. I would like to try that so it's a nice and neat installation, but don't know how they did it.

I taped both Kodak filters together and it works perfectly, does not interfere with sharpness in any way i can detect... Now i try to find an 1dB Attenuator RCA (for the cr) here in Sweden but no luck... I'd really appreciate a note on where you UK (!) guys found yours so i could order one to try, the only one i found so far is in the US (5$ thing but 35$ for shipment).

Regards
Joakim

PS thank's for the heap of good hints in this thread :)

(Z-3, projecta homescreen 90')

Hey I just received the cc20r & cc10y filters...and am waitng on 1db attenuator...should I just wait for attentuator before making final tweak adjustments..or go ahead and adjust as if i already was using the attentuator.....?????It will be monday before I receive attenuator!!!!!!By the way i'm going to use Jeremy's final settings!If you were in my situation what would you do?I'm leaning toward waiting....and just watching PJ without filters until attenuator gets here!But if the filters alone would improve the display picture(without making it to red)I may just go ahead and put on filters now!

Will someone with knowledge on filters and attenuators ....please explain to me something?Why would i want to put on a CC20r red filter...and then put on a attentuator to reduce the redness?????????doesn't that just offset each filter?????????Its probley a stupid ? but i thought I would ask

Go ahead and put them on. It should only be a small tweak after you get your attenuator anyway. As for why? I am not sure exactly but I would assume that the attenuator will only effect (affect?) the reds where the filter effects all of the other colors on the screen too. Make sense??

Hi Guys,

the red filters cut Blue and Green, it does not cut red.
the Yellow cuts blue.

The whole idea was to make the blacks more deeper and richer as they tend to be blue black, if you look hard, you will know what i mean.

I went to a color correction site it all there. see here,http://www.plumeltd.com/artzone/filterzone/compensa.htm

I have have ample red, no loss of red at all.

It seemed very strange to me also,

I have learnt that the color decoder has no controls, so if your projector is displaying to much blue, Use the yellow filter to help.!!!!

We have all made the mistake, that adjusting the red affects the red, it actually affects the grey scale, not the color. as red, green, blue make the grey scale.

remember the attenuator is only for component not HDMI, i think we will all use component at some stage.

bye for now,

GezzaZ3

****the red filters cut Blue and Green, it does not cut red.
the Yellow cuts blue****. :confused:

thank's for the valuable info GezzaZ3..........I have learned something new today!!!!!!!!!.........it looks like the red filter would add more red!!!:Dthen the attenuator would take away the red added by filter!!:D........but as long as it works .......i'm GTG

Hi, i think you got it.

The attenuator cuts the red to keep it level with Blue and Green.

But it is for component only,

The Red Filter cuts Blue and Green to make the Black look more defined and the Yellow just takes out a little bit more blue.

I recently bought a New HDMI LG DVD Player, WOW, 1080i is amazing. it's a cheap player to boot $179AUD.

I Can't wait for the True HD to hit the shops. 6 months and counting.

GezzaZ3

OK.......I have saved both Dynamic & Power settings and have done a direct comparison with CC20r & CC10y on ......then off............THE LENSES & JEREMY'S SETTINGS WITHOUT A DOUBT......HAS MADE THE BLACKS BLACKER & THE OVERALL PICTURE MORE VIBRANT ............JEREMY & JOHNNY .......I APPRECIATE YOU GUYS TAKING TIME & TWEAKING THE SETTINGS ON THE Z3.....IT HAS MADE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE.....quickfire

Now you can watch some darn movies without thinnking. "Man is it going to look better than this after I get the filters?"

Most of the work was done by Jeremy and Rone. I just tweaked the settings to my environ.

So I'll be getting my Z3 soon with a HCMW 80 or 92" screen soon.

I was wondering, with the 2 filters and the attenuator, how different is the PQ really (I have yet to see pics showing the difference)?

Is there a better way to use the filters than just haphazardly taping them onto the PJ?

With two filters, including the lens, doesn't this just create 4 more surfaces (both sides of the filter) where you'll have to worry about dust, lint, scratches, anomalies, etc.?

Ultimately, I'll be calibrating my machine with DVE and DV-588A-S (or I could do it with a DVP-NS775V, as the pioneer doesn't do blacker-than-black).

You can use the little lens cover that comes with the projector. If you don't know what I am talking about you will after you open the box.

Just pull off the cardboard and replace it with the filters.

You can use the little lens cover that comes with the projector. If you don't know what I am talking about you will after you open the box.

Just pull off the cardboard and replace it with the filters.

I did mine this way...

I posted this on the main Z3 forum as well but thought I may get more response here. Does anyone know if a filtered Z3 in dynamic mode is bright enough for a 100" 1 gain screen? I was thinking of buying this pj and installing the filters as per the tweak pages and pairing it with a DaLite HCCV screen but was worried that the result would be too dim. Appreciate any thoughts.

Moe

It works for me. The majority of the folks on here are using fileter Z3 on 1 - 1.1 gain screens at 100" or so.

Is the iris setting the only thing that will mess with color uniformity? It's really obvious on mine and doesn't get much better with the iris all the way open. Should I be able to see this with the iris at 0? I hadn't noticed before but with about 200 hours on it I've suddenly found myself wondering why the person on the left is pink and the one on the right is green.

