Please have some respect for this thread. Owners only, and questions that only pertain to tweaking the PLV-Z3.

Looking through the menu of the Z3 they seem to have moved a lot of the service tweaks on the Z1 to the main menu. We have a subtle but useful VB tweak for the RGB and DARK & LIGHT panels, although I've not had chance to adjust this yet but it looks like it's already pretty close to optimised - there maybe a hint of VB in the mid IRE's.

Oh you also have full RGB gain, offset and gamma shifted from the service menu to the main advanced menu so grey-scale calibration should be less of a ball ache. Anyone used these yet?

2nd, Can anyone help on the Iris settings for calibration - I've been out of projectors for 18months and they have these new light iris control systems.

With the Z3 you have a bright and cinema lamp mode and two further examples of A1,A2 which automatically control light. On top of this you also have a manual iris control.

Now I'm not sure how these relate to each other and which is the best - any suggestions? Also how do they relate to calibration?

I am going to have a mess tonight and report back.

I have found on smaller screens it may be beneficial to se the iris at its lowest setting -63 to stop to much light spilling onto the screen.

With bigger screen sizes and throw distances this may not be applicable.

What are people running there settings on - so we can get a feel for the set-ups out there.

Here are mine:
575p
Contrast: 13-14 (clips above this level)
Brightness: 1
Colour: 0
Gamma: 0
Color Temp: Mid
RGB all 0 for the moment
Sharpness: -7
(Bypass progressive)
Lamp mode: Theatre Black
Iris: -63
Gain, Offest and RGB gamma all at default
Auto Black Stretch: off
Contrast Enhancement: off
Transient improvement: off
Overscan: 10

Which picture mode are you using i.e. Natural/Video/Creative Cinema?

Cheers
Andy

Hiya, where do you find this settings in the menu ?

Auto Black Stretch
Contrast Enhancement
Transient improvement

I dont have them at all maybe becasue iam running hdmi ?

Kind regards
KaNoBi

Originally posted by ROne
I have found on smaller screens it may be beneficial to se the iris at its lowest setting -63 to stop to much light spilling onto the screen.

With bigger screen sizes and throw distances this may not be applicable.

What are people running there settings on - so we can get a feel for the set-ups out there.

Here are mine:
575p
Contrast: 13-14 (clips above this level)
Brightness: 1
Colour: 0
Gamma: 0
Color Temp: Mid
RGB all 0 for the moment
Sharpness: -7
(Bypass progressive)
Lamp mode: Theatre Black
Iris: -63
Gain, Offest and RGB gamma all at default
Auto Black Stretch: off
Contrast Enhancement: off
Transient improvement: off
Overscan: 10

Wny don't you use the Contrast enhancement ?
I use Level 3 and it pop the color and contrast right out of the screen.

Originally posted by zAndy12
Which picture mode are you using i.e. Natural/Video/Creative Cinema?

Cheers
Andy

The way I saw it was that each one of those was just a stored preset that the manufacturer supplied.

I start with Natural (because most stuff is set to zero) - then calibrate (for which the numbers I have shown above) then I store this as user 1 etc..

The settings they supply are just internal presets with sanyos version of contrast, lamp level.

Frichard - I will definately try the contrast enhancement, I brushed it off a bit too quickly as I though it crushed the shadow detail by remapping intensities to the top of the range - but I could be wrong.

KaNoBi - I'm pretty sure it says in the manual that those settings aren't available under the computer input.

hey guys, i have my z3 now just a quick question.. i have tried dvi->hdmi from my samsung dvd-hd931 and the picture is nice and sharp... and the same from my htpc too, but i tried to use component from my liteon lvd-2001 yesterday and even set to 720p it waqs really blurred looking.. so i thought i`d try it from the samsung component outs, then from a friend`s denon too... all the same. anyone got a proper sharp picture at 720p using component inputs yet? thanks

Hi R0ne, yes you was right it was on black on white in the manual. Been to lazy to read the manual.

Kind regards
KaNoBi

Originally posted by fretlessmusic
hey guys, i have my z3 now just a quick question.. i have tried dvi->hdmi from my samsung dvd-hd931 and the picture is nice and sharp... and the same from my htpc too, but i tried to use component from my liteon lvd-2001 yesterday and even set to 720p it waqs really blurred looking.. so i thought i`d try it from the samsung component outs, then from a friend`s denon too... all the same. anyone got a proper sharp picture at 720p using component inputs yet? thanks

I use component at 720P from my LG DVD player and the picture is razor sharp.
I cut myself on it yesterday:p

Originally posted by fretlessmusic
hey guys, i have my z3 now just a quick question.. i have tried dvi->hdmi from my samsung dvd-hd931 and the picture is nice and sharp... and the same from my htpc too, but i tried to use component from my liteon lvd-2001 yesterday and even set to 720p it waqs really blurred looking.. so i thought i`d try it from the samsung component outs, then from a friend`s denon too... all the same. anyone got a proper sharp picture at 720p using component inputs yet? thanks

There are some chromatic errors on the YUV. Whether they relate to the scaler, DAs or some other noise on the way in - god only knows.

My component is not perfect by any shot.

You guy's know why sometime there is some config that are lock

For example I want to change progressive setting but it's grey out and I can't change it !

Thanks

Fred

Originally posted by Frichard
You guy's know why sometime there is some config that are lock

For example I want to change progressive setting but it's grey out and I can't change it !

Thanks

Fred

Progressive cannot be selected when 480p, 575p, 720p is selected. That must be why.

Take care,
lpr

We need to give this thread a bit of energy so with my SMART III - and theatertek 2.0.4 via VGA and DMI I have calibrated my system and found some interesting stuff out.

Here is an updated cut and past from the AVforums in the UK that I did whilst bringing it up to date. 28th Nov.

I would rate on a scale of 1-10 each source as follows.

Budget DVD player interlace: 3
Some vertical Banding, Staircase jaggies, A little screen door.

Progscan DVD player:8
Tiny amount of VB, Some minor jaggies. No screen Door.

HTPC: VGA 10
Tiny VB, No Jaggies. No screen door. Superb contrast.

HTPC: HDMI 10
No VB, No Jaggies. No screen door. Good contrast, lower than on VGA.

I have found the IRIS function basically cuts down on light hitting the screen which lowers black level. I initally set it at the minium aperture of -63, but found it does nothing between -53 and -63. So I've now opted for -53 as this ist the point light level starts to increase.

I have extensively tested the lamp modes and for me there is only the cinema lamp mode that is any use.

Full Lamp: Too noisy but brighter (and so is the black)

A1: Too noisy

A2: Less noisy but adds a little to the peak white, probably in the region of 50+ contrast ratio. Maybe a little slow to update.

Cinema Lamp: The best black level if you can lower the light and quietist.


Preferred settings pre-calibration

Low1 Colour temp
Cinema Lamp mode
Iris - 53
Basic Avia Calibration for B & White level
All picture gizmos like contrast enhancement off.
VGA mode in from TT 2.0.4

As a basis for calibration I used LOW1 (which is analogous in colour temperature to creative cinema but I don't want the other settings that come with creative cinema.)

VGA calibration:

First time around with SMART I got results of 717:1. Post SMART I got 780:1, colour tracking looked good. Gamma needed to lowered from default of 0 to - 2.

HDMI calibration: HDMI setting L2 (L1 clips level)

Now I've done the same thing with HDMI. Strangely although the picture is smoother with less VB, the contrast ratio is lowered to 496:1 and 600:1 depending on where you clip red.

So that's where I'm at.

The one thing that confuses me - is that there exists RGB as part of the white balance and then RGB gain, RGB offset and RGB gamma as part of the advanced menu. I'm wondering what value the standard RGB offers as part if the adjustments.

Excellent idea to have this PLV-Z3 tweak thread for owners. So many smart guys on this forum.

I have the Z3 with an 80" diagonal Carada High Contrast Gray and component connections (until the HDMI problem is resolved).

I hope to be contributing something useful to the thread soon.

Gentlemen, it would be very helpful to all if you include your screen type, sources and connection type in your post.

I've just made a bit of a break-through I think ... Previously I was only getting around 490-600:1 contrast ration on HDMI. I could not get it higher. The picture seemed dim.

We have been assuming the the HDMI setting on the Z3 should be set to L2 because on initial black level test patterns the slightly brighter bars were crushed on L1 setting.

Well I've spent ages messing about wondering why I can't get the nice bright picture with HDMI that I could with VGA.

Well it's simple - put the Z3 HDMI on setting L1 - blacks will crush because the gamma is not corrected from the video-card overlay. Correct GAMMA on TT-Overlay non DXVA mode to 75. According to my card (RADEON 9600 cat 4.11) it has to be bang on 75.

No amount of display gamma will bring it back, you've got to lift the card's gamma and you will suddenly see the two black bars how they should be. (My display gamma is set to -2).

Then re-do black and white level - hey presto expanded contrast ratio and brighter picture. Also white level on the TT now sits at 0, with the black point at 32.

So I think it's created more headroom higher up the ire scale and remapped the grey-scale across this new range.

That has really, annoyed me ... It seems obvious now.



UPDATE * 30th


The news gets better ... on HDMI (L1) as opposed to (L2)

I got a pre-smart but AVIA calibrated reading of 870:1.

The interesting thing is - I can see now pushing the contrast up there is definately more light available - clipping occurs a lot later than before. In the previous setup of SMART - light was out really early down the contrast range.

I've had to switch back from TT 2.05 to 2.02 - because there were problems with GAMMA sticking.

My latest round of settings pre-smart. (TT2.02 - HDMI L1)

(All numbers in low lamp mode)

Projector:

C: 10
B: -7
GAMMA -3
LOW1
HDMI L1
IRIS -53

TT 2.02 settings

B: 32
C: -1
GAMMA 75 (this is the key)

My Z3 is up and running, waiting on a screen to arrive. I'm going to try these tweaks. Wanted a couple of recommendations.

My HDTV arrives over cable (Comcast) and they provide a component connection. When set to 1080i, the screen options are limited to FULL and NATURAL WIDE. This takes away several usable options. Anyone know a way around this?

I am shopping for a new DVD as well. I hope to get one that does 720p. But if I select this option on input, it will again limit my screen options to FULL and NATURAL WIDE. The ZOOM option seems essential for letterboxed DVDs you want to display fullscreen. How are you guys accomplishing this?

Okay some-more tweaking updates:

I noticed a garish'ness to the RED element of the projector through DVI that I'd not seen before.

We'd beeing working from LOW1 colour balance setting, however through DVI (and lord knows why) it looks different than on VGA.

So a quick look at some greyscale ramps and the upper 90IRE has a nasty red-ness to it, and the greyscale ramp looks too red in general. So i've modified some settings. (My brightness and contrast have changed a little due to swapping TT versions OVERLAY to VMR). Gamma looks to be okay on VMR as well.

Here goes:


HDMI:
TT 2.05 VMR (non DXVA, DXVA seems to have interlace artifacts to me)

Z3: Settings.

C: 19
B: 0
R +4
G -2
B -4

IRIS - 53 (as always)

Gain R: -15 (this takes out that nasty redness)
Gain G: 0
Gain B: -3
Offset R -5 (as does this)
Offest G: 0
Offset B: 0

Gamma R: 0 (might be worth having a tweak with this)
Gamma G: 0
Gamma B: 0

Lamp mode low (each lamp mode adds about 100:1 on with peak IRE levels)

Output on contrast ratio is 880:1

VGA is less at about 750:1 (originaly DVI was lower but because of the HDMI setting it's now higher)

These are my latest round of settings ...

You may find them a bit too cool, but LOW1 is too-red through HDMI but not through VGA...

Projector still locking up on HDMI though even with overscan on 1.

I've just recieved my replacement Z3 - the one that shouldn't now lock up on HDMI - so far so good.

The controls are all in completely different places when calibrated and LOW1 is really blue on this new model.

Come on guys - there must be someone else out there with some info ...

Speaking of tweaking, does anyone know which filter cine4home recommended in their tuning of the Z3. Their site is in German but using babblefish at altavista.com, you can make out most of the review. It is very detailed but they are convinced that using this filter the colour will be perfect with increased contrast.

It appears in the latest posting at cine4home.de that they feel that the optimal image level setting for the Z3 is Pure Cinema. They indicate that you can get solid results at the factory defaults in this mode, and that with futher tweaking you can get results equivalent to those achieved with a filter.

I tried this setting last night, and it seemed a bit red. I need to try it again, but I'm wondering if other people have had similar success with the default settings in Pure Cinema. If so, does anyone have any thoughts on settings to RGB gain, offset, and gamma to get the flat results that they achieved?

Thanks.

The Pure Cinema setting on my Z3 is not nearly as pleasing as the Natural setting with a few upticks on the contrast and gamma settings.

I am using an 80" Carada High Contrast screen so perhaps that combination is what produces a better result for me.

Interesting ... they said creative cinema mode originally.

The only thing I'm interested in as far as these settings are the RGB values - pure cinema equated to LOW1 mode in the RGB.

Now they are saying pure cinema?

Also do bear in mind, I've had two z3 units and both units' controls have needed different values per calibration.

Hvaing said all this LOW1 is a good place to start.

I too prefer the results I get afer doing an Avia tweak with Natural and Mid color temperature. I prefer the grays that I get with Mid. Without instrumentation, it's hard to verify exactly what cine4home was advocating.

One note for all the Z3 calibrators out there: make sure that you set your DVD player to put out enhanced black (0 IRE) rather than normal black (7.5 IRE). My Denon 2910 required two settings changes (one for component, one for DVI/HDMI) to achieve this. This is the only way to get projected black as dark as the black bars that the projector produces itself (such as the side bars in Normal screen mode). It also improves overall contrast and allows a higher Brightness setting.

Tried to get into service mode last night on Z3.

Using MENU+INPUT a "S" appears but nothing happens, can't seem to access lists.

Any takers?

Tuning tip:

When setting up your calibration you must start from Creative Cinema, because even though the user stores contain completely user definable numbers, they're not exactly the same.

For instance if you re-create the the creative cinema settings and you say start from "Natural" and use exactly the same RGB numbers as CC - the end result is different to creative cinema.

I just spent ages trying to figure out why there was a nasty posteurization/gamma tracking error that I didn't have before.

Conclusion: Creative cinema pre-set must contain a variable that isn't user definable and is to the benefit of a more accurate picture that you can't get from the other (some of the?) pre-sets start point.

This isn't to say the CC is the best calibration setting, you will still have to calibrate as normal - just start with CC.

This tweak may apply to Pure cinema also, i've yet to test it. But starting from natural or some of the others you will not inherently be able to get good gamma tracking. It goes bonkers around 20IRE and looks terrible.

I have the firmware 1.01 which now does not crash or do anything crazy under HDMI.

