Originally posted by GetGray
Thanks Dave. Nice to know you have one of my 2 choices for a light controlled room. Have you seen a Silverstar with these 1 chip DLP's? Your critical opinion/ comparision to the ST130 would be valuable if you have.

Also, I have a denon 3910 and am considering other players. Considered a SDI modded DVD. It's for video only (no SACD, etc.) so I have to go modding a 59avi. Is there some reason you chose the 59avi to mod? Which company's mod are you using?

I have seen the SS screen only for a short time with the TAW Stealth and TAW Revolution at CEDIA and CES shows. I think the initial punch of the screen definitley grabs you, but then the "sheen" as mentioned elsewhere starts to kinda show up and bug me. I am not a big fan of HP screens though. I really like mostly neutral screens. Comes from my CRT days I guess. Not the real "olde days" when CRT needed HP, curved silver screens like back in the 80's though;)!!!

I chose the 59avi because I already own it:D I am looking into an RP-91 w/ the SDI already installed for about the same price as modding the 59avi. Anyone else use an RP-91 SDI with an iScan HD+ and can you tell me your impressions?

Any opinions on whether I should mod the 59avi or just go with the RP-91 already modded? If I get the 91, I'll probably just sell the 59avi to save some cash.

Originally posted by DHarp193
I have seen the SS screen only for a short time with the TAW Stealth and TAW Revolution at CEDIA and CES shows. I think the initial punch of the screen definitley grabs you, but then the "sheen" as mentioned elsewhere starts to kinda show up and bug me. I am not a big fan of HP screens though. I really like mostly neutral screens. Comes from my CRT days I guess. Not the real "olde days" when CRT needed HP, curved silver screens like back in the 80's though;)!!!

I chose the 59avi because I already own it:D I am looking into an RP-91 w/ the SDI already installed for about the same price as modding the 59avi. Anyone else use an RP-91 SDI with an iScan HD+ and can you tell me your impressions?

Any opinions on whether I should mod the 59avi or just go with the RP-91 already modded? If I get the 91, I'll probably just sell the 59avi to save some cash.

Don't sell your 59 yet. they will release a software update for 576i dvi support for the iscanHD+ that will give you the same result as sdi. I use a denon 2900+sdi myself.

Daniel.

When you say "they will..." is that a definite??? I was reading a thread that was speculating the other day about 480/576 interlaced support on the DVI, but it wasn't finalized last I saw.

They've been talking about that iScan interlaced DVI update forever. I wouldn't bank on it showing up in a reasonable timeframe.

Originally posted by joatmon
Can one of the Windows Based HTPC users connected to the H79 run Viewsonic's EDID.exe. Have it read the EDID and translate it. Then post the results. After a bad bout with my previous projector, I am searching for a new one that might get this crucial packet of data correct. The EDID is the packet of data that is passed from the projector back to the source device (HTPC or DVD player) that describes supported resolutions and refresh rates. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.viewsonic.com/drivers/edid.exe

If you're concerned about running 1280x720 1:1, the H79 works just fine with both nVidia cards I've tried with it (MSI 5700 and Gigabyte 6600).

Originally posted by thirdkind
They've been talking about that iScan interlaced DVI update forever. I wouldn't bank on it showing up in a reasonable timeframe.

That was my impression also:rolleyes:

thirdkind,

I was actually more worried about my DVD player and a future Satellite receiver. I just want to make sure which companies can get this correct. It seems like this might be a common problem with manufacturers and for some reason they don't store this in firmware(at least with the projector I had).

Originally posted by thirdkind
You're probably right. Greg mentioned previously that there were three sets of five gamma curves, and upon reviewing his posts he was referring to the Film, TV, and Video settings.

Normal/Cinema/Vivid appear to be nothing more than memories.

thirdkind,

You are correct that Normal/Cinema/Vivid are just memories.

Film and Video are two special degamms designed to enhance the color saturation and contrast ratio. Video is a even stronger version of Film.

TV is a relatively flat, standard gamma 2.2 (or 2.3?) curve that gives flat-out responses.

I would recommend use Film to watch movies, TV for normal viewings or some dark DVDs, and Video for high contrasty HD contents. But that's just my preference!:)

Originally posted by DHarp193
Preliminary report:

H79 plus iScan HD+ plus DV-59AVi at 1280 x 720, 48Hz is a big two thumbs up:)!!!!!!!!!!!! I am VERY impressed so far, and that's saying "sumthin";)!!!

I can't wait until I get my 59AVi modded for SDI with the SDI board for the HD+.............

Dave and anyone else that may know,

I'm not trying to change the subject here, but I can see that there is a great deal of knowledge on this thread concerning DVD players and scalers.

Have you ever compared the Denon 5910 with the Realta scaler to using the 59AVI along with the HD+ or a Denon 3910 with theHD+ ?

From what I have read the 5910 does a great job of scaling with the Realta chip . By the time I buy a HD+ and say a 59AVI or a Denon 3910 and the SDI mods I am real close to the price of the 5910. It does not sound like the HD+ will be much benefit for SD signals, so it's main use will be DVD.

Hopefully someone can help me on this tough desision. I guess it would be much easier for me to decide if I just knew if the HD+ would impress me when using with sattelite or cable. I'm sure it does a fantastic job with DVD, but I don't need that if I had the 5910.

Any help would really be apprecited, Mike

Originally posted by nelson4u
Dave and anyone else that may know,

I'm not trying to change the subject here, but I can see that there is a great deal of knowledge on this thread concerning DVD players and scalers.

Have you ever compared the Denon 5910 with the Realta scaler to using the 59AVI along with the HD+ or a Denon 3910 with theHD+ ?

From what I have read the 5910 does a great job of scaling with the Realta chip . By the time I buy a HD+ and say a 59AVI or a Denon 3910 and the SDI mods I am real close to the price of the 5910. It does not sound like the HD+ will be much benefit for SD signals, so it's main use will be DVD.

Hopefully someone can help me on this tough desision. I guess it would be much easier for me to decide if I just knew if the HD+ would impress me when using with sattelite or cable. I'm sure it does a fantastic job with DVD, but I don't need that if I had the 5910.

Any help would really be apprecited, Mike

Infact scaling is done inside 5910 and hd+ by almost the same engine designed by dvdo not the realta chip that is only deinterlacing and noise reduction is done with that chip.

I agree with the delays by dvdo on the 480i/576i issue but have reasons to expect that to be resolved in weeks (so its a gamble).

Greetings,

Daniel.

Originally posted by danielo

I agree with the delays by dvdo on the 480i/576i issue but have reasons to expect that to be resolved in weeks (so its a gamble).



Thanks for clearing that up Danielo. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the above statement ? Can you explain why it is a gamble ?

Nelson4U,

I was wondering that myself. I haven't had the pleasure of checking out the 5910 yet, but I have been wanting to for just that reason.

Can the 5910 be configured for 48Hz framerate? Does it have customizable resolutions like the HD+ and DVDs like the Bravo D2? I haven't done much research on it yet.

I would not count on DVDO offering a 480i DVI upgrade. I was emailed a response to the question last week. They replied that there is a new DVDO product being released at the end of the year that has the 480i DVI input. I was also told that it may be cost prohibitive to offer the upgrade now.

The new Dragonfly http://www.algolith.com/index.php?id=137&L=0 is expected out soon. It will be a challenge for DVDO to compete with this (with the exception of pricing).

Yeah, that's a nice sounding piece. I am keeping my eye on it. Any preliminary reports from Beta testers, etc.?

It dosent' appear to have any aspect control. Wonder why not? With PIP you could have overlapping 4:3 images if they had aspect management I'd think. Dosen't the DVDO stuff have aspect control? Not a deal breaker since the H79 allows aspect control on HD input, but for future proofing concerns, all PJ's don't allow aspect management on HD (i.e. Marantz for example).

Holly Sh%$ Batman !

I think Tom holds the record for starting some of the longest threads for this forum:)

Probably so Alan, and they go like a Stock Market Tickers, ups and downs. :)

Lately on the H79 it's been nothing but up. Great machine

Originally posted by DHarp193
I haven't had the pleasure of checking out the 5910 yet, but I have been wanting to for just that reason.

Can the 5910 be configured for 48Hz framerate? Nope. And no customizable resolutions last I looked.

--Darin

I have 48hz working perfectly with the Bravo D2 and the H79. I see no combing or problems with film based DVD's which are the majority of them. The only thing that takes hit is the intro's before a movie. Took a good look at AOTC speeder chase and asteroid chase. Both looked super smooth. It's kind of like a lazy view isn't it?

I'll have to try the 48hz setting on the iscan - but AOTC looked awesome the other night when we watched it for the first time even with 60hz ( we're slow getting around to watching dvd's, what can I say ? )!!!

Craig do you have Comcast and if so did you record the INHD tune up?

I just received my H79 Saturday from AVS. I have a question and some observations.

Has anybody had there H79 lockup when using the the remote to adjust the zoom or focus? It has locked up twice with the picture frozen and the zoom symbol on the screen. The only way I'm able to cure the problem is to pull the plug or turn off the switch. The same thing happened to me once using the focus also.

I remember that happening with my H77 once but it never did it again. With these digitals I find they like to be used. Sometimes when one of mine has been sitting a while I'll run into glitches on start up. My HT1000 did that just yesterday. The bulb wouldn't fire up on the first try.

If it's persistant you should have it looked at.

Anyone have comments or suggestions about screen material? I currently have a 110" Carada classic white (1.0 gain) screen. I'm wondering whether or not changing to a Firehawk would make a substantial enough difference to justify the expense.

Originally posted by Craigslue Has anybody had there H79 lockup when using the the remote to adjust the zoom or focus? It has locked up twice with the picture frozen and the zoom symbol on the screen. The only way I'm able to cure the problem is to pull the plug or turn off the switch. The same thing happened to me once using the focus also. [/B] 1st note that I have a biased opinion about the remote. But, FYI, my H77 locked up a couple of times. A "reboot" of the remote appeared to fix it though, maybe try that next time (pull batteries). The H79 has been better but it too had room for improvement on the remote (same remote). Neither PJ of mine ever locked so hard they didn't start responding again in a few seconds or after rebooting the remote (which was likely just coincidence), definately no powercycle required. Now I use the AV-RS232 (see powerbuy on this forum) and it eliminated all my remote issues and added some functionality. HTH, Scott

Craigslue, I also just got my H79 and with only about 8 hours on the pj it locked up just like you described while zooming out. It was time to go to bed anyway so I just turned off the main switch. I did turn the switch back on and thankfully the fan went through its cooling cycle and stopped. Hopefully that will never happen again but if it does I will try the tip from GetGray. I did try hitting the buttons on top of the pj too though and everything was locked so I'm kind of doubting that removing the batteries from the remote would have done anything but who knows.

Craig, those first 8 hours I mentioned were comprised of calibrations and just watching clips. After this the first full movie our family watched on the H79 was AOTC and it was frickin' unbelievable! I'm stepping up from a Panasonic AE300 with 1500 hours on the bulb and a measured on/off CR of about 300:1. Need I say more? It was simply amazing switching between the two machines while watching some of the darker scenes in the Mummy on D-theater from my JVC 30K. No contest whatsoever, even in the bright scenes.

I'm curious, has anybody tried using a CC or FL-day filter on their H79? I've been playing around with a CC30R and cranking up the blue and green contrast but honestly don't see any CR improvement. The blacks are deeper but the whites are also dimmer. Of course I have no calibration equipment but the grayscale ramps look good with AVIA. Someone with the means should find which filter works best on this machine. It has the brightness to spare.

I absolutely love this pj. I just wish it had the variable iris like the Sharp12k. If Optoma would have done that they would truly have a *measurable* 4500:1 CR pj that could also be switched over to crank out a lot of lumens when called for. However, while the blacks aren't nearly as deep as the 12k IMO the H79's picture is a great compromise between the 12k’s high contrast and bright modes. I totally understand all of Tom's comments now about good blacks while maintaining brilliant whites. Again, awesome picture.

--Brent

Originally posted by RobZ
Anyone have comments or suggestions about screen material? I currently have a 110" Carada classic white (1.0 gain) screen. I'm wondering whether or not changing to a Firehawk would make a substantial enough difference to justify the expense.
If your environment is not well light controlled the Firehawk could help reject ambient light. Otherwise this pj does well with a white screen with unity to moderate gain (1-1.5) or even higher if you like very bright.

Dan

I'm stepping up from a Panasonic AE300 with 1500 hours on the bulb and a measured on/off CR of about 300:1. Need I say more?

I had an AE300. It was the first projector installed in my theater room. I can only imagine the difference!



If your environment is not well light controlled the Firehawk could help reject ambient light. Otherwise this pj does well with a white screen with unity to moderate gain (1-1.5) or even higher if you like very bright.

I have 100% light control. Maybe it would not be worth the $1500-$2000 to upgrade.

hi Brent,

Although adding a filter (with no other adjustments) dims the image over the entire range, if you increase the green and blue contrasts to rebalance the colorsyou will be increasing the contrast ratio, as you haven't really altered the brightness/black level. Ideally you'll need Colorfacts or similar to do it properly, but with the H77 just increasing green to 4 and blue to 9 (their maximums at 100ire when no more increase could be measured) gave over 300:1 to CR improvement.

The H78 has a better colour balance so it might be more like the H79, with a little less to be gained by adding a filter, but I still managed 2707:1 with a non optomal fl-day.