Just purchased a SPYDER2Pro Studio V2.0.

I am currently measuring my Z3 and previous settings (filtered dynamic, powerful), and they are coming in at 6800K more or less across the range. So the smart settings were pretty close.

There is a spike though at 10IRE of nearly 8000-9000K; unfiltered this is about 11000k, so I may be able to test filters with the Spyder.

I've not yet become completely accustomed to it so over the next few days hope to post more info.

Though with the Z4 around the corner I no where my interest is heading .... :D

Ok i watched a tone of movies, and i 'm not 100% happy, something is not right.

1. It may be the LG dvd player i bought. It is HDMI and doesn't have picture settings, like Cinema 1, 2, Movie. ect (lost my DVE so can't check BTB.)

2. I just bought a Fixed screen White, 1.0 gain.

I think the filters take out too much blue. When you see the sky it looks a bit washed out.

so i have a 10R filter, i will replace the 20R and leave the 10Y and see what happens.

When i adjust the Color temp to Low 1 or Low 2 it gets more life like, but it looses more blue, But the color become more vivid. Flesh tone are nicer and just below rich. With the 20R and 10Y they are paler and some shoots ill looking, as i said, it may be the dvd player, so i must find a fix for me.

So if i take the 20R and change it to a 10R this might be a good match with Color temp at Mid or low 1.

Any one having a similar problem,

I watch some movies tonight and let you all know tomorrow,

Thanks,

GezzaZ3.

Ok, i have tried the 10R filter, by itself and with the 10Y, then the 20R by itself.

You must try it, pause a bright scene with clouds and blue sky, then hold up the filters, then take them off, the filters darkens and looses clarity and sharpness and and adds a touch of red,

i took all the filters off, WOW, more color more sharpness, more life like. The whites were brighter and the blue was bluer.

You know i was so sure i had the best image before, then i bought the filters because i wanted the best picture. How do you know you have the best picture.

As i said earlier i thought it might be the DVD player, well the HD set top box looks fantastic also. HD set-top runs via component and DVD players runs via HDMI.

I have settled on Jeremy's second last setting and changed the Color temp to low1.

So i guess, if it ain't broke don't touch it.

hope to get some feedback, please try the test for yourself, let me know if you agree.

Bye for now,

GezzaZ3

I tried the filters too, didn't like em. Waste of money for me atleast. Found it looked much better w/o them. The way I figure it, if it was as easy as putting filters on to get better blacks and other improvements, then why wouldn't Sanyo have done it in the first place.

Check out the two new Epson's. They both have integral color filters built in.

Rone, Thanks for all of the work that you've done in this forum. I'm not a Z3 owner but I just sold my Optoma H31 and have my eyes on a Z3 and have read all of the tweak threads with much interest. You've done a lot to furthur the viewing pleasure of Z3 owners and if I do buy the Z3 I will look toward your calibration info to max its capabilities.

Moe

Does somebody have SANYO PLV-Z3 Service Manual?

He is available on ebay.

I will go to my grave saying that ...the Z3 with CC20r,CC10y & Attenuator 1db with Jeremys setting with Dynamic mode & Power mode.....enhanced my Z3 TREMENDOUSLY.....i CAN LIFT THE FILTERS AND YES THE PICTURE LOOKS BRIGHTER ...BUT ITS NOT THE COLORS THAT I SEE IN THE REAL WORLD..THE TWEAKED SETTINGS GET VERY CLOSE TO THE REAL THING....can't wait to see what you come up with RoNE....quickfire

I tried the filters too, didn't like em. Waste of money for me atleast. Found it looked much better w/o them. The way I figure it, if it was as easy as putting filters on to get better blacks and other improvements, then why wouldn't Sanyo have done it in the first place.

Hold on a sec ... the filters remove a shortcoming of the panel, that is blue leakage, you can't get away from the fact that black is meant to be black, at 30IRE and below the panel leaks blue. This is a distortion of black.

But unless you have performed a half-decent calibration to address grayscale and the effect of the filters on the rest of the IRE range then yes, you may see some awful effects further up the range.

As for a waste of money, well that's up to you, but I think £10-20 is worth spending to see what in 90% has been perceived to be better.

Don't get me wrong you can get a decent picture without them.

As to why sanyo doesn't include them, well they don't include a perfect D65 colour balance in the menu system either, so it's our call to get there.

Rone, Thanks for all of the work that you've done in this forum. I'm not a Z3 owner but I just sold my Optoma H31 and have my eyes on a Z3 and have read all of the tweak threads with much interest. You've done a lot to furthur the viewing pleasure of Z3 owners and if I do buy the Z3 I will look toward your calibration info to max its capabilities.

Moe

Thanks for that, just messing with my spyder2pro now, hopefully put something up soon.

Ok, i have tried the 10R filter, by itself and with the 10Y, then the 20R by itself.

You must try it, pause a bright scene with clouds and blue sky, then hold up the filters, then take them off, the filters darkens and looses clarity and sharpness and and adds a touch of red,

i took all the filters off, WOW, more color more sharpness, more life like. The whites were brighter and the blue was bluer.