If I remeber correctly, cine4home liked the gamma on Creative Cinema the best. This is probably what you are seeing. I am very happy with the results I get starting from Natural, but I may give it a shot with CC.

What settings did you end up with?

Originally posted by BH
If I remeber correctly, cine4home liked the gamma on Creative Cinema the best. This is probably what you are seeing. I am very happy with the results I get starting from Natural, but I may give it a shot with CC.

What settings did you end up with?

I would go along with that ...

However I find it confusing that the gamma on the user panel is in addition to an inbuilt gamma depending on your starting point. So you have lots of variables:

Gamma as per preset starting point, Overall gamma, and RGB gamma.

I will say this: above natural the gamma is screwy for video you can't tune it out. It seems that natual and below the gamma is optimised for video.

At the moment it's a toss up between pure and creative cinema, pure cinema seem to allow a couple more notches either end of the brightness and contrast - but I've yet to measure the contrast ratio to see how real-world it is.

Has anyone played with the Panel Adjustment feature on the Z3? Just wondering.

I have played with the panel adjustment feature on the Z3. It's easy to use, and it allows you to minimize VB for light and dark areas on all three panels. My settings are typically at the default of zero or +/-1.

I have done some contrast ratio measurements.

If you start with Creative cinema the contrast ratio measures 1086:1 when avia calibrated. The gamma comes in at 2.2 as well with a display gamma of 0.

If you start with Pure cinema the best contrast ratio you can pull in is around 800:1!


Choosing a pre-set determines some very strange gamma responses which you end up try to correct for and losing contrast ratio.

Adding A2 lamp lifts the contrast ratio to 1170, A1 to 1250.

These settings are assuming the preset colour balance (low1 in CC's case). And pretty close, although with tweaking you will expect to lose a bit of contrast.

So start with creative-cinema using low-lamp mode and Iris at -52, calibrate with avia then fine tune the colour balance. (TIP blue is excessive in the lowest IRE but virtually impossible to shift as it's too low down the IRE scale.) Quite a linear response other than this.
__________________

I have the firmware 1.01 which now does not crash or do anything crazy under HDMI.
How can I see the firmware version?

From memory - press select + input at the same time.

Thanks! :)

Give this one a bump ...

I'm still happy with the latest batch of settings brining CR at 1086. I'm sure there is more.

No lock ups at all since firmware 1.01.

Still trying to get into the service menu, can get it up but can't seem to adjust anything. Maybe sanyo have tried to lock users out ...

I'm bumping this thread as I just got my Z3 and I want to keep this alive.

I've got it attached to a PowerMac G5 right now through DVI/HDMI. Still deciding what DVD player to buy and use, so many options...

Will try some of the tweaks suggested so far cause the image off the Mac looks real bad, way contrasty (after one night of minimal viewing).

As far as tweakability goes, does anyone have the Momitsu 880N running on their Z3? It would give a very wide array of options: DVI and component both upsampled to 720p.

Will report any finds as I mess with the new toy.

Anyone have a problem with color/tint uniformity?

My image is red on the left and green on the right...and no amount of tweeking is getting rid of it.

Take a look

Hey all, naive questions:

1. When I do the Avia black level test, I don't see any moving black bars on the left side. No matter how I dial the Brightness settings, I can't see them at all. It's crazy, cuz when I drag the display to my normal 20" LCD monitor (I'm going dual display off my Mac, both DVI), I totally see the bars moving around. Is this normal?
(lowest lamp mode, iris at -53, if it matters)

2. Ok, a really dumb one, for the white level test in Avia, what should I be adjusting? I mean, since Brightness apparently is for adjusting the Black level settings.

3. Also, pressing the select and input buttons at the same time on the projector doesn't bring up any firmware displays. I ask because in hardly any hours of viewing I've already had a lockup problem with HDMI.

In general, not very happy with the situation. Any suggestions?

Okay this will be a HDMI/DVI level issue. On the Z3 you get two settings for HDMI try swapping between the two to see if it improves you black-level (brightness) bars in AVIA.

Contrast (white level) should be set for your white bars in AVIA.

Failing all this you may have the wrong gamma from your computer, thus crushing the blacks at the bottom end so you won't see them.

Originally posted by guldo
Hey all, naive questions:

3. Also, pressing the select and input buttons at the same time on the projector doesn't bring up any firmware displays. I ask because in hardly any hours of viewing I've already had a lockup problem with HDMI.

In general, not very happy with the situation. Any suggestions?
Hold SELECT + INPUT keys on projector until some informations appears on the top left corner. You must be out of any menù (no menù on screen)

Originally posted by guldo
Hey all, naive questions:

1. When I do the Avia black level test, I don't see any moving black bars on the left side. No matter how I dial the Brightness settings, I can't see them at all. It's crazy, cuz when I drag the display to my normal 20" LCD monitor (I'm going dual display off my Mac, both DVI), I totally see the bars moving around. Is this normal?
(lowest lamp mode, iris at -53, if it matters)

2. Ok, a really dumb one, for the white level test in Avia, what should I be adjusting? I mean, since Brightness apparently is for adjusting the Black level settings.

3. Also, pressing the select and input buttons at the same time on the projector doesn't bring up any firmware displays. I ask because in hardly any hours of viewing I've already had a lockup problem with HDMI.

In general, not very happy with the situation. Any suggestions?


What software DVD player are you using, also are you using an ATI graphics card and if so with what driver version?

Hi guys, thanks for the responses.

I will try L1/L2 with HDMI.

As for DVD Players, I'm just using the Mac OSX DVD Player, not a great piece of software that.

I need to figure out how to correct gamma on the computer.

The video card is an Nvidia GeForce 5200, so not ATI.

The thought was to be able to use the computer as a DVD player too, but I've also thought all along I'm likely to have to get a separate player. I'm thinking of getting a Momitsu 880N, plugging in via DVI/VGA adapter to the Z3, then switching to that input for movies, while still having HDMI for using the computer on a big screen.

It just seems like HDMI is a major problem right now for this thing. I'm very disappointed I must say, and am considering my options for returning it.

Will report my findings after it gets dark tonight :)

Hey Fellas,

Can you guys at least let me know that you do NOT have the problem that I mentioned (see previous page)?

I chose to post it here because this is an owners only thread, and because I was wondering is it was something that could be "tweeked" out.

Honestly, it is disapointing to not get a single response regarding what is obvioulsy a serious problem with my PJ.

Originally posted by jefe noche
Hey Fellas,

Can you guys at least let me know that you do NOT have the problem that I mentioned (see previous page)?

I chose to post it here because this is an owners only thread, and because I was wondering is it was something that could be "tweeked" out.

Honestly, it is disapointing to not get a single response regarding what is obvioulsy a serious problem with my PJ.

Sorry, I couldn't drag my eyes away from the girl long enough to notice the colour uniformity problem:D

It does look pretty bad and I have not noticed it on my Z3. I have noticed something slike that on Star Wars IV, but I believe that tis is in the movie itself. Can you post more screen shots, like the snow scenes in Star Wars V so I can make a comparison


Conor

Originally posted by guldo
Hi guys, thanks for the responses.

I will try L1/L2 with HDMI.

As for DVD Players, I'm just using the Mac OSX DVD Player, not a great piece of software that.

I need to figure out how to correct gamma on the computer.

The video card is an Nvidia GeForce 5200, so not ATI.

The thought was to be able to use the computer as a DVD player too, but I've also thought all along I'm likely to have to get a separate player. I'm thinking of getting a Momitsu 880N, plugging in via DVI/VGA adapter to the Z3, then switching to that input for movies, while still having HDMI for using the computer on a big screen.

It just seems like HDMI is a major problem right now for this thing. I'm very disappointed I must say, and am considering my options for returning it.

Will report my findings after it gets dark tonight :)

I am using the Z3 on HDMI L1 with Theatertek 2.06. There is an option in TT to change gamma and according to ROne the best setting is 75. This is the same as changing the gamma in Overlay of the Ati control panel from the default 1 to 1.45. As you are not using either TT or an ATI graphics card, this info is usless to you:rolleyes: sorry

Hi all,
So I successfully got my contrast/brightness settiongs to at least a tolerable level. Thanks for the tips about setting gamma on the source.

My next question is about the interaction of gamma on my computer, and the gamma setting on my projector? I've got the computer setting at around 1.6 or 1.7 I think, I don't know if this is the equivalent of the 1.4 setting your were talking about, in which case it is too high. Also, I've got gamma on the Z3 at -3. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Also, what should I be adjusting for the "hue" and "saturation" tests on Avia? I stared at the pulsing squares pattern through the supplied blue filter, and changing the "Gamma B" and R and G settings under "Advanced" seemed to have a noticeable affect. Not sure if I'm doing the right thing though.

Now I can see details in the dark areas, but something about contrast/color is still off. I'm just relieved I got this far. Even the wife thought it wasn't much better than our previous AE100 though (!!)

Thanks for the replies.

Hi Guldo

I didn't touch the gamma R, B or G on the projector, I adjusted the Hue and Satruation in Theatertek using Avia and the blue filter.

This projector is a major step up from the ae100, in terms of black level, contrast, VB, shadow detail and resolution (screen door). I came from a HS10 and it's quite an improvement on that. Only advantage the HS10 has was in terms of screen door. I do ocasionally see it on the Z3 but never on the HS10.

Try the following:
Set HDMI to L1
Set the pj to Creative Cinema and contrast/brightness to default in your software DVD player.
Set gamma on your pc source back to default from your current 1.6
Then put in any of the Star Wars disks and bring up the THX optimiser
On the Video calibration screen with the THX logo. The THX logo should be lost in the shadow. Bring up your gamma on your pc until the THX logo appears, no higher. This method gets me the magic 1.45 gamma setting in my PC (or 75 in Theatertek).

Then pop in Avia and complete your calibration

Hope this helps.


Conor

ok, cool, thanks for the practical tips, I'll give it a go tonight.

Also, does anyone have a tweaked impression of good DVD player through component vs. PC through HDMI? It just seems like a lot of us are going through a lot of trouble to get HDMI (upconverted to 720 obviously) work, and the thought keeps creeping into my head that a solid DVD player over component would look better. That would suck of course.

Also, since the Momitsu is the only player that upconverts through component, it really minimizes the choices if one still wants to feed a 720 image through component.

Originally posted by guldo
ok, cool, thanks for the practical tips, I'll give it a go tonight.

Also, does anyone have a tweaked impression of good DVD player through component vs. PC through HDMI? It just seems like a lot of us are going through a lot of trouble to get HDMI (upconverted to 720 obviously) work, and the thought keeps creeping into my head that a solid DVD player over component would look better. That would suck of course.

Also, since the Momitsu is the only player that upconverts through component, it really minimizes the choices if one still wants to feed a 720 image through component.

On my system the PC blows a progressive scan DVD player out of the water.

too true comer.

I don't think I could really watch the Z3 with prog DVD player having seen the HTPC.

I've got to say after a few weeks of viewing post-calibration and contradicting what I said about VB, I now feel like the VB could be better even on HDMI.

It's there - just. I've tried the internal VB adjustment, but it's not fine enough, there is some VB on the green panel.

I've made no head way into the service menu, I could be wrong but I think sanyo might have made it a tad more difficult to get in there now - the usual buttons (as per the z1 and 2) bring up displays but no adjustments. I've tried all the access keys I can think of and still can't get in there.

Anybody?

Originally posted by ROne
I've made no head way into the service menu, I could be wrong but I think sanyo might have made it a tad more difficult to get in there now - the usual buttons (as per the z1 and 2) bring up displays but no adjustments. I've tried all the access keys I can think of and still can't get in there.

Anybody?

Bump because I want to know if anyone has:

1) Successfully accessed the service menu on a Z3

2) Sucessfully tweaked any service menu settings with positive results

3) Performed a professional ISF calibration on a Z3 and could share settings, a la UMR's sony threads. (Please please!)

I am so very close to buying a Z3 which will be fed by the MyHD card in my HTPC over DVI to HDMI, as well as the component out of my ReplayTV for SD TV. I returned a Toshiba RP DLP today because it sucked in so many ways. And despite the market share, it sounds to me like the Z3 is in many ways superior to the Panny AE700, so I'm about ready to buy.

Thanks,
Adam

Anyone, adjust or find it possible to adjust to D65 with the dynamic setting for the iris on the Z3? And if so does/would this increase CR (off:on)?

I've got it close to D65 but no perfect - the z3 exhibits a blue in lower IRE (below 10ire) that is difficult to to shift.

What do you mean about the iris? It's not dynamic in that it doesn't react to each scene. You set it up based on how much you want to reduce light output for you room, depending on light ambience and screen size etc. I have it on -53 which is the lowest light output reduction.

The bulb can be put in a dynamic mode though at the expense of fan noise. There is info in this very thread about the CR measurements of each setting.

Originally posted by ROne
The bulb can be put in a dynamic mode though at the expense of fan noise.

Also note that anytime I put the lamp into dynamic mode I got dust blobs immediately.

so iris can't be dynamic with static lamp setting?

No, it's not dynamic.

You can adjust your own aperture but it's fixed and not adaptive.

Originally posted by jefe noche
Anyone have a problem with color/tint uniformity?

My image is red on the left and green on the right...and no amount of tweeking is getting rid of it.

Take a look

you are not alone! i have the exact same problem on my z3. it's not detectable (to my eye) when viewing in color, but on black and white material it jumps out at you. haven't come up with any tweak to fix it, except reducing red amount does minimize it.

mine is bad enough that i will probably get it serviced since it's under warranty. i have the 720p HDMI lockup issue (seen exactly once) so i figure it'll be going into the shop anyway.

Just got my Z3 today, watched a DVD on my DVP-975 set at 720P via HDMI out of the box. It was great but had a little VB and was not as sharp. After I applied the tweaks above the VB was gone and the picture sharper than I could have even hoped. Thanks Rone and everyone for your help.

I get my HD-Tivo tomorrow. Do you think the same tweaks will apply to HD as they do to upscaled DVD?

100 hr update.

Not much tweaking recently, quite happy with the picture and definately of the opionion that with such a good set-up as Z3/HDMI/TT that your DVD is your limiting factor.

Basically a lot of DVD's are just dreadful quality and it's easy to calibrate your system, pop in a dvd and then see a dissapointing image - don't lose faith when you get a good transfer it will shine.

It would be good to have a proper reference transfer list to know what we are aiming for ...

System has been rock-solid:

Re-cap of settings (assume default if not mentioned)

Z3: Firmware 1.01 (No crashes since upgrade)
Picture Mode: Start with Creative Cinema pre-calibration
Contrast +5
Brightness -4
Gamma 0
IRIS: -53 (point where black becomes no blacker)
R 4, G -1, B -2

GAIN all defaults (although you might want to play with red here)

Offset R -8, G 0, B-5

HDMI: L1

Individual RGB Gamma's - well RED is too strong through the MID and BLUE way too strong below 10IRE, not fixed this yet.