Wit

Rob, I was more than happy with the mat white 1.0. Only reason I got the high power is because of the non tensioned electric. I think 1.0 white is favored for neutral colors.

Tom, you just saved me $2000! Okay, help me spend some. Option one would be renting colorfacts and calibrating the H79 myself. Option two would be paying an ISFer to travel here (I'm in no man's land) to calibrate it. I guess option three would be spending three grand on Colorfacts but that's a whole other thread.

Originally posted by RobZ
Tom, you just saved me $2000! Okay, help me spend some. Option one would be renting colorfacts and calibrating the H79 myself. Option two would be paying an ISFer to travel here (I'm in no man's land) to calibrate it. I guess option three would be spending three grand on Colorfacts but that's a whole other thread. Option 4 is to get the Progressive Labs CA6X analyzer. Many of us like it. Some big dogs here prefer it (William Phelps if you'll excuse the name drop). I had no trouble using it. It's at least 1/3 less that CF.

I've been offered a Colorfacts with latest software for $1500. It's used of course. I'm considering it over renting.

What is Progressive Labs website address?

Originally posted by Craigslue
I just received my H79 Saturday from AVS. I have a question and some observations.

Has anybody had there H79 lockup when using the the remote to adjust the zoom or focus? It has locked up twice with the picture frozen and the zoom symbol on the screen. The only way I'm able to cure the problem is to pull the plug or turn off the switch. The same thing happened to me once using the focus also.

This also happened to me as well. I was zooming out and the H79
locked up solid. Only way to get out of it was to pull the plug.

My Silverstar sample arrived today along with a Stewart Ultramatte
150, 200 and Videomatte 200. The "mattes" are definately more substantial
in thickness than the ST130. Anyone have experience with the matte
line of screens?

Would one of you Optoma H79 / HTPC users be willing to export the Windows registry key for your projector and post it or PM it to me? You can get to it by going to Start, Run and type regedit. Once in regedit you can go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\DISPLAY\

You can then right-click on the entry for the projector and export it. In the Drop Down box for "Save In:" select the desktop or any other place you like. Give it a name in the "File name:" and select "Text Files" in the "Save as type:". You should see the branch listed at the bottom and the circle next to "Selected branch" should be selected. Click Save.

You can then open the txt file that you saved. The piece I am most interested in is the EDID data, but you can PM the hole thing to me.

Now the reason. I had a projector that didn't have this correct which caused some syncing issues with my DVD player, and I am in a search for one that does.

Anyone's help would be greatly appreciated.

Originally posted by RobZ
I've been offered a Colorfacts with latest software for $1500. It's used of course. I'm considering it over renting.

What is Progressive Labs website address?

That's a super deal. They way i see it is you're in at half price and the value will remain there. Which sensor does it come with?

It has the GretagMcBeth Eyebeamer and Trichromat-1 Colorimeter.

Has anyone used the Smart III for the H79 (or H77)? What are opinions on this?

Originally posted by RobZ Has anyone used the Smart III for the H79 (or H77)? What are opinions on this? [/B] I used it for the H77. It was educational, and may be worth it just for the experience and the bundled meter (although not an accurate enough meter to compare to other meters, but OK for your own comaprisons). My grayscale didn't come out well, I got only minimal help from the developer, although the sales guy was very, very nice. I'm confident I did everything right, grayscale was well off visually. Moved on to next level of expense (CA6X).

WHere can I find info on the CA6X?

Originally posted by RobZ
WHere can I find info on the CA6X? I sent you some info via PM on where.

Originally posted by RobZ

The new Dragonfly http://www.algolith.com/index.php?id=137&L=0 is expected out soon. It will be a challenge for DVDO to compete with this (with the exception of pricing).

It looks like the Dragonfly is using the Realta with HQV just like the Denon 5910 is using. Don't you think it would be better to get the 5910 with the added benefit of the great audio it puts out ?

I realize the Dragonfly can scale other SD sources, but from what I have been reading scalers don't seem to help a whole lot with sattelite and cable SD signals. Is this true ?

Nelson,

They can help out if the satellite box has been modded with SDI. I have heard from Phil at TAW that the HD-TiVo looks much better with an HD-SDI mod going through their scaler.

Also, you can scale HD sources with the Dragonfly, which probably will do a better job going from 1080i to 720p. I think I read it will do true 1080i de-interlacing.

It's probably just a matter of personal preference. There may be a few added benefits of the Dragonfly including compatibility with upcoming formats (HD).

Originally posted by RobZ
Tom, you just saved me $2000!...

Dang Rob, and I was just going to offer you my services:rolleyes: My brother in law lives in TX, just outside of Ft Worth-Dallas and it would have been a great opportunity to see him again;)!!!

Oh well, if you need me you know where to find me.............:D!!!

Dang Rob, and I was just going to offer you my services My brother in law lives in TX, just outside of Ft Worth-Dallas and it would have been a great opportunity to see him again!!!

I'll take you upon that offer if you don't mind driving 10 hours from Dallas! I live 4 hours south of San Antonio in no man's land. Most people don't even realize this land is still part of the lower 48. Let me put it this way, I was telling a patient about a new Target and Starbucks in the area when she asks "what's that?".

I'm going back home to visit soon (within 5 miles from Optoma in Milpitas). Maybe I'll visit the Optoma center.

I'm also going to stop by Tom's place, he's going to give me a complimentary box of Dunhills. Right Tom?

Damn, I thought 4 hours south of San Antonio was Mexico:eek: I'll still do it if you need me though:).

Rob, did I get that right? Both the eye-one and the Tri-chromat? That's $4k worth of equipment. Don't be a fool snag it in a heart beat. I was hoping you'd say it had just the Greg Macbeth 1eye and I would hv said jump on it.

You see if you buy the low priced optic 1, used it's just worth half of that, about $750 bucks. Your package at half price is worth at least $2000 at any time. Simple math here.
Plus I like the software with colorfacts much better.

No Dunhills, we smoke the heavy stuff at my shop. :)

Originally posted by guitarman Plus I like the software with colorfacts much better.[/B] Which feature do you like better? I didn't realize you had any experience with the Optic 1.

Just from the graphs that were posted. Personal thing, I like the look of the colorfacts graphs better. But the key thing is value, Rob can rake in a gold mine at that price.

I agree that is a decent price. Need to plan on calibrations of both instruments though. Milori told me at CEDIA the Beamer dosent' travel well and is the reason they don't rent it.

Originally posted by guitarman
Just from the graphs that were posted. Personal thing, I like the look of the colorfacts graphs better. But the key thing is value, Rob can rake in a gold mine at that price.

The Opticone doesn't have graphics as nice but does what it does well for a cheaper price. Colorfact with both meter at 1500$ seem's like a no brainer to me.

Bruno

Originally posted by GetGray
I agree that is a decent price. Need to plan on calibrations of both instruments though. Milori told me at CEDIA the Beamer dosent' travel well and is the reason they don't rent it.

Decent price! unbelievable price. Rob if you don't want it turn me on to the deal and I'll buy it.

New vs new, I don't blame anybody for buying the optic1 at $1600. After all that's half the price of colorfacts pro 1eye.

Originally posted by nelson4u
Dave and anyone else that may know,

I'm not trying to change the subject here, but I can see that there is a great deal of knowledge on this thread concerning DVD players and scalers.

Have you ever compared the Denon 5910 with the Realta scaler to using the 59AVI along with the HD+ or a Denon 3910 with theHD+ ?

From what I have read the 5910 does a great job of scaling with the Realta chip . By the time I buy a HD+ and say a 59AVI or a Denon 3910 and the SDI mods I am real close to the price of the 5910. It does not sound like the HD+ will be much benefit for SD signals, so it's main use will be DVD.

Hopefully someone can help me on this tough desision. I guess it would be much easier for me to decide if I just knew if the HD+ would impress me when using with sattelite or cable. I'm sure it does a fantastic job with DVD, but I don't need that if I had the 5910.

Any help would really be apprecited, Mike





As someone who owns the Denon 5910 I can tell you that I have not seen a player yet like it and I have owned a couple including a pioneer 59-AVI and the 5900 by Denon, the Realta chip used in the 5910 is the same chip used in Terranex's $60,000.00 video processor. the 5910 in my opinion does so many things right, its deinterlacing by Realta (hqv chip) and scaling by dvdo has set a new benchmark for stand alone players, the magic is in the noise reduction of this unit its like having a standalone scaler already built in, I have been told by Kris Deering that theres no need for an external scaler for this universal player however, I do plan on purchasing a lumagen scaler for my sd and hdtv sources( wife loves football). There is some much more to this unit than just video, more than I could go into right now, audio is utterly amazing in my opinion and to my ears,besting players costing more than three times as much. At 42lbs this is not a small player and I had to make some modifications to my rack to make it fit, being a cadence based player it does an great job on bad edits and makes well authored dvds pure pleasure to watch with the noise reduction feature cleaning up the video, watch for more players and scalers in the future featuring the Realta chip, its the new kid on the block( for consumer based products) and is offering broadcast quality performance, If someone has a H79 and has a no-cost mentality towards a dvd player then I highly recommend this Universal player, its what the 5900 should have been and I should know I purchased that player last year but sadly because of the macroblocking issue had to return it. I also feel that a pioneer 59AVI with sdi mod will work very nicely also.It would be interesting to see someones reaction to the 5910 & H79, Im sure it would be a knockout combo. Is it inexpensive? by no means.... ($3500.00 msrp), Is it for everyone? NO.. but for me this player incorporates the whole package of whats available today and when hd players become reliable and affordable this player will still be on my shelf.

Rob, did I get that right? Both the eye-one and the Tri-chromat?

There's no Tri-chromat with it after all. My mistake. I'm debating it still.



Damn, I thought 4 hours south of San Antonio was Mexico

It is. Actually I am 3 hrs and 55 min. from San Antone. ;)


My H79, some more speakers, and a couple of HSU VTF3 subs are sitting in boxes at my front door right now. Man I need to go home. I've flown through all of these pages in this thread again (man are my arms tired!). After reading Greg Roger's posts I'm questioning what I should initially do to the projector. I think I'll keep my hands off of the service mode and try the TV+Gamma 1. Hmmm. I'll sit it out until the WSR review comes out.

Greg Rogers "Have you guys tried setting the Film/Video/TV menu item to TV and then selected Gamma mode 1?My review of the H79 will be in the next issue of Widescreen Review."


Kid "Wow! That guy lives here? I thought he just flew in for the games!"

Originally posted by RobZ
There's no Tri-chromat with it after all. My mistake. I'm debating it still.





It is. Actually I am 3 hrs and 55 min. from San Antone. ;)


My H79, some more speakers, and a couple of HSU VTF3 subs are sitting in boxes at my front door right now. Man I need to go home. I've flown through all of these pages in this thread again (man are my arms tired!). After reading Greg Roger's posts I'm questioning what I should initially do to the projector. I think I'll keep my hands off of the service mode and try the TV+Gamma 1. Hmmm. I'll sit it out until the WSR review comes out.

No Tri-chromat, hmmm at this point it's a toss up really. The main advantage will be the re-sale value. As far as usage the optic1 will be super fast on low end readings which makes it less frustraiting. Though the 1eye can be aimed at the screen which is nice.

Love the HSU subs, my kitchen cabinets rattle if I don't watch it. I also have a 12" B&W and like the HSU way better. It's just the type of bass it does.
Go home and enjoy :)
enjoy

I just found out that my screen is only measured as a .6 gain rather than a 1.0 gain. Now I'm going to have to change the screen material to show the H79 a bit better. What is really amazing is how much light the H76 was showing on this screen even though it lets so much light pass through. I can't imagine what a high gain screen would do!

High Power = Plasma type effect.

My room has 100% light control. I value deeper blacks. Even my wife thought the H76 was too bright in low lamp mode. Thats a good thing!

I've had a couple of hours to play with the H79 now. I put it up on my Peerless mount and ran it for a while before doing some basics with Avia. My first impression is not good. Actually, this thing has the black level of a first generation LCD. I've also seen better resolution on a "enhanced definition" 480 projector. I think Tom was pulling some kind of con. This thing is going back and I'm going to put my old Panasonic AE100 back up.


Obviously I'm joking. This projector is good. Real good. The details, CR, and deep blacks are there. I'm running the Pioneer 59Avi 720P and using Film mode. I've played around with MIBII (non-Superbit) and a few others like Underworld. I'm a sucker for good black levels on these movies. I'm impressed. Even my wife took a look at the MIBII scenes and said "it looks very black". She also commented that the scene with the little dog talking inthe car looked very three dimensional. Hey she commented that my new 34" Sony tube is just another TV!

The only downsides thus far are:
1. Optoma's failure to improve the vertical lens shift mechanism. The Panasonic AE700 and Hs51 better the optomas with respect to lens shifting.

2.White? Hey even the silver H76 looked better. Why not a Pioneer Elite style piano black or......

3.Remote. Come on. The fact that I often have to stand up to make it work correctly! My RS232 is on it's way so I will not complain any longer.


I agree that bang for the buck, the PQ on this thing rocks. Without a doubt. I do think that Optoma need's to work on the ergonomics of their product. The fact that a $1700 Panasonic LCD functions better with respect to ergonomics and the "ease of use" is odd. I think reviews of this (in publications) are going to focus on these negatives instead of looking at the excellent performance.

Back to the theater room.

Originally posted by RobZ
I agree that bang for the buck, the PQ on this thing rocks. Without a doubt. I do think that Optoma need's to work on the ergonomics of their product. The fact that a $1700 Panasonic LCD functions better with respect to ergonomics and the "ease of use" is odd. I think reviews of this (in publications) are going to focus on these negatives instead of looking at the excellent performance.