You know i was so sure i had the best image before, then i bought the filters because i wanted the best picture. How do you know you have the best picture.

As i said earlier i thought it might be the DVD player, well the HD set top box looks fantastic also. HD set-top runs via component and DVD players runs via HDMI.

I have settled on Jeremy's second last setting and changed the Color temp to low1.

So i guess, if it ain't broke don't touch it.

hope to get some feedback, please try the test for yourself, let me know if you agree.

Bye for now,

GezzaZ3


The filters intend to darken and remove blue, that's what they do.

If you want more brightness with the filters in place then you have either lift your IRIS, or reduce ambient room light.

They may also knock of some sharpness, this has the happy side effect of reducing VB.

Rone ...i'm adding this setting to user button 3 ...hopefully you can keep tweaking and get it as close to perfect as possible........You are the MAN:D.........P.S. Will the 1db attenuator on the red component throw off the settings that you posted?

ROne, what screen are you using (again)?

I also believe that the filter+attenuator is pretty cheap & effective tweak. I now perfer using component cable for dvd as I was using the hdmi connection originally. Now, I have hdmi connected to hd ota tuner. This and the aura shaker have been the most cost effective tweak I added to my HT. I probably should have gotten just a progressive dvd player instead of a upconverting player... well, live and learn... :o

Not to be out of topic but if you're looking for a cheap ota hd tuner then try the Accurian HTS-6000 currently on sale @ your local RS for $90. Its probably going to be or is discountinued but it's the best performing tuner I tried yet... the cheapest and also returnable.

ROne, what screen are you using (again)?




Beamax A-series, 8ft - framed 1.2Gain screen.

http://www.beamax.com/

ROne, what kind of CR are you getting with the Spyder calibration?

ROne, what kind of CR are you getting with the Spyder calibration?

Not done it yet, but previously with SMART I was getting 1100:1 in low lamp mode and about 1250:1 in the adaptive lamp mode.

The filters intend to darken and remove blue, that's what they do.

If you want more brightness with the filters in place then you have either lift your IRIS, or reduce ambient room light.

They may also knock of some sharpness, this has the happy side effect of reducing VB.

Unless you also have your PC connected to it, which has an unhappy side effect of blurry text.

How can all Z3's be the same?????

there are so many variables.

1. DVD player (progressive, Component, HDMI)
2. HD set top box.
3. Room.( Dark/Light.)
4. Cables. Cheap, expensive.
5. Movies, Pal, NTSC.
6. Screen.

I find it hard to believe we can all achieve the same picture quality, using the same settings.

Also we all see things differently, i say it's nice, you say it over saturated.

Not knocking this thread, but stating a cold hard fact.

Lets remember not many of us know we are doing, and after all the tweaking and adding filters, i simply find the picture to be shaper and clearer and more life like with nothing but a good tweak.

Thanks to Ron and Jeremy for the hard work.

Just my 2 cents worth.

GezzaZ3.

If anyone could consider sending one of those 1dB attenuators to me here in Sweden i can pay in advance with PayPal - Nowhere to be found here, even wellsorted places have no clue!

Contact me on joakimw@mac/dot/com (exchange /dot/ with a .) i'd love to try it out !

Unless you also have your PC connected to it, which has an unhappy side effect of blurry text.

thats a halo effect nothing to do with PC as source. you need to adjust how your filters are fitted. when perfect there will be no halo. in fact Rone i think and me both have HTPCs with these settings. it really doesnt matter which source you use the filters will always help.

PS if you need them, filters (http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1978183#post1978183)

Red filters cuts blue and green, which leaves more red, then yellow cuts more blue

I think you are cutting too much blue out of the picture.

So you end up with Red 100%, green 70%, Blue 50%.

So now blue is the color that has less, then green, than red.

Then you add more blue and green in the tweak.

I find the colors less effective and the lens out of focus with the filters on.

When the filters are off the brightness increases and the colors do too, so does the sharpness.

i've watched a lot of movies recently, but, my big gripe is the skin color and the color of the sky. Now we all have an idea what skin should look like, some of us like pale looking skin, some like the suntan look, i like in between look. So on a close up they look awesome not pale and most shots shown they are all waring makeup, so unless they are sick then the skin shouldn't be pale.

It just doesn't look right. the rest of the colors look fantastic

I know what you mean, GezzaZ3. When I first followed the powerful settings that many people were saying looked so good, I found that everything looked way too yellow for 1 thing.

For anyone to follow another persons settings and expect their picture to look correct is just silly. If only it were that simple.

If you want your screen calibrated to the best picture, just pick up something like the Avia dvd. I got that and ended up with completey different settings.

What you say is true about cross using settings.

However AVIA will do nothing for color balance unless you have a way of reading grayscale.

AVIA on it's own will not allow you to make objective adjustments to RGB, offset or GAIN and these are critical adjustemets to getting colour balance (not saturation which avia can do) correct.

Red filters cuts blue and green, which leaves more red, then yellow cuts more blue

I think you are cutting too much blue out of the picture.

So you end up with Red 100%, green 70%, Blue 50%.

So now blue is the color that has less, then green, than red.

Then you add more blue and green in the tweak.

