www.cinenow.com reports that Hitachi is marketing this project for 1990 Euros.

Plus, Hitachi has an official press release with the following specs:
Brightness: 1200 lumens
Contrast: 5000:1 (D5 Panel)
Dual-Iris
10-bit processing
2x Zoom

***

Looks like the Z4 (no MSRP yet), AE900 (reported MSRP, $2399), and PJ-TX200 are going to battle it out.!!

***

Following is the press release from Hitachi on its new, HD-Ready LCD projector – complete with claimed contrast of 5000:1…

"Following the highly successful PJ-TX100 home cinema projector, Hitachi has announced its next generation Cine Master PJ-TX200 3LCD projector. High Definition ready (720p) and delivering a formidable 5000:1 contrast ratio, the elegantly designed 16:9 projector will change the way consumers enjoy big screen entertainment at home. While maintaining all the design features that made its predecessor a hit in home cinema, Hitachi has added some new advanced core technologies to push the PJ-TX200 performance even further. Coupled with all the benefits of 3LCD technology, including true colour accuracy, no colour break up and perfect moving pictures, the Cine Master PJ-TX200 uses Hitachi’s unique dual digital iris, a Super ED Lens and 10-bit digital image processing for the best possible picture quality in home cinema.

Easy setup and installation is a key feature of this projector - horizontal and vertical lens shift and a wide range zoom lens mean a perfectly shaped widescreen picture can be easily produced. The lens shift system enables the projector to be set up above, below, or to the side of the viewer, delivering a totally undistorted image. The front-end fan exhaust allows it to be set up on a bookshelf or discretely within an open wall cabinet and the X2 optical zoom gives great flexibility in positioning the projector anywhere in the room – without compromising picture quality.

Features such as a luminous remote control for low-light use, several preset picture modes (Normal, Cinema, Music, Sports and Dynamic) as well as four "My memory" settings that store customized viewing settings (for colour, Gamma, colour temperature, aspect, etc.) are also available. The Hitachi Cine Master PJ-TX200 can be connected to practically any home entertainment device and includes a HDMI port for extra connectivity.

The PJ-TX200 uses Hitachi’s Super ED lens system that comprises 4 Extra-Low Dispersion lenses in combination with aspherical lenses to reproduce 720p High Definition images with greater accuracy and with improved colour reproduction. Full 10-bit digital image processing ensures smooth and natural uniformity of colour transitions, which is particularly important when showing HDTV quality movies. The dual iris system and 9 - point Gamma control offer excellent colour balance and black level adjustment.

"Cine Master PJ-TX200 offers consumers a truly memorable big screen experience with High Definition offering up to 4 times more resolution than Standard Definition picture technology. Consumers no longer need to choose between picture quality and contrast. The combination of an amazing 5000:1 contrast ratio with High Definition performance and 10-bit digital colour processing means that users get the very best viewing experience – without compromise," said Nick Rogers, Manager, Presentation Products for Hitachi."

The Hitachi Cine Master PJ-TX200 will be available in September.

One thing that's not clear is whether the iris' (or at least one of them) are dynamic.

If not, it's much less interesting, leaving one with the choice between high contrast/low brightness or low contrast/high brightness.

Dynamic iris effectively gives high contrast and high brightness at the same time.

Courtesy of Waxxiemann in This Thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=574383). Check out This Link (http://www.bandl.hu/hitachi/eng/pjtx200.html) for some interesting information. Hopefully Hitachi does not follow last year with their MSRP disparity between Europe and North America.

One thing that's not clear is whether the iris' (or at least one of them) are dynamic.

If not, it's much less interesting, leaving one with the choice between high contrast/low brightness or low contrast/high brightness.

Dynamic iris effectively gives high contrast and high brightness at the same time.
I would be surprised if they could get 5k:1 out of LCD at this point without a dynamic iris. While they each have their advantages, I might take a projector that could get 5k:1 static on/off CR (best term I can think of) at low lumens and also go bright with lower CR over one that can get 5k:1 dynamic on/off CR at high lumens. It depends on how noticable the dynamic feature is, how well the dynamic one does with small bright stuff on dark backgrounds and whether I would use the flexibility of lower ftLs for movies in the dark and higher for some other things. One thing that I will miss is the flexibility of going much brighter or darker if those aren't features of some of these dynamic iris projectors because if the projector has to be close to its brightest to get the higher on/off CR, then that means that once you choose your ftLs for the highest on/off CR for movies, then there isn't headroom to go a lot brighter for some other things. These features/limitations depend greatly on how they design these.

--Darin

I must say that I am super excited for this PJ and have put off purchase until I get a good long look at this thing. I have read on another web site that the contrast ratio is 3000:1 but if Hitachi is quoting 5000:1 then I must have read from an unrelaible source.

I asked my dealer when this PJ will be available for purchase in Canada and he said mid September at first and then later said late November so.... who knows. As for MSRP , I have no idea but I am willing to bet it will be very close to the price of the origional PJTX-100, maybe 4-500 dollars more.

I also e-mailed Hitachi Europe and they said that there are no plans to release this PJ in Canada but I don't think that Fred the Hitachi intern knew a whole lot about what he was talking about. He didn't even know that I was talking about a projector at first.

I am looking forward to hearing some opinions from people who get the first looks at this thing.

Here's a link to the official (european I think) product sheet.

http://www.bandl.hu/pdf/pdev/projector/hitachi_pjtx200.pdf

It's an acrobat file.

The Yanks get shafted once again by Hitachi:


Sep 08, 2005 08:00

Hitachi Expands Front Projection Portfolio With Two New Models; Advanced HDPJ52 With New Dual Iris Technology and Affordable EDPJ32

INDIANAPOLIS --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 8, 2005 The Home Electronics Division of Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT), http://www.hitachi.us/tv, today introduced two new models that broaden Hitachi's compact home theater projector offerings, including the feature-rich UltraVision(R) HDPJ52 720p High Definition 16:9 LCD Front Projector for home theater enthusiasts and the EDPJ32 Enhanced Definition LCD Entertainment Projector for savvy consumers looking for an affordable projector option.
UltraVision(R) High Definition 16:9 LCD Front Projector HDJP52

The HDPJ52 features the company's new and exclusive Hi-2 Dual Iris System for superior picture quality and powerful contrast ratio of up to 5000:1.

"At the core of every Hitachi home theater product is years of optical engineering development and refinement, combined with advanced new technologies," said Jeff Fochtman, product manager for Hitachi America, Ltd., Home Electronics Division. "The HDPJ52's Hi-2 Dual Iris System is a testament to the fact that our engineering expertise and design know-how enables us to deliver a large screen size solution with flexible installation options and unparalleled image quality."

Loaded with exclusive Hitachi technologies, the HDPJ52 features the innovative Hi-2 Dual Iris System that combines two independently controlled Iris components to optimize the brightness of the projector to the ambient light conditions in the room to ensure users enjoy a more realistic and dramatic picture.

The 10-step, remote motorized lens iris can be opened for maximum output from the projector when more brightness is needed for high-ambient light conditions or closed in a low-light environment to create a deeper black level and increase subtle detail in shadows and highlights.

The system controlled Lamp Iris can also be independently opened and closed by degrees to dynamically affect the amount of light sent through the light engine to the LCD panels. By digitally mapping incoming frames to determine the correct position of the Lamp Iris, a 5000:1 contrast ratio can be achieved.

The HDPJ52 also includes Hitachi's exclusive nine-step gamma curve adjustment feature for attaining proper black levels and picture mode presets to optimize the picture quality for specific programming types and customized to suit the specific viewing environment. And regardless of the ambient light conditions of the room, the HDPJ52 projector delivers optimal brightness to ensure the best possible picture quality.

Hitachi's proprietary Super-Focus Quattro ELD Lens technology enables the HDPJ52 to be placed off-axis from the center of the screen without requiring digital correction. The lens system itself shifts the image both vertically and horizontally to reproduce 720p high-definition images with exceptional detail and sharpness. Extensive imaging features include a 1.6x optical zoom that, when combined with the 3 Panel 720p LCD light engine, can create an image up to 300 inches with clarity and enhanced brightness.

This front projector features a resolution of 1280 x 720, 3:2 film processing, 1,200 Lumen Light Output, HDMI-HDTV Input, a user-replaceable 150-watt lamp and a "whisper quiet" operation to reduce noise output to an industry low of just 24db.

The HDPJ52 measures 5 11/16" x 13 3/8" x 11 3/16" and weighs 10.8 pounds. It will be available this month for $3,999.99.

[...]


So, the TX200 will be called HDPJ52 in America, and MSRP will be $3,999.

That MSRP makes the $4500 MSRP for Epson's Cinema 800 look not too bad.

What are these manufacturer's thinking with these MSRPs? If the DLP camp announces new products with lower MSRP pricing as expected, you will most likely see a large drop in LCD marketshare.

If Sanyo of Panasonic annouce a substantially lower MSRP for their new models (note - Panny has already announced that the AE900 will MSRP for $3199) they will corner the market on LCD and leave Hitachi and Epson in the dust.

Hitachi yes, but Epson no. Remember that the LCD panels that all LCD manufacturer's use other than Sony come from Epson. Epson makes money so long as LCD projectors sell regardless of who the manufacturer is (other than Sony).

Remember that Hitachi released the TX100 in the US last year to a tepid response due to the high MSRP compared to Europe. Everyone was importing those suckers for cheap. Looks like this may be happening again with the Epson and Hitachi models this year. Somebody needs to confront Hitachi at the show about the MSRP and get an explanation. I don't think we got one last year for the TX100 however. Epson though has a vested interest in just about all LCD projector sales so they probably don't give a hoot what anybody thinks about the pricing of their LCD units. They win somewhat no matter which PJ sells best outside of Sony.

On another note it's interesting to see which manufacturers think they can label themselves High-End in one region and not in another. Hitachi US has come down market a bit in many areas but they still think they're hot stuff in projectors I guess. Sony is definitely coming downmarket in alot of areas due to their well-reported troubles. And for what you got, the HS51 could be had very quickly at a competitive price at the beginning of '05. Sony could have probably charged more given it's dominance in Contrast performance. Perhaps they were afraid of SDE and lumens deficiencies. Regardless, it's a welcome sight with Sony competing not only on cutting edge specs/performance but also on price. Other manufacturers will be forced to compete on price if Sony comes in with an array of unparalleled devices at multiple price levels with LCD and SXRD.

"Regardless, it's a welcome sight with Sony competing not only on cutting edge specs/performance but also on price."

? The only thing I've seen on the HS60's price was pushing $4K (yen equivalent).

The PJ-TX200 does appear to have a relatively high noise level if one were to just look at the specs: 30dB normal and 27dB in Whisper Mode.
The HDPJ52 is rated at 24dB in Whisper Mode which makes me suspect that they may be different PJs

I noticed at cinenow they list:

Video Processor Dcdi Faroudja

In a way, I almost hope that isn't true, because it'll increase the price and I prefer using SiL iScans for de-interlacing. I doubt the TX200 has Dcdi Faroudja though.

On the other hand, built in Faroudja may be useful for some people. Anybody know what the scoop is on this one?

FYI - the HDPJ52 has been added to Projectorcentral. I noticed that it does not state in the "notes" portion that it will carry the D5 panel. Can someone confirm this? I have read from a number of places that it will.

... still eagerly awaiting some impressions from a firsthand viewer. :D

The new Hitachi will definitely be using the D5 panels.

Sorry gang, like it's predecessor this gets moved to the more expensive forum.

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_10228.html

It sure is a nice lookin pj :)

How do guys think this unit will compare to the IF SP 72XX and BenQ units?

Hitachi dropped a little bomb on us!

Interesting choice of words when discussing a Japanese manufacturer.

So the TX200 was not at Cedia?

Any more news regarding the TX200's availability anywhere?

...and has anybody found out when this will be available for each market? Japan? North America? Europe? When should we see it on the street?

:)

Interesting choice of words when discussing a Japanese manufacturer.


Even more interesting if we were to discuss US manufacturers though... ;) :eek:

I'm going to order my unit tommorow! I am super stoked! It is a little more that I was hoping it would be but I'll probably take the plunge anyway.