Back to the theater room. I think you summarized what so many posts have indicated about this pj. It reminds me to some extent of the Bravo D1 - excellent pq and a great value but ergonomically challenged. I'll live with the idiosyncracies.

Dan

Originally posted by RobZ
Greg Rogers "Have you guys tried setting the Film/Video/TV menu item to TV and then selected Gamma mode 1?My review of the H79 will be in the next issue of Widescreen Review."


Kid "Wow! That guy lives here? I thought he just flew in for the games!"

Rob, you got me laughing my a$$ off right now:D:p!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I remembered that line as soon as I read it. "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", talking about Forrest Whitaker's character "Jefferson" the football player, right?

That is one of my all time favorite movies. I own the DVD and have to watch it at least twice a year, if not more when I get the urge.

"...that was my skull, I'm so wasted..."

Back to the topic at hand...

I finally got the SDI board for the iScan and the RP-91 SDI hooked up to the H79 and so far I am quite impressed once again. Anyone who says they don't see a difference between SDI and YUV needs either a good calibration (to quote another famous movie line..."I can arrange that!!!"), a better display or their eyes examined:eek:!!! I have worked with SDI for over 11 years in my broadcast career and even on the high end broadcast VTRs like the Sony BetaSX, SDI looks superior to YUV.

Originally posted by funlvr1965
As someone who owns the Denon 5910 I can tell you that I have not seen a player yet like it and I have owned a couple including a pioneer 59-AVI and the 5900 by Denon, the Realta chip used in the 5910 is the same chip used in Terranex's $60,000.00 video processor. the 5910 in my opinion does so many things right, its deinterlacing by Realta (hqv chip) and scaling by dvdo has set a new benchmark for stand alone players, the magic is in the noise reduction of this unit its like having a standalone scaler already built in, I have been told by Kris Deering that theres no need for an external scaler for this universal player however, I do plan on purchasing a lumagen scaler for my sd and hdtv sources( wife loves football). There is some much more to this unit than just video, more than I could go into right now, audio is utterly amazing in my opinion and to my ears,besting players costing more than three times as much. At 42lbs this is not a small player and I had to make some modifications to my rack to make it fit, being a cadence based player it does an great job on bad edits and makes well authored dvds pure pleasure to watch with the noise reduction feature cleaning up the video, watch for more players and scalers in the future featuring the Realta chip, its the new kid on the block( for consumer based products) and is offering broadcast quality performance, If someone has a H79 and has a no-cost mentality towards a dvd player then I highly recommend this Universal player, its what the 5900 should have been and I should know I purchased that player last year but sadly because of the macroblocking issue had to return it. I also feel that a pioneer 59AVI with sdi mod will work very nicely also.It would be interesting to see someones reaction to the 5910 & H79, Im sure it would be a knockout combo. Is it inexpensive? by no means.... ($3500.00 msrp), Is it for everyone? NO.. but for me this player incorporates the whole package of whats available today and when hd players become reliable and affordable this player will still be on my shelf.

Funlvr,

You did not mention what projector you are using with the 5910 ?

Also what are you using for audio as far as amp, pre amp, speakers ?

Thanks for a very imformative review, Mike

Does anyone else have any experience using the Denon 5910 with the H 79 ?

nelson4u, the projector im using is the digital projection " IvisionHD" others may know it as the "Action one MKII" originally from projection design, a norwegian based company ......1000 lumen, HD2+ 3000:1 contrast, my audio setup is M&K S150P powered monitors using balanced cables connecting to a B&K Reference 50 audio processor & LFE duties being handles by a M&K MX-5000THX MKII SUB ,Its such a shame that this player is at the price point that it is because many will not know how great it really is, from a video standpoint if you can imagine having a high end standalone video processor inside a dvd player and weighing in at 42lbs then you can start to imagine what the Denon 5910 might be like, the audio side is another story entirely, as I said previously I have no doubt that the optoma/denon 5910 would be a hard combination to beat but because of the price point many may not travel that road.

DHarp193
good to see you smiling again my friend and hope youre feeling better these days

Originally posted by drapp1952
I think you summarized what so many posts have indicated about this pj. It reminds me to some extent of the Bravo D1 - excellent pq and a great value but ergonomically challenged. I'll live with the idiosyncracies.

Dan

Ouch.

I certainly hope it is better than that....at least in terms of dependability.

Dave,
Ahhhhh....the days when Sean Penn was the pinnacle of acting. Its too bad that he's actually taking things so seriously now.

When it comes to great lines in film you always hear :
"You talkin to me? You talkin to me?"



But you and I know the true classic that will always live with us is

"my brothas gonna sh.t! He's gonna kill us! My brothas gonna sh.t!"

"make up your mind dude. is he gonna sh.t or is he gonna kill us?"

Rob,

Hey, my Bravo D1 hasn't locked up like it used to since I replaced the power board and loader tray!

Seriously, as long as you don't enter the service menu to adjust an RGB gain, or use the focus control too much, or maybe test the lens shift once too often (I do get nervous when I make adjustments there), this pj will do fine. And as long as you're patient, the supplied remote will suffice.

Dan

Originally posted by drapp1952
Rob,

Hey, my Bravo D1 hasn't locked up like it used to since I replaced the power board and loader tray!

Seriously, as long as you don't enter the service menu to adjust an RGB gain, or use the focus control too much, or maybe test the lens shift once too often (I do get nervous when I make adjustments there), this pj will do fine. And as long as you're patient, the supplied remote will suffice.

Dan

Patience?! I guess this isn't the projector for me then!

;)

or maybe test the lens shift once too often (I do get nervous when I make adjustments there)

I don't like hearing that. I have an improvised masking system that I used with the HS51 and AE700. I just mask the lower half of the screen. With the H79 DVI, I have to use the manual lens shift to vertically raise the image. With component I can often get away with just vertically shifting in the menu though. I've been looking for a good scaler with vertical image shifting using DVI but have not been successful. Maybe I should do like CraigP posted in an earlier post and buy an extended warranty. Then again. I'll probably move on to the H80 within the two years!

Originally posted by DHarp193
I remembered that line as soon as I read it. "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", talking about Forrest Whitaker's character "Jefferson" the football player, right? This is completely off topic, but when I was about 15 we asked our parents if we could go see this. They agreed to buy us the tickets and we were pretty excited. Then they got the bright idea of deciding to go with us to see what R rated movies that we wanted to see where like. Just our luck that they picked this one. They even brought my little brother who was about 5. Partway through my mom grabbed my little brother and left. He is still upset about getting dragged out of the theater just at a good part and forced to go watch ET. :) BTW: My dad enjoyed some of it as much as we did (or could with them there), but played it as a bad movie to my mom. She wouldn't let any R rated movies in the house for a while after that one.

I think I'll go rent it. :)

--Darin

mmmmm.....Phoebe Cates........yummmmmmmmm.

I currently have a Sencore cp-288 that only works for crt, so it is of no use for me on my H79. I have some questions for the Milori users.

I may have come across a Colorfacts Pro with the eye-one and wondered how the support would be for someone who bought Colorfact Pro second hand?

I was on the Colorfacts website and read about needing a key code and a dongle. Do you need both the key code and dongle to use the eye-one and Colorfacts?

How often, how much and who can calibrate the one-eye?

Originally posted by funlvr1965
...I have no doubt that the optoma/denon 5910 would be a hard combination to beat but because of the price point many may not travel that road.

The guy I just bought the RP-91 SDI from, when asked why he sold his HD+ and now the RP-91, said that he sold them because he got the 5910 to use with his BenQ 8700.

He told me he regreted selling his HD+/RP-91 because it outperformed his new 5910. He said there's more noise in the background and he believed the de-interlacing was slightly inferior.

I asked him if he tried tweaking the 5910 because it has many video enhancement adjustments. He said yes and it didn't seem to help to get the image as good as his old HD+/RP-91 SDI.

I can't verify this info of course because I didn't do the "playing" with it and I haven't seen the 5910 in action yet. This is just his opinion, but figured I'd throw it out there for info purposes. He may not really know what to look for or what to do.

He did say he may call me to do a calibration, so maybe that will change his mind? I'd love to see the 5910:)

I personally will probably just wait until the Realta powered Algolith Dragonfly is released and see what reports come from that.

Originally posted by funlvr1965
DHarp193
good to see you smiling again my friend and hope youre feeling better these days

Thanks:) I really appreciate the support.

It depends on what day you ask me how I happen to feel that day. This has gone on way too long:(!!!

Originally posted by RobZ
Dave,
Ahhhhh....the days when Sean Penn was the pinnacle of acting. Its too bad that he's actually taking things so seriously now.

When it comes to great lines in film you always hear :
"You talkin to me? You talkin to me?"



But you and I know the true classic that will always live with us is

"my brothas gonna sh.t! He's gonna kill us! My brothas gonna sh.t!"

"make up your mind dude. is he gonna sh.t or is he gonna kill us?"

Oh yeah, certainly another classic:D

I actually like what Sean Penn is doing these days. I think he is an excellent actor. One of my favorites of his is a relatively unknown movie called "Racing with the Moon" with Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth McGovern. For some reason it touches a chord in my emotional side:p It was recently released on DVD for the first time and I snatched it up.

Just to keep this on topic...

Man, I really like my H79;)!!!

I think the new slogan for Sim2 should be what we use to describe planes from Lockheed-Martin in the Air Force...

"You can buy better,...but you can't pay more!!!"

Sorry, couldn't resist after comparing the H79 to the 300e:rolleyes:

Originally posted by drapp1952
Seriously, as long as you don't enter the service menu to adjust an RGB gain, or use the focus control too much, or maybe test the lens shift once too often (I do get nervous when I make adjustments there), this pj will do fine.
And you don't blink too much, or maybe shift around on your chair too often, or laugh too much during a film, or give the projector the evil eye... :)

Just kidding. I am sure there are many projectors out there that become fidgety if people start playing around within its service menu.

Cheers,
Raul

Thanks Dave, glad to see a respected opinion in my camp. My sentiments exactly. I felt like the lone wolf way back when I first looked at the 300e. The wolrd was saying how wonderful it was, I didn't see it, thought the 79 was significantly better.

Support for buying used is the same for buying new, stellar. Once you buy it you and the seller inform Milori of the switch. Then they'll send you the key code. You can turn on the downloaded CF-pro.

Gregtag will calibration 1eye's for $75.

I think you guys are too hard on the lens shift and overall build quality. The case needs to be of light material, couldn't be metal like the HT1000 it would weigh a ton. The H79 is twice the volume size of the NEC.

If you look at the inside you'll see the Lens Shift is solid, it's metal. I find it's great and I can use light pressure on the spinning to get where I need to go. I wouldn't change a thing with the shift.

Compliments of cine4home -
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/lensshift.jpg

Originally posted by guitarman If you look at the inside you'll see the Lens Shift is solid, it's metal. I find it's great and I can use light pressure on the spinning to get where I need to go. I wouldn't change a thing with the shift.] Well, I've tried a bunch of them, and this one has some slack when changing directions the others didnt' have. BUT, it hasn't caused me any issues at all. The one thing I woudl change is to mke it a knob. That falt thing requires pushing in and turnin at the same time, not to ergonomic. Just put a knob on it. easy to grip, easy to control. It's not liek anyone shoudl be placing anything on top of the PJ if it were right side up. And upside down, it's moot. If I were braver, I'd take it apart and make a knob for it. Except that once I set mine, I never fiddled with it again. For most folks, unless you use it all the time, it's not gonna be an issue. If you use it a lot, I'd get a piece of heavy duty double stick foam tape, cut out a circle and adhere a knob to it :)

Originally posted by guitarman
Gregtag will calibration 1eye's for $75.
Have you done this? I would pay that right now if I was going to get it back right away, but need to figure out when I won't be using it. Do you know if they give you a pre and post report? I may contact you offline about who to talk to about this.

Thanks,
Darin

Milori told me about the $75 and to call Gregtag. I'd imagine you could ask for a report. I don't know if my meter is that off. Every reviewer that's done the H77 shows the same CIE chart I get. I suppose it can't hurt.

I have the Tri-chromat as a back up but find it odd to use it right. Over at milori they say to have it 18" or closer to the lens. At that spot the holder blotted out the onscreen RGB menu. Which on the Optoma is dead center.

A tip for Optoma users and this type of meter would be to use the ADC RGB's which shoots a small set menu in the upper left corner. Also good for the eye-one also. The eye-one Milori says to have is as close to the screen as possible but avoiding it's own shadow. I could get the eye 3" or 4" from the screen.This helped me with the speed of the low end readings. Things were moving much faster.

Scott the fact that when you back track doesn't mean anything to me, so when you spin it it takes up some slack, what does that mean? :) It's the light feather touch I like. With the Z90 I had a needed to use two hands not two fingers. Definitely better the Optoma way.

Getting way off topic here, apologies for that but, for those considering color tools, the CA-6X (Optic 1) does not have to be anywhere that close to the projector. Several feet away works fine for me. It also uses a diffuser calibrated to teh system so directionality isn't the factor it is with the older Tristimulus probe either. The CA-6X measures at 6 reading per second, speed isn't a factor.