I find the colors less effective and the lens out of focus with the filters on.

When the filters are off the brightness increases and the colors do too, so does the sharpness.

i've watched a lot of movies recently, but, my big gripe is the skin color and the color of the sky. Now we all have an idea what skin should look like, some of us like pale looking skin, some like the suntan look, i like in between look. So on a close up they look awesome not pale and most shots shown they are all waring makeup, so unless they are sick then the skin shouldn't be pale.

It just doesn't look right. the rest of the colors look fantastic

The reason this is a problem is because you sound like you have no objective way of measuring you color balance.

The Z3 produces too much Blue at low levels, this a fact across the board, it's inherent in the panels.

So in this case the filters will help everybody, what you have to do though is get the rest of your whites, back to a reference point, and the "too Yellow" that you mention is down to your color balance (RGB) not being good at the top of IRE, around 90% peak white.

It's not so much the filters don't work (though I do admit there are some trade-offs) it's just that they are not set-up as best they could be for you, unless you have a way of referencing D65.

I wonder why rones settings work very good for me. I just input them then adjust brightness/contrast using bw reference calibration dvd+dve combo.

For component you ofcourse have to adjust color/tint and others (i have used jeremys settings for those values).

I have learnt a lot form this forum, for that i am grateful,

I do not have any calibrating equipment other than my eyes.

I lost my new DVE, so i can't even check BTB.

But i use 3 or 4 reference movies that i know very well.

I know what the scene should look like, the sky, the colors.

In reality we have all spent a sh*t load of money yet no of us have it professionally calibrated. WHY.

If we did get it calibrated, would we still complain.????


Is our HT worth the expense???

I think we all know it's not that hard, but they have the equipment and experience.

I saw the Z3 in a shop in a light controlled room, we saw the incredibles and Troy and then saw HD TV, i just said wow.

There was no filter and it looked fantastic.

Sometimes, we want what someone else has got, i just got xyz, then i get an xyz, then i tell the forum, then we all have to have them. It 's just the way we are.

Ron can you recalibrate without the filters????

I still can't see why the blue can be tweaked without the filter.

The blacks are black enough, i think if you talk yourself into it, you can see the blacks are not black enough.


Please try this at home, when you have friends over.

Find a bright scene, clouds, blue sky, people.

Then ask you friends does it look better with or without filters, all my friends said without, not one said with, no one thought the blacks were not black enough.


GezzaZ3

,

The color filters work great on a dark scenes, but on a bright scene they don't preform as well.

I think what i'm trying to say is this.

They are designed to correct a color imbalance, now thats meant to be a stationary picture.

So when you have a moving picture that has light and shade, very dark scenes and very bright scenes, they don't perform well. they work better in the dark scenes, when it come to the bright scenes, i see imperfection, in the sky, the clouds, people faces, color.

Now i watched a lot of movies with the filters on, i likes the dark scenes as it enhanced the darkness, but i also felt detail was missing, but i thought the blacks looked darker, but the trade offs to me are not worth it.

I 'll shut up now, just wanted people to make up their own mind,

If you like it the way it is, be happy, don't change it.

GezzaZ3

C: -25 (needed: couldn't get a decent color balance at the top without lowering)
B: -2
R: +4
G: -5
B: -1
Gain R: +8
Gain G: -5
Gain B: -9
Offset R: -15
Offset G: +5
Offset B: -2
Gamma R: -1
Gamma G: +2
Gamma B: +3

Some interesting stuff; these latest round of filter settings are my closest yet according to the spyder. 20IRE to 100IRE comes in at 6500 +/- 100. To get here though I have had to drop the contrast immensely. Contrast has dropped from 0 to -25, this seems drastic but you don't realise how much the powerful setting is skewing color balance at the top of the range. At 90IRE color balance is around 8000K with the previous settings, it could be that you choose extra punch over accurate color balance though.

Switching between them does reveal a nasty yellowish tint to the picture that I became accustomed to over the last few months.

It leads me to realise a few things: 1) That powerful is powerful but at the expense of bad color balance between 80-100 IRE, it looks like all the Green & Blue are in ample supply, but not red, no amount of tweaking could get red where it should be. 2) Maybe now I have accurate color balance I may be able to optimise it against contrast ratio. 3) If I went back to Creative Cinema as a preset I bet you that contrast doesn't need to be shifted so much as the white is less cocked up due to a better colour balance response in the CC preset.

That's all for now, will measure actual CR tonight if I get chance.

Will also do a D65 run with CC preset and no filters at some point.

Hi ROne,

That would confirm the filters are causing some imbalance due to the settings you have just posted. Wow -25 Contrast!!!

Would love to see the spyder calibration settings without the filters using HDMI.

Pretty please, i think the results will be much better, just a hunch i have. I think it will be easier to pull into line also, the image is brighter to start with.

i 'll keep watching this thread.

keep up the good work.

GezzaZ3

Hi ROne,

That would confirm the filters are causing some imbalance due to the settings you have just posted. Wow -25 Contrast!!!

Would love to see the spyder calibration settings without the filters using HDMI.

Pretty please, i think the results will be much better, just a hunch i have. I think it will be easier to pull into line also, the image is brighter to start with.

i 'll keep watching this thread.

keep up the good work.