It'll take 5 to 10 business days to arrive. I'll get back to you when I get it!

Once you get that puppy in your hands, project your entertainment sources like you've never projected them before !!!.......and then come back here and tell us how it went. Report back here with your review/experience.

:)

Is there anyone else in Canada, the US or elsewhere who is ordering a Hitachi PJ TX200??

Hitachi presented this projector at IFA, with an official CR of 5,000:1. However, other manufacturers had also new products, some of them with higher CR specifications (5500:1 for the Panasonic AE900 and 7000:1 for the Sanyo Z4).

Then, a mere week afterwards, Hitachi announces (http://www.projektoren-datenbank.com/pdf/presse/hitachipjtx200-press-en.pdf) that their final production version will have a contrast ratio of 7000:1.

Those Hitachi engineers are amazing. I'd like to know what 'refinements made to the component technologies used in the mass production of the PJ-TX200' have allowed them to 'squeeze' a 40 percent increase in contrast. :eek:

Well, they do say that 90 percent of the work gets done in the last 10 percent of the time you have...

:rolleyes:

The announcement says that the PJ "... will be available throughout Europe early October 2005". Is this slated for just the European market or does it include the US also?

Waxxiemann apparantly ordered one from his local retailer and he's in western Canada. I say "apparantly", not because I don't believe him :cool:, but because when placing an order for a projector when its this new and as yet unseen on our shores, who knows when it will actually get here.

I am looking forward to seeing an LCD projector with such high contrast specs. I hope the black level and overall contrast look effective in terms of the projected image, and not just impressive when the specs are measured. Specs can sound impressive, but it'll be much more interesting to see what the end result is image wise. This seems like quite a jump in contrast for these lcd projectors. We were at roughly 1000:1 normal and 2000:1 with iris tricks and now 5000:1 or 7000:1 I'm assuming with iris tricks. It'll be interesting to see what the non-iris tricks mode will produce in contrast and black levels.

Any tests yet? Cine4home?

:)

I would be surprised if they could get 5k:1 out of LCD at this point without a dynamic iris. While they each have their advantages, I might take a projector that could get 5k:1 static on/off CR (best term I can think of) at low lumens and also go bright with lower CR over one that can get 5k:1 dynamic on/off CR at high lumens. It depends on how noticable the dynamic feature is, how well the dynamic one does with small bright stuff on dark backgrounds and whether I would use the flexibility of lower ftLs for movies in the dark and higher for some other things. One thing that I will miss is the flexibility of going much brighter or darker if those aren't features of some of these dynamic iris projectors because if the projector has to be close to its brightest to get the higher on/off CR, then that means that once you choose your ftLs for the highest on/off CR for movies, then there isn't headroom to go a lot brighter for some other things. These features/limitations depend greatly on how they design these.

--Darin
Darin, marketing still surprising you? :)

Whatsup guys,

I have been waiting almost 5 business days since my purchase and they said that it should arrive in 10 so I am expecting the arrival of the PJ next Friday (fingers crossed).

I don't know why you guys call it the PJTX200. Thats the European model name. It's the HDPJ52 in North america.


I don't know how well I am going to be at describing black levels and such because this is my first PJ. I'm going to be using a "120 DIY screen painted w/ Behr SS.

I'll keep you posted.

Waxx

because this is my first PJ. I'm going to be using a "120 DIY screen painted w/ Behr SS.

I'll keep you posted.

Waxx


Wow this will be your very first pj and you bought sight unseen??? Ballzy man, very ballzy :D :eek:

Yeah, you are really going for it. We call it the TX200 because its essentially similiar to the TX200 sold elsewhere and before it came out, thats what we thought it would be called and it was announced that way. ;) We all know what it is anyways...

Whatsup guys,

I have been waiting almost 5 business days since my purchase and they said that it should arrive in 10 so I am expecting the arrival of the PJ next Friday (fingers crossed).

I don't know why you guys call it the PJTX200. Thats the European model name. It's the HDPJ52 in North america.


I don't know how well I am going to be at describing black levels and such because this is my first PJ. I'm going to be using a "120 DIY screen painted w/ Behr SS.

I'll keep you posted.

Waxx
I'm really curious as to what made you consider this unit over all others, especially since you have not seen.

The Ferret,

First I would like to mention that I have 2 ferrets (Smokey and Bandit). What made me choose this PJ ? Well I researched projectors for quite a while and I looked at the Panny AE700 , the Tosh MT800 (way to expensive here) the BenQ pe7700 and the Hitachi PJTX100.

I narrowed down my choices to the BenQ or the Hitachi. I did not like the placement options of the BenQ, they just would not work in my environment (without a ton of work), so I decided that I would go for the PJTX100.

I visited the store a number of times and brought some of my material from home to get a really good idea of what the PJ had to offer. I was really pleased with the projector and I was going to go and buy it ... and then they announced the PJTX200 (HDPJ52) at CEDIA.

I read as much of the little information there was about this PJ. I asked my retailer if and when they would be able to get it in and they said mid Oct so I decided to wait. After a few weeks and a few more visits to the store they said that they were now able to get the PJ in on an order only basis. So I took the plunge. :eek:

I figure it this way: I have a lot of experience with other Hitachi products and I have only good things to say about the quality and engineering of their products. I am certain that this PJ will only be an improvement over its predecessor and if it's not then I'll take it back and get the PE7700 or the Panny AE900. No big.

I have my doubts that they will provide the PJ in the time frame that was quoted but, like I said, I have my fingers crossed.

Cheers,
Waxx

these new lcds still have vertical banding and color shifting (see the sanyo Z4 at www.cine4home.de). and contrast is on the sanyo more like 1800:1 vs 900:1 on the Z3
still LCD is making huge progress in contrast indeed and has no dithering of course.
but it should be reserved for long viewing distance (because of VB and screendoor)

I know you ! You're the guy who likes to rain on everybodies parade ! There's one in every forum. :p :rolleyes: :p

Thank you for your input.

" these new lcds still have vertical banding and color shifting"

This is outdated info, based on a pre-production unit, and ignoring many reports of no VB whatsoever.

It's too soon to make definitive statements either way, but indicators are promising.

Do you guys think that I will have a problem playing Vids on this PJ? That is 75% of reason that I wanted to buy a projector but I have been paranoid about this one thing. :o

They said at the store that it won't be a problem but those guys will say anything. I want to know what you guys think. I'll have my Xbox hooked up until I get an Xbox360.

Thanks for reading,
Waxx

That wasn't worded exactly the way I wanted but you get the point.

Do you mean VHS videotapes? They will look pretty poor on any projector.

How's availability on this PJ looking so far? Any news? Any new tests? Anybody else order one?

:cool:

Well I called my sales guy @ the store I bought it from today and he said that it will definatly not be here this week. :( :mad:

I am pissed. :mad: I expected this to happen. Oh well, I sure hope I have better luck next week.

You guys jynxed me :D

Cheers,
Waxx

Waxx,
Try to post few screen shots using HDMI and component input for HD material and DVD, this will help to determine the ability of this projector ( TX 200 ) in relation to picture quality.
You seem to be very gung-ho about this pj and I am next in line. 3chip 1280/768, 1000 lumen brightness, 4000:1 contrast, new color and focus system plus more, all this for under 3K. Now, if this pj deliver what it says on the spec sheet, it will be a hottest selling pj for 2006.
Syed

It would sell more if it had horizontal lens shift (my requirement). :(

Waxx,
Try to post few screen shots using HDMI and component input for HD material and DVD, this will help to determine the ability of this projector ( TX 200 ) in relation to picture quality.
You seem to be very gung-ho about this pj and I am next in line. DC3, 1280/768, DLP, 1000 lumen brightness, 4000:1 contrast and a new color system plus more and all this for under 3K. Now, if this pj deliver what it says on the spec sheet, it will be a hottest selling pj for 2006.
Syed

Am I missing som ething?

Isn't this a D5 lcd projector?

Shbelly

It would sell more if it had horizontal lens shift (my requirement). :(

The Hitachi 200 has horizontal lens shift.

Shelly

The Hitachi 200 has horizontal lens shift.
My bad. For some reason I confused this for the Mitsubishi's HC3000. :o

SRaoof ,

I'll do that for sure... as soon as I get the thing :o

I think I am more anxious and exited than gung ho. This is my first pj after all and I have this blank 120" screen just begging to do its job sitting in my basement.

Cheers,
Waxx

Well, the Sanyo Z4 test at Cine 4 Home is a promising sign. To sum up the important points that they claim (its their test, and an early unit (second test, the first unit they tested was pre-production) ... so remember it doesn't mean it will describe all Z4's...but again, it looks promising for D5 projectors in general, like the TX200 / HDPJ52) ..here are some of the bottom line conculsions I got from Cine4home's review of the Sanyo Z4:


Vertical Banding is much reduced, and was apparantly hardly visible using test material, and with film, not visible.
Shading is improved and artifacts aren't visible in films (colour uniformity).
Sharpness is good.
Screendoor is improved, but only very little. Considering that its not a big deal now for most D4 720p projector owners, I for one am fine with this small improvement.
Contrast is improved vs previous Z3 model both with and without the dynamic iris. Z4 contrast was measured as 1800:1 with iris vs 1100:1 without vs 900:1 for the Z3. (all figures colour calibrated).
Overall, the picture is improved and looks better than the Z3.

I'm hoping Hitachi's D5 720p projector fairs well also. It has great potential since it has very good optics, with that great lens, and also some of the best adjustability/tweakability, that is, if its construction and electronic inards remain essentially similar to the TX100.

Good luck Waxxiemann. Its looking promising for you, future LCD projector owner ;) Don't give up hope. Keep us informed.

:)

Is VB somthing that is always there but you don't notice it as much or all the time like screendoor?

I am just ot all that clear on what exactly it is or what causes it but I do know that it's a bad thing.

Any input?

Since this is the TX200 thread, nobody knows what the TX200 pictures looks like yet, and nobody has feedback regarding vertical banding for the unit.

....but here is the short answer regarding vertical banding. Vertical banding is only visible in certain scenes where there is a somewhat more uniform image, like sky, clouds, desert sand, a wall or building of the same colour etc etc.

Vertical Banding is not always there. For example, vertical banding is most noticable when the picture on the screen is a uniform colour across part of the screen. Usually a larger part of the screen. I'm sure some people can live with it. When you see a close up of the actors face, or detail of objects which have lots of detail and contrasting colours, I cannot for the life of me see the vertical banding. Its only there when there are more or less uniform colours across the screen. Now the trouble is, they don't have to be totally uniform in colour. For instance, when the screen is a cloudy sky or fog, although there is a pattern, and its not all the same colour, you will see vertical banding. This is when its the most annoying, etc. Especially when there is a sea scene, or sky, or fog, or desert, or the side of a large object all the same colour.

Don't panic, some projectors don't have this issue, or have it less than others. My TX100 was kooky and probably defective because one vertical banding line stuck out much more than the others, no matter how I adjusted it, so I knew it wasn't normal, and its highly likely Hitachi agreed, since they're sending me a new unit.

Since you're getting the next generation of projector, there is at least less of a chance that you'll have vertical banding. My guess is that with the newer D5 lcd panel projectors, vertical banding will be less of a problem, less often, and when its visible, it won't be as bad as some of the worst D4 PJ's, however, even though there is also a chance we won't see vertical banding hardly at all on most people's projectors, there is just as much chance that a few of us will get projectors with horrible vertical banding.

Its all a crap shoot. When you get your projector, watch it and adjust it using at the very least, a DVD with the THX video optimizer, or better yet, use AVIA or Video Essentials, or have it professionally calibrated, or use Colorfacts or Smart III. If after doing a bit of fine-tuning you have problems, simply contact your supplier and ask that the problem be addressed, as in, eliminated.

I'm anxious to hear how the TX200 is, so I can decide whether I flip my TX100 to a TX200 within a month :)

Again, Good Luck...