Originally posted by guitarman
Scott the fact that when you back track doesn't mean anything to me, so when you spin it it takes up some slack, what does that mean? :) Sorry, I'll elaborate. For example, start with the lens shift centered. Now, turn the shift dial clockwise until the image moves. Stop turning. Now turn the dial counter-clockwise. You have to turn it about 1/2 to 1 turn or more before the image starts to move again. Once the image starts moving, stop. Change directions, turn the knob back clockwise. Ditto, youhave to turn it some before you get any movement.

This is due to the mechanincal components of the shift mechanism having some "play" or slack. It takes a partial turn or so to take up that slack and begin moving the lens the other direction. Other PJ's had some slack, just not as much.

But as I said, this is not a big deal at all. Really. I set mine and it was done. I have no reason to move it ever again unless the PJ moves, or the screen moves. Even if you did have a reason to move the lens shift a lot, the slack isn't a big deal IMO. But if I had to do it routinely, I'd add a knob that I could grasp easier and it would be fine. No projector I played with had a decent knob here I should point out. Probably because the majority of folks will set it once and that's it.

These are the same type of meters. First I was using it at the screen which works, but after reading quality tips over at Milori one of the staff members chimed on with the 18" or closer recommendation. Best to pin it down per meter, what did Cliff tell you?

I have to move mine on a regular basis. I don't mind the mechanism itself as much as I'm a little concerned about any loosening of the mechanism with repeated use. .

Originally posted by guitarman
These are the same type of meters. First I was using it at the screen which works, but after reading quality tips over at Milori one of the staff members chimed on with the 18" or closer recommendation. Best to pin it down per meter, what did Cliff tell you? Said it would work fine at the screen at 30IRE. I was being anal getting super accurate measurments so I moved closer to about 4-5'. The Optic 1 has this spiffy little bulls eye window. A ball moves real time as you adjust. Once you center it you are at D65 coordinates within .001 (or .0001) if you choose to measure that close. If it dosen't have enough light it will bounce aroound some. I didn't have to move it too close for it to stabilize which was nice.

Originally posted by RobZ
I have to move mine on a regular basis. I don't mind the mechanism itself as much as I'm a little concerned about any loosening of the mechanism with repeated use. . I haven't seen the mechanism but wouldn't worry about that really. The slack is bound to be in the linkage between the screw drive and the housing that moves the lens. Then again, I doubt any PJ is designed for tons of cycles on this mechanism. If you want to send me your's I'll be ahppy to take it apart and analyze it for you :D:D

Funny about the Lens Shift, if you want I'll ask about it. My guess is it works the way it should or does do to optimal gearing to make moving it easy. You've seen the picture of the mechanism, it looks solid.

Originally posted by DHarp193
The guy I just bought the RP-91 SDI from, when asked why he sold his HD+ and now the RP-91, said that he sold them because he got the 5910 to use with his BenQ 8700.

He told me he regreted selling his HD+/RP-91 because it outperformed his new 5910. He said there's more noise in the background and he believed the de-interlacing was slightly inferior.

I asked him if he tried tweaking the 5910 because it has many video enhancement adjustments. He said yes and it didn't seem to help to get the image as good as his old HD+/RP-91 SDI.

I can't verify this info of course because I didn't do the "playing" with it and I haven't seen the 5910 in action yet. This is just his opinion, but figured I'd throw it out there for info purposes. He may not really know what to look for or what to do.

He did say he may call me to do a calibration, so maybe that will change his mind? I'd love to see the 5910:)

I personally will probably just wait until the Realta powered Algolith Dragonfly is released and see what reports come from that.



Dave see if you can get to play with guys 5910 something doesnt sound right, with the settings that Kris Deering recommended Ive got a great image, I think the Algolith Dragonfly is really going to make a big difference in displays, Realta chipsets are going to find their way into a lot of processors and players in the future, how each manufacturer programs it will seperate their products from each other, I guess im one of the lucky ones, not only do I have the 5910 but I will be getting the lumagen pro hdp in the near future for my sd and hdtv sources and the hdp pro comes standard with sdi outputs so I guess Ican do my own A/B testing :D

WHere can I find a pic of the lens shift mechanism?

It was posted above by Tom (link)...

Have a look here - better picture:

Tony

Plastic teeth? My monitor is a bit dim. Hopefuly that was metal I saw.

Take a good look, plastic gears for the lens focus and zoom probably for smoothness. The lens shift operation is metal. Looks like the shaft knurls down and up and mechanically moves the lens light.

Plastic teeth? My monitor is a bit dim. Hopefuly that was metal I saw.

The $100,000 3chip pro Christie DLP's also use plastic gears for the lens shift.
It's not a gearbox in a car.

Tony

Plastic Gears have appropriate places and this is one of them. Low torque application, self lubricating, silent. (2) decent metal gear sets would cost a fortune to manufacture and be unnecessary IMO. I wouldn't fret about that.

When I shifted the image up tonight (to mask 2.35:1) it really only took a few seconds and is not much more of a bother than having to vertically shift the image through menus. I was just concerned about regularly using a function that is intended to be used less often.

I was watching Star Wars AOTC. Wow. The contrast and image depth is something else. I was using the 59Avi 720P. I was also watching parts of Dark City. This is the first time I've been able to watch it without wanting to turn it off. Dark City is unbelievably difficult to use for viewing a display but on the H79 it rocked.

Who here is using a Carada Brilliant White screen with the H79?

Rob,

I agree Dark City may rock, relatively, on the H79 compared with other fixed panel displays, but we're still not seeing every scene as it should be. As you say, at least you don't feel like turning the movie off and that is progress.

Dan

Seeing 100% of shadow detail and deep blacks of Dark City on m 34" Sony CRT takes the cake. However, I really can not fault the great image the H79 throws considering it's price and the fact that it is not a $25,000 G90. Factoring in that the source is SD DVD, the image is 110", and the projector costs under six grand, the image it puts out is exciting and very satisfying.

With that said hopefully within the next couple of years we'll see Optoma produce a DLP that:

1.Has 1080P

2. Remote adjustable lens shifting

3.Case design that looks like a small Qualia 004

4. Is quieter (hey you've got to admit that if it got down to 10db it would be pretty sweet even though the projector would probably have to be twice the size and stuffed with tons insulation and fans)

5.Has a built in Teranex processor

6.Lower street price


Okay maybe I'm asking for a bit too much. I'll take the remote lens shifting though.

" I was watching Star Wars AOTC. Wow. The contrast and image depth is something else. I was using the 59Avi 720P. I was also watching parts of Dark City. This is the first time I've been able to watch it without wanting to turn it off. Dark City is unbelievably difficult to use for viewing a display but on the H79 it rocked " -

I agree - both of these movies look great on the H79.

Since fooling with service gamma's made me reset my machine. Don't touch the services gamma's, don't even look at them pls.

Anyway since things change with a reset I re-did my analog progressive signal (denon 1600).

I used Greg's tip on trying in the image area TV and chose gamma 1 per posts. Gamma 1 won't be working for me with this setup but anyway I got some good results.

Using the eye-one with colorfacts the test run shows ---

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79TV2cie.jpg

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79TV2rgb.jpg

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79TV2gamma.jpg

You can see the image TV setting gave me an excellent grayscale tracking. Best I've got so far and I went quick and easy by just using 40IRE and 80IRE.

Gamma's high but the curve looks much better than before when I used Image/video.

Hmmm that's wierd rgb chart is screwed up. Only thing I did different was to send it immediatly to my WS-FTP on my website. Before I was saving as a Doc. I'll see if I can fix it next time. Take my word for it I had to take a double take it looked too good. I thought maybe I was looking at History diagram but then spotted the slight red and blue lines at the 10IRE area.

Also after a reset here's my CIE chart with the Bravo/DVI. You can see by above Analog test that one pushes the red out a little. Something like the Opic1 guys were getting. DVI looks similar to other DVI tests I did.
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79resynccie.jpg

Here's the DVI related gamma again, number 2.18 is nice but the curve is nasty. :)
But remember this is with Image/video, looks like we should stick with image/TV

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79resyncgamma.jpg

I ended up with tv and gamma 3 on the H78, as it gave a gamma of around 2.26.

My CIE isn't as good as I'd like, and my HT1000 measured almost perfect - the best DLP CIE I've ever seen.

Gary.

This is the gamma curve

HT1000 CIE

Oooooohhhhhhhh Gary, what a nice gamma curve you have:D:p!!!!!!!!!!

I'll have to look you up next time I'm in merry ole' England, hehehe;)

Originally posted by Gary Lightfoot
HT1000 CIE

I put a FLD on the HT1000 and re-tuned. Contrast went up and picture quality looked good so I'll probably leave it on. But I do have a high power screen to make up for dimness the lens adds.

Dave,

I didn't know your bread was buttered that side. ;)

Tom,

With the fl-day, 2000:1 CR is possible, but if you add a skylight 1b to the fl-day, you can get almost 2200:1. Not bad considering it's old technology. :)

Gary.

"Dave,

I didn't know your bread was buttered that side. ;)"

Uh, it's definitely NOT, hence the smiley:) and winkey;) faces,........but my gamma curves are certainly sloped that way:D!!!

lol,

Glad to hear it - on both counts! :)

Gary.

Gary,
Can you PM me your settings on the HT1000 with the lens, so I have a ballpark to start in.

Scott

Hi Scotty,

I was usin DVI, and these are the settings using an fl-day, but I can't remembe if it was with or without a skylight 1b (combined):

Contrasts:
Red 134
Green 118
Blue 122

Brightness':
Red -9
Green -5
Blue -8

This resulted in a CR of 2027:1, so it may have been just the fl-day. I'll be recalibrating it with a Cokin filter during the week as I've now sold it, and I'll be doing the component inputs as well, but I'll post them all here when I'm done.

Gary.

In addition to WSR, The Perfect Vision will be reviewing the H79 in the next issue. This month's looked like a Sony brochure. It'll be interesting to see if they bash Optoma.

Several folks here privately asked about inexpensive remote options for the AV-RS232 H77 controller before the powerbuy ends. Because they may not see it otherwise, I'm posting this link as promised on the H77 and H79 review threads. Please excuse the static if this is of no interest:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=5567429#post5567429

Originally posted by guitarman
I think you guys are too hard on the lens shift and overall build quality. The case needs to be of light material, couldn't be metal like the HT1000 it would weigh a ton. The H79 is twice the volume size of the NEC.

If you look at the inside you'll see the Lens Shift is solid, it's metal. I find it's great and I can use light pressure on the spinning to get where I need to go. I wouldn't change a thing with the shift.

Compliments of cine4home -
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/lensshift.jpg

Well, I've used the lens shift only once (when I set up the H79). Never touched it again. SJ

I tend to use the shift allot and it works nice and easy. Just had to use it again putting the H79 back in commission. But what I really like is the picture quality when I put it back in commission. Best projector I have. Allot of HDTV specials during week day use so the H79 gets the call. :)

Originally posted by guitarman
I tend to use the shift allot and it works nice and easy. Just had to use it again putting the H79 back in commission. But what I really like is the picture quality when I put it back in commission. Best projector I have. Allot of HDTV specials during week day use so the H79 gets the call. :)

Another thing, allot of people are yammering about how great CRT is. Well I have a top quality CRT/rptv and the H79 to me is better, especially for HDTV.

"It's a Mother beautiful projector!" :)

I did a seperate post on this also, but I thought this would be a good spot to ask this also since there is a wealth of knowledge here in this thread.

I have been following this and all the threads on the Optoma H 79 and really think it sounds like a great projector, however I have yet to see one in person to make a decision.

Today I went to a local A/V store here in Phoenix and they had the Yamaha DPX-1200 on a 96" Firehawk screen. It really had great blacks and vivid colors overall a very nice picture.

Now I realize the Yamaha retails for about $2000 more than the Optoma, but the Yamaha has an adjustable iris and adjustment for the primary colors , which the Optoma does not.

My problem is I can not find a demo of the H79 to compare. I may very well like the picture on the H79 better, but it is hard to buy sight unseen.

Has anyone been able to compare these two ?

There is not a real lot posted here yet on the Yamaha.

I really want to know if anyone thinks the difference is worth the extra $$ or am I better off sticking with the Optoma ?

I pulled up the manuals for both and the Yamaha does seem to have a lot more adjustments to it.

Hopefully some of you will chime in that have some experience with either these.

P.S. If anyone is willing to give an H79 demo, I can travel. :)

Thanks for any help you can give.

If you're a stickler for color accuracy, have a way to calibrate the 1200 properly (like Colorfacts or OpticONE), and don't mind the extra expense, I'd say the 1200 is the way to go. And I've never even seen one.

Configurable primaries, configurable iris, motorized everything...the main benefit of the 1200 is its configurability. With the H79, you get what you get. Don't get me wrong--what you get is really good, but there are sacrifices.

Keep in mind though that the street price of the H79 is nowhere near the MSRP. The actual difference between the two is probably much more than $2000.

If cost wasn't that important, I would've bought the Yamaha myself.

The actual difference I saw on them was more like $6000. either you are getting a tremendous deal on the 1200 or a really bad one on the H79. :)
IF it was the former (deal on 1200), I'd say the 1200 is probably the best choice for the reasons thirdkind mentioned. If it's the later, check around, Jason here for starters, to be sure you are getting an appropriate price comparison. my2c

Originally posted by GetGray
The actual difference I saw on them was more like $6000.

The street price on the Yamaha shouldn't be that high.

" If cost wasn't that important, I would've bought the Yamaha myself. " -

If cost wasn't important we'd all be watching 3 chip DLP's after we drove home in our Bentleys............ : )

In that case, I'll take a Faroudja 3 chip 1080P please.