GezzaZ3

To be fair, the filters will cause an imbalance, the idea of using the spyder is to remove the imbalance (something that I couldn't do to easily before even with smart).

The imblance should be to effect the removal of BLUE at the bottom IRE to make it blacker which it as always done, and also to make the Green/Blue response at the the top end linear to the rest of the range, the Powerful preset just serves to hugely boost that top end. I can see why some people would like this though as your top end punch defines your contrast even if color balance is skewed and it's easier to live with than the converse.

I will do a run without filters on creative cinema at some point.

OK guys I just got my Z3 today!!!! I shot a pic on the wall and was quite impressed with the pic. I need to order my screen but am unsure of which one to get, its going to be a CARADA 96"er, but I cant decide between BW, CCW, or HCG.
Anyways what do you guys think are the preferred settings for this display through the componoent inputs with a progressive scan player??

PS, I really tried to get through this thread but the settings got changed and I got lost!! LOL!!

Thanks all!!

Try just 3 posts above yours:)

To be fair, the filters will cause an imbalance, the idea of using the spyder is to remove the imbalance (something that I couldn't do to easily before even with smart).

The imblance should be to effect the removal of BLUE at the bottom IRE to make it blacker which it as always done, and also to make the Green/Blue response at the the top end linear to the rest of the range, the Powerful preset just serves to hugely boost that top end. I can see why some people would like this though as your top end punch defines your contrast even if color balance is skewed and it's easier to live with than the converse.

I will do a run without filters on creative cinema at some point.


Rone's latest settings are fantastic. they came just as I installed some new software called proshow on my htpc so i have made a proshow demonstration of rones settings past and present!!! :cool:

You're a genius Rone and this is in homage to your awesome progress tweaking the Z3 and shows the difference in quality to any doubting thomases.

Enjoy the show chaps:

http://rapidshare.de/files/5583473/sho_off.zip.html

:)

Having a look now ...

The only problem I've got, is lack of contrast now . Bah!

Working on it though.

Hi Saturday, welcome aboard.

Let get the screen out of the way first.

I was told the following, the darker the room (Full light control) the whiter the screen.

If you want to watch movies during the day, Grey is the choice.

I did a lot if research, please read the link from an Australian Screen Maker,

It explains a lot about gain, screen type.

I picked White and gain 1.1 which is for night time and perfect for me.

http://ozts.com.au/gain.htm

That should help.

Now lets clear up the second bit, the settings on this forum start off without the use of Color correction filters and 1db attenuator, then about 1/2 way through we all went out and bought them.

So please note most of the settings except the early ones from ROne are with filters.

I saved all the settings in my user spots, i like the second last one from Jeremy.

Here it is, Yes i use it without a filter, i am using HDMI via the DVD Player.

I took off my filters and i am much happier, but thats just me.

User 3
Start with Powerful
Contrast -1
brightness -2
color 1
tint 1
temp L1
red 0
green 3
blue 1
sharp -3
gamma -1
Theatre /black bulb.
iris -21
Grain R 0
Grain G 1
Grain B 0
Offset R 0
Offset G 2
Offset B 3
Gamma R 0
Gamma G 0
Gamma B 0
Auto Black on
Contrast E
Transient
Overscan

Hope this helps,

GezzaZ3.

Gezza, Thanks a bunch!! I look forward to trying the settings when I get home from work.

One other question.......which ceiling mount do you use??

Hi.

Been reading alot about filters etc. and was wondering if thats the way to go with my Z3....However, it sounds quite sofisticated with all those tweaks, so I was wondering if there's someone out there with some settings ideal for my setup?

I've bought the DVE calibration disc, but I find it hard to tweak it to perfection. I've read across boards on how to use it, but once I use those offset setting etc I find it hard to tell the real difference! Also using the supplied red green blue paper thingie seems challenging to tweak to perfection. Infact it seems the factory settings are quite alright as is - or I havent got a clue...?

I'm using a sony DVP 7700 player via component feed, and projecting onto a 0.80 gain grey screen at 86". Sitting about 11 feet from it.


I've tried that french component setting theres somewhere inside this huge thread and that looked ok I guess, but then I tried using the, I think it was called dynamic cinema, and got good results fromt that too.

So, is there anyone out there with super component setting using a similar setup as me? who are willing to give a few hints to a newbie? :)

Or should I just get some filters! hehe

All in all, I just wanted to make the best of my new Z3 :)

Regards

Claus Linde
Denmark

Claus, You'll find that tweaking is not that easy especially without the measuring equipment. Using other people's setting will not always work because the room will be the main factor even though equipment are the same. Probably the best advice I got was from Jeremy which is to only adjust the brigthness, contrast, tint, color, color temp, sharpness (with the DVE I have). Having said that I have Jeremy's and ROne's in user settings for comparison and also have filters (7mos later). I also noticed was that my wife has a better color perception than I do... :o

Remember a few months ago I decided to try and find a pringles style lid to fit the Z3 and act as a filter holder over the Z3 lens?

FINALLY, SUCCESS!

I have prepared another little media file for anyone who is interested in how to do this - full instructions in widescreen so you can watch it on your projector!!!