:)

Thanks CPC. :D

I think that the 200 looks just like the 100 except black.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/Hitachi-UltraVision_HDPJ52.htm

... and here is a pic of the one they had @ CEDIA, don't know if this is final hardware (you have to scroll down to find it):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=578853

Cheers,

Waxx

Cool. By "what the Hitachi picture looks like"...I mostly meant the projected image :)

I'm so on the edge of my seat. I am waiting for you to get yours and have it set up and give us feedback.

:)

I emailed Cine4Home about the new D5 projectors and whether they will test them all and do a shootout:

yes, we will test them all and publish reviews as well as a shootout..

Looking forward to the Cine4Home shootout. I hope they test the Hitachi TX200/UDPJ52 soon :)

I really think that LCD is not "here" yet in terms of price vs. reliabilty. I have documented on this forum the difficulties with my first projector purchase from SONY last year. Several units later with no resolution we parted ways. I watched the forum for many months trying to decide which display technology I should consider next as replacment. The odds of the SONY debacle happening again would be slim to none, so I thought, and made the Hitachi purchase over a panel or rear projector.

The pjtx100 is a better performing unit, but I am now on my second with less than 150 hours on it and it looks as if I will likley end up with a third unit.

Potential projector purchasers should take a deep breath and consider if they are willing to take on the time and aggravation of LCD projection ownership. Or consider a manufacturer like Benq that will replace within 24-48 hours any defect within the first year. That would take a lot of trepidation out of a projector purchase.

It has been my observation that the many LCD units I have owned cannot operate for more than 100 hours without repair.

F.Y.I.

Thanks for the "advice"/warning Kiwi. Thats why it's a good idea to purchase an extended warranty. It is usually at a premium but well worth the additional 4 years.

Forums are funny in that you never see poeple who come on to express how elated they are with their projector purchase. This is because they are to busy enjoying them. These forums are over run with people who are having or have had problems. This is inherent with any electronics based forum.


I think that forums are valuable for making an informed purchasing decision but you have to take what people say with a grain of salt. There are thousands and thousands of people who own LCD projectors and if they were so poor in construction and operation it wouldn't be a very lucrative business to be in would it?

Be sure that I have done my research and am well aware of the limitations and inherent problems with LCD technology and have prepared by making sure that I purchased a good warranty.

Yeah, its all statistics. I think the D4 projectors have had a less than spectacular reliability or problem free record vs previous projectors, but again, I haven't the numbers to really tell. Lets hope the D5's fair well quality control wise :)

Forums are funny in that you never see poeple who come on to express how elated they are with their projector purchase. This is because they are to busy enjoying them. These forums are over run with people who are having or have had problems. This is inherent with any electronics based forum.



That pretty much describes me. I bought the TX-100 unseen from Japan like 14 months ago for about $1800.00. I now have about 2900 hours on it (yeah, it's on a lot). I did some of the service menu tweaks for VB and whatnot way back when, and just this week took the lid off to do a good cleaning since I was starting to have some dust issues (little bit of pink discoloration on the lower right of the image) and all is well.

I've been very satisfied with the unit running 80% HDTV and upconverted DVD's through it. But I'm sure one of the reasons is because after making a purchase like that I dont continue to read all the info out there about competing products. Thats an easy way to start getting remorse about not having bought a different brand or wonder if you shouldnt have just waited a few months for the next in line, etc etc.

The only way I might be happier is if I would've waited longer to buy it since I see the price from Japan nowadays is down to like $1175.00 to your door. ;)

"I've been very satisfied with the unit running 80% HDTV and upconverted DVD's through it. But I'm sure one of the reasons is because after making a purchase like that I dont continue to read all the info out there about competing products. Thats an easy way to start getting remorse about not having bought a different brand or wonder if you shouldnt have just waited a few months for the next in line, etc etc."

I agree with that 100% ;)

It's nice to hear some posotive feedback.

Is anyone considering upgrading their TX100 to a TX200 or perhaps a Z4 or AE900?

Where are the reviews of the TX200 / UDPJ52? The other projectors are getting all kinds of reviews and exposure, but the Hitachi is not out there yet. Its funny because last time the TX100 was one of the only projectors to come out mid-year, apart from, I think the Infocus SP5000.

If anyone spots a review of this puppy, let us know. Also, if anyone from the Toronto area is planning to get a TX200/UDPJ52 I am willing to bring my TX100 over to compare or vice versa :)

... Still waiting :mad:

So what is the point of the dual-iris? Does the TX200 not have a dynamic iris? The AE900 and Z4 have a dynamic iris, correct?

THis is what I read :

" One is a lamp iris, dynamic like the others to adjust for maximum contrast. The other is a lens iris, allowing 9 different levels of light output to best suit your needs. Very nice indeed. It boasts 5000:1 contrast and 1200 lumens. It also has vertical and horizontal lens shift."

It is out of the PJ-TX200 or the Z4 but I'm pretty sure the PJ-TX200 will be my next projector. The reason I'm leaning towards the PJ-TX200 is because of the shorter throw lens and front exhaust with side intake, allowing me to mount it as close to the back wall as physically possible. These two things will allow me to use a 92 inch screen rather than an 84” with the Z4. I'm assuming this projector will have a very similar picture quality to the Z4 but I'm hoping for a bit lower black levels, but that probably wishful thinking. Now I just have to wait for cine4home’s review and the PJ to be released in Japan on Monday.
Any word on when cine4home’s review is due?

If the TX200 has less vertical banding on average, and it has better contrast than the TX100, I may bite. I don't want to buy a TX200 and end up with vertical banding again. Even the one I have now still has some. Vertical banding is a real problem, and although it seems like we beat it to death, it is a visible issue we shouldn't have to deal with. Sure if I showed my friends, they'd have a hard time noticing it, but when you watch hours and hours of movies over months or years, a real problem like vertical banding becomes distracting.

I'm glad to hear the TX200 has a dynamic iris. I've been lazy and didn't re-check the info.

We're all waiting patiently for the cine-4-home review....others like me are waiting un-patiently. Remember that their review doesn't necessarily give us an idea of the likelihood that units people buy may suffer vertical banding, at least, not right away. But Cine-4-home will report back to give feedback on the frequency of this problem for each of the currect pack of D5 pj's that they test. I recall they did give this feedback on their website or through AVS.

:)

for all the toronto people...I noticed in a flyer that a certain "2001 Audio" store was advertising it. I take it that it's in stock?! they where selling it with a bonus screen as well...

Yeah, they are also advertising the AE900 for cheaper than the UDP J52 too. At least their starting prices are somewhat reasonable, but now with this latest release, their price for the UDP J52 has gone up from their TX100 price. I have to say though, you can barter with these stores. I remember learning this the first time I bought speakers, amp and components for my first Hi-Fi system. My friends and I all did this to some degree, as did our parents, back in the 80's. You can't do that any more in most stores, like department stores, at least not with most things, but its funny that stereo/hi-fi audio video stores have retained this ability to barter. Anyways....unfortunately, I still think most retail stores in Canada selling projectors are price gouging, and its not their fault, I've asked at least two people what there cost was, and it was high, so thats a whole other discussion that we've gone through many times before regarding the manufactures or Canadian distributers. Whatever the case may be, the new projectors should be available in Canada now, or very shortly by the looks of things.

Wow. The PJ LC9 is priced really well. Where was this projector two years ago when I was getting into this?

I have got to say, the black UDP J52 looks very cool :cool:

If they are in stock, its a curiosity, but going to one of those stores to view a projector is almost completely meaningless to me. The rooms are never totally dark and I wouldn't trust the employees know what they are doing. No dis-respect, but in order to know what you're doing, you have to be trained, or be a regular on AVS ;) . Now, although its fair to say that you should be able to just hook them up and get an idea of how they look generally, we know these projectors have so many options, so much adjustment etc, that we'd have to tweak them in store before we got an idea of what they're like.

I guess I will still visit a retail store if for no other reason than to look for vertical banding on both the AE900 and UDP J52. Whether they have it or not, it'll be interesting to see and I'll file it away in my vertical banding stats.

:D

http://www.hitachi.us/tv/browse/lcd_projector/lcd_projector/HDPJ52.shtml


They changed the CR from 4000:1 to 7000:1 ? Wassup w/ that?


P.S. I am still waiting. I am totally over it now and whe I do get it, it will be a bonus... thanks CPC.

No problem man. When that projector comes, you will surly have lots of fun. What screen and source player are you using again?

As for the specs change, I haven't been following it. I have no idea about the specs. I largely ignore the exact numbers, although I admit it is amussing to see the different manufactures claims and the tested results.

Quite frankly, specific contrast ratio specs reported by the manufacturer haven't reflected the measurements that reviewers make well enough, nor do they reflect very well how the projector looks in general for me to pay much attention. Some manufacturers under report specs while others exaggerate the specs.

Wait until people see it, like yourself, or until somebody credible measures it, like cine4home. While I agree it is an annoyance when the specs change like they do and are inconsistent in how each manufacturer tests and reports them, you are best to ignore the exact numbers. I agree they shouldn't mislead customers, and I'm not arguing that, but for your own good, don't take those numbers too seriously.

As of right now, all I know is that the newer Hitachi will have higher contrast than the last one did. How much better, and exactly how good the blacks will be and how the pj will work from bright scenes to dark scenes, once calibrated, is what you should really care about, and we won't know that from manufacturer specs.

I have a panny DVD S77 which I have not even tested yet! I will admit I am worried about macroblocking but the dealer I bought it from is really good and they said that when I get my PJ, if it has MB, I can return it or exchange it.

I am going to start HDTV in the new year.

My screen is a DIY 120" behr SS. I am super happy with how it turned out. It weighs about 100 lbs and is suspended from the ceiling with big I ring anchors.

Yeah, I have never owned a PJ before so I don't really care about the spec either. People seem to get mad about Iris technology but I don't get it. If it makes the CR better than who cares?

Anyway, the PJ is up on the wesite now so that is a good sign that it may arrive soon.

P.S. - If you buy a Hitachi display between Oct. 15 and Dec 24th you get a free NFL jacket with the logo of your choice! Sweet! :cool:

I would post some pics of my screen but I don't know how

It is odd that this projector is retailing in North America for so much. It can be had cheaper than both the AE900 and Z4 overseas???? What's up with that????

ITS HERE BABY!!!! I'll get back to you guys tommorow. Wish me luck. :)

Sweet! Go forth and project.

Since you've not owned a projector before, let me give you some helpful instructions. Set up the projector as best you can and aim it as straight as possible. Connect your dvd player using HDMI. Turn on your receiver. Play your dvd's. Change your diapers.

:)

Whatsup! Well I gotta say that I am totally pumped! I love my new projector and it has preformed wonderfully thus far. I have watched Return of the king, Final fantasy : the spirits within as well as a little bit of Pirates of the Carrebean. I played a whole bunch of Xbox on it last night as well. I'm going to watch 3 movies tonight.

Here are some thoughts, observations and some questions.

The thing looks super sweet in black.

I really like the build quality and fit and finish of the PJ. The input connectors are excellent.

It took me about 2 hours to get it all where I want it and save my settings ect.

I sit about 12-13 feet away from the screen and I don't see ANY screen door. You can see it pretty clearly at about 5 or 6 feet away. I also see absolutly no vertical banding! :D I was really looking for it but I can't even find a hint. VB does not develop over time right? Either you have it or you don't right?

On a side note, I didn't get any macroblocking with my DVD player (S77) as I was worried about and that makes me happy as well.

I have been playing a lot with the settings (there is lots) but I really could use a calibration disc. I did my best though and am pretty happy with where it is right now. It comes pretty good right out of the box. I used the THX optomizer on Pirates.

The black level is not on par with my Hitachi CRT RPTV but I am pretty happy with it. It is hard for me to explain black levels because this is my first PJ and all I have to compare it to is my RPTV.

There is a power button on the back that brings the unit into standby. You then turn it on via the remote. Do you think I should turn off the main power every time I am done w/ the unit or should I leave it in standby? The manual is not to specific on this.

what else ..... its nice and quiet, I can't hear it at all when there is a movie on.

The thing is plenty bright and I can have a nearby lamp on and it does not really affect the picture although I prefer it to be pitch black.

CPC- The lens is rock solid man.