Originally posted by Craig Peer
" If cost wasn't that important, I would've bought the Yamaha myself. " -

If cost wasn't important we'd all be watching 3 chip DLP's after we drove home in our Bentleys............ : )

Let me be clearer. If I could afford the extra cost of the Yamaha, I'd prefer to own it instead of the H79 because I believe it's worth that extra cost.

The relative cost of the Yamaha isn't out of scale with the H79 when you consider the improvements. Given the price levels at which we're playing, I don't think the extra cost of the Yamaha is unreasonable given the feature set, better build quality, and superior ergonomics.

Better software, better parts, and more complex functionality cost time and money on the engineering side. It's no surprise that cost is passed on to consumers.

Looking at the H79, it's an excellent performer for the money. It's just obvious what corners were cut.

It's "cheap" for a reason.

Looks like the Yamaha has great contrast and blacks but verdicts not out on how it handles dither in some tuff panning scenes. Better take FOTR with you and view (Dwarfs get their rings/opening) and (journey in the Darkness).

Pay attention to contour ripples during panning and actors movement. If it's jerky and wavy then it's not handling the panning as well as the H79. Some people are very sensitive to this.

And don't forget to pay attention to thirdkinds point of having the tools to adjust them. One of the Yamaha's strong points is its ajustability. But you have to have expensive tools to adjust some of it's features (i.e. primary colors). If you have no plans to do it yourself, or pay someoen else to to a very high-end calibration, at least a some of the extra functionality may be for naught.

2 other points about it I don't know is how it compares in brightness, and how it compares in loudness. The quiet H79 goes a long way for me at living with it's other little quirks. It's is one quiet puppy. And of course brightness is important for obvious reasons. I measured the H79 brighter than several of it's competitors, but didn't have the opportunity to demo a Yamaha in my home like the others. Something I thought about since brightness was paramount for me was that I could buy a lot of $400 bulbs for the incremental cost of a PJ like the Yamaha. Around here Tweeter was the only place to get one and they won't budge off MSRP + our 10% sales tax.

Remember with the savings you could get some spiffy (albeit unnecessary) extras, like a external scaler allowing the PJ to run at 48Hz and get even quieter we've heard. Or a very nice DVD player to match it, i.e. a Denon 3910 or a Pioneer Elite 59AVI both with DVI upscaling. Or even a SDI modded player like Craig has. Of course if $$ are no object... get a 3 chip Marantz. Pissy lot but I'm sure it's very nice :)

I can't help but be tickled to hear anyone put the Optoma on a pedestal for comparing panning against. It's funny because of it's predecessor's panning was reputed to be very bad (H77). I shoudl clarify that the H79 has no panning issues per the same critics however.

And yes, looking at each one can help. You're welcome to see my H79, but I'm a long way away.

Best, Scott

Originally posted by guitarman
Another thing, allot (sic) of people are yammering about how great CRT is. Well I have a top quality CRT/rptv and the H79 to me is better, especially for HDTV.:rolleyes: gee, is it better than a 14" CRT monitor, too?!

Yammer, yammer, yammer... ;)

I know a good picture when I see one. The Toshiba I picked up a couple of weeks ago. A 57HX93 which is supposed to be the hot pick. :)
I converged/focused/geometized it and grayscaled it with colorfacts just like the digital PJ's I have. All are looking veddy good!

I think I watch way too many specific scenes rather than a full movie. I've watched the opening panning and 3D effect of Panic Room a thousand times. Wife says not that again. lol

I think I know what to look for.

You better watch it Tom, or the CRTers will be hijacking your thread faster than you can light your next cigar ;)

R.

Originally posted by Raul GS
You better watch it Tom, or the CRTers will be hijacking your thread faster than you can light your next cigar ;)

R.

No, Clarence's point was that a front projector was compared to a CRT RPTV implying it was a fair comparison. Sorry, a fair comparison is to a CRT front projector. The technology in a CRT RPTV and an EMF CRT FP is significantly different. In fact, considerably more different than a DLP RPTV and DLP FP.

But of course, if we don't whole heartedly agree with misleading information, we are "hijacking" your thread.

Good timing I'm about to light up a Monte 2. :)

I like to think I know allot about CRT's and how to make them do their best. I almost bought one a few weeks ago but gave up becuase of the size and weight. I get more kicks out of trying the different digital projectors I'm lucky to have. I had three different models taken up and down this weekend. Once you setup a CRT it's going to stay there. :) I stand on a ladder and hold these other PJ's with one hand. Very easy to switch them around.

Hijacking is getting on a tangent significantly off-topic. Like this. Y'all want to do a H79 vs FP vs RPFP, start a new thread. Tom's quite prolific, I'm sure he'll come participate ;)

Question for RS232 uers. What is the process of configuring the MX700/800/850 for the RS232? Do they supply software? If so is it a fairly easy setup?

Rob:

For the MX-700 series, it's pretty easy. You install and run their software (which is also on the AV-RS232 disc since it dosen't actually come with the remote, go figure). Plug up the included cable to the PC and remote.

Choose import a device. That looks for "mxf" files. The mxf for the AV-RS232/H7x is on the CD that comes with the AV-RS232. Download the modified config to the remote. That's it.

The AV-RS232 for the Optoma will appear as a "H7X" in the LCD menu on your remote, on whatever screen you imported it to. You can change the LCD name to whatever you like (5 chars) like "H79" for example. All done unless you want to customize and most folks will...

I did, so I put the imported device back on page 4 with some of my other full device files (and then I hide page 4). Then I make a new blank device called PROJ, and put my most commonly used functions all in one place on this new device. I also have devices for "DVD" and "CABLE" where I have all the commands I use for DVD watching including my receiver, my cable box, and the PJ on the same screen, ditto for cable. I have one device (screen) for ONOFF where all my devices on and off commands are. You can customize them to suit you, and with the PC interface, it's easy and quick to fiddle and make changes. I'm sure the remote forum woul dbe all over helping you if you have any trouble. But just getting the AV-RS232 commands into the remote is very easy as described earlier.

Once you get used to using their software it's pretty spiffy. Fairly intuative and as a bonus, the AV-RS232 CD has all the stuff from the URC website including the manual, tutorial and video on using their software.

Hope that helps, Scott

Sounds straight forward. I like the MX-850 but it is interesting how they design it and market it for installers. They should have included the manual and software.

My RS232 arrived fed ex today so I'll try it out. Thanks for the help.

Scott, The RS232 was pretty simple to install. Thanks for the help. I love the MX-850. It's like my MX500 on steroids!

Originally posted by RobZ
Scott, The RS232 was pretty simple to install. mmmmm MX-850 and av-rs232 mmmmm H79 works good now ;).

You are welcome. Glad to help.

I jinxed myself. I guess I spoke too soon. The MX-850 installed only the standard H79 codes. How do I download or access the discrete codes? Also, is the RS232 IR device supposed to have a lit LED or is the LED supposed to light up with commands? I can't tell if it works properly.

Originally posted by thirdkind

Keep in mind though that the street price of the H79 is nowhere near the MSRP. The actual difference between the two is probably much more than $2000.



I don't want to discuss prices here and violate the forum rules so I will send out a few PM's. Could some of you PM me where the best pricing on the H79 or Yamaha is ?

Originally posted by guitarman
Looks like the Yamaha has great contrast and blacks but verdicts not out on how it handles dither in some tuff panning scenes. Better take FOTR with you and view (Dwarfs get their rings/opening) and (journey in the Darkness).

Pay attention to contour ripples during panning and actors movement. If it's jerky and wavy then it's not handling the panning as well as the H79. Some people are very sensitive to this.

Thanks Tom,

I will definately try this on the Yamaha next time I go see it. I know you posted some other good torture tests dvd's for this, but i can not find them in this thread.

Can you tell me the discs and chapters to use for these tests ? I remember you mentioning Spiderman. What chapter is best for this test ? Next time I go out looking I want to be prepared with the right Discs.

My problem is I still don't have the H79 anywhere local to compare to.

Looks like I will have to do some traveling to see this bad boy.

Anyone interested in having me come by for a demo I would greatly appreciate it !

Originally posted by GetGray
And don't forget to pay attention to thirdkinds point of having the tools to adjust them. One of the Yamaha's strong points is its ajustability. But you have to have expensive tools to adjust some of it's features (i.e. primary colors). If you have no plans to do it yourself, or pay someoen else to to a very high-end calibration, at least a some of the extra functionality may be for naught.

2 other points about it I don't know is how it compares in brightness, and how it compares in loudness. The quiet H79 goes a long way for me at living with it's other little quirks. It's is one quiet puppy. And of course brightness is important for obvious reasons. I measured the H79 brighter than several of it's competitors, but didn't have the opportunity to demo a Yamaha in my home like the others. Something I thought about since brightness was paramount for me was that I could buy a lot of $400 bulbs for the incremental cost of a PJ like the Yamaha. Around here Tweeter was the only place to get one and they won't budge off MSRP + our 10% sales tax.

Remember with the savings you could get some spiffy (albeit unnecessary) extras, like a external scaler allowing the PJ to run at 48Hz and get even quieter we've heard. Or a very nice DVD player to match it, i.e. a Denon 3910 or a Pioneer Elite 59AVI both with DVI upscaling. Or even a SDI modded player like Craig has. Of course if $$ are no object... get a 3 chip Marantz. Pissy lot but I'm sure it's very nice :)

I can't help but be tickled to hear anyone put the Optoma on a pedestal for comparing panning against. It's funny because of it's predecessor's panning was reputed to be very bad (H77). I shoudl clarify that the H79 has no panning issues per the same critics however.

And yes, looking at each one can help. You're welcome to see my H79, but I'm a long way away.

Best, Scott

Thanks scott,

You bring up a good point about all the adjustability not really beneficial if I do not have the proper equipment.

I have been reading here for about 6 months now and have learned a bunch, but still have a long way to go when it comes to doing a full calibreation myself.

I'm not sure how the Yamaha compares in brightness because I have not been able to demo the H79 in person, but I can tell you the Yamaha is dead silent just as they advertise. I do not know how they do it but I could not hear a thing sitting under the projector.

Another good point yous said about the money saved could buy a lot of "goodies". I am actually think of either the Denon 3910 or 5910. I don't think I could swing the 5910 if i went with the Yamaha.

Thanks for the invite also, I will keep you in mind if I can get near Tenn.

I purchased the H79 realizing that I will likely be upgrading to 1080P within the next couple of years. When Marantz and Yamaha change to 1080p, the price will be justifiable because 1080p will likely be around for a while. With that said, the H79 is a remarkable buy. To think I was going to spend this amount for an LCD (Sanyo) a few years back.

Originally posted by RobZ
I jinxed myself. I guess I spoke too soon. The MX-850 installed only the standard H79 codes. How do I download or access the discrete codes? Also, is the RS232 IR device supposed to have a lit LED or is the LED supposed to light up with commands? I can't tell if it works properly.

edit:

Sounds like the CD has the wrong mxd file on it. Looking into the reasons for that, but in case, I'm sending a correct one now to try...

Best, Scott

The unit works great. Much better response than the lousy remote that comes with the H79 and most other projectors. Now I dont have to stand up to the side of the projector and repeatedly push buttons to get to various menus. Thanks again.

Here's some shots of the latest grayscaling after tips from Gregr. The adding of all these new usable gamma settings opens up for allot more testing. This was Image/video gamma 3.

In honor of Star Wars -
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79gs551.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79gs552.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79gs553.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79gs554.jpg

Spoof shot :)
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79gs555.jpg

Over all not too bad. I think my whites look a little hot. I used the contrast method of having the right moving bar at the faintest spot. Think I'd better use Guys Kuo's tip on having the right bar half the brightness of the left bar.

Oh yeah Bravo D2, 1.1. I can't seem to find a way to delete the Pause sign. I could with the Bravo D1. Anyone know the trick?

Originally posted by guitarman
...Oh yeah Bravo D2, 1.1. I can't seem to find a way to delete the Pause sign. I could with the Bravo D1. Anyone know the trick?

Yeah, hit "PLAY";):D:p:rolleyes:

Use the force Luke!

Yeah, that too!!!:eek:

One could use the freeze button on the H79's remote.

Dan

(In my best Homer Simpson impression...)

Doh:eek:!!!

Originally posted by drapp1952
One could use the freeze button on the H79's remote.

Dan
I've used that for HDTV because we have to, but it's not as precise. You need the skip step to find the sharpest spot.

I showed the first Star Wars image to a video buddy here. He's says it nice and clean and the Hue's show you that the actors an alcoholic. Now that's detail :)

They had alcohol a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away??? I wonder what would happen if you mixed booze with the Force:eek:!?!?!? The lightsaber reaction time would be shot...

...Oh wait, I remember the Cantina scene now...never mind:rolleyes:

Originally posted by nelson4u

Another good point you said about the money saved could buy a lot of "goodies". I am actually think of either the Denon 3910 or 5910. I don't think I could swing the 5910 if i went with the Yamaha.


Dear Nelson,
Would you consider spending more than 1k on a DVD player at this point in time, given the probability that HD-DVD players will be out in several months (October)? Note that these HD players should be backward compatible with SD DVD, and upconverting to boot. I would bet once you watch an HD DVD, I predict the 3910 or 5910 would sit relatively idle.

I am interested in feedback, as I am in a similar position, where I am about to purchase an H79, and need a DVD player to hold me through the arrival of the HD DVD players. I am leaning closer to the 2910 rather than the 5910.