I have also updated the "sho off" presentation (the one showing off my setup and all of Rones settings in use on a particularly dificult subject) to include footage of the new lens filter cap.

SETUP: http://rapidshare.de/files/5598772/sho_off.zip.html
FILTERS: http://rapidshare.de/files/5598199/sho_filters.zip.html

Hi Saturday,

Well i had a Infocus Screenplay 4800, i bought a new bracket, i sold the Infocus and kept the Ceiling bracket. It had a Triangle shape base with 3 holes, which didn't line up on the Z3. So i kept the top bit and made the bottom bit.

I then found some polished Aluminium strap 50mm wide and about 5mm thick, i made 3 lengths measured and drilled where the holes go. I had i look at the stores and couldn't justify another $200, $300, when i had all but the straps.

I would rather buy a DVD player or 10 dvd movies. Which i did, i bought a new HDMI dvd Player for $179.00AUD.

Now to the Filters, you know at first i was all for them, then i started noticing washed out scenes, which i thought might be the dvd quality.

Well i tried a scene in the incredibles, where the wife is in the plane with the kids, now the shot shows the plane, sky, the wife,white clouds, i paused this scene and removed the filters and wow it increased in brightness and clarity and color. Then i put the filter back on, and we all said yuk, it darkened the scene, it had a reddish ting and the white and blue seem to suffer the most, but only on bright scenes. I did think that dark scenes looked a bit better, but i don't think the lose of bright scenes is worth it. Now you know when your wife says its look much better with no filters, it must be better, as women seem to have a better sense of rational views, they don't care how or what you use, they will tell you the truth. I was so caught up in the whole filters thing, i wanted to believe it was the best picture.

So my filters are off at the moment.

GezzaZ3

OK I got all the settings in ( thanks again Gezza!) and WOW what an improvement. Yesterday I watched some of AVP with the factory settings and I thought that the pic was good but after putting in the settings the pic was GREATLY improved. Blacks are WAY better and brightly lit scenes "jump" right off the screen, and color is improved.
The only thing that I changed was the sharpness level, but I only bumped it up 2 notches.

Now onto the CARADA screen samples........the grey was just too dark for me and the white screens seemed to give the pic a blueish tinge. AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!! What screens are the rest of you using??

Hi Saturday,

try this test as i did, i used to project onto my wall.

I placed normal A4 copy paper on the wall and watch in amazement, that's when i knew i needed a screen.

Be careful with the screen Gain 1.0 to 1.1 is pretty standard, and the higher the number the brighter the image.

Too bright will decrease your viewing angle and image quality.

Not sure where your from, but, L.P morgan, Cinemax, are well liked here in Australia. I went with OZsceeens as they are locally made and ship to other parts of Australia and the world.

If your not happy try a different brand, there's one there with your name on it.


GezzaZ3

These will probably the last round of numbers for a while, (I'm starting to confuse my self!)

Anyway two sets of numbers:

ON both I started with Natural Preset (I wanted a flat start and less ramp of upper IRE).

You will need to turn down lamp and IRIS to suit, as well as calibrate B+C.

The good news is managed to get 6500 +/- 50 across the range with the filters and optimise contrast! To pay for this there is some funny stuff going off at 10IRE, and I can't do anything about it - it's sort of green!

As the Iris marginally effects colour balance you may need to experiment.

You will also notice huge difference in contrast setting compared to powerful; it looks like presets store how bright their brightest setting is in relation to the contrast adjustment. So 9 is not 9 on both powerful and natural etc.

None filtered first.

Start with Natural preset - turn down lamp, adjust sharpness and set IRIS. I have settled on -52 for Iris, as without the filters you need help to get rid of panel leakage.

Rone Natural 6500

C: +6
B: -1
R: +9
G: -2
B: -4
Iris: -52
Gain R: +15
Gain G: +3
Gain: B: -9
Offset R: -15
Offset G: +2
Offset B: 0
Gammas: all 0
Overscan: 0

That comes in at 6500 +/- 150


Rone Natural CC20R + CC10Y setting

Iris: -30
C: +9
B: -1
R: 12
G: +5
B: +8
Gain R: +10
Gain G: +3
Gain B: -9
Offset: R -13
Offset: G: +5
Offset: B: +7

And that one comes in +/-50 6500 from 20IRE to 100IRE.

I've got to say though as a disclaimer, my filters are wearing quite quickly, the bulb has also lost it's edge. So I am on the none-filtered versions now, and very punchy they are too.

Look at the way the Green and Blue are increased on the filtered version to bring it back into line ...

That's it for a while I need time to watch some films...

ROne, How many hours do you have now? Just wondering since you noticed the bulb is losing it's edge.

On the maintenance side, how often do you clean the lens? I have never cleaned it but I guess it's time. A liquid & lens cleaner from an optical shop should do the job, right?

Lately, I've been watching more hdtv than dvd. I thought I was going to watch hd football only but there's been more primetime shows in hd. It's been good and I'm only using ota. I should stop messing around this pj before I get the look... again.

ROne, How many hours do you have now? Just wondering since you noticed the bulb is losing it's edge.

On the maintenance side, how often do you clean the lens? I have never cleaned it but I guess it's time. A liquid & lens cleaner from an optical shop should do the job, right?