Lamp Low

HTPC: (Shuttle based sempron)
Radeon 9600se (fanless, plays HL2 fine) - HDMI output
TT 2.05 (not had the guts to switch to 2.06) VMR
VMR Settings: B 17, C -10, Sat approx - 40

You may need to adjust gamma if using overlay to +75 on TT or as per comers figures 1.45 on ATI display? No adjustment needed on VMR.

VB: There is a tiny (but annoying) bit of VB on the green panel that is virtually impossible to tune out, trying to do something with service menu - but no success yet.

Contrast ratio with these settings approx 1100:1, a further 100-200 can be gained by using the lamp modes, but I prefer the quietness.

Best transfer this month: Thunderbirds movie

Worst film this month: Thunderbirds movie

Anybody tried a "Superbit" dvd? Is it better than regular dvd especially for teaking?

Originally posted by enier
Anybody tried a "Superbit" dvd? Is it better than regular dvd especially for teaking?

I tried the Super-Bit Version of punch Drunk love. The color are great but this particular DVD has a lot of noise.

Anyone know if there's a way of reducing noise on a picture?
Some DVD of less quality has a lot in it and other has close to none.
Is it because of the Z3 or maybe my DVD player?

Thanks

Fred

Originally posted by Frichard
I tried the Super-Bit Version of punch Drunk love. The color are great but this particular DVD has a lot of noise.

Anyone know if there's a way of reducing noise on a picture?
If you want to play with an HTPC, sure.

Some DVD of less quality has a lot in it and other has close to none.
Is it because of the Z3 or maybe my DVD player?

Thanks

Fred

Neither. It is the DVD itself.

RG

Coincidentally I bought by first Superbit DVD last week (The Fifth Element) and was skeptical if the additional cost would be worth it. Well hands down, it was one of if not the best visual and audio experience I have had the pleasure of being a part of! I was really impressed. I’m not sure if all Superbit DVD’s are of this quality, but this one clear made me a believer.

Originally posted by Italia_NYC
Coincidentally I bought by first Superbit DVD last week (The Fifth Element) and was skeptical if the additional cost would be worth it. Well hands down, it was one of if not the best visual and audio experience I have had the pleasure of being a part of! I was really impressed. I’m not sure if all Superbit DVD’s are of this quality, but this one clear made me a believer.
Ive got a short answer for you. No they are not all of that quality!!

Punch Drunk Love is really bad. I think that if the transfer is bad in the first place you cant have a great Super-Bit DVD.

Originally posted by jefe noche
Hey Fellas,

Can you guys at least let me know that you do NOT have the problem that I mentioned (see previous page)?

I chose to post it here because this is an owners only thread, and because I was wondering is it was something that could be "tweeked" out.

Honestly, it is disapointing to not get a single response regarding what is obvioulsy a serious problem with my PJ.

I do not have that problem with my Z3. It has excellent color uniformity.

I also have a Z2 that has a similar (maybe not as severe but still annoying) problem.

I will say I assumed they had somehow solved that problem with the Z3.

It might be worth the two or three days without the projector to send it out to Sanyo for them to fix.

Moderators, could we pretty-please sticky this thread?

Sony has a main and tweak thread sticky, Panny has a main and tweak thread sticky, Z3 has only a main thread sticky.

Please?

Thanks in advance,
Adam

jefe noche the z3 i picked up friday had the same problem did not notice it till Saturday . i ended up taking the unit back and exchanging it for another unit the new unit did not have the color uniformity issue.call your dealer and see if you can exchange the unit.to me i think the panels where out of alignment gave it a purple hue on the left side and green hue on the right

Originally posted by ROne
100 hr update.

Rone, thank you SO MUCH for your wonderful calibration / tweak updates. My Z3 arrives tonight and I was wondering, are the settings in your 100-hr update still what you'd recommend as my out-of-the-box baseline?

I will be using the DVI output of my MyHD-120 card at first to play DVD's as well as HDTV content, might switch to TT and software-based decoding if performance is not what I hope. I actually need to figure out where a comparable gamma setting will be in my MYHD card. Running an ATI 9800se with DVI passthrough for some Half-Life 2 action soon as well.

Can't wait to get home and tear the box open, will keep you all posted.

Does anyone else other than Rone or Comer have tweak recommendations? C'mon, we need to get some life in this thread!

I'm suspecting everyone is too busy watching stellar picture quality to post... :-)

Thanks,
Adam

has anyone had color uniformity issues.I'm on my second z3 the first one had really bad purple push on the left side of the screen.now the second unit has a slight trace in the same corner, but Ive also noticed this purple color in the the center of the screen on panning shots can this be tweaked out with the color controls. its on both hdmi and component any help would be great.

Ad-rok ...

I suppose you could try my tweaks but they're unlikely to be the same figures, I've had two Z3 units and they both ended up at different calibrations.

However - starting from creative cinema is a must ... and the iris was the same on both units (-53). LOW1 would also be a reasonable starting point for any unit.

And largely the white balance showed the same limitations (excessive blue at below -10IRE). Even if the numbers ended up different.

Hope this helps.

Originally posted by ROne
Ad-rok ...

I suppose you could try my tweaks but they're unlikely to be the same figures, I've had two Z3 units and they both ended up at different calibrations.

However - starting from creative cinema is a must ... and the iris was the same on both units (-53). LOW1 would also be a reasonable starting point for any unit.

And largely the white balance showed the same limitations (excessive blue at below -10IRE). Even if the numbers ended up different.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Rone!

Well, I can honestly say that after the months of research and work, building my HTPC with the MyHD-120 and DVI output, with the addition of the Z3 in my living room, this is THE MOST AMAZING PICTURE I HAVE EVER SEEN from a DVD or HD source, period. I love it!

I actually went ahead and applied your settings Rone and I rather like them, though the unit makes it easy to toggle between these and others. I'm playing with image settings a bit now, but watched LOTR Fellowship with Rone's settings in native 720p last night with:

NO overscan and
NO cropping and
NO Vertical Banding and
NO screen door effect and
NO HDMI lockups and
NO "Predator" effect, ever.

Basically, I watched it with my jaw dropped to the floor last night, and this on a white painted wall with a little ambient light coming in (it was plenty bright). Compared to the new Toshiba 52HM84 I returned two weeks ago, the PQ was just night-and-day better all around. I will want a better DIY screen to pop the blacks out a bit more soon, but otherwise this thing is awesome.

Wanted to post this quick review for benefit of some who have been wondering about this PJ over the Panny AE700...GET IT! Right now, I have ZERO regrets and am quite proud of the theater I have created for myself!

I am having a few issues with the MyHD / TitanTV guide and will need to ask around about that in the HTPC forums, but otherwise, this baby is simply gorgeous.

FYI, I'm using Rone's 100-hour settings with an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe-powered HTPC with the MyHD-120 with DVI daughtercard hooked up to my ATI Radeon 9800se.

Now to install Half-Life 2 and play it at 720p...back in a bit!

Thanks all,
Adam

This is my first pj and I was wondering how often should you clean the filters/vents of your Z3? Any rules of thumb here? I did not see any recommendations from the user manual. Just an fyi for me...

About every 100 hours

Could Rone, Comer, and everyone please post the screens you have chosen to mate with your Z3's and whether you are happy with results? I am projecting on a white wall and thus can't display about 3 of 7 black shades per my quick THX calibration test. I have been thinking DIY (Goo or blackout cloth) for my 105" diagonal screen.

FYI, I am still thrilled with my Z3 despite one occurrence of an HDMI lockup, hoping I can get 1.01 firmware without too much hassle.

Best,
Adam

Ad-Rok don't get hung up on the THX calibration test, get yourself a proper calibration disc like Avia.

My screen is 72" wide matt white 16:9 screen at a throw of 13feet. The screen is okay but a bit cheap.

Originally posted by ROne
Ad-Rok don't get hung up on the THX calibration test, get yourself a proper calibration disc like Avia.

My screen is 72" wide matt white 16:9 screen at a throw of 13feet. The screen is okay but a bit cheap.

Very true, I need to get DVE or Avia fired up for sure. Still, the THX black-bar test is not that different from the PLUGE test on DVE I think...blacks do crush a bit on my Z3 (but then I always knew that it would and I will take that over the artifacting and rainbowing of DLP anyday). I have an almost totally light-controlled room so I think a nice grey reflective screen of some variety will be nice and help pop the contrast out a bit more.

So you're projecting on matte white, eh? Lack of black level doesn't bother you?

-Adam

Originally posted by Ad-Rok
Could Rone, Comer, and everyone please post the screens you have chosen to mate with your Z3's and whether you are happy with results? I am projecting on a white wall and thus can't display about 3 of 7 black shades per my quick THX calibration test. I have been thinking DIY (Goo or blackout cloth) for my 105" diagonal screen.

FYI, I am still thrilled with my Z3 despite one occurrence of an HDMI lockup, hoping I can get 1.01 firmware without too much hassle.

Best,
Adam

I'm using a diy 45x80 goo digital grey lite. If you're going this way I suggest using a paint spray for better results. I would have used the blockout cloth if I knew about it beforehand. Also used DVE to adjust the dvd player's black level output .

Originally posted by enier
I'm using a diy 45x80 goo digital grey lite. If you're going this way I suggest using a paint spray for better results. I would have used the blockout cloth if I knew about it beforehand. Also used DVE to adjust the dvd player's black level output .

Thanks for posting enier...so you would recommend BO cloth? I would think the greyer Goo-based screen would be better for black levels, right?

Adam

Adam,

If I knew I would have tried BO cloth first since it's a lot cheaper the Goo. The darker gray Goo will definitely have better blacks but darker screen in general lessens light output. In my case, I weighed the Z3's brightness, ambient light and color of the room. Since my ceiling is light colored and we like some ambient light when watching I chose the Digital Grey Lite. One thing I know now is light colored ceiling is not good especially if you have sconces because it reflects back to the screen. It's a good thing I installed recess lights. I have some pics on the gallery...

Originally posted by enier
Adam,

If I knew I would have tried BO cloth first since it's a lot cheaper the Goo. The darker gray Goo will definitely have better blacks but darker screen in general lessens light output.

Many thanks for the input enier. Since I'm in basically a totally light-controlled viewing situation, I think I can go with the greyer / silver option to enhance black contrast over the standard white wall I'm projecting onto right now. Brightness is totally fine as is and I am willing to sacrifice for some black level definition.

My current thought is to either Paint a BO cloth with Behr SilverScreen (cheap, but potentially messy without a sprayer) as a few have done, or pony up for a Carada high contrast. I think the Carada's got awful reviews on Projectorcentral, though they make no mention of what projector they used to run their tests so hard to say. Plus Leedees (I think) said he had good results with a Carada.

Decisions, decisions. Anyone else here projecting a Z3 onto painted silver/grey with a totally light-controlled room?

Also, anyone using a filter per the cine4home.de article? I'm in the US so I don't even know where to get a filter / how best to apply it.

Thanks,
Adam

Originally posted by Ad-Rok
Very true, I need to get DVE or Avia fired up for sure. Still, the THX black-bar test is not that different from the PLUGE test on DVE I think...blacks do crush a bit on my Z3 (but then I always knew that it would and I will take that over the artifacting and rainbowing of DLP anyday). I have an almost totally light-controlled room so I think a nice grey reflective screen of some variety will be nice and help pop the contrast out a bit more.

So you're projecting on matte white, eh? Lack of black level doesn't bother you?

-Adam

It does a little ... but having experimented in the past with grey screens etc, I'm note sure this projector with a grey screen would be a good idea, the light ouput isn't brilliant in cinema lamp mode.

And I although I have good light control the walls are bright ...

In an ideal world as in my last house I painted the room dark blue and had 100% light control, put up a grey screen and you could lower the light ouput somewhat - giving better blacks. Can't do that in this room, as it's not my house!

has anyone here tried a dalite hipower screen yet

can we get a sticky for this thread moderator

Could someone clarify this for me. I have a very dark room with no ambient light. With the Z3, should I get a white or gray screen. Walls are grey, carpet is darker and ceiling is white stucco but not very reflective. I cannot see any reflection while watching my 61" RPT.

That's a difficult one - I would risk the grey if you have NO ambient light.

But I think you're on the fence with the room colour scheme as you will get some light spill.

But if it was me I would go for grey ...

I use the Z3 with a Dalite High Power. I am very happy with this setup. I think the critical issue with the High Power is the relative height of the projector vs. viewing angle. Being angular reflective, you certainly lose some of the brightness away from the angle of the projector. My projector is on a 12" drop pipe and the top of my screen is about 16" from the 8' ceiling. You don't lose too much brightness at this height, but if you had a taller ceiling it could prove to be a problem. I have almost complete light control, but there are times when I want to have something on while I do something else, so I leave my blinds open or some lights on. I have a custom setting on the Z3 for brighter output which works pretty well. Depending on the image, it can be a little washed out, but it's still very watchable. (I just watched the Return of the King appendices like this while I set up my new Harmony Remote! Awesome!)

I have a lot of experience with a Stewart GreyHawk with a PLV-60. The GreyHawk looks good, but a little dull, and although it improves blacks somewhat, the High Power seems to improve shadow detail more due to the more vivid colors. It's a tradeoff with LCD, but with good DVD transfers, I am never distracted by the black limitation.

I would also say that I have watched a few movies from a bean bag type chair from the floor and off to the side in my room and it still looks great. The only thing is that closer to the screen I occasionally see screen door effect (don't think this has anything to do with the screen). What can you do? I will also say that the loss of brightness is NOTHING like the problem seen with rear projection sets. It gets slightly dimmer, but not bad. I can still see a perfectly good image when I stand right next to the screen - not that you would watch anything that way, but just for perspective.

Go for it!

What are the functions and differences between these parameters

R,G,B
R,G,B GAIN
R,G,B OFFSET

..I have tried altering them but do not understand how/what they adjust?

Anyone?

RGB alters overall colour balance.

RGB offset alters lower IRE (darker) colour balance

RGB gain alters upper IRE (brighter) colour balance.

However, I've found that it's not strictly the case, and they interact with each other to an infinite degree rather than just being able to tune out low IRE with offset you will need to adjust all the parameters of all RGBs to get where you want.

Ouch! That sounds difficult...

But thanks for the answer anyhow! :)

ROne,

Got a question for you...I started my Z3 with the settings that you provided earlier and with very slight tweaking, I get what I think is an absolutley dynamite picture. Then, I borrow a copy of Digital Video Essentials and, for fun, try to correct color decoder inaccuracies using the provided 3 color window/test patterns via DVE. Making some great changes to the many RGB values listed above, I got very close to perfection according to the test patterns and provided color window. Then I switch to some program material and it looks like crap! Color is now way off. I happily went back to my saved configuration and all is well again. Why would getting closer to what the color test patterns indicate, make program material worse? Just curious. Thanks.