Cheers,
-jb

I personally think the V Inc Bravo D2 is a killer deal as a stopgap DVI upconverting DVD player. I owned one and actually miss it a little. I jumped the gun on a pretty good deal for a 59avi, but probably should have waited on the HD-DVD's as mentioned previously.

JB,

It looks like we are in exactly the same shoes. I am interested in the H79 also.

Here's how I justify the 3910 or 5910 :

HD dvd players may come out at the end of the year as planned, but first of all I do not want to buy into a brand new technology until the bugs are worked out with HD DVD and there will be "bugs". Also prices will be high for the first couple years. And there will not be a huge selection of movies for a long while.

Second : There will be 2 formats (BlueRay and HD DVD) and until they either settle on one format or make a universal HD DVD player i'm waiting.

Third: It will take a long time for the studios to start releasing "new " movies on HD DVD. The 120 or so movies being released later this year are movies that have already been out on regular dvd for some time. I don't want to have 2 versions of the same movie on my shelf. One in HD one in SD. It's the chicken and the egg analogy. Consumers won't rush out and buy HD players if there are not many movies and studios won't rush to put out HD movies until there is big demand.

Fourth: It will be years before they build an HD player that can perform the processing of the DVDO and Realta chip in the 5910 also the audio performance of dvd audio and SACD of the 5910 will be hard to match for a long time with an HD player. HD players will not have nearly the features of the 5910.

And while all this is playing out I will be enjoying top notch DVD video and premium audio with the 5910.

I see it like this HD Dvd players will become another component for the rack to go along with the 5910 when the time comes to be used for strictly HD dvd which is what they are made to do.

The 5910 will be in my rack for a long time, thats how I justify the price.

This is all the way I feel, you may feel differently. Mike

Originally posted by nelson4u
Third: It will take a long time for the studios to start releasing "new " movies on HD DVD. The 120 or so movies being released later this year are movies that have already been out on regular dvd for some time. I don't want to have 2 versions of the same movie on my shelf. One in HD one in SD. It's the chicken and the egg analogy. Consumers won't rush out and buy HD players if there are not many movies and studios won't rush to put out HD movies until there is big demand.

Fourth: It will be years before they build an HD player that can perform the processing of the DVDO and Realta chip in the 5910 also the audio performance of dvd audio and SACD of the 5910 will be hard to match for a long time with an HD player. HD players will not have nearly the features of the 5910.

Mike

Third comment:
Many of the movies coming out are going to be Day and Date new releases with their SD counterparts, Like I think "Batman Begins" or something like that. Check Widescreen Review's list of the upcoming titles.

Fourth comment:
Why would it have to do the processing of the DVDO or the Realta??? It's already native HD resolutions coming off of and stored on the disc:confused: Maybe something like 1080i to 1080p, or cross scaling from 720p to 1080i and vice versa, if that's what you mean?

Originally posted by DHarp193
...Oh wait, I remember the Cantina scene now...never mind:rolleyes:

<mind_trick=on>These are not the blondes you are searching for</mind_trick>

<mind_trick=on>Yes! I am rich. I wear these robes because they're comfortable.</mind_trick>

:D

Later,
Bill

Originally posted by DHarp193

Fourth comment:
Why would it have to do the processing of the DVDO or the Realta??? It's already native HD resolutions coming off of and stored on the disc:confused: Maybe something like 1080i to 1080p, or cross scaling from 720p to 1080i and vice versa, if that's what you mean?

Hi Dave,

I guess I was not very clear with that fourth comment. What I meant is the processing in the 5910 will be far superior to the processing in the HD dvd player as far as watching standard def. DVD's.

The majority of the discs watched on the HD dvd players will still be regular SD dvd's until consumers have a big library built up of HD dvd's which could take a while.

Some of us have hundreds if not thousands of standard def dvd's in their libraries and will not just get rid of them. Until HD DVD really takes over a player like the 5910 will still be a valuable asset for it's processing of SD.

Like I mentioned above once HD dvd really takes off and the prices come down for the players and the discs and there are plenty of movies to choose from, then I will just add a nice HD player to the rack to do what it can do best and that is play HD discs, but until then I can be enjoying the best quality sound and video from the 5910 for all the dvd's out there today and have the best of both worlds HD and SD DVD when the time comes.

One more thing. I think after HD DVD gets more mainstrem consumers will tend to get kind of "spoiled" with the great HD quality which will make it even more important to have a very good SD dvd player like the 5910 to come as close in quality of HD as you can get when viewing all your SD dvd's. Just my opinion.

Nelson,

Thanks for clearing that up. I was kinda thinking that's what you meant. I tend to agree with you too.

Thanks for your insight. I know we are straying from our projector forum topic, but I wonder whether there will much difference in standard def DVD image quality played on a 3910 vs. an HD player. Both will be upconverted. It would seem true that the dedicated SD DVD player will probably have more bells and whistles, and of benefit if one finds they are useful.

Regards,
jerry

Hey guys, this IS way off topic and has nothing whatsoever to do with the H79. Please start a new thread in the right place. You'll get more input from folks not watching this thread anyway. This is the H79 thread.

Last night I compared the H79's image on my usual 110" Cinema White Carada with a 110" Brilliant White Carada. The CW has supposedly been measured to be less than 1.0 gain (projectorcentral review) due to excess light passing through. The BW is stated to be 1.4 gain but may be a bit less (not sure).

I wanted to change the screen material to compare and determine whether or not I prefer a brighter image. To compare them I watched scenes of Spiderman, Underworld, and Chronicles of Riddick.

I was amazed that I could not subjectively see a punchier image with the higher gain (BW 1.4 gain). This is likely due to higher black level. I could, however, see some pixelation, more artifacts (source related), and less filmlike image.

By the end of the night I fastened the CCW back up. The blacks were seemingly much deeper. Less visible artifacts, and overall better film like quality (closer to CRT). The higher gain made it look more like a plasma.

I calibrated both with Avia. The contrast had to be dropped for the higher gain screen. The image quality may also be due to 100% light control, and minimal reflection from the surrounding walls.

I was actually pretty amazed at how much better, cleaner, dimensional, and contrast rich the H79 was with the lower gain. I'm sure this will decrease with lamp hours but at around $325 a lamp, an annual change is pretty affordable.

I also prefer a dimmer image for all the above reasons you've given.

I now try to aim for around 12ft lamberts, but am also quite happy with less. I caluibrated ny old HT1000 with two lens filters to boost contrast (2200:1), and found the image very watchable. I was surprised to find that I was only getting a little over 4ft lamberts. I'm guessing that might be why higher contrast CRT projectors give such good images despite their lower lumen levels - more depth due to a higher CR.

My H78 is giving over 2700:1 with lens filters, and although putting out
about 14ft lamberts at the moment, that will, as you say, drop as the lamp ages. If I can be happy with 2200:1 at 4ft lamberts, 2700:1 at 7ft lamberts when the lamp reaches the end of its life will be more than acceptable. :)

Gary.

What do you guys/gals think of this combination? Please share you
pros and cons.

I had my samples up again last night and this combo seems to run
the middle of the road. Good color, decent blacks with some gain for
bulb age. The Ultra 200 is too much and the SilverStar
requires sunglasses. The ST130 just didn't seem to have the
subtle "punch", which the Ultra150 did.

(ceiling, 110" diag, 15ft throw)

I put up a piece of ST130 on my 110" firehawk the other day. I was pleased to find I still like the Firehawk best. Even light reflecting of nearby items (speakers) caused a significant differece in blacks. Firehawk was WAY better on darker materials. And on the bright stuff, the difference was only subtle. I'm supposed to have a piece of silverstar on the way so I can finally see how it does compared to my Firehawk.

Originally posted by GetGray
I put up a piece of ST130 on my 110" firehawk the other day. I was pleased to find I still like the Firehawk best. Even light reflecting of nearby items (speakers) caused a significant differece in blacks. Firehawk was WAY better on darker materials. And on the bright stuff, the difference was only subtle. I'm supposed to have a piece of silverstar on the way so I can finally see how it does compared to my Firehawk.

FYI, the SilverStar sample comes in a cute little frame. It's cute, but hard
to attach to your viewing area. (Like a mini screen)

The firehawk would likely be a great choice for the H79. The only reason I do not change is the simple fact that I can keep my Carada and buy six replacement lamps. I'm very happy with the black levels I get with the Carada. A higher gain made the black level the equivalent of an HD2 chip with the CCW screen.

The H79 is pretty bright right now with low hours on the bulb but I'm at about 500hrs now and the bulbs toned down a little. Looks still nice and bright with the High Power material at about 1.8 gain. I don't think I'll have to go with bright mode until maybe 1500hrs and maybe not at all. You know there's trade offs you just have to figure what balance you want.

Originally posted by guitarman
I'm at about 500hrs now
What are you using this thing as, a reading lamp? ;)

That is about 183 hrs a month, 45 hrs a week, 5 hrs a day.

Are you watching films at your cigar shop ;)

Cheers,
Raul

I'm at about 500hrs now

I went through a Panasonic AE700, HS51, H76, and now H79 in less than 500 hours viewing!

At 3-4 movies per week, I probably go through 300-400 hours a year.

Originally posted by Raul GS
What are you using this thing as, a reading lamp? ;)

That is about 183 hrs a month, 45 hrs a week, 5 hrs a day.

Are you watching films at your cigar shop ;)

Cheers,
Raul

Actually I'm working on using my H30 at the cigar shop. It should blow the minds of the uninformed.

We use our H79 everyday, mornings for 4hrs, evenings another 5hrs, weekends it can get to be many more hours. The good new is I put this many hours on it without a hitch.

Originally posted by GetGray
I put up a piece of ST130 on my 110" firehawk the other day. I was pleased to find I still like the Firehawk best. Even light reflecting of nearby items (speakers) caused a significant differece in blacks. Firehawk was WAY better on darker materials. And on the bright stuff, the difference was only subtle. I'm supposed to have a piece of silverstar on the way so I can finally see how it does compared to my Firehawk.


Is your room totally light controlled ? Can you explain a little further what you liked best about the Firehawk ? I am trying to decide between the Firehawk and ST130 for a H79 in a totally light controlled room. I always thought the ST130 was supposed to have better punch and more accurate colors without affecting black level in a totally light controlled room ? What did you think ? I really need to find some demo's so I can judge these differences. I'm having a hard time finding demo's.

Well I got my Colorfacts Pro with one-eye Friday and got around to playing around with it. There sure is a lot more to it than my Sencore cp 288. I have a question about the eye-one. What is the button on the side for? Haven't done anything but play around and get some window readings. The H79 sure seems to be a pain in the butt to get a good gray scale compared to others (crt) that I have done before with my cp 288. Don't know if I will ever be able to get the excess red below white out of the gray scale after getting white to 6500. I only have about 65 hours on the bulb so maybe that will improve after I get more hours on the bulb?

I have also noticed when checking the color level with my Accupel 2000
that my color level is to low on the BNC input for both component and RGB. I snagged a DVD player with DVI out and checked the color level on the DVI and that seems low as well. Has anybody else noticed low color levels besides me? Is there any way to increase the color level in the service menu?

What are everybody's factory setting for motion detection, mine is off, should be on? My CWI is 27 is that the norm for everyone else also? What about the noise reduction, leave it on or turn it off? I dont think I see any differece either way.

I'd leave the service items as set by factory. On the Optoma projectors the motion is set to off, CW is set for your machine, only alter it if you see contour problems.

The button on the 1eye is for starting a Dark reading. You still hv to go back to the computer and key it in though. Don't forget to try TV in the image area then find a gamma that gets u closest to 2.2, if you like.

I have the gamma set to tv 1 as Greg R suggested. Haven't tried different
gamma yet. Still figuring out Colorfacts software and haven't tried gamma readings. In the help section it says to put the eye-one in the center of the pattern to take a reading, is this how you do it or do you put it at the edge and angle it to read at the center of the window and how far away from the screen do you get the best results? What about the color level, is mine the only one that appears low using a blue filter?

Craigslu: You'd be better off to start a thread on how to use yoru CF meter. There, a lot of folks other than just H79 owners that will be able to chime in with more help. You are limiting yourself here, it's usage is not specific to the H79.

Originally posted by Craigslue
I have the gamma set to tv 1 as Greg R suggested. Haven't tried different
gamma yet. Still figuring out Colorfacts software and haven't tried gamma readings. In the help section it says to put the eye-one in the center of the pattern to take a reading, is this how you do it or do you put it at the edge and angle it to read at the center of the window and how far away from the screen do you get the best results? What about the color level, is mine the only one that appears low using a blue filter?

Facing the screen center up the eye-one closer than 18" or as close as you can and angle the lens up and out of it's own shadow. I'll pm you a good tip sheet with a floor plan on calibrating steps.

Got my Widescreen review today with Greg Rogers in-depth review and calibrations. I've not yet read it through thoroughly, but the calibrated lumens he got (DVI) were 775 and 578 - that's might impressibve for the DC3 chip, as the low lamp is producing the same lumens as the H78 is in low lamp - though my lamp has 170hrs on it so is obviously reading dimmer, but it's still a huge difference. More was achievable using the white peaking and upping the contrast settings though, with 1100 lumens being the amount that could be achieved at the expense of greyscale etc.

The CR at D65 was 2900:1, though white peaking would allow 3200:1. Upping the contrast settings could manage 4100:1 though at the expense of image quality. White field uniformity was just 7% from center to edges with a colour temp chnge of just 95 Kelvin. ANSI was measured at 370:1

Color accuracy is less than stellar with 480i component sources, but everything else was better. DVI is the best connection it would seem.