Lately, I've been watching more hdtv than dvd. I thought I was going to watch hd football only but there's been more primetime shows in hd. It's been good and I'm only using ota. I should stop messing around this pj before I get the look... again.

Do you know what - I'm not sure! But the bulbs seems to dim quite a bit from the off in the first 10-20 hours and then stay steady for a while.

I will check and post.

As to lens cleaning - prevention better than cure, I've never touched the lens or needed to in 1 year.

That said I have a problem putting anything on the lens; perhaps a photographic shop could offer you some advice. Same with our camera lens' I hate touching them!

I'll give your settings a shot tonight, ROne. I've tweaked mine a little using my 6500k ISF'd RPTV for comparison, but it'll be interesting to see how your filtered settings look on mine.

I hit 840 hours on my bulb last night, and I still don't see any particular dimming. It did dim some in the first 10 hours of use, but mine still looks bright as all hell.

Hi ROne,

I tried your new settings last night, something is not right.(without Filters)

When i go back to my saved #3 which is Jeremy last setting i think. The one that started in Dynamic. It's like watching a plasma TV.

Then when i go to your new settings, it looks a bit dull and lacking color.

What i didn't try is your settings using Dynamic or Powerful. Which i will do later.

Nice to see Jeremy back.

GezzaZ3.

So many sets of settings. Now that I have my Z3 and HCMW 82" 1.1 screen on the way, I was hoping someone could suggest the appropriate settings for me? I play on connecting with component cables. I have DVE as well.

I've actually gone back to using Powerful as my starting point instead of Dynamic. Sure, Powerful mode has a big ramp up in the upper IRE's, but you can level it out with the Contrast control (bringing white under clipping) and still get a brighter image than Dynamic. It tends to look better with my X-Box and HD material. ROne, however, is using the SMART-III system to test with... while I am simply using my ISF'd RPTV as an optical comparator (since I can run both simultaneously with the same patterns).

Rone Natural CC20R + CC10Y setting

Iris: -30
C: +9
B: -1
R: 12
G: +5
B: +8
Gain R: +10
Gain G: +3
Gain B: -9
Offset: R -13
Offset: G: +5
Offset: B: +7

And that one comes in +/-50 6500 from 20IRE to 100IRE.
Hey, ROne... Are you sure you had 12 on Red? I ask because it's the only one that didn't have a plus or minus next to it... and when I try 12, the middle IREs look way too red. Backing it off to +2 made it look much better, so I was wondering if maybe that was just a typo.

I plugged in the rest, but I had to set Brightness to -6 and Gamma to +1 to get mine to match up well with my RPTV (based on both Avia and DVE). It does look very nice so far, but I'll have to live with it a while before I make a final assessment. I see what you mean about the lower IREs though... Even though the rest of the grayscale looks solid, I'm getting a blue caste on 10IRE. Everything above that is nice though, so it may be a fair tradeoff. The slight blue down that low tends to bring out shadow detail a bit more, but as I said, I'll have to live with it a while before I decide whether that's a good thing.

Amazing how far we've come with this thing though, huh? ;)

my head hurts from reading this forum ;-)

can anyone share settings who uses a 106" matte white screen 1.0 gain in a light controlled room - lights are always off - total darkness. i use hdmi input only for both DVD and HD TV.

settings without use of a filter would really help - though I think i am going to try the filter thing soon.

GezzaZ3 I'll def be trying your settings posted on 9/27 - i hope the .1 gain will not make much difference for me.

excellent works everyone, excellent.

sainthalo awesome demo re media files for filters - i suspect i'll be giving this a try too.

Hi ROne,

I tried your new settings last night, something is not right.(without Filters)

When i go back to my saved #3 which is Jeremy last setting i think. The one that started in Dynamic. It's like watching a plasma TV.

Then when i go to your new settings, it looks a bit dull and lacking color.

What i didn't try is your settings using Dynamic or Powerful. Which i will do later.

Nice to see Jeremy back.

GezzaZ3.

Okay - a few things first, save the usual warnings about different units ...

1) My aim was D65 using the spyder, whether this appears dull or not unfortunately is a side effect of optimised color balance rather than contrast, whereas with the powerful setting there is no way (at least that I have found) to produce 6500 at 100IRE. It's just too damn cool(green), however this gives a massive perceived boost in contrast - which may or may not be more appealing.

2) The settings without filters do appear dull compared to the Powerful ones, but these are based around the natural preset because these seemed to be the flatest. The reality is that to get 6500 at 100IRE using this preset comprimises contrast.

3) Having said that, these numbers were done in total blackout, complete absence of light other than the projector, and after viewing them several times back to back with other settings - I quite liked them, but then switching back to powerful made them seem a tad flat.

In summary you can take more contrast or best color balance.

You can't have both at their best. Or at least I've not yet found a way.

Hey, ROne... Are you sure you had 12 on Red? I ask because it's the only one that didn't have a plus or minus next to it... and when I try 12, the middle IREs look way too red. Backing it off to +2 made it look much better, so I was wondering if maybe that was just a typo.