Dan

When you say colour do you mean saturation or colour balance across the greys?

If saturation then I wouldn't expect you have colour decoder problems as colour saturation is not adjustable on the projector in HDMI is it?

I suppose you may be talking about saturation at the source - on TT I stick to about -50.

Another thing - DVE uses a colour chart encoded in PAL or NTSC, I would imagine that the saturation information is not appropriate for a digital colour-space and would not be accurate.

I do my colour by eye and then test it across many discs, as lots of disc have bad colour information.

First off, I'm using component and NTSC. I didn't actually check my greys but I'm sure that is what would have shown my problem. The picture was overly green as far I remember.

I'm sure it doesn't help that I was just "blindly" raising and lowering the red and green values until I got as close to what the color test patterns were supposed to look like through the gels. My blue was right on when I started so I didn't need to change it.

My assumption was that getting the test patterns to appear as was explained using the gels, could only make things better. Not that simple apparently....

Dan

Dan - it sounds like to me you like your colour balance/white reference point is too green. Yet you are trying to calibrate the saturation rather than the colour balance (the balance of white/grey with no saturation.)

Gels will not point you in the right direction here.

If there is too much green in the picture - yes you can try and tune it out with the RGB but not using the gels as your reference. The only way you can tune the "colour" of grey/white is with a device that measures colour such as colorfacts (as expensive to buy as your Z3!).

You can try and eyeball it to a reference described by colour temperature (how warm or cold it is) for 6500 standard, the reference films are usually telecined at. But getting hold of a 6500 kelvin reference system is easier said than done.

Has anyone done any testing with settings on the component video inputs??


I have an HD Cable receiver which I am connecting via component video..

What is the best way to calibrate the projector for this type of device?


Would it be a bad idea to just temporarily hook up a DVD Player and run the basic AVIA calibrations and use them with my HD receiver, or would that only be useful for that DVD player only?

hello,
This is my first post but I've been lurking for awhile. I've owned a Z2 and now a Z3. I'm very happy with the upgrade except.....

First off...
I'm using a Panny S97S w/ HDMI
projecting a 92" diag onto a Dalite High Contrast Screen
I've used the settings posted in this thread and I've calibrated contrast and brightness with Avia.
Contrast is at +10
Brightness at 0
Gamma at 0
all of the Panny settings are at zero
Firmware version 1.00

Anyway, in very black scenes or very bright scenes my image is very grainy. Very black scenes will actually show gray specs that flash in and out of the scene. On the other hand, very bright scenes seem to pulse brighter at times. In general, poor transfers look very bad (very grainy). LOTR fellowship of the ring first issue disk looks completely washed out in parts.

Could this be a problem with my contrast adjustment?
Noise?
or, I hate to say it, version 1.00?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ian

Ian you have PM

I have had a Z3 for a couple of days now (after my panny 100 blew up)
I get a good image from my tosh550 DVDplayer with component inputs. I also use a HTPC. The picture is OK with the VGA/RGB input. The graphics / desktop seem OK with the DVI output from my radeon 7500, but when watching DVD with power DVD, the picture is a bit jerky. Why would it be jerky with DVI but not RGB. I am a bit of a newbie to DVI /HDMI!!! Thanks

Re: color/tint uniformity...problem solved:)

Originally posted by Big Kahuna Daddy
A fellow a.v.s forum member "pm'ed" me a solution to the tint uniformity problem. He said simply go into the menu, go to advanced settings, go to iris. The idea is to "open" the iris, and this will TOTALLY solve the tint shift.
In cinema color the iris is factory set to -38. Adjusting the level to -21 will fix the tint. Even a level of -30 made a huge difference. You can then adjust the brightness and contrast to make up for the open iris black level decrease. :) :p :) :p

That's very interesting - and worth having a mess with ...

However you will not be able to lower your black level to the same degree with your iris open more.

Why? Because the iris determines the floor of light output, and brightness adjusts only to the floor of the iris.

This doesn't mean you will necessarily sacrifice contrast, just black level.

An interesting tweak though.

FWIW, I have the iris open to -21, but have the Z3 paired with a Carada High Contrast Gray screen (fairly dark gray). This combo provides very good black levels,contrast, "punch", and GREATLY reduced tint uniformity issues.

Are there any optics geniuses out there who could explain to us why the iris is affecting color uniformity?

Tom

My guess ....

Because if you limit the light output to a certain extent - the bulb can't illuminate the panel with enough intensity to hide imperfections?

Hi,

I have a 2HD (Z2) and I'd like to ask if much of the info in this thread can be applied to the Z2 as well?

Thank you,

bedo

Hey All -

I originally had this in the Z3 owners thread, but now that I saw this thread I figured it'd be more appropriate here. Let me know if you have any thoughts on this...

I've had my Z3 about a week now, and I'm starting to get frustrated with the focus. It looks great in many shots, but whenever the focus is on something not in a close-up, it looks out of focus to me. I've played with the focus extensively, and cannot seem to fix this.

A couple things to consider - #1, I am currrently projecting onto my wall (painted misty evening grey). #2, I don't think this was as noticable before I finished mounting it on the ceiling this weekend (could just be cause I've watched a lot more since then and didn't notice before). #3 before I had it ceiling mounted, the cables were running along the floor, now they are in the ceiling and closer (still over a foot away) to some electric wiring.

One other note - this is all based on watching DVDs using component video cables.

Obviously you can see my suspisions. Any thoughts on what it might be? Is it just that I need to hurry up and order a screen? By the way, I've played with the sharpness settings on the pj.

Thanks,
Jeff

Originally posted by affeking
Hey All -

I originally had this in the Z3 owners thread, but now that I saw this thread I figured it'd be more appropriate here. Let me know if you have any thoughts on this...

I've had my Z3 about a week now, and I'm starting to get frustrated with the focus. It looks great in many shots, but whenever the focus is on something not in a close-up, it looks out of focus to me. I've played with the focus extensively, and cannot seem to fix this.

One other note - this is all based on watching DVDs using component video cables.

Jeff

Jeff,
I don't have an answer for you, but I too just got a Z3 in the past week, which replaced a Z2 that I had for a year. The Z3 does look slightly fuzzy in comparison to the Z2. No amount of focus or sharpness adjustment makes it any better. However, I just finished watching the Oscars in HD and the picture was sharp as a tack. But other HD broadcasts as well as DVDs and SDTV broadcasts have all looked softer and slightly out of focus on my new Z3 compared to my year old Z2.

I have a Da-Lite Hi Power 92 X 52 pull down screen.

Tom

Originally posted by jefe noche
FWIW, I have the iris open to -21, but have the Z3 paired with a Carada High Contrast Gray screen (fairly dark gray). This combo provides very good black levels,contrast, "punch", and GREATLY reduced tint uniformity issues.

:p :p thank you" jefe"for this great tweek, it fixed the tint uniformity totally for me. :) I have had the Z3 for 5 days now and we just luv it. Iam a major critic and i really cant find anything to bitch about with this brilliant pj. just marvelous.:p

Originally posted by TCroly
Jeff,
I don't have an answer for you, but I too just got a Z3 in the past week, which replaced a Z2 that I had for a year. The Z3 does look slightly fuzzy in comparison to the Z2. No amount of focus or sharpness adjustment makes it any better. However, I just finished watching the Oscars in HD and the picture was sharp as a tack. But other HD broadcasts as well as DVDs and SDTV broadcasts have all looked softer and slightly out of focus on my new Z3 compared to my year old Z2.

I have a Da-Lite Hi Power 92 X 52 pull down screen.

Tom

Tom -

Just curious, what cables are you using for your different sources? I'm using component for DVDs (its a long 35' too...) and S-Video for my Directv (non-high def). The problem seems to appear on both of them, so I'm inclinded to assume that's not the issue, but I wonder if using HDMI (or shorter cables) would solve it...

I was thinking it might just be the fact that I'm blowing up the relatively low def DVD image so large, but even when I shrink it down to a little over 70" the fuziness looks bad. I wish I could sit mine next to someone else's Z3 and figure out if I have a legitimate problem I need to have it serviced for... By the way, I don't have HDTV to test with.

Thanks,
jeff

Originally posted by affeking
Tom -

Just curious, what cables are you using for your different sources? I'm using component for DVDs (its a long 35' too...) and S-Video for my Directv (non-high def). The problem seems to appear on both of them, so I'm inclined to assume that's not the issue, but I wonder if using HDMI (or shorter cables) would solve it...

I was thinking it might just be the fact that I'm blowing up the relatively low def DVD image so large, but even when I shrink it down to a little over 70" the fuzziness looks bad. I wish I could sit mine next to someone else's Z3 and figure out if I have a legitimate problem I need to have it serviced for... By the way, I don't have HDTV to test with.

Thanks,
jeff

Jeff,
I feel exactly as you. I would like to test my projector side by side with another to see if this problem is "just the way it is" or if there is something wrong with my particular projector. The fact that you describe the exact same thing, makes me less inclined to think it is something wrong with the projector. I notice this softness most on superimposed graphics, like the score of a ball game posted at the bottom of the picture. I was watching a basketball game in HD and it looked pretty good, but the score graphic looked soft and out of focus.

The cables might be the issue and I am going to get some new cables to do some testing. I am using inexpensive, 3 foot long, component cables to connect my HD cable box and my DVD player to the projector. The Tivo goes via S-video cable. But the Tivo PQ has always been soft compared to the cable box or DVD.

I was using a VGA breakout cable with a VGA to DVI adapter to connect the DVD player to the Z2. This was resulting in a pretty sharp picture, but for some reason the VGA input on the Z3 does not recognize the output from my DVD player the way the DVI input of the Z2 would.

I plan to get an up-converting DVD player that I will connect to the projector with HDMI, but I am waiting for the Panasonic S77 to be released in April.

Tom

Hi there,

My Z3 and Panasonic S97 arrived yesterday and I'm shocked at how amazing the picture quality is! When it comes to tweaking it I'm not even sure where to begin so I look forward to reading this thread in depth, I'm curious if I should be watching my DVD's in 720p or 1080i??

Also when I hook up my VCR (with the RCA cable) I'm getting a line through the image which starts at the bottom of the screen and slowly travels upwards, is there any way to fix this?

Thanks,

Crab, it is really a matter of preferrence and source material. Some may argue that the LCD panels are native 720p and therefore you should use 720p to avoid artifacts, vb, etc.. Others will argue that the 1080i is higher resolution and should be used instead. When it comes down to it......what looks good to you?

Your question prompted a question of my own. How does the upscaling feature of the Z3 work? The manual makes it sound like it only upscales from 480i to 480p. Does it also upscale 480p to 720p or will you need an upscaling player like th S97 to do this. When my player is set to output 480p the Z3 always displays 480p output. Is this right? If it's upscaling shouldn it not display 720p?

Originally posted by leitweight
I have a custom setting on the Z3 for brighter output which works pretty well.


It's great to hear that about the High Power Da-lite, as I just purchased one.

What is your custom setting?

thanks,

Originally posted by ianjenkins


Your question prompted a question of my own. How does the upscaling feature of the Z3 work? The manual makes it sound like it only upscales from 480i to 480p. Does it also upscale 480p to 720p or will you need an upscaling player like th S97 to do this. When my player is set to output 480p the Z3 always displays 480p output. Is this right? If it's upscaling shouldn it not display 720p?

It's weird the way that it's shown in the maneual as only having 480p. In actuality when you get to that point in your set up you just push the right arrow on the remote and you get the other two choices (720p & 1080i)

Originally posted by crab1664
Hi there,

My Z3 and Panasonic S97 arrived yesterday and I'm shocked at how amazing the picture quality is! When it comes to tweaking it I'm not even sure where to begin so I look forward to reading this thread in depth, I'm curious if I should be watching my DVD's in 720p or 1080i??

Also when I hook up my VCR (with the RCA cable) I'm getting a line through the image which starts at the bottom of the screen and slowly travels upwards, is there any way to fix this?

Thanks,

I use 720p so that there's no reformatting of the image. But actually, I do not see any difference between 720p or 1080i.

When I hook up my vcr (480i), I have similar problem/s unless I choose 480i or Auto. Now I'm not sure how the upscaling should work. On another subject, the vcr caused a hum to go thru my audio system which prompted me to disconnect it.

Originally posted by crab1664
It's great to hear that about the High Power Da-lite, as I just purchased one.

What is your custom setting?

thanks,

Crab,

It's just increased Iris and a brighter bulb mode, then a recalibration of Contrast, etc at these settings. I am way too busy right now to even check what my settings are, but when I have a chance I can post them.

bump

Got the PJ, so whats the first thing I need to do ? Buy a calibration DVD ?

Picture looks great , but I have no frame of reference to judge it against..

Sometimes ignorance is bliss

Go to the first page for settings by other owners. Then adjust to taste... and like you have said... "Sometimes ignorance is bliss". Most of all enjoy...

question..

I am watching on a screen painted behr silverscreen..

I think it is a bit "dim"

the contrast is incredible, but overall i like brighter pictures




maybe the screen is a little too dark gray ???


what do you guys think ? am I better off with white, or a few shades lighter gray ?

I'm trying to get my Z3 looking good with a 720p input over HDMI from a samsung 841 upconverting player. I'm been trying everything and searching this forum and still can't find anything to help. The picture just doesn't look good. To me it doesn't look as good as a 480p picture. So I must be doing something wrong.

Could someone tell me what user setting (color, iris, etc...) they have made on thier Z3 for this kind of input? I'm at my witts end with this.

Thanks for any help

rdefino, There are some Z3 settings in Page 1 of this thread. Also check the DVD Player thread for more setting info on 841.

Update on my dim question

It is totally not an issue anymore now that I am using the right equipment, and good cables....

cheers

rdefino,

I remember reading a review in Sound & Vision in January that discussed the soft image issue you may be observing in the 841s upscaled resolutions 720P or 1080i. I believe the magazine reviewer thought the 480P setting had the best image quality. Below is a link to the magizines article. It may give you some additional background about setting up your 841 for optimal performance.

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=728&page_number=1

can everyone post what screen they are using ? curious about colors

thanks

I got the S97 yesterday for my Z3 and the picture quality is an upgrade from the zenith progressive scan player my roommate owns, however, blacks are not up to par yet. I upgraded the players firmware to version 540 and this helped with macroblocking. I am projecting on a off white wall, and the surrounding walls are all the same color. The black bars are not even really black. Should I paint the projected wall or the surrounding walls a grey matte color? Any owners with this combo have any good tweak information?

I use silverscreen paint - Blacks are black to me

In fact, I was thinking of going a shade lighter paint. But after watching the incredibles last night, I really think it is fine as is. That movie looked sweet on the Z3 with home made screen with Silverscreen paint...

here are a couple pics

www.silroc.net/theater

All my walls in the viewing area are white, I can imagine this being my problem on why the black bars do not appear black and appear washed out. The room is completely dark but when the projector goes on there is light bouncing off all the walls. During bright scenes you can't even see the black bars they are washed out so much. Do you guys agree with me on this. I am thinking about painting each wall in the viewing room a navy blue color and doing a DIY screen using blackout cloth and painting it with Behr Silverscreen. Should this solve my problem?