I'll have to read it properly as I've just glimpsed at it, so I may have made some errors, but overall it sems to get a glowing review. We should see some more comments here as others get their copies in.

Gary.

Hope I get my copy of WSR today as I am looking forward to reading Greg's review in depth.

Since I'm a web subscriber, I won't get mine for a while... :mad:

I'm anxious to see his CIE and how it compares to the ones we all discussed awhile back. Mine hasn't come yet. You'd think TN would be quicker than UK :), delivery that is.

What's he using for charts? On the web they look like Optic 1 charts.

I think red was slightly oversaturated on some of the CIE charts. Can't remember which one(s) ad there was a proviso IIRC. Nothing negative in his comments as far as I can remember though.

Gary

Tom: Could you get to the H79 rview? I only see the issue with the sharp when I login. Gregs charts on teh Sharp are not from a Optic1, dont know what it's from, but the Optic 1's (CA6X) dosent' look like those.

I was thinking about the procedure of determining the limited color while I was grayscaling the H30 this morning. Off note I tried PC with that machine and got a tuned 6500k but in reality it showed an odd color arrangement when just looking at the needle pulse steps, so I went back to Film at 6500k which looked natural, could be machine related.

Back to determining limited color. I was thinking it might be best to work with the service RGB adjustments first for finding the limits of a color. The user area is the last line in the chain. Figure what we're trying to do here is push the contrast colors as high as possible. Since the service area is the first line of the chain we might get higher contrast results. Plus it's nice the RGB menu in service shoots to top left and the menu is small.

You get what I'm talking about? Example when we first got the H30 many users couldn't get the blacks to low dither so I sent them to the service area (first line in the chain) and they lowered the bright/rgbs there, then went back to the user RGB area and they were able to get black with low dither. Service area being able to pull black lower.

If I remember right Wing told me the steps in the chain.

1. ADC
2. DLP (I wouldn't use these for grayscale) they're set uniformly
3. Picture
4. User RGB

The only info I got from Wing early on about these is ADC is more dynamic and he liked using the service area because the menu's out of the way.

Originally posted by GetGray
Tom: Could you get to the H79 rview? I only see the issue with the sharp when I login. Gregs charts on teh Sharp are not from a Optic1, dont know what it's from, but the Optic 1's (CA6X) dosent' look like those.

I've beening hunting around there everyday, don't think the web review will be up until after the magazines are sent out. Maybe he's using Sencore equip.

I finally got the site to work (clear the cache and refresh; had to grab to full issue file, rather than the individual review). The colorimetry seems to agree more with the OpticOne crew, not the EyeOne, so notch one up for them (even if he's using a different meter). I will say that Greg's light measurements seem to indicate that the H79 is definitely one of the brightest single-chip DLPs around (notwithstanding the 72xx).

So, Greg, now that the cat's out of the bag, care to meow a bit more? :)

Later,
Bill

Originally posted by Ursa I finally got the site to work (clear the cache and refresh Thanks Bill, that did it for me, too. But I right clicked on the H79 pdf and DL'd if fine. Off to read now...Best, Scott

Originally posted by Ursa
I finally got the site to work (clear the cache and refresh; had to grab to full issue file, rather than the individual review). The colorimetry seems to agree more with the OpticOne crew, not the EyeOne, so notch one up for them (even if he's using a different meter). I will say that Greg's light measurements seem to indicate that the H79 is definitely one of the brightest single-chip DLPs around (notwithstanding the 72xx).

So, Greg, now that the cat's out of the bag, care to meow a bit more? :)

Later,
Bill

Red doesn't appear that oversatured, DVI was very close. Long review looks like it's available front page now. Overall what I got is its a super bright projector with very good contrast at the same time, sharp with pleasing color.
Nice review!

Reading Reading, Reading, :)

One thing for sure the guys that wanted huge screens don't hv anything to worry about. I see D-theater looks great on the H79. Can't wait to get started I got a 40k delivered yesterday. But Comast has 6pin and the player has 4pin and I bought a 4 to 4 pin firewire. :(

I clipped the little thingy inside so I can use S-video's for HD. :) I'm cheap
Tweak compliments from Michael TLV, thx Mike.

In the review I noticed black level was good at .04. Took a look at the Yammy 1200 and it was .03, so not to far off.

Originally posted by guitarman
Can't wait to get started I got a 40k delivered yesterday. But Comast has 6pin and the player has 4pin and I bought a 4 to 4 pin firewire. :(

I clipped the little thingy inside so I can use S-video's for HD. :) I'm cheap
Tweak compliments from Michael TLV, thx Mike.


Tom,

Go to Radio Shack, they have a 4 pin to 6 pin adapter for firewire. That's what I use with success.

Can you point me to that clip tweak to use S-Video? I have a 30K and just hit the "D-VHS" button with S-video tapes, but maybe I'll just do that instead.

Can someone PLEASE send me the .pdf article of the H79 review via email or PM? harperhometheater@comcast.net I have a subscription to WSR but I am having trouble logging into their site. I think it is a problem with the disclaimer that's there about the new site:rolleyes::( I really want to read that article ASAP.

Dave, I bit the bullet and got one From RS a minute ago, $35! I could get these on the web for $3.00. Here's the link -

http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/learnabout/generaltips/dvhs_budget.html

$35:eek:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think I only paid $9.99 for mine!!!

Did you get the cable or the small plastic adapter with 4 pin on one side and 6 pin on the other???

Thanks for the link:)

They only had the cable so they got me. Time was of the essence, I want to clean up the hard drive, too many American Idols :)

Go bo! rip em to shreds

The H79 is very bright. Last night I was watching In Good Company on a 110" BW Carada. I was previously using a less than 1.0 gain screen. I had an unlit Dunhill cigarette in my mouth. During a bright scene, the cigarette actually lit. Well maybe not. Very high light output though. Maintains the very good blacks.

Thanks guys for sending me the review:) No one has to send me anymore, I already got two copies;)!!!

Tom,

You're a Bo fan too, huh? So are we. We are so glad that Scott and Anthony finally got booted. We thought they sucked:eek:

Originally posted by DHarp193
Thanks guys for sending me the review:) No one has to send me anymore, I already got two copies;)!!!

Tom,

You're a Bo fan too, huh? So are we. We are so glad that Scott and Anthony finally got booted. We thought they sucked:eek:

Yeah guitarman but I'm also a singer and I like to think I know a good singer when I hear one. Early on I knew this Alabama boy was unique. My wife said but that low voice, I said it's the power of that low voice, plus there's soul/blues there also. The kid should win it.

Hey Rob did you read the review yet? He said if you wanted you could get 1100lumens out of the H79. ouch

Can someone send me the review (ftlee@comcast.net or PM)?

Guitarman,

1100lumens What was it at D65?

Thanks,

Frank

585lumens in low bulb, 785 in bright mode, there abouts.

Frank - Why not subscribe?

As for the measurements, check Gary's post above (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=5613377#post5613377)

585lumens in low bulb

I guess that is about what I thought all along. It is about 5@% dimmer than the 7210 at D65.

Frank

:) actually he thought 585 was too high, he had to use an ND filter. I hate filters though.

I tried the ND.3 filter on my H79 today as WSR suggested. Greg used a smaller screen with a higher gain (Studiotech 130). My screen is larger and has a bit less gain. The filter drops the light output well. I prefer the deeper blacks with it. Although, my room is very dark and fully light controlled. Those who prefer the punch of brighter images will probably not like the drastic reduction. One thing I noticed with the H79 and higher gain screen was subtle rainbows. This was only while watching Precinct 13. Lots of black scenes with very bright lights. I could not notice any with the ND filter due to the reduced light. I'm sure as the lamp ages, the filter will not be needed.

I like the part where Greg says the cream colored enclosure is not much to look at. "Hey, for us Star Wars fans the case looks like a Strom Trooper!" It really is not much of a looker though. I have my projector ceiling mounted from a 1' arm coming down from the ceiling. It's visible right wehn you walk into the room. It definitely doesn't look like a machine that will produce this good of an image. I'd pay a bit more if they made it look like a little Screenplay 777.

A Dark Helmut appearance maybe?

May the Swartz be with you, lol

Gregg Rogers uses a PhotoResearch PR-650 to take his measurements of displays. All patterns are supplied from his Accupel HDG-3000 pattern generator.

I've viewed the H79 with the filter a bit more tonight. With the current brightness of the lamp, I love the image when using the filter (ND.3), and Video 1 (not TV). The apparent contrast, which I have not measured, amazes me when I compare it to previous projectors of mine such as the HS51.

Who is using the Firehawk with the H79 in alight controlled room?

Could one of you please PM me with a link to the H79 review ? I have been following this thread from the begining and would love to read the review to help me with my decision.

Thanks, Mike

Originally posted by RobZ
Who is using the Firehawk with the H79 in alight controlled room? I am.

I am.

Do you feel that the Firehawk improves the black level on the H79? I've been wanting to change to Stewart but the closest dealer is approximately five hours from me. I would have to purchase one without viewing first.

Originally posted by RobZ
Do you feel that the Firehawk improves the black level on the H79? I've been wanting to change to Stewart but the closest dealer is approximately five hours from me. I would have to purchase one without viewing first. Yes. I like it very much and still feel the same as these posts:


http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=5275280&highlight=firehawk+AND+CEDIA#post5275280

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=5396831#post5396831

Screen fabric aside, the build quality of my fixed frame screen is very, very nice. I have the delux model (I think it's the name, their high end frame whatever it's name), and it is impressive, easy to assemble, and the black velvet angled frame might as well be a black hole for any "overscan".

I just looked over the review briefly. The CIE doesn't look that bad but it certainly appears that OpticOne produced a more accurate result vs Colorfacts.

Wow! That factory greyscale was awful. Have you H79 owners had greyscale that bad from the factory? Looks like an ISF is a must.

I thought that the white peaking results were interesting. Very little additional deviation with it on but a nice boost in CR and lumens.....might be worth using.

Looks like the H79 is a good price performer :)

Have you seen many graphs of Sharp, Seleco's, Marantz, OTB grayscales?This is not a way way out OTB grayscale. But yes when you're into high caliber HT like this it's good to have a display calibrated. At least a digital can hold the grayscale pretty well over time.


http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79factoryrgb.jpg

After one try,
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/H79rgbchange.jpg

Oh yeah maybe you'll want to re-think about the CIE? Colorfacts w/1eye
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/H79tv2cie.jpg

That's two out of three but finally a hit. The H79 is the Dark Chip3 best deal right now. :)
take care

I used some white peaking while playing teh U571 posterisation test on my H77, and it did some odd things with the bright center of the lamp in that scene. That made me feel it wasn't a good thing to use for accurate video playback.

Anyone actualy using it?

Gary.

I have a CA6X so it's not an issue for me, and I'm not a fan of Marantz due to their pricing structure but... the S3 was almost dead on out of the box on grayscale. For it's price however, you can get a H79, an Optic1 system, an accupel signal generator, and pay someone to come show you how to use it and still have enough left over to get a Denon *5910* and more.

Hey Gary looks like the Ex-techs aren't too far off like we were led to believe. At least my reading was close to whatever Greg used for his test. I tested what WP did for contrast ratio, it seems to bump you up 100.1 or so per click. But watch out for white clouds. ;)

Marantz, later models helped out with the auto tune gismo. But you know you've seen many OTB graphs way out, high into the 9k area on some. The H79 is sitting pretty close you must agree?

Originally posted by guitarman
Marantz, later models helped out with the auto tune gismo. But you know you've seen many OTB graphs way out, high into the 9k area on some. The H79 is sitting pretty close you must agree? Yes, I agree that with the exception of the overpriced S3 I tested, the others were typically "hot" and/or just as off as the Optoma, often more by other's reports. If someone is looking at getting a H79, I think they will be fine as is. If they are seeking the very best, they will be looking at getting a calibration anyway one way or another (ISF, rent CF, buy O1, etc.) regardless of their PJ choice. So, especially at the price, the H79 is a good choice since one way to look at it is they will give you a calibration tool and $4k vs the competing product ;)

Scott, interesting about the early Ex-Tech reading we got vs Gregs, both machines early on in bubl life. Lets see he got 585 and I got around 575 I think. If we were 10 percent off we would hv been 60 points apart, just 10 points (less than 2%) difference is great for a $100 meter. Test was done in Pitch Black enviorment.

Yeah, nice to see your's was in the ballpark. I always felt mine was measuring low. William Phelps confirmed my suspicions, then the factory specialist himself verified and told me that their meters aren't accurate in low light readings. And WP found he got significant errors on high levels with a NIST calibrated meter vs his NIST High $$ LightSpex..

But for me, I was using the same meter to compare several projectors in identical setups, so I'm comfortable the Extech was perfectly fine for that. It showed the H79 brighter than all the other's I tested. Actual measurment aside, the differences between PJ's were measurable using the identical meter.

Point is, I wouldn't trust one to compare to your friends meter (i.e. mine and yours), but you can definately use one to compare differences or changes using the same meter on different sources. Like if you want to see how bright a Yamaha 1200 is, go measure one with your meter. You'd then know how much different it is from your other measured PJ fairly close, just maybe not it's "real" number to compare with someone's PR650 (or definaltely not to compare with someone elses Extech).

re enviroment, You mean your test was done with no lights except that 100IRE pattern I presume. With the H79, that definately would not have been a pitch black enviroment :):)

Right background light has to be squashed. Amplifier LED lights, Optoma's Blue on light, laptops off etc. It sound overdone but is necessary. Especially when using the analysis systems color meter for a make shift contrast ratio. ;)

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h794900.jpg

How well does the H79 render SD/480i video. I would like to know how it compares to similar models like the Infocus 7210 when viewing SD material.