I plugged in the rest, but I had to set Brightness to -6 and Gamma to +1 to get mine to match up well with my RPTV (based on both Avia and DVE). It does look very nice so far, but I'll have to live with it a while before I make a final assessment. I see what you mean about the lower IREs though... Even though the rest of the grayscale looks solid, I'm getting a blue caste on 10IRE. Everything above that is nice though, so it may be a fair tradeoff. The slight blue down that low tends to bring out shadow detail a bit more, but as I said, I'll have to live with it a while before I decide whether that's a good thing.

Amazing how far we've come with this thing though, huh? ;)


Good to see you back in the debate.

Yes the RED was on +12. (This was done starting with Natural preset though)

It's a consequence of trying to tame 90-100IRE.

Last night (and I've yet to publish them) I tried readings using CC and POWERFUL at D65 to compare them. Powerful just goes to yellow/green towards the upper end for me when you've got used to a better color balance.

CC also still ramps up a little towards the end but not as much as powerful.

What it may come down to with this unit, is whether you are prepared to accept whatever happens at 90-100% to get a decent color balance.

I realise there are so many numbers flying about now but hopefully there is a reason for all of them to exist along this learning curve.

Shortly though I am about to move on to a Z4, and the Z3 will be gone forever ....

Another final consideration all ...

These settings (especially the contrast) are effected by what HDMI setting you are on.

We have ran with L1 (video levels) for the most, which will clip below RGB 16,16,16. The alternative is L2 - PC Levels, where the contrast and brightness end up at different points to allow for BTB / WTW detail to be passed.

Don't forget that if you are using HDMI there is a choice between the two, and where the position of maximum contrast and thus maximum GAIN will be on your dials. To that end I have not a clue what these settings would do to a VGA or component input.

The real question is, what is the best preset starting point.

Well if contrast is your thing, you would do well with POWERFUL or DYNAMIC (yet to do a D65 run with DYNAMIC).

If color balance is your thing and you have good control of room light then NATURAL or CREATIVE CINEMA seems to be relatively accurate.

It's like that brutal scene in casino "You can have the money and the hammer or you can walk out of here - you can't have both!".

ROne, what kind of CR are you getting with the Spyder calibration?

I can answet this now but with a disclaimer: this is know way optimised for contrast, just for D65.

I got a relatively average 575:1 using POWERFUL & FILTERS.

But I'm 100% sure it can be a hell of a lot better, the tools with the spyder pro don't really give you enough information to deal with contrast.

Well, my Z3 will be arriving mid-next week. It will be replacing my older Panasonic PT-L200u.

Can anyone provide any set-up tips and/or tweaks to get her off the ground and running. I'll be using a component connection for now until I can upgrade my dvd player and change over to an HDMI connection.

Well, my Z3 will be arriving mid-next week. It will be replacing my older Panasonic PT-L200u.

Can anyone provide any set-up tips and/or tweaks to get her off the ground and running. I'll be using a component connection for now until I can upgrade my dvd player and change over to an HDMI connection.

If the image looks too pinkish/reddish out of the box then you need a line attenuator in your component cable to cut the red down. You might also want to "borrow" an hdmi capable player from CC just to test hdmi connection... :)

I do have a red push attenuator that I used to use on my old Mits RPTV I should be able use. I will go with an HDMI connection but not for a couple of weeks. I need to land a player and cable and I doubt I'll be able to do that before Wednesday.

Yes the RED was on +12. (This was done starting with Natural preset though)
Crap... I started with Dynamic. That's what I get for trying to do it while Night Stalker was on the projector. :)

I'll fiddle with it again tonight when I spin Four Brothers.

Will be interesting to see your opinion on it Jeremy - it really is the best setting yet that I have been lucky enough to input.

That spyder equipment in rones hands has made a serious difference even over yours and rones joint settings from a couple months ago let alone the starting point at the top of this thread.

I think what we need to do is establish the best starting point, which maybe could be done with SMART, having said that personal preference comes into play.

My Z3 is on borrowed time, it being sold this thursday I think...

My Z3 is on borrowed time, it being sold this thursday I think...

Glad to hear that... or sorry to hear that... When you get a chance, can you give us an comparison of your next pj (Z4?) vs Z3. I just like to see an opinion from someone who tweak the hell out of the Z3. I'm itching to upgrade but I have 2 rooms and 2 bathrooms to do before I can ask for anything... :o

Tried the settings last night. ROne's natural settings with filters does look REALLY good... but I do miss the added contrast.

Strangely, I left in those same settings but starting with Dynamic and changing Red to +2 instead of +12, brightness -6 and gamma +1... and it looks really good. It actually looks better than my previous settings starting with Powerful, which was unexpected. Who knows if it's anywhere close to 6500k, but it does look nice. I'm still playing with it though.

Is there really that much missing contrast?

I find it hard to notice as big a difference loss as the statistics suggest.

I think that you guys have the Z3 tweaked so well that there is very little difference from 1 optimized setting to the next. I find it strange that vastly different settings can all produce such great results. The starting point really must be the key.


I am currently using ROnes natural settings with filters and really like the colors. The contrast might be a bit lower, but contrast is not everything....

Thanks to all you guys for your time and effort and for sharing your findings!

And thanks to sainthalo for the filters.