Originally posted by ezecoli2001
I got the S97 yesterday for my Z3 and the picture quality is an upgrade from the zenith progressive scan player my roommate owns, however, blacks are not up to par yet. I upgraded the players firmware to version 540 and this helped with macroblocking. I am projecting on a off white wall, and the surrounding walls are all the same color. The black bars are not even really black. Should I paint the projected wall or the surrounding walls a grey matte color? Any owners with this combo have any good tweak information?

To improve blacks I had to adjust the brightness and contrast of the S97 during DVE calibration. Without it I cannot see BTB in the test pattern. You're screen could be not helping too and light colored walls. I'm using goo and from time to time some blacks are not totally black. This could also be a limitation of the pj itself.

It seems that the forum is not providing too much "tweaking" for the Z3....I am pretty sure there has to be plenty of expertise out there....

I just bought it and I am not an expert at all.

I found in the internet the following link (french forum) with useful information (apparently I can not post the link, so guess it ;-)

in homecinema-fr.com

forum viewtopic.php?t=29760878

For example:

(HDMI)

contraste : 0
luminosité : -5
rouge : +5
vert : 0
bleu : +1
netteté : 0
gamma : +3
mode lampe : a2
iris : -38
clair rouge : +10
clair vert : -1
clair bleu : -5
sombre rouge : 0
sombre vert : 0
sombre bleu : -5
gamma rouge : 0
gamme vert : 0
gamma bleu : 0
aggrandissement : 0

(YUV)

contraste : +1
luminosité : -5
rouge : +5
vert : 0
bleu : +1
netteté : +1
gamma : +5
mode lampe : a2
iris : -33
clair rouge : +10
clair vert : -1
clair bleu : -5
sombre rouge : 0
sombre vert : 0
sombre bleu : -5
gamma rouge : 0
gamme vert : 0
gamma bleu : 0
Couleur 0
Teinte 0
Renforcement contraste L2
Pic off (effet d'escalier)
Noir on

Thanks!!! I have been looking for component setups!!!

Using HDMI and a RADEON card in a HTPC, I've found that leaving the Z3 on Creative Cinema gives the best output.

I've tried some of the suggested setups here, but nothing seems to beat the default setting.

Also, some of the newer DVD players such as PowerDVD have image enhancements themselves which tend to make the images look better on the Z3.

where is the lamp "clock" located ? I estimate my bulb time, but I want a true figure

many thanks

Apparently you have to press "on/off" during more than 20 seconds (or even more) to show that information, but I did not try it yet.

That's right. Press and hold the power button until the lamp hours info displays. I've only tried it on the remote's power button.

Originally posted by ROne
No, it's not dynamic.

You can adjust your own aperture but it's fixed and not adaptive.
Can someone clear up the confusion on this? Because the spec sheet on Sanyo's website says:
"The motorized lens iris adjusts automatically according to ambient light conditions in 63 increments from 100% down to 60%."

The spec sheet at VisualApex says:
"With its perfectly coordinated motorized iris and automatic lamp control, the PLV-Z3 ensures that brightness is adjusted to match the current image content."

It also says (under the section entitled "Optimum depth at all times thanks to automatic iris function"):
"The automatically adjusting iris diaphragm - an important component of the Sanyo TOPAZreal technology - ensures that the contrast and depth of projected images is increased at those crucial moments."

All of that seems to indicate that the iris IS dynamic and not just a fixed setting. One early review I read said that the review sample did not have that feature but that later models would. So... anyone have a definitive answer? Not that it really matters - my Z3 arrives today (though sadly my screen doesn't get here until next week so I have to hang a white sheet in the meantime). I'm just curious why people are saying it isn't dynamic when the literature indicates that it is.

Ah... from cine4home (translated):
"The adaptive iris screen of the Sanyo PLV-Z3 exclusively works in the dynamic mode. This mode is not recommended without appropriate tuning due to its color and brightness distribution despite its high contrast."

thanks for the bulb info

the numbers flash so quick, i had to do it a few times
here is the info - doesnt seem to add up

Projector Lamp - 59

Normal - 55
ECO - 3
Total - 86

I assume 59 is the actual lamp time ? , and 86 is what ? total time powered on ?

I got my Z3 in today and was surprised to find that they also delivered my Da-Lite 92" HCMW screen! Not bad considering I ordered last Friday. Took me all of 20 minutes to set up the projector and mount the screen.

I did some initial tweaking with Avia and DVE and ran through some demo material. After about my 5th hour of bliss (during which I got to watch the hi-def feed of Lost and Alias), I decided to try Rone's 100 hour settings out of curiosity. All I can say is THANKS for posting those! I plugged your settings in, and I swear the Z3 looks almost as deep and rich as my ISF calibrated RPTV (which sits behind the screen). I'll be snapping some pics of the room (with some screen shots) later in the week.

Originally posted by Jeremy Anderson
Can someone clear up the confusion on this? Because the spec sheet on Sanyo's website says:
"The motorized lens iris adjusts automatically according to ambient light conditions in 63 increments from 100% down to 60%."

The spec sheet at VisualApex says:
"With its perfectly coordinated motorized iris and automatic lamp control, the PLV-Z3 ensures that brightness is adjusted to match the current image content."

It also says (under the section entitled "Optimum depth at all times thanks to automatic iris function"):
"The automatically adjusting iris diaphragm - an important component of the Sanyo TOPAZreal technology - ensures that the contrast and depth of projected images is increased at those crucial moments."

All of that seems to indicate that the iris IS dynamic and not just a fixed setting. One early review I read said that the review sample did not have that feature but that later models would. So... anyone have a definitive answer? Not that it really matters - my Z3 arrives today (though sadly my screen doesn't get here until next week so I have to hang a white sheet in the meantime). I'm just curious why people are saying it isn't dynamic when the literature indicates that it is.

The iris definately does not move unless you touch it!

Just as well really because it's quite noisy when opening and closing.

Their marketing blurb is wrong - maybe at some stage they were intending on implementing this.

You go into the menu select your iris setting (-53 - the point at which the black level goes no lower) out of 63 possible steps and it doesn't move from that number.

The bulb can be put into an adaptive mode however, but I don't quite understand how it works - one thing for sure the fan get's progressively noiser in this mode. (It adds between 100,200:1 on the contrast ratio respectively between the two adaptive lamp modes)

I tried dynamic mode, which is what cine4home was saying allows the iris to dynamically change. Tried putting some test signals on to toggle between bright and dark patterns quickly, and I never heard the iris move.

Theater black mode on the bulb works really well for me, so I'm not messing with the auto modes for the bulb. However, what about stuff like automatic black stretch and contrast enhancement? Has anyone seen any significant use for those features? Black stretch only seems to change the picture when I'm sending standard def stuff from my digital cable, and I couldn't tell if contrast enhancement had any effect at all.

I learned something that I hope may help others. I have been running my Z3 with a Denon 1815 DVD Changer with a farudjia (sp?) de-interlacer. When I was running with progressive scanning on a noticed some blurring on the top of the screen. It looked like the screen was bending. I turned off the progressive scanning and bam! The image was perfect. I then turned on progressive on the Z3 and let it handle that for me. Too bad I sprung for this DVD player with this "magical chip" and end up turning off the function I bought it for.

But man that picture kicks hiney!!!! It's perfect now.

what do you mean you turned on "progressive on the Z3". I have a z3 and can't find that setting.

The option only comes up on the menu if you're feeding the Z3 an interlaced signal. For instance, it comes up for me on 1080i and 480i material. If you're already feeding it 480p or 720p, the option is grayed out.

Having settled on my 100hr settings (save for a bit of red adjustment) - one of the other threads has prompted me to get back involved again.

The Z3 has two HDMI settings, L1 and L2.

L1 clips below 16, no matter how you increase the brightness you can't see any RGB/VMR data below this point. The white is much brighter but doesn't clip.

L2 Allows me to see below 16 (BTB) and WTW, yet appears to be dimmer.

Now assuming 16 is the floor of Black video - why would I need to be worried about using L1? It's only clipping below black (and I know there is a raging debate about this) but I would imagine 90% of useful picture data starts there - and I get much better contrast to boot.

If I didn't use this option - what would be it's actual use on the projector itself?

According to the way I have read the thread on the HTPC forum about source matching HTPCs video and pc levels, I am not convinced what I am doing is correct. At the moment L1 definately produces the better perceived contrast but may very well be harming the greyscale - although I've yet to be clear on this.

Any comments?

Cine4Home now has results from calibration with a red filter. They got a post-calibration contrast ratio of 1,460:1!

To read, plug this URL into your favorite German-to-English translator:
http://www.cine4home.de/Tuning/Z3/Z3Tuning.htm

I have really been enjoying my Z3, I am so glad I ordered it. I use it about 50/50 for computer use and for DVD/TV watching. I calibrated everything with Avia and got a slight improvement over the factory settings, which were surprizingly good in my case.

The only issue I have not really been able to resolve is a slight blurryness in areas of the screen. It is hard to see with moving pictures, but when browsing a website with lots of text the effect is easy to see. It looks like some of the words are slightly out of focus. If I had to describe it, I would say it looks like the text is slightly smudged, but only barely so.

Any ideas what to experiment with to correct that? Thanks!

Hey Will.

If you are running over HDMI make sure you have overscan set to 0. I had the same problem. If you are shifting the lense, it can make the corners go out of focus.

Thx,
Vidkidd

What is the purpose of overscanning? I am using component cables. Does it just bring the picture closer to the edge? Also, are you supposed to unplug your projector when not in use? I have read that some people do that.

Thanks

Hello everyone,

I'm a new owner of the Sanyo PLV-Z3 and pretty excited to see a forum dedicated to getting the most out of this excellent projector.

A little background - Ceiling mounted Sanyo PLV-Z3, D.H. Labs SILVER SONIC VX-1-3 component cables, Denon DVD 1600, 100 inch diagonal Stewart Firehawk fixed tensioned screen, light controlled room, flat black ceiling and front wall, dark purple side and back walls, light carpet.

Now to figure out how to tweak this bad boy :). I have Digital Video Essentials and figured that I would start there.

Any recommendations on a solid foundation in which to build on in regards to initial iris settings, image presets such as VIDEO, NATURAL, NORMAL, CREATIVE CINEMA, etc., High, Mid, Low 1, etc., Lamp modes such as Theater Black, any advanced menu fuctions, etc. I figured a solid foundations in which to apply Digital Video Essentials would be a great help. I'll start at the beginning of the thread and see if anyone has done this already.

Thank you,

Check ROne's 100th hour update:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=468801&perpage=20&pagenumber=3

/David

I'm still roughly with those 100hr updates. Will do a new update very shortly - with some things about VB and that IRIS tweak mentioned earlier as I've done my own experiments with this.

Even starting with creative cinema - it's imperative you calibrate your own brightness and contrast, mine has changed yet again with the move to windows MC.

After using the 100 hour foundation:

How does this sound in regards to a step by step process? I am using a progressive DVD player with component out. No computers or HDMI/DVI.

1. Choose Creative Cinema as a starting reference point.
2. Choose Theater Black for light output.
3. Choose Low1 (this looks reddish to me, where Mid level looks grey?).
4. Adjust Iris level down from 0 until the screen no longer becomes more black.
5. Utilize DVE to adjust Brightness. BTB - side bars disappear into the black background.
6. Utilize DVE to adjust Contrast (could someone please explain what this looks like on DVE. In the video it shows what "blooming" looks like and it is very aparent on the video, but when I adjust the setting myself I don't notice a change in the size of the square. It just becomes more white looking. If the idea is to make it white looking, how does one know what is white and what is too white?).
7. Utilize DVE to adjust Color. Blue is right on with slight changes in Color and Tint from what I can tell, but Red and Green are a bit off and I can't seem to fix it via Advanced settings or any RGB changes for that matter. Assuming I knew how to use them correctly.
8. Utilize DVE to adjust Sharpness. Turned down to eliminate "extra information".

Questions after the fact:

Watching the greyscale ramp pattern on DVE, I noticed that as I turn the contrast up, a pinkish hue begins to emerge from the light side of the grey scale (about 2-3 squares) and moves towards the darker side of the spectrum as contrast increases?

Low 1 looks reddish where Mid looks grey?

DVE states that if the contrast is turned up to high on CRT projectors there is a risk of ruining your tube. Is this a problem with LCD projectors such as the Sanyo? Are there any adjustments on the projector where a person would not want to Max it out because of the fear of breaking something?

Thank you,

What you're looking for on DVE is CLIPPING. In other words, you want white to remain white without the upper IRE levels starting to look the same. The segments of DVE's grayscale pattern that has dots above and below represents 0 and 100 IRE. DVE includes information ABOVE 100 IRE so that you can observe where 100 IRE and the step above it appear to be the same color. You want to raise it until they look identical, then back it down until you can see a difference between 100 IRE and the step above it. Then, you need to recheck brightness.

I don't have any calibration gear, but my RPTV has been ISF calibrated for 6500k. Using my matrix switcher, I put up the grayscale pattern on both and then tweaked the Z3's settings until they looked as identical as possible. I then double-checked it with Avia's window patterns. Doing this got me some nice shadow detail compared to out-of-the-box settings or Rone's settings (though plugging his in looked nice). My preferred settings on my HCMW screen (after 100 hours of use):

Start with Creative Cinema
Contrast=+11
Brightness=-2
Color=+1
Tint=+1
Color temp=User (started with Low 1 and tweaked)
Red=+3
Green=+2
Blue=-2
Sharp=-2
Gamma=0
Lamp mode=Theater Black
Iris=-21 (any lower causes color inconsistency on sides)
Gain R=-1
Gain G=0
Gain B=0
Offset R=0
Offset G=+6
Offset B=0
Gamma R, G, B=0
Auto Black Stretch On (mostly helps with standard def TV on mine)
Contrast Enhancement=Off
Transient Improvement=Off

Next month, I'm going to purchase the SMART system and play with some color correcting filters to see if I can get close to Cine4Home's 1,460:1 tweaked contrast ratio. Still, I'm very happy with it for now.

Originally posted by eharding
After using the 100 hour foundation:


How do I even see lamp hours on my Z3? On my old AE100 it was easy - it was just right there in the menu. Do I have to go into the service menu on Z3 to see it?

/David

Originally posted by Jeremy Anderson
What you're looking for on DVE is CLIPPING. In other words, you want white to remain white without the upper IRE levels starting to look the same. The segments of DVE's grayscale pattern that has dots above and below represents 0 and 100 IRE. DVE includes information ABOVE 100 IRE so that you can observe where 100 IRE and the step above it appear to be the same color. You want to raise it until they look identical, then back it down until you can see a difference between 100 IRE and the step above it. Then, you need to recheck brightness.