I am trying to figure out which one of these is for me. Sounds like the H79 has a better picture overall.

I have some controlled ambient light during day and dont mind a less than stellar picture during the day, just watching normal programming.

Movie quality is important to me and HD sources for most part. But I dont want a real grainy SD picture. I dont believe the H79 has Faroudja processing? Does it make that much of a difference?

I have Comcast and Alan got me into Gunsmoke lol

The picture for these old shows looks great to me in 4.3 boxed. Mainly I view OTA 480p, HDTV, DVD, now 1080i D-theater. I wouldn't place to high of a value on 480i TV shows but the H79 will play them nicely. It's Pixelworks scaling deinterlacing has shown to be very good in several projectors they have. Image is even better with the 720p machine.

Originally posted by starchild
How well does the H79 render SD/480i video. I would like to know how it compares to similar models like the Infocus 7210 when viewing SD material. <snip> But I dont want a real grainy SD picture. I dont believe the H79 has Faroudja processing? Does it make that much of a difference? Of the PJ's I tried (IF 7205, Sim300E, Marantz S3), the H79 clearly had the best picture for SD TV. Unfortunately, it is slow to resync to different sources (relative to the others) and so I set my HD cable box to do the upscaling and lose that quality. By having the HD box do the scaling (480 passthrough off), the PJ dosen't have to resync when going from a SD to a HD channel. If you surf channels that can be annoying. If you don't the PJ's scaler is the best one IMO. And of course there is always the option of getting an external scaler which you can do and still save money vs the others.

Originally posted by guitarman
Right background light has to be squashed. Amplifier LED lights, Optoma's Blue on light, laptops off etc. It sound overdone but is necessary. Especially when using the analysis systems color meter for a make shift contrast ratio. ;)

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h794900.jpg
Your margin of error must be throwing off your actual on/off CR. The specs provided by optoma (which would be higher than calibrated) are 9% lower than your instruments indicate, and all indications are that the H79 calibrated should have an on/off CR ~3000 (which is 39% lower). So, even though it is a good strategy to develop a bat cage, I would not assume you have achieved almost 5k on/off CR.

Cheers,
Raul

You didn't see the wink. "color meters makes shift Contrast reading"

It was a joke, we know you can't use colorfacts for an accurate CR reading.

Originally posted by GetGray
Of the PJ's I tried (IF 7205, Sim300E, Marantz S3), the H79 clearly had the best picture for SD TV. Unfortunately, it is slow to resync to different sources (relative to the others) and so I set my HD cable box to do the upscaling and lose that quality. By having the HD box do the scaling (480 passthrough off), the PJ dosen't have to resync when going from a SD to a HD channel. If you surf channels that can be annoying. If you don't the PJ's scaler is the best one IMO. And of course there is always the option of getting an external scaler which you can do and still save money vs the others.

I am in the same boat as Starchild trying to make a decision.

You mention the option of using an external scaler. Is it worth the price of say an Iscan HD+ or some other external scaler to use for SD material with the H79 ?

I guess what I am asking is would an external scaler be a really noticable difference in PQ compared to the scaler in the H79 as far as viewing SD content ?

Originally posted by starchild
How well does the H79 render SD/480i video. I would like to know how it compares to similar models like the Infocus 7210 when viewing SD material.

I am trying to figure out which one of these is for me. Sounds like the H79 has a better picture overall.

I have some controlled ambient light during day and dont mind a less than stellar picture during the day, just watching normal programming.

Movie quality is important to me and HD sources for most part. But I dont want a real grainy SD picture. I dont believe the H79 has Faroudja processing? Does it make that much of a difference?

I'm using a iSCAN HD for 480i sources (I even output 480i from my DVD and let the iSCAN scale it). Works great with my H79. I scale everything to 720p (even my XBOX). An external scaler allows a lot more options than most projectors. Picture is fantastic on my Firehawk (great with some ambient light as well...) SJ

Originally posted by nelson4u
I am in the same boat as Starchild trying to make a decision.

You mention the option of using an external scaler. Is it worth the price of say an Iscan HD+ or some other external scaler to use for SD material with the H79 ?

I guess what I am asking is would an external scaler be a really noticable difference in PQ compared to the scaler in the H79 as far as viewing SD content ? I'm sure it's a spiffy option. It's just going to depend on how much you watch SD. I use a Denon 3910 ans only send 720p from the DVD player via DVI. Regular network programming plus ESPN and INHD comes in in HD, that leaves the other cable channels which I don't watch much so for me it's just a nicety, not a necessity for SD IMO. One thing, if I was getting a external scaler, I'd probably get a SDI modded Denon 2900 instead, too.

Originally posted by guitarman
You didn't see the wink. "color meters makes shift Contrast reading"
It was a joke, we know you can't use colorfacts for an accurate CR reading.
It clearly was. I should read a little more carefuly instead of clicking on the links ;)

The WSR review proves the oversaturated reds and that ColorFacts default setup is wrong and OpticOne is right.

ColorFacts->Edit->Options->Preferences->Constrain Colors to Gamut is defaulted

I think this was put in a long time ago when the Spyder1's started drifting - you would get bad greyscale because it was misreading the primaries. By constraining the gamut you would get a better greyscale because the primaries were closer to reality if they were constrained.

I have no idea why it is defaulted now that you can easily get a RMA on drifted sensors. But the reason I recalled this option - is years ago when I first complained about drift they said that was the fix. I am also not sure why Milori did not respond to guitarman's query in their forum - beyond "read our sensor calibration technology article".

It has been my experience with these lamps that after burn-in intense neon reds become more natural - so I don't think this is a big issue.

What I would like to know is why did WSR switch from the 1976 CIE charts - which minimize green error, and high-lite red/blue error (per human eye response?)

As for the rest of the review - it just proves that Optomas need to be calibrated. Since I get blasted for saying that I will unsubscribe again.

Please - someone PM if you found ColorFacts option solved the primary correlations

All I know is the last time I ran CIE with DVI my chart levels looks similar to WSR.

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79tv2cie.jpg

Plus my RGB chart at stock looked pretty good and not much far off from Andrea's stock chart of the 7205.
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/h79factoryrgb.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/7205stockrgb.jpg

Put it this way 6500k at not that far off will look very good to a new owner. Perfectionists well that's another story. Plus I like the peace of mind knowing things are tuned the best they can be.

Here's a good quote from Wing re calibrations for ISF's

"We like to leave some room so ISF's and installers use their tools and knowledge to better their clients projector. Otherwise if things were dead on the installers would be complaining to us. Plus production line timing delays would force higher prices on the machines."

They have an automated tuning generator back in the Taiwan Factory which does a pretty good start up job. You know they had some software/firmware item that they were considering that would auto-tune the projector. Which would have the correct color/ Black/ White - auto cal. They haven't got around to that though, maybe they want you to stay in business. ;)

"ColorFacts->Edit->Options->Preferences->Constrain Colors to Gamut is defaulted"
You saying to take a look and input this option in Options Preferences?

Originally posted by guitarman
Here's a good quote from Wing re calibrations for ISF's

"We like to leave some room so ISF's and installers use their tools and knowledge to better their clients projector. Otherwise if things were dead on the installers would be complaining to us..."

So they want to leave room for calibrators and installers to improve their clients' projectors, but they consider direct control over the primaries and secondaries a bad idea (per an earlier post of yours)?

Yeah an Engineer said folks could really foul things up with primary controls. Sorta like a comparison how things got fouled up messing around in the service menu with the gamma's. ;)

Thx my PJ's still screwed up.

In all fairness, it's my fault for messing around. All it will take is sending my projector back to the factory, so really no foul.

guitarman

It is not that difficult to get flat greyscale - that is the responsibility of the gamma tables - the Infocus Screenplay line is perfectly flat, as is the NECHT1100. Infocus has designed their colorwheel calibration based on statistically QA'd lamps for color temperature so any remaining ISF is to take care of std. deviation.

The human eye notices differences in greyscale balance much quicker than overall greyscale balance being off. The Optoma is not a flat greyscale, which is even more noticeable if you zoom in on the chart.

I would charge ISF full rate for an Optoma as I know the work will take hours - so do you really think it would cost Optoma $500 retail to get a flat greyscale? I do know from refused quotes that many people buying a $5K projector think it is wrong to be forced to spend $500 on a calibration to make it right.

As I alluded to in another thread my dealer prices on Optoma are higher than Infocus. So the extra money the manufacturer is getting obviously did not go to HT calibration design - but it does have a nice HT case. That is where Infocus cut their corners - they use a business projector case.

On Infocus the majority of the work has been done - with flat gamma curves and greyscale. My customers who hire me to do that last 10% after a few months of lamp burn-in (I already did basic calibration when they bought) only need pay me for an hour - and are often amazed that all I did was go a few clicks off.

So Wing is quite wrong that factory calibration puts ISF out of work - if anything it brings more work to the table. This is why companies like Runco have joined the ISF ccc program which reserves memory for night/day calibration per input - as well as an attempt at factory calibration (proper color temp and gamma optical/electronic designs). Also ISF is not just calibrators - it is a dealer network. And ISF dealers will not carry things that are poorly calibrated out of the box - it would sully a reputation they have built up if their display wall looked like CircuitShacks.

Anyways, maybe that option is off on the Eye-One if you are out of gamut. I just booted and checked with the simulated sensor it was on.

"I would charge ISF full rate for an Optoma as I know the work will take hours -"

Not your fault, just not knowledgeable about the projector. You use the service area to do grayscale which put a small menu in the upper left corner out of the way. Then you can do a speedy grayscale.

Originally posted by guitarman
Yeah an Engineer said folks could really foul things up with primary controls. Sorta like a comparison how things got fouled up messing around in the service menu with the gamma's

First, switching gammas in a menu shouldn't completely screw up a projector. This is a fine example of Optoma's mediocre software engineering. If Optoma provided better documentation and clear direction on what user menu settings provided the best results, we wouldn't be mucking around in the service menu to begin with. Fortunately for us, Greg Rogers has the time to test every possible configuration to determine the best settings to use.

Second, there are numerous projectors on the market that provide extensive primary and secondary control via the standard user menu, and these projectors don't blow up every time these settings are touched. Even if the user completely botches these settings, there's always a factory default tucked safely away in a memory that can't be erased.

I'm a bit suprised that Optoma's engineers are thinking of reasons not to improve their products instead of looking at the competition for inspiration and taking their customers' suggestions more seriously.

For sure Wing agreed the PC/video levels was a mistake and s/b labeled in the menu system. He was thankful for the info and Taiwan was quick to make up a firmware. I also told him they should white out potential problem areas in the service menu. He's pretty firm on not adding primary control, maybe it's machine related and they have to set the gamut a certain way to achieve the image they want for this machine.

I can't find it anymore but Optoma did have a more in depth reading of what all the menu functions do on their website. It's probably still there but a pain to find. I'll keep looking for it.

"I have no idea why it is defaulted now that you can easily get a RMA on drifted sensors. But the reason I recalled this option - is years ago when I first complained about drift they said that was the fix. I am also not sure why Milori did not respond to guitarman's query in their forum - beyond "read our sensor calibration technology article"

Gottcha, very helpful. It is defaulted to on in my setup. I'll uncheck Constrain Colors to Gamut and give the 1eye another go for CIE. What I got from Mark is to use the 1eye for the most accurate result. Thx

Don't want to seem lazy, but since this thread has gotten very large and I have not been able to find the information scanning it, is there direction on how access the service menu on the H79?

Hai,

Don't have a H7x at the moment, but top of my head its 3 of the 4 buttons on the unit itself
skip one of the middle ones. you should find it in 2 try's.

resync, source, enter

or

resync, menu,enter


Daniel.

Kei, pls don't enter the Gamma tables. Don't even try them at all. There's nothing there for anyone anyway. By just looking at them there will be an alteration of the User RGB menu's function. It won't work correctly anymore.

The only things useful in the service menu is
Picture
CWI
ADC

But in the ADC area never hit the auto cals, just hitting the enter button on them sends the projector into and automated tuning procedure and will mess up the factory tunup.

Hope I caught you in time.

(Looking from the back of the PJ to the front you hit the two left buttons in the row of four and the far right button in the row of four at the same time once.

People should advise the warnings when giving out the service code, thx

"ColorFacts->Edit->Options->Preferences->Constrain Colors to Gamut is defaulted"

Kras, I unchecked the Constrain Colors to Gamut which according to the help read will give a true CIE reading. This does comes defaulted, after this CIE read you think I should return to the defaulted setting for grayscale tuning?

Here's the chart, still looks about the same, w/1eye beamer

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/H791eyereadcie.jpg

I submitted the H79 to Alan for inclusion in the list of PJ's that can do an anamorphic stretch on all inputs, including HD. In the Constant height forum.

Anyone here besides Craig using a anamorphic lens or a constant height setup with their H79?

Well, all your discussion here has convinced me to buy the Optoma H79. Now the question...

Da-Lite Da-mat or Cinema Contour screen material???? I have a dedicated room, totally dark with no windows. Screen is 52" by 92". Projector distance from screen will be whatever is recommended by Optoma. Also, my viewing angles are very straight-on, approximately 22 degrees at the largest.