I'll do my very best to try and answer any questions if you have any and I hope you guys can answer mine. I'll let you know tommorow how my movie night goes tonight.

Peace.

Whatsup! Well I gotta say that I am totally pumped! I love my new projector and it has preformed wonderfully thus far. I have watched Return of the king, Final fantasy : the spirits within as well as a little bit of Pirates of the Carrebean. I played a whole bunch of Xbox on it last night as well. I'm going to watch 3 movies tonight.

Here are some thoughts, observations and some questions.

The thing looks super sweet in black.

I really like the build quality and fit and finish of the PJ. The input connectors are excellent.

It took me about 2 hours to get it all where I want it and save my settings ect.

I sit about 12-13 feet away from the screen and I don't see ANY screen door. You can see it pretty clearly at about 5 or 6 feet away. I also see absolutly no vertical banding! :D I was really looking for it but I can't even find a hint. VB does not develop over time right? Either you have it or you don't right?

On a side note, I didn't get any macroblocking with my DVD player (S77) as I was worried about and that makes me happy as well.

I have been playing a lot with the settings (there is lots) but I really could use a calibration disc. I did my best though and am pretty happy with where it is right now. It comes pretty good right out of the box. I used the THX optomizer on Pirates.

The black level is not on par with my Hitachi CRT RPTV but I am pretty happy with it. It is hard for me to explain black levels because this is my first PJ and all I have to compare it to is my RPTV.

There is a power button on the back that brings the unit into standby. You then turn it on via the remote. Do you think I should turn off the main power every time I am done w/ the unit or should I leave it in standby? The manual is not to specific on this.

what else ..... its nice and quiet, I can't hear it at all when there is a movie on.

The thing is plenty bright and I can have a nearby lamp on and it does not really affect the picture although I prefer it to be pitch black.

CPC- The lens is rock solid man.

I'll do my very best to try and answer any questions if you have any and I hope you guys can answer mine. I'll let you know tommorow how my movie night goes tonight.

Peace.

Thanx for the lens feedback.
So when you focus it, the image stays dead centre?

Wicked. Sounds pretty good so far. Watching three movies tonight eh? Wow. Don't burn yourself out man! Invite over your friends. Order a great big pizza and break out the beer. Laugh and dance a little jig. You have joined the front projector club.

How is the colour uniformity? Notice any shading or tinting in the corners?
How have you set it up so far?
What is your iris setting?
Are you using it in the dynamic iris setting?
Your dvd player is connected with HDMI?

My advice would be to run the unit in low lamp mode for now. If you go into the advanced menu, you should be able to find the setting for fan. Most people run their projectors on low lamp and high fan.

After power down, turn it off using the rear mechanical switch, or do what many people do, connect the pj to a power bar and use that to turn it off. Don't turn it off until the fan is stopped of course.

Always watch with total light control for best contrast and black level (all light sources off). This is essential for getting the maximum contrast and black level performance from your projector. Your home theatre room should resemble a cave, with of course, some considerations for WAF (Wife Acceptancy Factor)...depending.

just had a demo of the hitachi tx200 projector and they let me play with it on my own for 1 hour so here it goes.

I Thought the picture was exellent very rich and bright there are many settings on this projector and the best i could get with the settings where

all this was tried in a light controled room with black room

Iris set to 4 or 5 and auto iris set to auto 1 contrast set to about 75%.
I tried iris 3, 2 ,1 but this made the picture way way to dark and took the punch out of the picture, setting the auto iris to off the blacks where crap and was pointless setting the auto iris to setting 2 again to dark killed the picture so the best setting i could get from it with high brightness and best blacks was iris set to 5 and auto iris set to auto 1.

Now i have to say this is the first projector i have seen with auto iris and it was terrible the picture flickering and the iris was just not fast enough to change it was jumping up and down it was like watching a macrovision protected film going dark to light this happend even in light scences

I know many people say you can spot this but it was abit of a joke i would put it up there with rainbow effect that you get on a dlp just teriible

i know people have said the panasonic 900 you can not see this happening becasue the iris is super fast i dont know as i have not seen one yet but i hope it is becasue theres no way i`ll get a projector if thay all do this.

I have to say if it was not for the iris jumpimg all over the shop i would have bought it stight away becasue the picture was stunning but the slow speed of the iris made it just as bad as rainbow on dlps and i thought i hope this is not on all projectors or i will be waiting along time for a new prtojector.

picture exellent
blacks exellent
settings full rate
iris terible way way to slow and even in light scences it adjusts and you can still see it

sorry but its just to bad

hope to see the Hs60 but even then thay say that needs a faster iris to and for the panasonic thay say its the fastest and you can not see the change at all

oh also i found that the picture was very soft had to put it to max 7 setting on sharpness and it could have done with abit more level settings as you could not go higher

i have had many projectors this is one of the best blacks i have seen on a projector but the iris is just to slow and turning it off is no good

so i`ll have to see it first

Meridius,

Strange review. Right off the bat you say it looks very good, and then you go on to say that the major new feature doesn't work properly.

What was the source player and connection?

Whenever people see something performing in an extremely poor fashion you should suspect that the projector may be set up incorrectly or that it is somehow faulty or damaged. I say suspect, because nobody can know for sure unless there is another unit to compare with. Did you not mention the problems with the unit to whoever showed it to you? Why not check another unit out? I would be surprised if the projector was not malfunctioning or broken if you felt it looked that bad. Anything is possible, but Hitachi is not an in-experienced company, and I doubt very much that they would release a product unless it was working fairly well. I just hope that the later release of this PJ is not due to teething problems with their auto iris. You report your experience as though it is representative of what you figure all the projectors must work like. Case in point, lets check something out here:

Waxxiemann,

Did you use the AUTO iris setting and if so, did the projector work ok? It sounds like it was working well in your description, but you didn't mention whether you has the AUTO iris setting working.

- - -

Is there anyone else in Canada or the US with a TX200/UDP J52 yet?
What is your experience thus far?

It was setup on a denon dvd player we tried a dlp projector and it did not have the same fault so the dvd player and cables where ok and it was the only one thay had to test.

I know it was the iris becasue every time you seen the flicker i could just about hear the iris moving in the projector as i was sitting about 1/2 foot away from it.

I said the picture was exellent apart from the iris problem i said it was exellent becasue if it did not have the iris problem as i was watching it it would of been exellent projector because as you are watching it you can see the depth and detail in the picture. The iris was just to slow and you could clearly see the iris was causing the flicker.

maybe it was a faulty unit i dont know but its abit strange the flicker was happening the same time the iris was adjusting

I treid blade 2 starwars 2 and thay both did it, what i did see to if there was any subtitles in the film it was going light to dark like it did not know what to do soon as the subs came on the iris would close then when the subs went off the iris would open then when thay came back on the iris would close and this made the whole picture flicker to

im sorry but i just dont think this is very good even for a cheap projector like this its just like watching a macrovision protected film and yes 4 other people all seen the same thing happening at the same time to and thay where all put off by it

like i said it might be a fault but if it not i dont thing alot of poeple are going to be happy

i can remember when i first got a projector it was the best thing since sliced bread but now when you have more experiance you know that the peojector you bought was not that good. I should have looked into it more all i`m saying when a person first gets a projector thay just put up with anything as the big picture dazzales you more than anything it was the same for me but now its a diffrent matter as i have more experianc ewith them.

well all i can say is i want to see the hs60 which thay say has the same slow iris and the panasonic 900 which has the fastest iris and also i`m interested in the ruby

but i dont think the hitachi was faulty but you never know

... what i did see to if there was any subtitles in the film it was going light to dark like it did not know what to do soon as the subs came on the iris would close then when the subs went off the iris would open then when thay came back on the iris would close and this made the whole picture flicker to...

Did the flickering occur only when the subtitles appeared/disappeared, or did you also see it during normal video (without subtitles)? I can understand how a full-white subtitle could confuse a projector, but would be quite surprised to see slow tracking during "normal" material.

Weird, I don't see any flickering at all. It does mention in the manual that you "may experience flickering" with this setting but I don't get any :p . I have the Auto Iris set to "auto 1"(there is off, Auto 1 and Auto 2). I have the other iris (lamp level) set to 3 and find that anything higher is to bright for movie watching. I found 5 and above WAY to bright. I have it at 5 for playing Xbox.

I have a question I was hoping one of you guys can answer. There are 4 customizable and savable gamma settings. When you go in there there is 3 different test patterns for adjustring the gamma and 9 slide bars that correspond each to a different shade of black. What is a good rule of thumb for setting this up? :confused: I don't have a calibration disc to help me for this one.

I'm using my DVD player via HDMI. There is a setting for the HDMI input on the PJ to change HDMI to "enhanced" but I found that it had a green tint to it and stuck with standard.

I don't know if this is in the TX100 but there is a thing you can do to attempt to rid yourself of VB in the service menu but as I don't see any, I didn't want to fool with this.

CPC - I tried to look at the color uniformity by looking at an all white screen as well as an all black screen. I am pretty novice, but I don't see anything. It's hard to look for stuff like that when the screen is all white because my eyes get all screwed up from the brightness. If there was a problem, it would probably be blatant and even I could notice it.

Also, yeah, when I focus it, the image stays dead center.

Sweet. Sounds good. Well, as for the flickering, thats another crappy variable to add into the mix, since you say the manual mentions it. Odd. At least we know that your settings with an HDMI connected S77 will not likely have that problem. A good start :)

As far as calibration goes, and all those gamma sliders etc, there are many routes to go. Here is a rundown:

Simple adustment of contrast, iris and brightness:
1) Use your eyes and your fave dvd's to test. Not the bests method.
2) As per above with the addition of using a dvd with THX optimizer. A little better, but almost always produces results maximizing caibration for that particular dvd more than others.

Further adjustment, usually involving gamma and further colour tweaking:
3) Calibration discs: AVIA and DVE (Digital Video Essentials)
These discs are a whole discussion unto themselves. You need to make sure you pick up the most up to date version of whichever you choose. Generally, the DVE disc is less expensive, but it has a less than intuitive navigation menu. The AVIA disc is proported to be better than the DVE disc, and navigation is reportedly better, but alas, AVIA costs more.
4) Calibration software/hardware such as Colorfacts or SMART III
With these I believe you get a spreadsheet and a light meter to go through a whole gamut of adjustments at various brightness levels (IRE levels) and using the light meter, you get a more precise result in your calibration.

And lastly, there is the potential to boost the contrast of your projector by using colour filters, but thats another level of complexity altogether. Its not impossible, but you'll have to ask others on here how its done. Cine4home does it and they charge for the service, iirc.

My advice would be to get DVE or AVIA and try your luck with that first. If you want better, try buying, renting or borrowing Colorfacts or SMART III. (I think SMART III may not work for just any projector, and they have to calibrate the product first. Not 100% sure). All the while, keep your eyes on this, and/or any TX200 tweak thread which may rear its head. There you may find people with the same dvd player and screen who may share their settings. Thats a short-cut that can be somewhat useful, but all equipment varies from unit to unit, so thats your call.

Don't worry about colour uniformity just yet. If you suspect you have problems, you can do stuff in the menu later. As far as vertical banding, don't touch anything for now.

Have fun :)

nope noticed in in normal viewing wached 2 films and noticed it alot, Have to say its is crappy even if the manual says you may notice flicker and i can tell you theres alot of it dont know how Waxxiemann can not see it as there was 4 of use and we all seen it in the same places i have to say i watched hose of flying daggers for about 5 mins and i did not notice it this is becasue the films bright but starwars2 and blade 2 seen it stight away and it was giving me a headache whern i watched it.

I have to say hitachi have not done a good job here and to cover it up saying it in the manual is a joke thay should have doen a better job.

wel have to see the panasonic 900 and hs60 and ruby when i get a chance

nope noticed in in normal viewing wached 2 films and noticed it alot, Have to say its is crappy even if the manual says you may notice flicker and i can tell you theres alot of it dont know how Waxxiemann can not see it as there was 4 of use and we all seen it in the same places i have to say i watched hose of flying daggers for about 5 mins and i did not notice it this is becasue the films bright but starwars2 and blade 2 seen it stight away and it was giving me a headache whern i watched it.