I don't have any calibration gear, but my RPTV has been ISF calibrated for 6500k. Using my matrix switcher, I put up the grayscale pattern on both and then tweaked the Z3's settings until they looked as identical as possible. I then double-checked it with Avia's window patterns. Doing this got me some nice shadow detail compared to out-of-the-box settings or Rone's settings (though plugging his in looked nice). My preferred settings on my HCMW screen (after 100 hours of use):


Next month, I'm going to purchase the SMART system and play with some color correcting filters to see if I can get close to Cine4Home's 1,460:1 tweaked contrast ratio. Still, I'm very happy with it for now.

I did a similar thing myself - have a broadcast 6500 crt monitor which allowed to run along side it and get grescale as close as possible.

I have smart and can only get about 1150:1 with my current settings, have had a play with some filters - and I think an orange/yellow would be best as the blue influence is the pain at below 10ire and gives the "black" a blue cast.

Good stuff though. What connection are you on?

I'm using component, through a 4x2 matrix switcher, for both my DVD and high-def digital cable (and I'm adding an X-Box soon). I may go HDMI later with an upconverting player, but for now my Panny RP-56 (Faroudja chipset) is getting some very nice detail via component.

Cine4Home says they're using a red filter leaning toward orange for their tweaking. I'll probably start off with a CC25R filter (so I don't lose too much light output) once I get SMART. The green can be boosted to compensate, so I should be able to tame the blue at the low IRE levels fairly well.

Originally posted by Jeremy Anderson
Cine4Home says they're using a red filter leaning toward orange for their tweaking. I'll probably start off with a CC25R filter (so I don't lose too much light output) once I get SMART. The green can be boosted to compensate, so I should be able to tame the blue at the low IRE levels fairly well.

Hi Jeremy

Thanks for posting your settings. I'm very interested in the use of a filter with the Z3. Please keep posted regarding your progress

I ordered a 3dB line level attenuator today to use on the Cr lead of the component cable. I'm hoping this will bring the red push of the color decoding down, since the Z3 offers no way to change the decoder settings (at least in the user menu). Does anyone even know how to get into the service menu yet?

Hey all...I know I have done this before, but I have tried once again to view my Lamp Counter and for the life of me, I can not get it to display. I am pretty sure all you have to do is hold down the Power Button for about 30 seconds and that should do it no?

Thanks.

I can't seem to get the lamp hours either. Is it the power button on the remote or on the machine?

/David

I'm most certain it's on the machine.

You can bring the lamp counter up with either the power button on the unit or the remote.

Ok, I got it. One thing everyone keeps forgetting to tell people is; Make sure you have the "Power Off Confirmation" ON in the Setup Menu. You have to first Power the PJ on, then Hold the Power button down for 30 seconds. If you have the Power Off Confirmation OFF (As I did), it will immediately turn off the projector. Hope this helps.

I got a 3dB line level attenuator to see if I could reduce the red push on my Z3. I was getting about a 10-15% push in red according to Avia. I placed the attenuator on the Cr lead going into the projector, at which point I was getting around -15% on the color decoder check. I tried raising the color just a bit (since green is about -10% as well), but the attenuator was just too much. Reds began to look too orange as they approached lower IREs. However, yellows were much improved with the attenuator in place so I think there's still room to tweak here.

I'll order a 1dB attenuator and see how I fare with that. If the response is fairly linear, I think it will do the trick. Then I'll start fooling around with color correcting filters. With a CC20R filter in place, it might help to cut some red from the decoder, so I'm keeping the 3dB attenuator just in case.

I lucked out and found a place here locally that has a used 3"x3" CC20R filter for $7, so I'm going to try to mount it to my Z3 tonight and eyeball the grayscale using my ISF'd RPTV for comparison. I'll report back after some tweaking, though I don't have the equipment to measure grayscale or contrast ratio yet.

Okay, I did some eyeball grayscale matching to my RPTV with the Kodak CC20R filter in place over the lens of the Z3. So far, I'm seeing a much nicer black (presumably because the blue of the lower IRE's is being filtered out some) and by adjusting the gain of the green panel I was able to get a much purer-looking white out of it. My settings are massively different and I still have about a 10% red push, but the grayscale looks SO nice now. With the brighter whites and darker blacks, I'm getting much better contrast with the CC20R and tweaked settings. A brief run through on some hi-def material shows greater depth than before, sometimes looking as deep in the blacks as my RPTV.

I tried the 3dB line attenuator on the Cr lead again, but it still cuts too much red from the color decoder. I'm going to order a 1dB filter to see if that can bring red into line. The good news is that having the CC20R filter in place with tweaked settings brought my green in line with my blue on the decoder test. Amazingly, I did not have to open the iris to get the same perceived brightness/black from the Z3 and I'm still in theater black bulb mode (which means the filter didn't cut overall light output much).

If it looks this good by eyeballing it, I will definitely invest in the Smart III system soon.

Jeremy,

This sounds good. I have SMART III - and I would like to knock out that blue at the bottom.

How did you mount the filter? Do you have any specifics of the filter you purchased (brand etc?).

I don't get the red-push on HDMI but I can still see some benefits here.

Good work.

Tyrone.

Great work Jeremy, it might be helpfrul if you could post your settings with the CC20R filter

Thanks

I got a Kodak 3"x3" CC20R gel filter, since it was what a local photo supply place had for $7 used. I know this will sound cheesy, but the 3"x3" filter fits just perfectly over the lens if you secure it to the case with a piece of scotch tape at the top and bottom of the filter. I used removable tape in case I figure out a better looking way to mount it later, but this way allows the front cover to close and still gives me access to the focus and zoom on the lens. I'll put my post-filter settings up tonight when I get home from work.

As for the red push, it really isn't that noticeable when watching a movie; it just shows up on Avia's color decoder test. It makes me wonder if Sanyo's AUCC color control is doing automatic fleshtone adjustment, since skin tones are normally where you notice red push the most. Compared to my RPTV (which has no push of any color because it has full decoder controls), you can't really see a massive difference in skin tones. The attenuator is just something I'm toying with to see what happens.

Brill.

I will see if I can get one of those, and maybe an orange one as well.

I am running an experiment with VB at the moment, testing whether the unit is worse with it unplugged or left in standby.

I've got a suspicion that its much better left plugged up in standby - which would explain why on some days VB is non-existent.

Hope to report soon.

I haven't seen any VB on mine but I leave it on standby. In fact, the only time I've done a hard power down was to plug it to a UPS (which is a good thing, because our lines got surged by lightning and we lost power about 20 minutes after I hooked it up).

Hello,

I fired up my Z3 today and noticed a blue blob that now shows up in dark portions on my movies, especially black portions of the picture. It is approx. the size of my fist in diameter. Any ideas on what it could be and possibly how I could fix it?

Thank you,

It is dust without a doubt. Read about how to remove it in the manual.

/David

Okay, following are my new settings using the CC20R filter. I'm getting much nicer black levels with the filter on (lower in perceived level than a 10IRE window on my RPTV), notice less chromatic aberration with the iris closed a bit more than before, and it's very much worth the small expense. However, keep in mind that I had an ISF-calibrated RPTV to compare it to while adjusting, so it might be more difficult to use a filter if you have no reference by which to make your adjustments. Also keep in mind that these settings will likely change once I get my Smart III system.

Contrast=+6
Brightness=-5
Color=+3
Tint=+1
Color temp=User (started with Mid and tweaked)
Red=+2
Green=+3
Blue=+1
Sharp=-2
Gamma=+1
Lamp mode=Theater Black
Iris=-32
Gain R=0
Gain G=+10
Gain B=+6
Offset R=+2
Offset G=+6
Offset B=+2
Gamma R, G, B=0
Auto Black Stretch On
Contrast Enhancement=Off
Transient Improvement=Off

I'm getting a 1dB line level attenuator to put on the Cr cable tomorrow, which should help with the 10% red push I have. I'll report back once I've tried it. In the meantime, I'm going to watch Alone In The Dark and Assault On Precinct 13. ;)

Thanks for posting your settings. I have ordered my filter and will be playing with it this weekend. I will post my settings too. I don't have Smart III but I do have a wife who is an artist with a degree in, get this, Color Theory. You think you guys are anal about color. She requires that the colors are accurate per her opinion. The colors my not be analytically accurate but they will look realistic and pleasing to the eye. Really that's all that matters anyway right?

Please agree with me :)

Well, getting the color right isn't the big issue... It's getting the GRAYSCALE right that forms the basis for the rest of the picture. My settings give me an image pretty comparable to my 6500k calibrated RPTV, so I'm happy with it. But I'm still anal enough that I'll order Smart III in the near future just to make sure.

But if it will make you feel better (and I'm always one to help a brotha' out), then yes... that's all that matters.

I got my 1dB line level attenuator in, so I did some intensive tweaking. With the attenuator on the Cr lead of the component video, red push was reduced from +10% to dead on perfect. So now on Avia's color decoder test, I have blue and red at 0 and green at around -5%. Can't ask for much better than that and it looks great. so I'm leaving the attenuator on.

I did some more careful calibration, however, and have some slightly different settings. The settings that have changed from my above post are:
Contrast=+7
Brightness=-3
Gamma=-3

I started looking at Avia's gamma test pattern, and saw that my previous settings gave me a gamma of under 2.0 according to the Avia chart. I found that I could hit 2.2 on the chart by backing gamma down to -2. I then had to readjust contrast and brightness a bit, check the gamma chart again, etc. before I settled on the new settings The end result looks far more three-dimensional and I'm seeing slightly better shadow detail, as well as overall brightness of the picture. I tossed in The Incredibles after all my tweaking, and I honestly don't think I can get the picture to look any better than it does right now.

It will be interesting when you get your SMART as that will give you a gamma reading.

I think I was coming in at about 2.1, which is about right in my opinion.

Does anyone else have to adjust the manual lens shift a couple of times a week ?

For some reason, every few days, my picture is either too left, too right, up, or down....... It's not a big problem, just wondering if this is common.

Hey Silroc,

Do you have it mounted on the ceiling? I had been noticing this as well over the past few weeks and wasn't sure why? however today I took it down from the ceiling to clean the filters and as I wasn't hooking it up again my girlfriend was walking in the room over the projector and the unit was bouncing all over the place, I'm not sure that this is the cause but I do suffer the same problem.

I have a question for you, now that I've hooked my projector back up I can't seem to get the bottom line straight? the top and sides are perfect but the bottom is way off? the projector is level side to side so I can't figure it out?

any idea?

Hey Silroc,

Do you have it mounted on the ceiling? I had been noticing this as well over the past few weeks and wasn't sure why? however today I took it down from the ceiling to clean the filters and as I was hooking it up again my girlfriend was walking in the room over the projector and the unit was bouncing all over the place, I'm not sure that this is the cause but I do suffer the same problem.

I have a question for you, now that I've hooked my projector back up I can't seem to get the bottom line straight? the top and sides are perfect but the bottom is way off? the projector is level side to side so I can't figure it out?

any idea?

Originally posted by crab1664
Hey Silroc,

Do you have it mounted on the ceiling? I had been noticing this as well over the past few weeks and wasn't sure why? however today I took it down from the ceiling to clean the filters and as I was hooking it up again my girlfriend was walking in the room over the projector and the unit was bouncing all over the place, I'm not sure that this is the cause but I do suffer the same problem.

I have a question for you, now that I've hooked my projector back up I can't seem to get the bottom line straight? the top and sides are perfect but the bottom is way off? the projector is level side to side so I can't figure it out?

any idea?

Crab
I am pretty much a newbie - So I dont want to give you any bad advice.

I have it mounted to the back wall in the basement. I suspected wall shaking also as the possible problem, but this is a major load bearing wall, and I assumed it was more fortified from vibration. But since you mention it, I guess thats what it could be.




Regarding your leveling issue - This is my guess as a newbie !!!

Personally I would first start with a completely un modified image (no keystone, no lens shift) and make adjustments to the projector mount to get a perfectly level image - then you I'd move forward with lens shift adjustments and finally keystone if needed to fine tune.

Originally posted by silroc
Does anyone else have to adjust the manual lens shift a couple of times a week ?

For some reason, every few days, my picture is either too left, too right, up, or down....... It's not a big problem, just wondering if this is common.

I do noticed it too and I usually have to adjust it up or down.

Yes, I too have to adjust my manual lens shift usually two or three times a week! It is getting extrememly annoying now, as I have to keep grabbing a chair or step stool to reach the ceiling to adjust.

I took some quick snaps of The Incredibles and one from Finding Nemo with the CC20R filter and red push attenuator on. Check my gallery if you're interested.

As to having to adjust the lens shift slightly from time to time, I was having to at first. But then I learned to position it, then back the dial up a little so it sits in that slack area where nothing moves. I've had a lot less of a problem this way. But then, mine is on a shelf over my head, so I can reach up from my seating position and fix it. :)

Where could I buy an attenuator to help with the red push on my Sanyo Z3?

Also, is the Smart III system recommended to help calibrate my projector?

Any help is appreciated.

If you're using component video, you simply get a RCA style line level attenuator (typically used for audio) and put it on the Cr lead of the component cable. I got both a 1dB and 3dB attenuator from PartsExpress.com, because I wasn't sure how much I would need. With the 3dB attenuator, it cut red too much. With the 1dB attenuator, it's just right. It's a very cheap fix if you have too much red in the decoder and does not affect grayscale.

Originally posted by Jeremy Anderson
What you're looking for on DVE is CLIPPING. In other words, you want white to remain white without the upper IRE levels starting to look the same. The segments of DVE's grayscale pattern that has dots above and below represents 0 and 100 IRE. DVE includes information ABOVE 100 IRE so that you can observe where 100 IRE and the step above it appear to be the same color. You want to raise it until they look identical, then back it down until you can see a difference between 100 IRE and the step above it. Then, you need to recheck brightness.

Hi Guys,

I need a bit of help with using DVE as well for adjusting brightness and contrast. The rest is all fine because I bought the projector from cine4home guys and they did all the other stuff (colour, tint bla bla) for me.

According to my understanding the PLUGE pattern test are for the CRT displays as "blooming" is a phenomenon only relevant for the CRT world. For the LCD projectors they recommend to use the "REVERSE GRAY RAMP" which is title 12 chapter 14 and has dots above and below that. The way the ask to set is that get the contrast in the middle (which is 0 for Z3) and move the brightness down till the blackest box (extreme left on the lower bar and extreme right on the upper bar) disappears and than back off a little bit till it reappears. Once you set the brightness right increase the contrast till the whitest box disappears and than back off a little. This exercise is to be repeated between brightness and contrast till the both the blackest and the whitest boxes are BOTH barely visible. I did that and ended up with a brightness of -6 and contrast of +18. BTW I was using low lamp mode with these settings.

Now the problem is that with these settings some movies i.e. topgun looked pretty good but on the other hand "Man on fire" looked like crap (a part of Denzel Washington's face would literally disappear in darker scenes). Ok I backed off a little bit during that movie and contacted cine4home the next day. They said that these things are normal as most of the movies are not mastered very well and therefore you can't have a setting which would work for every movie.

Now my questions are:

1. Am I setting the brightness/contrast in the right way?

2. If the statement from cine4home is true how do you guys keep one setting for all moves and be happy with it?

3. What could be a couple of movies with good mastering that can be used as reference once you have done the calibration?

Thanks in advance for any help extended as I am really in need of it.

Sincerely,
-dollarman

It sounds like you're setting brightness/contrast correctly. If you're losing shadow detail, you might want to try raising gamma slightly.

That being said, Man On Fire has a very stylized look and is meant to look very overexposed. It isn't so much that it was poorly mastered to DVD, as it looks very much like the theatrical presentation (meaning the transfer is pretty decent). Man On Fire used a process called skip bleaching to bring out the film grain and make it look gritty. Skip bleaching is just that - they skip the step during the film developing where they bleach off a layer of silver emulsion. This same effect was used on Spielberg's Minority Report and Saving Private Ryan, as well as many others.

The whole point of calibration is to reproduce the DVD on-screen as faithfully as possible. In other words, once you find a calibrated setting, you shouldn't need to change it. If a film looks strange with your calibrated settings, then it was supposed to (barring other variables such as edge enhancement or compression artifacts).

Originally posted by Jeremy Anderson
It sounds like you're setting brightness/contrast correctly. If you're losing shadow detail, you might want to try raising gamma slightly.

First of all thanks for helping me on this one. About changing/raising the gamma setting is it only by eye or is their more scientific/meausred way of doing. I could not find anything in my DVE disk for gamma correction. If its done by eye what is exactly I am looking for.

I also have another problem which I was wondering could be fixed with a tweak. In some 16:9 format movies (The village, Ladykillers)the picture does not fit the screen perfectly. When the height is perfect the width is about 1-1.5 inches out of the viewing area. Has anyone else encountered such a problem and is their a way to fix it.

Regarding one of my previous questions are there really no DVDs which you could use as a viewing reference.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sincerely,
-dollarman

DVE doesn't have any kind of gamma reference, and the only real way to properly adjust gamma is with a meter (like the SMART III system). Avia, however, has a gamma pattern that works fairly well for getting it close by eye.

In very simple terms, gamma is how quickly the white level goes up in relation to the supplied signal. If the IRE levels above black (0 IRE) look too dark, you lose shadow detail. Raising the gamma level alters the curve by which each IRE level goes up in contrast. In other words, it isn't linear; 10 IRE does not equal 10% gray. Without Avia or a meter, all you can do is just adjust the gamma setting and see if it brings out the shadow details better without washing out the picture.

As for The Ladykillers, The Village, etc. this is because those movies are 1.78:1 instead of 1.85:1. Put simply, the black bars to the side are encoded on the DVD to keep the picture at the proper aspect ratio. The reason most people don't notice this is that most people have a certain amount of overscan (usually around 5%) that conceals the black bars on the side. So if you really want to get rid of the bars on the side, just increase overscan. You'll cut off a bit of the top and bottom of the picture, but not so much that you'll miss anything.

There are many DVD's that people consider visual references, but it's pretty subjective. The only two that immediately come to mind for me are The Fifth Element: Superbit (which is good for checking fleshtone delineation and detail) and Charlotte Gray (which just has a damn nice transfer). Another one that I like that looks so good it seems hi-def is the haunted submarine movie BELOW, which is also very good for assessing shadow details.

Originally posted by crab1664
Hey Silroc,

Do you have it mounted on the ceiling? I had been noticing this as well over the past few weeks and wasn't sure why? however today I took it down from the ceiling to clean the filters and as I was hooking it up again my girlfriend was walking in the room over the projector and the unit was bouncing all over the place, I'm not sure that this is the cause but I do suffer the same problem.

I have a question for you, now that I've hooked my projector back up I can't seem to get the bottom line straight? the top and sides are perfect but the bottom is way off? the projector is level side to side so I can't figure it out?

any idea?

I suspect it's not aimed exactly perpendicular to the screen on both planes, horizonal and vertical. The two projectors I have owned can be aimed so that the screen has perfectly parallel sides and top/bottom by yawing the projector left and right and pivoting it up and down until the sides are dead parallel.

Ricketty

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your help again. I have ended up ordering AVIA as every now and than I need to do something which DVE does not do or it does but not as user friendly as AVIA. One question. Is AVIA any better than DVE in setting contrast/brightness as well? I find this DVE pattern to be a little bit confusing and would prefer black/white stripes on the side the way it is for setting CRT displays in DVE.

I am also thinking about Rone's 100 hour setting a try and see how it works for me.

Sincerely,
-dollarman

Avia's easier to set contrast and brightness with, in my opinion... but that pattern on DVE is helpful if you start toying with the grayscale. That's actually how I tweaked my grayscale after putting the CC20R filter in place - I put that DVE pattern up on both my RPTV and Z3 simultaneously and compared the two (since my RPTV is ISF calibrated to 6500k). Either way, it's good to have both discs if you're a serious tweaker.

I just bought a pioneer dv-575 to go with my sanyo plv-z3 .. I will be using progressive scan through the component output .. Is there anyone that can recommend settings for me? Preferably someone that has a pioneer dv-575 ..

Thanks Ricketty!

Hi!
I hope someone can help me. I have a problem with my Sanyo z3.
When i tried to turn it on it started to turn red in the warning indicator.
I tried to disconnect the AC power cord and then reconnect it, and turn the projektor on again, but the same thing happened.
The ventilation start a little and thenit goes out and the warning lamp lights red.

Hi there,

Welcome to the forum. It looks like that the fan is not working correctly in your unit which is causing that warning light to come on. Better send the unit back to Sanyo for a check up as trying to fix it yourself would probably void your warranty.

BTW for similar questions/issues the PLV-Z3 thread is more appropriate as this thread is mainly for Z3 tweaking.


Sincerely,
-dollarman

Hi Dollarman.

Thanks for the respons.
I think I will send it back to Sanyo :o(

But its just a little wierd because ive only had the projektor in 2 days.

Jacob.

Originally posted by tompa39
I just bought a pioneer dv-575 to go with my sanyo plv-z3 .. I will be using progressive scan through the component output .. Is there anyone that can recommend settings for me? Preferably someone that has a pioneer dv-575 ..

Noone that can give me any advice? I have tried tweaking the picture abit, but i´m not at all satisfied .. I will buy a DVE dvd in the near future to make the best of it, but in the meanwhile I really could use some pointer .. ;) Thx in advance

For the tweakers:
I'm currently using a CC20R filter on my Z3. But I started looking around and found this filter:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=102574&is=REG

My theory is that the bulb in the Z3 is mercury vapor/metal halide, so that mercury vapor filter for daylight film ought to do a better job of restoring the color balance of whites (i.e. the weakness of red in the bulb) than a stock color correcting filter. I ordered a 4"x4" variant of this from another place that had it in stock, so I should be toying with this by the weekend. I'll post my conclusions on how this works compared to the CC20R filter. I still haven't ordered SMART III (due to unavoidable car repairs), but I ought to get a pretty good result by comparing grayscale to my ISF'd RPTV.

Most people are using either red color correcting filters or daylight filters for fluorescent (DAY-FL), but I haven't seen anyone try a daylight filter specifically for mercury vapor. At the very least, it'll be an interesting experiment.

I have had my eye on one of those filters for a few weeks now. I really like what the CC20R has been doing for me. I ended up using settings similar to your's but backed off on the green to give me a better black.

Have you gived noticed any problems watching The Phantom Menace? I watched it last night and thought the digital image looked nasty. I then watched LOTR and even Dude, Where's my Car and thought the image was perfect (smooth, vivid and crisp).

Menace just looked so gritty. :(

This is the only movie that I have seen this happen with.

Funny you should mention that about the greens. I've since TOTALLY changed my settings, based on Steve Smallcombe's brief comments in Secrets' review. I'm now starting with POWERFUL mode (but with lamp on theater black) instead of Creative Cinema and I'm getting WAY better visible contrast (though it took a little longer to get the grayscale comparable to my RPTV). I'll post my new settings tonight when I get home, because I think you'll like the results.

The Phantom Menace was not a digital transfer; it was scanned from film. It's very grainy and has some visible ringing around contrasting areas (i.e. heads against sky, etc.) that makes it look horrible no matter what you view it on. In other words, your Z3 is properly reproducing the crappy picture on that disc.

RINGING!!! TONS OF RINGING!! I am so glad you said that about 'Menace. I was watching it last night thinking one of the kids was messing around with my settings or something (that better not EVER happen).

Thanks for setting me straight on the digital thing too.

I look forward to your settings being "published". Thanks !

Jeremy and johnny

If you dont mind me asking, how many hours do you both have on your bulbs?

Have you noticed any dimming?

Thanks a lot

I have about 60 hours. No dimming to be had.

I have 354 hours as of last night with no significant dimming yet. Between my movie habit, hi-def digital cable and the X-Box, I've put some serious time on the Z3's bulb in a relatively short period of time (less than three months).

A little tip for everyone: Make sure Sharpness is set to -7. (Not 0 which is default I believe).

Setting it to -7 removed ALL ringing/edge enhancement effects I seen.
(Not the ones that was applied to the DVD of course)

-7 seems a bit extreme to me, and going that low on my Z3 caused softening of fine details (especially noticeable on hi-def material). After comparing DVE and Avia's patterns, I find that -3 is the point where I get even brightness across the frequency sweep without adverse ringing or softening of thin lines. However, I'm checking sharpness with the projector in NORMAL THROUGH and FULL THROUGH modes so that it displays each pattern without scaling (to rule out scaler-induced artifacts). You also need to make sure that TRANSIENT IMPROVEMENT is turned off in the advanced menu, as that seems to create ringing in the higher frequency patterns (almost like scan velocity modulation on a CRT).

Also, the "right" setting for sharpness can depend on your source. Some DVD players don't pass all material unaltered (especially when you get into 6.75MHz patterns). You should always calibrate based on YOUR individual equipment, though sharing settings can be a useful guideline or starting point when we get into serious tweaking.

I keep my sharpness at -3 too. It seems to look the best based on the calibrations that I have done. I also noticed that it does soften the HD images. I never knew what transient setting did. Thanks for the info.

Jeremy, man that is some serious bulb time!!!! I got mine before you did and I have 1/5 the hours you have. I try to only use the pj during the weekends and I use my HDTV during the weekdays. Gotta show some love to the "little display".
:)

I read an interesting post at http://hometheaterhifi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2642

It Mentions the Z3 does in fact utilize a dynamic (auto) iris?!?!?

I was always under the impression this was not possible with this model.

I translated the link from Cine4home.de there, but it was still difficult to comprehend.

Any thoughts?

I read an interesting post at http://hometheaterhifi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2642

It Mentions the Z3 does in fact utilize a dynamic (auto) iris?!?!?

I was always under the impression this was not possible with this model.

I translated the link from Cine4home.de there, but it was still difficult to comprehend.

Any thoughts?

No - I'm sure this is in the thread somewhere...

But. It's not auto (adaptive), you set it and forget it based on how much light you need to hit the screen, if you have no ambient light you can lower it to -53 or so for the best black you will get from the unit.

I posted that Cine4Home link at Secrets (I'm da' Slimster). As I said there, I've put up the ping-ponging pattern on Avia and listened for iris movement in every mode on the projector, and I don't hear it do anything.

Jeremy, man that is some serious bulb time!!!! I got mine before you did and I have 1/5 the hours you have.
Yeah, but I'm a freak like that. I've done a LOT of movie watching... plus Lost, Alias, Deadwood, etc. in hi-def every week. For instance, this past weekend's viewing included Hostage, Hide And Seek, Cursed, Hitch, The Machinist and Oceans Twelve - so I put some serious hours on it. Now that I have a X-Box with Burnout 3, I imagine that bulb count will rise steadily.

My current settings: 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 -1
Brightness -2
Color +2
Tint +1
Color Temp User
Red 0
Green +3
Blue +1
Sharpness -3
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 Off
Transient Improvement Off

I saved my settings this way and my settings from starting in Creative Cinema mode (both with the bulb in theater black mode and with the iris at -38), and starting in Powerful seems to give a much brighter white with less discoloration at 90IRE. Also, the intensity of each IRE level more closely matches that of my RPTV, at least by my eye. Contrast is nicely improved and there's a marked difference in shadow detail.

Thanks dude, I will try these on my setup and tweak to match my theater environment. Really liked the powerful setting when I first bought my pj. Especially if you want to show someone who says, "I don't like front projection it always so dark." Have you noticed a difference if you turn down the bulb mode after you set the other attributes?

For those of you who do not know I am running the same setup as Jeremy. I think we are even using the same component splitter.

As for hours. I have been playing quite a few games on the XBox too. I just bought Stranger's Wrath (very fun) and Doom 3 (pretty cool but the dark environs get a little boring). I have not been able to really get in to any shows lately 'cause they are usually on during the "put the boy to bed time". But every once in a while I take a look a Leno and the Bikini Destinations :D on HDNET.

Like I said above, setting the bulb to theater black is the first thing I did after changing to Powerful mode (because Powerful defaults to Bright bulb). But for some reason, Powerful/theater black has way brighter whites than Creative Cinema/theater black. I don't know if it's increasing the digital range of the panels or what (since that's basically what the different modes do - modify the gradations of gray)... but once you adjust both to just below clipping using DVE or Avia and tweak the gamma using Avia's gamma pattern, Powerful/theater black is amazingly bright and still has really good blacks and shadow detail. I wish I had SMART III so I could check the contrast ratio, but it definitely looks better once tweaked this way.

Great job Jeremy! This is awesome! I just re-tweaked my projector and after adjusting the iris a little bit and the sharpness I am very happy with what you posted. These settings are signifigantly better than the previous one based off of the Creative Cinema.

Example: I turned on HDNET and there was a guy wearing a dark grey striped blazer. The best part was the stripes were black and I could see them!!! If I had a AE700 I wouldn't know if they were stripes or VB ;) Just kidding 700 guys. :p

I always thought there was something going on 'behind the scenes' with those pre-settings. Think I read somewhere if you take the settings of 'powerful' for example and then use 'cinema pure' and transfer those settings over the picture will not look the same.

ted1001
you said -
"A little tip for everyone: Make sure Sharpness is set to -7. (Not 0 which is default I believe)."