I have to say hitachi have not done a good job here and to cover it up saying it in the manual is a joke thay should have doen a better job.

wel have to see the panasonic 900 and hs60 and ruby when i get a chance


Dude, I had to read that 4 times to understand it. Periods man periods.

All I can say is that I don't see ANY flickering and I have about 25 hours on the PJ now. I put 7 and a half hours on it on saturday night alone. I've watched about 8-10 movies bright and dark as well as a bunch of Xbox.

I am certainly not blind and I am not suggesting that you are either but I know what I am seeing. I can only suggest that the player or connection may be the culprit but really I don't know. I do agree that putting that in the manual seems like a cop out if there is infact a problem.

Thats all I got, Peace.

Dude, I had to read that 4 times to understand it. Periods man periods.

All I can say is that I don't see ANY flickering and I have about 25 hours on the PJ now. I put 7 and a half hours on it on saturday night alone. I've watched about 8-10 movies bright and dark as well as a bunch of Xbox.

I am certainly not blind and I am not suggesting that you are either but I know what I am seeing. I can only suggest that the player or connection may be the culprit but really I don't know. I do agree that putting that in the manual seems like a cop out if there is infact a problem.

Thats all I got, Peace.

25 hours? 7 and a half on Saturday night? 8 to 10 movies? Dude! You are going to overdose. Welcome to the video equivalent of crack. :)

Statistically speaking, odds were that you, someone who has just recevied their new Hitachi would be on the other side of the country. Isn't this Murphy's law? So is Gadget Girl. If you were within driving distance, I'd be over there with a case of beer and a bag of dvd's...that is if you'd oblige. Oh well....Enjoy man. You are certainly making good use of the projector, thats for sure.

Anybody in the Toronto area getting one of these?

:D

Does anybody know whether or not the TX200/UDPJ52 has the much of the same adjustability? Does it have the C.UNIF for tweaking colour uniformity problems?

Does anybody know whether or not the TX200/UDPJ52 has the much of the same adjustability? Does it have the C.UNIF for tweaking colour uniformity problems?


Not sure, but really hope so!! My PJTX100 had color uniformity problems, but were fixable with the service menu. I have not posted in awhile as I have not been looking for a new pj. But now that the new DLP DC3 chips and the new LCD D5 panels are out, here I go again.

CPC were you, or are you not a fellow PJTX100 owner like myself? This looking for a new pj is driving me mad!! I am not sure what to believe as far as reviews and forums go, but I do know this. My pj does look great, but would I trade in the problems of VB, CU, FPN and SD for something that does not have these flaws? You bet I would!!

I am currently looking at either the MITS 3000U, BENQ 7700 or the new PJTX200. Not sure where to go yet, but this flicker issue may be a deciding factor for me. I will not put up with another issue on a an LCD projector!! :confused:

I’ve ordered my TX200 and hopefully it will be here early next week. Ill definitely post in reference to the flickering problem once the projector is set up

I am a TX100 owner. My first projector had poor VB and bad colour uniformity. I sent it back and was sent a new unit. The replacement has better colour uniformity and vertical banding may be better, hard to say, and vertical banding changes over time. My TX100 right now seems to have a slightly loose lens. Its not too serious I guess, as I can still zoom, focus and align the image and it looks very sharp (I use as little lens shift as possible). I am selling mine. I have zero issues with screen door, unlike yourself. I ever so slightly defocus to reduce infrequent peak-a-boo's, but I can't for the life of me see screen door. I sit 1.75 x away from a 92" diagonal 16:9 screen.

I too want to upgrade my projector. My concerns are much the same as yours. I want less vertical banding and better contrast and black levels. The contrast and black level improvement is not essential, as its quite decent already, but there is always better out there. The flicker issue is also a concern, so far Waxxiemann reports flicker free performance.

Is there anyone in southern Ontario, possibley close to Toronto who has a TX200/UDPJ52 or has one on order?

:)

Unfortunately Meridius has right about the slow auto iris mechanism.
The only thing you can do about it is to turn it off and increase the contrast.
But out of this the picture quality is almost excellent.
Details in a few days as i only use the pj only 9hrs and through vga port and s-video only.

Unfortunately Meridius has right about the slow auto iris mechanism.
The only thing you can do about it is to turn it off and increase the contrast.
But out of this the picture quality is almost excellent.
Details in a few days as i only use the pj only 9hrs and through vga port and s-video only.

I have about 30 hours or so (give or take a half hour) now and I don't have flicker.

These must be isolated incidents. I am sure they did not intend to design it that way. Plus like Zardim said, you can just turn that function off.

As I said to CPC, I have nothing but good things to say and I am THOUROUGHLY enjoying my new PJ. The more I use it, the more I love it. I just got SW episode 3 yesterday :cool: and I am saving it for this weekend. I am really pumped to watch that. :D

I'll pop in once in a while but I don't want any bad mojo to rub off on me so I'll see you guys later.

Waxx

I have about 30 hours or so (give or take a half hour) now and I don't have flicker.

These must be isolated incidents. I am sure they did not intend to design it that way. Plus like Zardim said, you can just turn that function off.

As I said to CPC, I have nothing but good things to say and I am THOUROUGHLY enjoying my new PJ. The more I use it, the more I love it. I just got SW episode 3 yesterday :cool: and I am saving it for this weekend. I am really pumped to watch that. :D

I'll pop in once in a while but I don't want any bad mojo to rub off on me so I'll see you guys later.

Waxx


How does SW EpIII look on the pj?

There was talk of this projector having Dcdi Faroudja Video Processing. Anyone with this projector know if this is the case? Also to those who already own this projector how good is its scaling and deinterlacing capabilities. I’m a bit concerned after what they have been saying about the Z4

Waxxiemann you said ( I have about 30 hours or so (give or take a half hour) now and I don't have flicker. )

so what you are saying is you had flicker and now you dont after 30 hours i really dont think you have spoted it to be honest it cant just stop flickering and also you said when you just bought it you had no flickering. ???????

like i said and zardim on here it does have aslow iris and like the book says it can have flickering and why should you turn it of Waxxiemann the whole point of auto iris is to find the best blacks in projectors this is why thay added it but its just to slow and crap

wating for the demo of panasonic and hs60 and maybe the ruby mmmmm loooks good

I know the MSRP is $3,995 on this PJ - what is the MAP (typical selling) ?

- Chris

I know the MSRP is $3,995 on this PJ - what is the MAP (typical selling) ?

- Chris

It's been said over and over and over--we are not to discuss prices or the thread can be shut down.

Shelly

Its been said over and over and over again that its OK to state MSRP and MAP.

- Chris

msrp yes but not street price.

Shelly

It may be allowed to generally mention an average retail price, as in "The (AV product) goes for around $2500 in most stores"...but you definitely cannot mention prices for specific retailers together. I may be wrong about being able to refer generally to average prices from most stores, so don't quote me. What is MAP?

It may be allowed to generally mention an average retail price, as in "The (AV product) goes for around $2500 in most stores"...but you definitely cannot mention prices for specific retailers together. I may be wrong about being able to refer generally to average prices from most stores, so don't quote me. What is MAP?

Why get into it at all? Why try to skirt around the pricing rules here? I don't want to be a price policeman around here but this is how threads get threatened with being shut down. Let's keep Madpoet happy. :)

There are always discounts available, even for this Hitachi unit. Froogle or Yahoo search engines will help you find them.

Instead, let's just keep these threads full of information on performance and tweaking for the best picture.

Shelly

Fair enough. I guess there is nothing to be gained by talking about price anyways. If someone wants to find about price, pricing can be found elswhere.

Waxxiemann you said ( I have about 30 hours or so (give or take a half hour) now and I don't have flicker. )

so what you are saying is you had flicker and now you dont after 30 hours i really dont think you have spoted it to be honest it cant just stop flickering and also you said when you just bought it you had no flickering. ???????

like i said and zardim on here it does have aslow iris and like the book says it can have flickering and why should you turn it of Waxxiemann the whole point of auto iris is to find the best blacks in projectors this is why thay added it but its just to slow and crap

wating for the demo of panasonic and hs60 and maybe the ruby mmmmm loooks good

Who are you, and why are you raining on everyone elses parade??? Are you and Zardim the same person your spelling and sentence structure is the same!! Wax clearly says that he has put 30 hours on his unit to date and he has not seen flicker in those first 30 hours of viewing!! Are you just not getting it?? Why are you waiting for the demo of the Panny, why have you not seen it yet? It has been out longer than the Hitachi has. I bet you have not seen the Hitachi yet as the Hitachi units have just started to hit the market globally last week. So how can you even compare them yet?? Your probably one of those people who just like to spout off!! If you have seen this projector up and running like you say you have, where and when was it? Get me the number so I can call them myself. If you dislike the Hitachi so much, might I make a suggestion to leave this forum now and switch over to the Panny forum!!

WAX
Wax can you produce for me and this forum the product manual page that says it has flicker! I want to read it for myself. I have been looking for the manual on line and can not find it yet. What is your source and what connection method are you using? These may make a difference as well.

There was talk of this projector having Dcdi Faroudja Video Processing. Anyone with this projector know if this is the case? Also to those who already own this projector how good is its scaling and deinterlacing capabilities. I’m a bit concerned after what they have been saying about the Z4


I believe it uses the Pixel Works chip. Check this link out for yourself.

http://av.hitachi.co.jp/homeproj/lineup/tx200j/index.html

Also check out this link as they may have an English review of this unit soon and a shoot out review against the Panny 900 and Sanyo Z4!!!


http://www.royjowetthomecinema.co.uk/product/Hitachi-PJTX200-Projector.html

Later!!

Meridius - I never had flicker.

Guys!! I got a friggen dust blob!!! It's driving me nuts. How do I get rid of it? :confused: :(

upnorth I have seen the hitachi so dont call me a liar ok I can even tell you what shop i viewed it at, I just pointed my view on what i thought of that projector and another said the same on here i have not seen the pany becasue no loacal shop has them in.

and upnorth i have seen many projectors just becasue the panys been out longer dont mean crap , so whats your problem ok i might of misread Waxxiemann post but i dont go of on one like you it people like you who cause trouble.

i bet you have not even got a projector. i am not going to waste my time with you

Wax,

You have to remove the cover and blow air around the lcd panel area. I think there are better explanations and pictures on how to do this somewhere on AVS, but its pretty straight forward. Before you open it up, make sure you clean the lens with a camera lens cleaner brush or proper cloth.

The best thing to use is a product called Re-Air from Read Right. Its a re-fillable air cannister that you pump up with a bicycle pump. I have a couple cans. You should be able to find them on the internet. Otherwise, the other cans are full of nasty propellants that are generally bad, and its not good to spray that stuff into the optical parts of your projector anyways, in my view.

You could ask you dealer to ask Hitachi what to do, out of curiosity. You should also clean you dust filters regularly too to try and prevent dust blobs from gettins inside your projector to begin with :)

upnorth I have seen the hitachi so dont call me a liar ok I can even tell you what shop i viewed it at, I just pointed my view on what i thought of that projector and another said the same on here i have not seen the pany becasue no loacal shop has them in.

and upnorth i have seen many projectors just becasue the panys been out longer dont mean crap , so whats your problem ok i might of misread Waxxiemann post but i dont go of on one like you it people like you who cause trouble.

i bet you have not even got a projector. i am not going to waste my time with you

Not trying to cause any trouble just trying to protect the forum!! I have had two projectors in the past both one DLP and one LCD. I currently own the PJTX100. I have had many posts with screen shots on the PJTX100 forum last fall(check the forum for my posts, you will find many). I tried to post usefull information for fellow owners. I am looking for valid user views to try and decide if I should upgrade to the PJTx200. I just did not think your posts were helpful to the forum, rather I saw them as an attack on Wax. Did not mean to misread you either.

Are we cool?

Meridius - I never had flicker.

Guys!! I got a friggen dust blob!!! It's driving me nuts. How do I get rid of it? :confused: :(


I agree with CPC, the canned air not a good idea and does not work that well!! Also remove the filters only when doing a filter clean and never blow into the unit, unless your trying to remove blobs, or giving it a good yearly clean. As this will cause more blobs for sure. I had a bad blob the other night , right after a filter clean. I use compressed air from my compresser at about 60PSI, with a long nozzel attachement(like the one for blowing up baloons) with a rubber tip on it. I blew into the filter opening and all the vents, spent about ten minutes blowing out dust. Best thing about this as you can do this while the projector is on and see the visual results, because it is only cool air your blowing into it. It works like a charm, if you have a compressor!!

Hope this helps!!

I am waiting un-patiently for a review of the TX200 !

What I would really like to see is a shootout between these projectors:

TX200 vs Z4 vs AE900 vs Epson 550 vs Sony HS 51 vs Sony HS 60

But a review of the TX200 would be nice!!!! How long must we wait? I believe Cine4home will likely do one, and I'm not angry with them, they are awesome in their reviews, but I'm just disappointed that there are no reviews anywhere of the TX200. You would have thought that some place would have gotten a TX200 before they came out. Luckily we have Wax here with some feedback. I'm just curious how the 200 compares to the other projectors :)

upnorth we are cool dont worrie about it but just thought people should know about the iris like i said i never seen an iris projector untill this unit.

but i have to say if thay are all like this which i dont know because its the only one i have seen with iris i would not get one but i hear good things about the ruby and yes its alot of dosh but even the review of the sony hs60 is said to have a slow iris to so i just dont know what to go for as i have had 3 projecotrs and getting abit sick of upgrading just want a projector that i am realy happy with this time.

You know Upnorth I’m writing this post from Greece, I’m Greek and I am a Hitachi pj-tx200 owner.
You better don’t make any comparisons with other members of the forum and don’t tell me about my spelling and sentence structure.
This is the best I can do with my English knowledge. Can you go any further in Greek
I write what I saw believe it or not. I really don’t care.
I was trying to help.

Ok, everybody put down their dukes....

Bottom line Meridius, you saw ONE single projector. NEVER base an opinion on ONE single projector. You keep saying "if they are all like this which I don't know because its the only one I have seen"...you ask a question and answer it for yourself in the same sentence. Statistics doesn't work with a sample size of one. Be patient and take a look at some other TX200's before even worrying that they will all perform as the one you saw. That and the fact that others in this thread are reporting no issue such as you describe.

Wait until more people get the TX200 and we have more people reporting their results :)

You know Upnorth I’m writing this post from Greece, I’m Greek and I am a Hitachi pj-tx200 owner.
You better don’t make any comparisons with other members of the forum and don’t tell me about my spelling and sentence structure.
This is the best I can do with my English knowledge. Can you go any further in Greek
I write what I saw believe it or not. I really don’t care.
I was trying to help.


My apologies Zardim, your right rude of me. No, I could not do any better in Greek, in fact could not do at all. Are we cool?

May we please get back to helping each other with this projector? I will watch my manners from now on I promise.

Ok Back on topic.
The Pixelworks chip used by the TX200, is it used in any other projector, is it any good? The write up on the Hitachi Japan Website just uses a lot of words to say its a Scaler/Deinterlacer.
Should have my TX200 here by the end of the week. When i get it set up ill post my thoughts, which probaly won't be that useful as ive never owned a projector before and have only ever seen 1 widescreen projector in use and that was at a store with heaps ambient light (AE700).

As far as scaling goes, you should be fine to scale 480p via VGA or HDMI, as the TX100 scales really nicely. I cannot comment on the de-interlacer. Unless you test it with the tough material, I guess you won't know for sure. For 99.9% issue free dvd de-interlacing, use a dvd player or video processor with a Faroudja or Silicon Image deinterlacer. I use an iScan Ultra with Sil504 chips :)

Wax,

You have to remove the cover and blow air around the lcd panel area. I think there are better explanations and pictures on how to do this somewhere on AVS, but its pretty straight forward. Before you open it up, make sure you clean the lens with a camera lens cleaner brush or proper cloth.

The best thing to use is a product called Re-Air from Read Right. Its a re-fillable air cannister that you pump up with a bicycle pump. I have a couple cans. You should be able to find them on the internet. Otherwise, the other cans are full of nasty propellants that are generally bad, and its not good to spray that stuff into the optical parts of your projector anyways, in my view.

You could ask you dealer to ask Hitachi what to do, out of curiosity. You should also clean you dust filters regularly too to try and prevent dust blobs from gettins inside your projector to begin with :)


I can borrow a small air compressor from work that goes up to 100 PSI. Is this a good idea? I can turn it down to somthing like 60 if I want.

Start with 60 PSI. I can't advise how to use a powered device. Use caution.

Agreed, I certainly don't want to blow the crap out of the thing. Maybe I'll start @ about 40 PSI and work up from there.

There are no chemicals that could be expelled from the nozel of a small electric compressor is there? I am sure that we do not service or maintain it in any way. It's been here for years and as far as I know all it is is a motor, valve and tank.

I'll shoot it on a peice of glass and ensure that there is no residue but I can't see there being any.

What do you guys think?

Ok Upnorth we are cool!

Definitely shoot it into something for quite a bit to be sure. I don't know. I use the Re-Air cans because I just fill them up with a bicycle pump and I know for sure there is nothing inside but air. With an electric pump, there must be something lubricating the inards. You'd better ask somebody else about that one. I'd suggest trying to find some cans of Re-Air by Read Right.

Agreed, I certainly don't want to blow the crap out of the thing. Maybe I'll start @ about 40 PSI and work up from there.

There are no chemicals that could be expelled from the nozel of a small electric compressor is there? I am sure that we do not service or maintain it in any way. It's been here for years and as far as I know all it is is a motor, valve and tank.

I'll shoot it on a peice of glass and ensure that there is no residue but I can't see there being any.

What do you guys think?

Should be no problem, that I can see, you will only be expelling air, as the engine and pump is usually sealed and you are drawing from the tank. However it is always wise to test it first on something less expensive, in case something comes out that was not supposed to be there....like a spider!!

You should also make sure you do not use to much air, 40psi may work but may be a bit weak, you should be fine at 60psi, but start at 40psi if it feels safer to do so. Also do not stick in the nozzel to far as it may damage the elctronics it touchs, that is why I use a narrow tube and with a rubber tip. My wand has a handle to control the flow of air coming out and to start/ stop the flow, this is good too as you can get a burst of air as well as just blowing air.

With the projector on blow down on the lower part of the opening, where you see the most light and or lights(coloured). If you blow on the top two holes you may blow more blobs down. Then just keep blowing/bursting air on the bottom untill all blobs are gone from the view on the screen.

Be very gentle and careful and you should be fine, as over caution is a good thing in this case.



Good luck..let us know your results.

With a compressor there is always a chance of water vapour coming out with the air, especially in humid conditions. Large industrial compressors use dryers to stop this but I'm pretty sure your little compressor wont have this feature.
Depending on how good the compressor is, I doubt oil contamination will be problem. You will only get oil contamination if your rings are gone.

With a compressor there is always a chance of water vapour coming out with the air, especially in humid conditions. Large industrial compressors use dryers to stop this but I'm pretty sure your little compressor wont have this feature.
Depending on how good the compressor is, I doubt oil contamination will be problem. You will only get oil contamination if your rings are gone.


Thanks a lot Widseth. I did manage to rid myself of my dust blobs and all is well in the world again. ;) There is one really stubborn blob that I was not able to get rid of but it is DARK blue and you would not notice it unless I told you it was there and the scene was almost pitch black. It still pisses me off but I am happy that the really offensive blobs are gone.

From what I can tell the Blue panel faces away from me when I am looking through the filter opening and that would explain why I can not reach it with air.

I even tried to use a bendy straw and wiggle it right in there but no luck.

With my warrantee I get a free yearly cleaning and I will deal with it then but it does not really bother me so much as to have it dealt with by the dealer or Hitachi. I am more worried that they will screw it up more and take forever with it :mad: .

Yeah, the compressor worked really well but after I ran it for about 10 minutes I did notice some moisture coming out. :eek: Luckily it was not while aiming the hose directly into the projector. I used 40 PSI and it got rid of the 2 blobs that were really bugging me but then the really annoying one popped up and I turned it up to 60 PSI but I did not dare go higher as 60 was A LOT of pressure and I did not want to damage my PJ.

Anyways, thats that. Thanks for your help with this, guys. I appreciate it. :D

Thanks a lot Widseth. I did manage to rid myself of my dust blobs and all is well in the world again. ;) There is one really stubborn blob that I was not able to get rid of but it is DARK blue and you would not notice it unless I told you it was there and the scene was almost pitch black. It still pisses me off but I am happy that the really offensive blobs are gone.

From what I can tell the Blue panel faces away from me when I am looking through the filter opening and that would explain why I can not reach it with air.

I even tried to use a bendy straw and wiggle it right in there but no luck.

With my warrantee I get a free yearly cleaning and I will deal with it then but it does not really bother me so much as to have it dealt with by the dealer or Hitachi. I am more worried that they will screw it up more and take forever with it :mad: .

Yeah, the compressor worked really well but after I ran it for about 10 minutes I did notice some moisture coming out. :eek: Luckily it was not while aiming the hose directly into the projector. I used 40 PSI and it got rid of the 2 blobs that were really bugging me but then the really annoying one popped up and I turned it up to 60 PSI but I did not dare go higher as 60 was A LOT of pressure and I did not want to damage my PJ.

Anyways, thats that. Thanks for your help with this, guys. I appreciate it. :D



Glad it worked out for you. But you could have got the blue blob out as well with some more time. That same thing happened to me as well. When I started to blow I got more blobs than the one I was after including a couple of blue ones. I just blew/blasted air into the unit untill they were all gone!!

You could try again and blow higher up in the opening and then lower again, just my thoughts. I will not send my PJ in for cleaning as I have cleaned every projector myself both DLP and LCD. I have gotten really good at taking them apart right down to the lens and LCD panel and color wheel(DLP) as well. I have even fixed a fan problem on a friends DLP and gave it a good cleaning at the same time.

I usually do a major clean inside once a year taking it apart. But now that I have discovered compressed air for LCD, I may not have to take it apart anymore. If I just blow the dust out every once and awhile when blobs do appear.

upnorth- I didn't even move the projector. I was scared to keep on blowing because of the moisture that started coming out of the compressor.

It really bugs me that there is a blob there.... I am trying not to think about it. You can't really see it but I know it's there.... I am sure that all you guys know the feeling.

I am going to try and find some of that Re-air stuff @ walmart or london drugs or somthing. I would feel a lot safer using that stuff.

I probably could have got it out if I went underneath and took off the cover for the lamp but I was way to chicken to do it. I haven't physically touched the projector since I set it up until today.

Waxx

Waxx: If I may...

How wide is your screen? I know you sit ~12 feet back and can see SDE around 6 ft from the screen, but I need a screen width to put the other numbers into context.

The screen is 105" wide by 59" tall. 120" diag.

P.S. since I have been viewing for longer now I would have to say that I can see SD from more like 8 or 9 feet.

Where I sit I can't see it at all.

I received my TX200 last night but haven’t had a real chance to play around with it yet and at present I am only projecting onto a darkish blue gray wall. My screen will turn up tomorrow.

The only thing I have had a chance to look at is about half hour of toy story 2. I haven’t had any flickering as yet but the dynamic iris is slow and fairly annoying. Even within the same scene if something a bit darker comes on scene it will adjust and it is not subtle, but I am watching it on a super high contract surface.

I’m sitting at about 1.5 screen lengths away and during toy story I definitely could not see any SDE, though on the projector menu text I could just make it out. The picture was smooth and sharp but I won’t comment on colour due to my temporary screen. But what I did see looked amazing and I couldn’t stop smiling.

My other problem is that I got this projector out of Japan so the manual is in Japanese and I haven’t found an English one on the net as yet. It took me about 10 minutes just to change the menu to English as well and who know what else I adjusted while trying to find the English menu.

widseth,

There should be different settings for the auto iris. Check in your OSD menu.

Wax,

How do you find the speed of the iris?