After using Jeremy's new settings I have to agree with you that a softer sharpness level is working out for me much better than my previous ones. I dropped it down to -5 this time and it looks REALLY nice. But with HD I do prefer to keep it at about -3. No big deal I can just save this as my HDTV setting (#4).

I always thought there was something going on 'behind the scenes' with those pre-settings. Think I read somewhere if you take the settings of 'powerful' for example and then use 'cinema pure' and transfer those settings over the picture will not look the same.
Yup... They aren't just presets with stored settings; there's an actual difference in each mode's available range. If you read what each setting does in the product literature, it gives you a hint at how it affects the gradient range (i.e. it says something about Pure Cinema providing a smoother gradient). That's why identical settings starting with different modes don't come out the same. Actually, the way I arrived at using Powerful mode was by plugging in my settings starting with each different mode and saving each as a preset... then toggling between each with DVE's grayscale pattern to see the difference. Creative Cinema, even when tweaked, had visible red around 90 IRE no matter what I did with the gains, though 80 and 100 IRE did not appear red. Powerful, however, looked solid across the board compared to my RPTV.

I tried starting with Dynamic mode, but it just didn't give me the same punch on whites (though it was still better looking than Creative Cinema). I'll hopefully toy with the mercury vapor/daylight filter this weekend to see if it works better than the CC20R filter, but I can't imagine it looking much better than it does now. I watched The Jacket on mine tonight, and the shadow detail and contrast blew me away. I also logged some time with Discovery-HD and was very impressed. The whites are so bright now that you'd think it was in high bulb mode.

So are you using a lower iris setting than -38? I found that any lower than that, though it helped with the blacks, produced red and green chromatic aberration at the left and right edges (especially noticeable with black and white movies).

I tried starting with Dynamic mode, but it just didn't give me the same punch on whites (though it was still better looking than Creative Cinema). I'll hopefully toy with the mercury vapor/daylight filter this weekend to see if it works better than the CC20R filter, but I can't imagine it looking much better than it does now. I watched The Jacket on mine tonight, and the shadow detail and contrast blew me away. I also logged some time with Discovery-HD and was very impressed. The whites are so bright now that you'd think it was in high bulb mode.


This is interesting stuff. I have always used dynamic mode because with Creative Cinema whites appear gray (I have 90" ~0.8 gain gray screen). I´ll try Powerful tomorrow. Hope it´s even better. I guess I have skipped it because lamp defaults to Full Mode which makes you deaf ;-D

I tried starting with Dynamic mode, but it just didn't give me the same punch on whites (though it was still better looking than Creative Cinema). I'll hopefully toy with the mercury vapor/daylight filter this weekend to see if it works better than the CC20R filter, but I can't imagine it looking much better than it does now. I watched The Jacket on mine tonight, and the shadow detail and contrast blew me away. I also logged some time with Discovery-HD and was very impressed. The whites are so bright now that you'd think it was in high bulb mode.



Jeremy, this is a really interesting find, I'd stopped at creative cinema with a few color balance tweaks to pull in that red. But starting with powerful is just as you say, cleaner color balance, brighter white - no red at 80-90 IRE.

I will measure the CR tommorow.

It looks like the intensity steps are larger across the range, there may be a little bit of clipping towards 90IRE - as there doesn't seem the latitute to describe the last few steps, but could be a small price to pay for a bit more punch.

If you back the contrast down a bit in Powerful, you can bring 90IRE below clipping... and the result is still so bright that it's hard to believe your bulb is on its lowest setting. -2 contrast gave me a clear delineation between 100IRE and above white on the DVE pattern. My final setting of -1 contrast doesn't clip 90IRE and there's only a very slight difference between 100IRE and above white (meaning it's right on the edge of clipping). Rechecking with Avia, I can still see both moving white bars with this setting, so I'm not crushing the whites.

I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of CR you measure. I'm also curious what kind of gamma you get out of it, if you can check that, because it does seem that each step up in intensity is greater in Powerful mode.

I've just done contrast ratio measurements for the above.

Creative cinema comes in at around 980:1

Powerful preset with low lamp: 1020:1

So a definate difference there, not bad for a free tweak and no adjustments to color balance.

ROne, is that measurement with any kind of filter in place? Just curious, as I'm using a CC20R filter.

Speaking of which, the mercury vapor to daylight filter I ordered shipped today, so I should be able to play with it a bit this weekend to see if it works out better than the CC20R filter. It's a 4"x4" filter, so I'll probably cut it just about in half (since the 3"x3" CC20R filter I have now more than covers the Z3's lens). If it works out really well and I have enough left over, I may have to get your address over there in the UK and send it to you so you can do a little better analysis.

Jeremy - I've not got a filter, have toyed with the idea but just not got around to it.

By all means if you do end up with some left over - let me know if you want to send it - be much appreciated.

tyrone

ROne, is that measurement with any kind of filter in place? Just curious, as I'm using a CC20R filter..

Are you using hdmi or component cable for hdtv viewing? Just curious if the CC20R filter will only be good for component cable and not factor in hdmi feed. BTW, the 1db line attenuator worked great. I just did brigthness and contrast adjustments and all I have to do now is figure the color calibration. I have DVE but is it worth $$+sh to get the Avia? Any rule of thumb in color adjustments aside from starting @ Powerful Mode?

I'm getting the look again from my wife whenever I go down the basement. :eek:

I get that look too :D

Enier, I'm using component for my HD-cable, Xbox and DVD through a 4x2 matrix switcher.

The CC20R filter works well no matter what input you're using. The CC20R filter is to correct the color imbalance of the projector's bulb, independant of whether you're using HDMI or Component. Since the filter takes some of the blue out of the blacks, you get a deeper looking black and better contrast. However, you have to use the color, gain and offset controls to restore the grayscale when using a filter, so you need to have either instrumentation to measure it (a la SMART III) or something to compare to. In my case, I have an ISF calibrated RPTV to compare to.

Don't mistake the RED, BLUE and GREEN controls in the user menu for color decoding controls. Those are actually for white balance, or the amount of each primary color in the whites on your projector. There are no color specific controls for decoding, which is why I used the 1dB attenuator to bring red down. So all you have to do for color is use DVE to set the color and tint controls, and you should be good to go.

As to whether you should get Avia: DVE will work fine for video calibration. Where Avia is far superior is in the AUDIO calibration, as DVE has several errors that prevent it from being reliable. The creator of DVE still refuses to acknowledge it, but several of us have indisputably proven that the subwoofer and calibration tones on DVE are just plain wrong, rendering it completely useless for proper reference level calibration. For video, however, both should get you to relatively the same point. However, I find Avia much easier to navigate and it has way more useful patterns for tweaking and evaluation than DVE.

Jeremy, Thanks. Those are great info to have. I am planning to get the LG4200A tuner and connect it via hdmi and keep the S97 at component cable. I'm going to hold off buying CC20R filter until I really know what I'm doing. As far as audio, I never used DVE anyway. I use the receiver's test tone and my trusty spl for calibration. And I agree with you that DVE is hard to navigate.

Hi there,
I own my Z3 for ~3 weeks now. There's this Slight VB effect while watching movies, especially within image areas which are bright and smooth or non-focused (e.g. - cloudy sky).

I'm watching dvd movies through Pioneer 470, progressive, component cable.

Any suggestions how to overcome this ?

Hi there,
I own my Z3 for ~3 weeks now. There's this Slight VB effect while watching movies, especially within image areas which are bright and smooth or non-focused (e.g. - cloudy sky).

I'm watching dvd movies through Pioneer 470, progressive, component cable.

Any suggestions how to overcome this ?


Have you gone to the "panel adjustment" in the menu and tried to tweak it out from there. THat function is made to eliminate VB.

yes, but the effect is not seen in the "panles adjustment" menu... :-(

I am no expert so my help will be minimal here. When new I noticed that I had very slight VB on the green panel so I tweaked it out with the panel adjustment. Have you gone through all the colors on panel adjustment? Can you make it worse by adjusting it on any particular color in the panel adjustment?

This is interesting stuff. I have always used dynamic mode because with Creative Cinema whites appear gray (I have 90" ~0.8 gain gray screen). I´ll try Powerful tomorrow. Hope it´s even better. I guess I have skipped it because lamp defaults to Full Mode which makes you deaf ;-D
Powerful definitely gives more light with default settings. I have had contrast at +10 with dynamic mode and now I have it at +6 (brightness at 0 and gamma at +1 with both). Both look ~same (calibrated with AVIA patterns). Maybe Powerful gives a bit more "white" though. It is difficult to say because Z3 changes light output for a second when you switch between preset user settings.

Is this the filter you are using?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=26826&is=REG

That Kodak filter is the one I'm currently using because a local photo shop had a used one for $7. I would imagine another cheaper brand like Lee would perform just as well though. I have a new Lee filter coming in on Monday (stupid UPS) that I'm going to test with, but the CC20R from Kodak works nicely.

I just made two "tweaks" and am VERY happy with the results.

First, I started from "power" mode for my settings (as Jerremy had suggested). I ended up with simuliar results as he did, except my brightness is much lower (-12). This is probably because I like the Iris at -21 (i can still see the color uniformity problem with the iris any more closed than this). I can get away with this because I use a gray screen. All I can say is WOW...what a difference. The image has much more punch, blacks are very good as is shawdow detail.....and the whites are WHITE.

Second, in an effort to get rid of the tiny bit of VB that I could not tweak out, I bought a line conditoner/surge protecter and plugged the PJ and all my components into it. It is not completely gone....but it is at least 50 percent better. I am not saying that this will work for anybody...but I has for me. Incidently, I live in a condo that is over 25 yrs old.

Is this the filter you are using?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=26826&is=REG
I bought a CC20R for my Z3 from a place in Toronto for $10. It's a little small but I have figured out a way to mount it with some tape on the top and botton.

Henry's Photo www.henrys.com

I just got the Lee mercury vapor to daylight filter. First impression compared to the CC20R is that it is a darker filter (2 1/3 stops exposure per the package) and has an almost red-brown look compared to the red of the Kodak CC20R filter. It looks like it lets a bit more green through than the CC20R, but it's hard to tell by eye. The CC20R only cuts exposure by about 1/3 stop, so I ought to be able to open the iris up quite a bit with the MVD filter (which should get rid of more of the blue in the blacks, giving me a more solid black level).

I'll mount it on the Z3 when I get home and do some tweaking, then report back on my impressions.

I made the adjustments last night using the numbers on the top of this page starting in Powerful instead of Creative and I got that initial wow feeling that I got in February we I first bought the projector. I'm not really sure if I need the filter. I'm waiting for my new Avia disc to arrive in the mail. I let someone I use to work with borrow my DVE disc and he now no longer works with me so this gave me the excuse to purchase the Avia disc.

You don't necessarily "need" to use a filter with the Z3; if you're happy with the picture, be happy. However, it does help quite a bit with the blue tint that blacks tend to have with the Z3, as a red color correcting filter reduces blue. You're basically using the filter to reduce blue and green to bring it even with the red because the lamp is deficient in red. You then use the panel gains and offsets to restore the color balance of white across the grayscale. The result is improved contrast with deeper blacks (because you're reducing the amount of leaked light from the panels). This also reduces overall output, but you can counter that by opening the iris up more (since most people are using the iris to lower the level anyway).

This is different than an ND filter (neutral density), which reduces overall light output like the iris does. ND filters do not change the contrast ratio (and neither does the iris), whereas tweaking with a color correcting filter can improve measured contrast significantly.

MY REPORT ON THE LEE MVD FILTER:

The MVD filter was a complete failure in theater black bulb mode with the iris completely open. Because the filter is so dark, no amount of tweaking could restore an adequate white. Whites came off too pink even with the red gain turned all the way down, though the rest of the grayscale looked solid below 80IRE. Blacks, however, were very dark. Turning the bulb up to its highest mode made the whites look better, but who wants to run their bulb in the highest mode?

So there you have it... An experiment that was worth a shot that didn't quite work out. I'm still may try fiddling with an 81EF filter, an 85 filter, and a CC30R filter to see if I can still eke out some more performance. As it stands, the CC20R filter is still working nicely and may be the best option.

what kind of filter did the cine4home people use?

They don't say in their review of the Z3, probably because they do projector calibration for a business. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they disclosed what filter they used to get that ~1,400:1 contrast ratio.

I don't think we're that far off it.

If I got a filter and used the adaptive lamp mode I reckon I would be close on that.

The less noisy adaptive lamp mode adds 150:1 onto your base figure whilst the more powerful adaptive setting adds about 250:1.

Put a filter in and lift the green and blue upper IRE (gain) and i reckon we would be there.

Must get that filter...,

/Must get that filter...,/

which filter? the ccr20 or the ccr25? what's the difference?

or do i need the ccr20 + 1db line attenuator?

I have been using the CC20R and the 1 dB attenuator. I have to say that the picture is awesome. I was watching Apollo 13 IMAX edition the other night and have a tough time finding any flaws. It looks just like my RPTV in terms of contrast color.

The color correcting filter primarily affects the white balance/grayscale, while the 1dB line level attenuator for the component video reduces the red in the color decoder (i.e. how much color is laid on top of the grayscale to produce a color picture). If you're using component, I recommend the line level attenuator on the Cr lead whether you're using a filter on the lens or not as the component inputs look to have about a 10% red push. You'll notice the difference primarily in how it reduces the red caste of fleshtones, making them look far more natural. On Avia's decoder check, the 1dB attenuator on Cr brought me to 0% blue, 0% red and -5% green.

I'm using the CC20R filter, but I still think a 25 or 30 might eke a little more performance out of the Z3 down in the lower IREs. The 30 filter appears to reduce overall light output by about the same amount as the 20 (1/3 to 2/3 stop exposure), so that may be what I try next. However, there's no way for me to tell for sure which filter is the absolute best because I don't have SMART III and hence can't measure which color panel clips first. Based on my user menu settings, I still have a lot of room for adjustment to bring green and blue back up if I use a stronger filter. Hopefully ROne will get a filter and give us some idea of how it calibrates out with SMART III.

bh has the cc20r by lee (size 4x4) and kodak (3x3), the lee is $8 cheaper, is there any reason to spend more to get the kodak?

The Kodak is a gel filter and the Lee is a polyester filter. That said, I didn't particularly see much difference material wise between the gel and poly filters. I don't know if one fades faster than the other though. I got the Kodak just because a local photo shop had one used for $7.

BTW: You can get the CC20R filter by Lee in a 3"x3" format that will still cover the lens of the Z3 and save you a little more money. B&H's website actually has it mislabeled as a CC15R filter, but if you click on it you will see that the graphic shows CC20R in the corner and B&H's model number is LECC20R33 instead of the LECC15R33 of the CC15R filter.

At the risk of sounding benighted; exactly how do you affix the CC20R filter to the projector?

And am I to understand that you can use both the CC20R filter AND a 1dB line level attenuator on the RED (Cr) lead?

Thanks.

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.