:)

CPC,
For the auto iris there is OFF, Auto 1 and Auto 2, both Autos had the same problem for me. The auto iris function is called “BLACK”. I haven’t had a chance yet to see if the iris acts differently in the different picture modes eg SPORT, CINEMA HIGH and CINEMA LOW etc. I’ve just got it in STANDARD at the moment. The cinema ones are too dark for my dark wall but in just 24 hours and ill have my screen. CINEMA HIGH looks like it will be impressive and hopfully the iris will work better in that mode.

CPC,
For the auto iris there is OFF, Auto 1 and Auto 2, both Autos had the same problem for me. The auto iris function is called “BLACK”. I haven’t had a chance yet to see if the iris acts differently in the different picture modes eg SPORT, CINEMA HIGH and CINEMA LOW etc. I’ve just got it in STANDARD at the moment. The cinema ones are too dark for my dark wall but in just 24 hours and ill have my screen. CINEMA HIGH looks like it will be impressive and hopfully the iris will work better in that mode.


I think that I am in Standard as well. I'll have a look tommorow. I am interested to see what your settings will be when you have it the way you want it. I am using a high contrast screen (behr Silver Screen) and our settings wil probably be different, but let me know.

:)

I ordered mine today, could not wait any longer..premature projectoring problem I have!!!

Will be receiving it by the end of next week. I will then pit it against the old PJTX100 and see how it compares. I will also try to put some screen shots up shortly after hopefully by the end of the weekend. But I will need to spend a day or two calibrating (with Smart Tweaks) it first and getting used to all of the settings. I will take the color correcting filter off the PJTX100 and do a direct comparsion between the two without filters. I will then put the filter on the new PJTX200 , calibrate it with the filter on and then see again how they both compare. I will take some screen shots of the same image on both the PJTX100 and PJTX200, with filter on and off to give everyone out there a chance to see the difference between them.

Upnorth- thats sweet man. Please let me know what your settings turn out as (filter off). I am really interested to see what the shootout will turn out like.

Does anyone know where to get an English manual for the PJTX200?? The sooner I get it the faster I can familiarize myself with this projector. Also mine will be a J model, so it comes with only a Japanese manual, just like my PJTX100J.

What does everyone think of the J models? How does the warranty usually
work with these?

The J models are good. I can't recall there being a huge number of owners with problems. Some TX100 units have had poor vertical banding, while others have had poor colour uniformity, but its not been the norm. The TX100 has amazing adjustability too, which allows taming of vertical banding, and probably the best adjustment of colour uniformity of the lcd projectors.

I searched all the Hitachi websites. No English owners manual available for the J52/TX200 as of yet.

I had forgot all about the dreaded VB until last night, so I tried different methods to try and see some. I watched a bit of Football which had some nice big shoots of the field, then I tried some sky shots and then just a gray screen but honestly I could see nothing that resembled banding at all.

Also the auto iris is definitely less noticeable in the cinema modes, though I could see it but I was looking for it.

Have you folks done any extensive comparison of using the auto iris and not using the iris? How much difference does it make? Which do you prefer?

I received my TX200 last night but haven’t had a real chance to play around with it yet and at present I am only projecting onto a darkish blue gray wall. My screen will turn up tomorrow.

The only thing I have had a chance to look at is about half hour of toy story 2. I haven’t had any flickering as yet but the dynamic iris is slow and fairly annoying. Even within the same scene if something a bit darker comes on scene it will adjust and it is not subtle, but I am watching it on a super high contract surface.

I’m sitting at about 1.5 screen lengths away and during toy story I definitely could not see any SDE, though on the projector menu text I could just make it out. The picture was smooth and sharp but I won’t comment on colour due to my temporary screen. But what I did see looked amazing and I couldn’t stop smiling.

My other problem is that I got this projector out of Japan so the manual is in Japanese and I haven’t found an English one on the net as yet. It took me about 10 minutes just to change the menu to English as well and who know what else I adjusted while trying to find the English menu.

After stopping at a dealer here in Ottawa, Canada I saw this projector in action. It looks GREAT and the picture (HD hockey) was very decent. BUT as every single time I decide to upgrade my PJ and I stop at these forums, voilá, someone finds an issue with the projector I liked. :D
So what is the verdict on the iris? I was considering the Panasonic AE900 (even cheaper) and based on my experience with the Panasonics (mine is still up and running after 2000 hours on the same bulb) they are great machines.
But after seeing the Hitachi for about the same price I started thinking about it.
Apparently (I did not have a chance to see the AE900 in action) the AE900 has a much faster iris system, 2X zoom and comparable CR.
Does anyone know how these two compare?

Thanks guys!

Hey all,

Searched the internet all day for an English manual for the PJTX200, but could not find one either. In my search I came across an intersting Japenese site. They have a review of this projector. I translated it, but it is still hard to understand, and only half the page ever gets translated??? Any way it looks very favorable for this projector, according to them. With many improvements mentioned over the old PJTX100 projector, with some of the core features retained. They did mention the slow iris in some modes and tried to correct for it with different setting combinations. From what I can gather is that they recommend the cinema mode, 6500k color mode, manual iris set to 5 and dynamic iris set to auto 1 or auto 2 then the flicker is less noticable if at all. This is positive news if it is the case.

Wax or Widseth can you confirm this?

Here is the link if you want to take a stab at trying to translate it for yourself.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20051020/dg55.htm

What does everyone think of the J models? How does the warranty usually
work with these?


No problems, just buy extra warranty, and opt for the ship back method if they have one, or you will have to pay the shipping back to Japan. Remote and on screen functions all the same. They are the same projector, just labeled differently, the European model I believe is the Illumina, they North American model is the Ultravision and the Japenese model is the WOO!! Which I think is pretty cool!!

Hey all,

Searched the internet all day for an English manual for the PJTX200, but could not find one either. In my search I came across an intersting Japenese site. They have a review of this projector. I translated it, but it is still hard to understand, and only half the page ever gets translated??? Any way it looks very favorable for this projector, according to them. With many improvements mentioned over the old PJTX100 projector, with some of the core features retained. They did mention the slow iris in some modes and tried to correct for it with different setting combinations. From what I can gather is that they recommend the cinema mode, 6500k color mode, manual iris set to 5 and dynamic iris set to auto 1 or auto 2 then the flicker is less noticable if at all. This is positive news if it is the case.

Wax or Widseth can you confirm this?

Here is the link if you want to take a stab at trying to translate it for yourself.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20051020/dg55.htm

Interesting from what I could understand. They seem to compare the unit to the Z4 and AE900 which is what I am interested in but cannot figure out what they are saying. Any Japanese speakers out there that could help out?

Dont know if I can do this, but is this the same projector as noted on this website?




If so this projector is a steal.

Dont know if I can do this, but is this the same projector as noted on this website?



If so this projector is a steal.

1- No you can't post that web address.
2- Yes, the Hitachi retails for much less outside the Americas.
3- Don't know if it is a steal as it has the same D5 panel and similar specs as the AE900, Z4 and Epson 550 which retail for far less in the Americas also.

Well I in canada this hitatchi goes as cheap as those above.

It also seems brighter then those projectors, and I am looking for brightness. I am also looking for a projector with color and more punch.

I currently own a benq 8700+ but would like to purchase a brighter projector with more vivid colors, the HC3000 mitsubishi looked very good, but its definately more expensive then this.

So I am curious how the 8700+ stacks up against it, mainly in brightness and colors.

Hey all,

Searched the internet all day for an English manual for the PJTX200, but could not find one either. In my search I came across an intersting Japenese site. They have a review of this projector. I translated it, but it is still hard to understand, and only half the page ever gets translated??? Any way it looks very favorable for this projector, according to them. With many improvements mentioned over the old PJTX100 projector, with some of the core features retained. They did mention the slow iris in some modes and tried to correct for it with different setting combinations. From what I can gather is that they recommend the cinema mode, 6500k color mode, manual iris set to 5 and dynamic iris set to auto 1 or auto 2 then the flicker is less noticable if at all. This is positive news if it is the case.

Wax or Widseth can you confirm this?

Here is the link if you want to take a stab at trying to translate it for yourself.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20051020/dg55.htm

Looking around watch impress I found a Japanese article comparing four of the newer D5 pj's in the market including the Hitachi TX200. I started a thread in the lower priced forum in which I included the web address:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=602150

Well I in canada this hitatchi goes as cheap as those above.

It also seems brighter then those projectors, and I am looking for brightness. I am also looking for a projector with color and more punch.

I currently own a benq 8700+ but would like to purchase a brighter projector with more vivid colors, the HC3000 mitsubishi looked very good, but its definately more expensive then this.

So I am curious how the 8700+ stacks up against it, mainly in brightness and colors.

My post should then read US and its territories instead of the Americas.

After stopping at a dealer here in Ottawa, Canada I saw this projector in action. It looks GREAT and the picture (HD hockey) was very decent. BUT as every single time I decide to upgrade my PJ and I stop at these forums, voilá, someone finds an issue with the projector I liked. :D
So what is the verdict on the iris? I was considering the Panasonic AE900 (even cheaper) and based on my experience with the Panasonics (mine is still up and running after 2000 hours on the same bulb) they are great machines.
But after seeing the Hitachi for about the same price I started thinking about it.
Apparently (I did not have a chance to see the AE900 in action) the AE900 has a much faster iris system, 2X zoom and comparable CR.
Does anyone know how these two compare?

Thanks guys!

crodrigues,

I am interested in the TX200 and my only concern is the speed of the iris and any "flickering" or obvious slow behaviour that may exist which would look lousy. If the Hitachi fairs as good this time around in terms of contrast ratio improvement, it should do well. Remember the TX100 reached 1100:1 calibrated with filter. The Z4 reaches 1450:1....so figure the worst the Hitachi can do will be around 1400:1 calibrated with filter, and possibly better. Of course, the Z4 reached 6800:1 calibrated with filter using the dynamic iris, so again, who knows what the highest contrast of the TX200 will be (all according to Cine4home calibrations).

Remember that the Hitachi has a large lens, (sharp optics), and the Hitachi will probably retain its excellent colour uniformity adjustments (as well as vertical banding tweaking). I'd say give the Hitachi a serious consideration. We're all waiting for the test results. Again, my only concern is the iris. I would use the unit without the dynamic iris if I had too, but I'd rather get the maximum I can from the projector. I can't see buying a projector with a feature like a dynamic iris, and then not using it. Seems a waste of money and features.

I'm waiting for this shootout:

TX200 vs Z4 vs AE900 vs Epson 550 vs Epson 800 vs Sony HS51 vs Sony HS 60

:)

I stopped at the dealer again this morning and mentioned that to the guys over there. They have been using the PJ for a couple weeks and all there seem to simply love it. We took a look at the settings and what I remember was something like Black was off and Iris was 2 or something like that. I could NOT see any flickering.
The best would be to know from people that see the flickering which movies/scenes we should try and in which settings (iris/lamp) so I can go to the dealer and give it a try again.
I am really considering it as it is extremely quiet AND costs the same as the AE900/Z4 here in Canada.

The Japanese reviewer seemed to be a big fan of the "Automatic 1" setting. The review indicated all the other iris-settings were slow (lagged update) and made the image presentation unnatural?

I received my 92" matt white screen with 1.1 gain, so last night I watched "The Interpreter" which has allot of dark scenes and changes from dark to light/light to dark scenes. My settings were "Cinema High", "Auto 1" and iris down to 4. I have not tweaked any other settings at all (Gamma etc).

I only really noticed the auto iris once when a person wearing a black suit walked into a bright scene causing the iris to close down a little, the other two people with me didn’t noticed at all. You could also tell the iris was working because the movie was 2.35:1 so the bars top and bottom got darker and lighter depending on the scene, also when changing from dark to light scenes I could sometimes just see the iris working but it didn’t bother me at all

Ill have to watch "The Interpreter" again because I wasn’t following the movie at all just to busy analysing the picture and iris. When I finally watch a move rather than analysing the iris ill probably never notice the iris.

I definitely will be using the auto iris for all my movie watching because it improves dark scenes and really isn’t that noticeable in the cinema modes, but for sport/TV ill probably turn it off.

If I had my time again I would still buy this projector because the smile never left my face the whole movie, it just looked so good. The colour saturation is pretty impressive if you ask me. But I would have got a Fixed, High Contrast and Low Gain Screen, damn wrinkles and a bit darker blacks would be nice.

Sample of my tx200 on the wall. 113''

What screen is everyone using for this projector? I have a completely light controlled room with no windows.

I saw this at CEDIA and at my local dealer it is an improvement in CR / blacks over my owned TX-100 and the price point in Canada is pretty good...

The only issue with dynamic IRIS is the flickering issue and I will need to spend more time viewing it before purchasing ...

The best dynamic IRIS was the EPSON Cinemea 800 which had the fastest movement and although there CR is measured at 5000:1 it is close enough if the dynamic IRIS works better than other brands ..

Will have to wait to see in depth reviews on this feature and real world comparisons...

There definitely can be a small amount of flicker with the auto 2 setting. When I changed to the auto 1 setting I did not see any flicker. Still haven't calibrated the projector....all of 24 hrs old!

Toronto and/or southern Ontario folks with a n HDP-J52 / TX200 ?? Any local dealers where I can see one in action? Not at my local 2001av yet.

Some really quick info from about 2 hours with the Hitachi, at home tonight:

I'm not really considering this PJ, but brought one home from the local dealer, who is also a friend, just to play with.

Comparing it to my old JVC G-10. Rear projection install, on a 110" stewart 1.0 gain 110" diag.

Lumen output of the Hitachi, by my meter, = 555 at iris wide open, 415 at iris 5, 190 iris closed all the way. Seems a little low, but looks pretty bright if iris is 5 or higher.

Didn't notice any flickering, but auto 1 def. looks better (less aggresive). I watched mostly with it off, and lens iris at 5. Still alot of "digital haze" in dark scenes (IMO), but probably a tad better maybe than my 7 year old JVC in this respect. I preferred gamma at "normal".

Screen door is pretty good for an LCD - better than I was expecting. Visible from about 1.6x by my eyes, but I bet alot of people wouldn't object to it a fair bit closer - it looks better than the "old" LCD units. Uniformity was pretty good, but left side of screen was about 25% dimmer than center, but right side only maybe 10% dimmer (remember, I'm rear projecting, so its "backwards" for most everybody else). Don't have the exact FL numbers on this ATM.

VERY quiet.

Using the lens throw very near the wide end, BTW.

At 6500 color setting, it still looked pretty blue to me, but I have no way to verify.

Otherwise, it looks pretty good. No VB that I could see, no dead pixels, etc...

- Chris

Got mine yesterday and tried 'Batman Begins'. Tried BLACK in AUTO1 and the IRIS on CINEMA LOW. Then I reduced the IRIS setting from 5 to 4.
NO FLICKERING at all. The Flickering IS THERE is in AUTO2 but then the picture may get too dark unless you adjust brightness on the PJ and/or on the DVD.
Note you should also adjust the DVD settings as in some you can adjust Gamma, brightness, contrast and so on. If you set both you may get a picture too dark or with such light/dark contrasts where the AUTO2 may not work great. I have to play more with these settings.
So far my impressions are: AMAZING picture and excellent contrast/3D punch/shadown details.
All this on a bare wall.
My screen will be up hopefully today and I will try to post a better review.
But as I said this PJ really puts an excellent picture, au par to many of the new DLPs/LCDs.
And the finish/build quality is really great. Even small details like the cable cover make a lot of difference.
The lens is huge. :eek:
Must be good as size matters. :D

Got mine yesterday and tried 'Batman Begins'. Tried BLACK in AUTO1 and the IRIS on CINEMA LOW. Then I reduced the IRIS setting from 5 to 4.
NO FLICKERING at all. The Flickering IS THERE is in AUTO2 but then the picture may get too dark unless you adjust brightness on the PJ and/or on the DVD.
Note you should also adjust the DVD settings as in some you can adjust Gamma, brightness, contrast and so on. If you set both you may get a picture too dark or with such light/dark contrasts where the AUTO2 may not work great. I have to play more with these settings.
So far my impressions are: AMAZING picture and excellent contrast/3D punch/shadown details.
All this on a bare wall.
My screen will be up hopefully today and I will try to post a better review.
But as I said this PJ really puts an excellent picture, au par to many of the new DLPs/LCDs.
And the finish/build quality is really great. Even small details like the cable cover make a lot of difference.
The lens is huge. :eek:
Must be good as size matters. :D


Thanks for the impressions dude :)

I can't see myself going with the AE900 now after reading all these spectacular reviews of the HC3000.

It's probably gonna boil down to either this or the InFocus 7210.

Toronto and/or southern Ontario folks with a n HDP-J52 / TX200 ?? Any local dealers where I can see one in action? Not at my local 2001av yet.


Gibson Sound and Vision in Waterloo has one set-up.

Thanx. Waterloo is a little far. Hopefully 2001av will get one in, but their theatre room is not so great due to incomplete light control.

I would love to see it at someone's place. My TX100 is available for view by AVS members :)

My WOO (PJTX200J) arrived today!! I will be hooking it up tonight. With some playing, tweaking and then comparisons between it and my current WOO PJTX100J over the weekend. Look for my mini shootout results with pics, settings and all hopefully by Monday night. :D :D :D :) :) :)

Awesome. Your review of the TX200 compared with the TX100 will be greatly appreciated. Take your time to set up your new WOO! as best you can just as you have set up your TX100 and compare as you dare. I think the Auto1 setting for the iris is the hot tip so far, but you knew that already. Shame you are so far away or I'd offer to bring over some beer and dvd's :) I guess light control isn't an issue as much for you up there? What sunset times are you looking at up in the near (far?) north? No holds barred. Put the TX200 threw its paces and tell us how you feel it compares with the TX100.

WOO!

:D

P.S. BTW, I haven't been following availability for the folks down south. What is the status on that? Is it in stores in the US yet? If not...when?

Nice. I want to see what this thing can do. I was looking at the Sanyo Z4 because of the really nice lens shift. If the Hitachi Lens shift is as good as the Z4, and the quality is better, it might be worth it to spend more for the Hitachi. I don't like what I read about the Sanyo customer service and I don't like what I read about all the tweaking needed for the Z4. Any info about the feedback would be much appreciated.

Received my Denon 1920 DVD player yesterday and hooked it up to my TX200 via HDMI, I’m also using the Faroudja scalar and deinterlacer in the Denon.

The difference between my cheap JVC via component and the Denon via HDMI is amazing, the first thing I noticed was the detail that was now visible, like hair looking like hair not a mass of brown stuff and I was able to see real 3D depth as you get in a cinema.

I’m not entirely sure what is causing the large increase in picture quality, the scalar or HDMI I haven’t played around with it enough yet, but I’m extremely glad I brought a better DVD player and recommend to every TX200 owner to hook them up with HDMI.

Received my Denon 1920 DVD player yesterday and hooked it up to my TX200 via HDMI, I’m also using the Faroudja scalar and deinterlacer in the Denon.

The difference between my cheap JVC via component and the Denon via HDMI is amazing, the first thing I noticed was the detail that was now visible, like hair looking like hair not a mass of brown stuff and I was able to see real 3D depth as you get in a cinema.

I’m not entirely sure what is causing the large increase in picture quality, the scalar or HDMI I haven’t played around with it enough yet, but I’m extremely glad I brought a better DVD player and recommend to every TX200 owner to hook them up with HDMI.

Here we go again down the 'spend more money' road. My wife will kill me when she hears I need an HDMI DVD player. :D

I'd wait. Try different inputs. Hooking up my iScan Ultra via VGA to my TX100 was great and I swear I couldn't notice much difference when I tried DVI with an iScan HD. I suppose if I did a really thorough comparison, I may notice that it looks better via 720p, but I can't imagine it being enough to notice. The scaler in the Hitachi TX100 was reportedly very good according to cine4home, so the TX200 scaler is likely similar.

Can anyone tell me anything about the horizontal lens shift on the Hitachi? The Sanyo Z4 does a 50% shift while the Panasonic AE900 only does 25%. I'm really hoping the Hitachi does around 50% like the Sanyo. I need about 20% shift but the Panasonic would be almost maxed out at that shift. That leaves me with 2 options at best. The Z4 and the TX200 (hopefully!). I don't like what I read about Sanyo's customer service and the projector can be tough to calibrate from what I understand. I might be willing to spend a few extra bucks for the Hitachi.

I believe the Horizontal lens shift is 33%.

It looks like Projector Central is in the middle of testing the TX200 with results due next week.

While watching Return of the King last night i did a bit of a comparrison between the TX200 internal scaler and the Faroudja scalar in the Denon 1920 DVD player. The Denon internal scaler definataly created a superior image with a sharper image.
One thing i have notice is large light areas are quite noisy, not solid, ive only noticed it since i put the Denon on. It occours using HDMI or Component or scaler on or off. Ill chuck my old JVC back on and try and pin point the problem

So you're saying the internal scaler in the projector or the scaler in the Denon is better - the way you worded it, its hard to tell. (Its probably not the scaler thats "better" in the player or PJ - its the de-interlacer). That said, I haven't tried 480i into the PJ from any source.

I've been using an Oppo while demo'ing a tx-200 and haven't noticed what you mention. I HAVE noticed very infrequent (2-3 times / movie) tearing via HDMI from the Oppo DVI output.

- Chris

Wideseth, thanks for posting that info on the lens shift. Now I know I have another option other than the Sanyo.

I want to use a projector with a throw distance of 17'. I will have seating at 10' and 16'.
It will be a 92" screen. I will watch DVD's, high def and some standard broadcast. I have to OPPO DVD player, 25' Geffen HDMI cable, and a Denon 3805. Will be getting either a DTV or Dish high def box.

Looking at either a PJTX 200 or the Z4. Also considering the new Denon 3806 with HDMI switching.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Iamjcl
The Denons' Faroudja scaler was definitaly better than the TX200 scaler

Just wanted to let you all know, that I am close to completing my mini review of the PJTX200 against my older PJTX100. It has taken me longer than anticipated(will explain in my review), I am trying to do this right and give as accurate an opinion as I can. So with that said; sorry but the review will be delayed a day or two.

For those that can not wait, here is my first impression of the new PJTX200....WOOOOOOOOOOO..........W000000000000000W!!!!

Does anyone know if the manual is available on line?

Shelly

Does anyone know if the manual is available on line?

Shelly


I have been looking all over the internet, including the site where I was able to get the manual for my PJTX100, with no luck!! I have even emailed some dealers on the net asking for a copy, no bites yet.

It sure would make tweaking this projector easier!

I am really curious how this projector stacks up with the Mitsubishi HC3000.

I currently looking for another projector other then my benq8700, but one with brighter picture, better colors, and more punch!

However I would love to hear how it stacks up to HC3000 or even then AE900 and Z4.

There really is a lack of reviews and info on this projector. Im hoping its my new projector because it can be had at a great price, and would fit well in my theatre.

The Hitachi 200 may cost less than the Pan 900 and Sanyo Z4 in other countries, but the PJ52 will street for about $1000 more than those pj's in the United States.

So it has a have a GREAT picture for me to chose it.

Hope this does not break forum rules about specific pricing/dealers.

Shelly

Hi all, I've just joined the forum a few days ago, but I've been lurking and learning for months. I just came back from my dealer in Vancouver where they had a Panny 900U and a HDPJ52 setup. IMHO it's no contest, the Hitachi had better colors, deeper blacks with no VB and no screen door from 1X the screen width. For some strange reason the Hitachi MSRP is lower in Canada than the U.S. so it's a no brainer for me. I'm off tomorrow after work to buy my first projector. Thanks to all, for your wisdom and opinions, this is a great site!

How is the brightness on this thing compared to the AE900 and Z4?

For Liquid,

Hi all, I've just joined the forum a few days ago, but I've been lurking and learning for months. I just came back from my dealer in Vancouver where they had a Panny 900U and a HDPJ52 setup. IMHO it's no contest, the Hitachi had better colors, deeper blacks with no VB and no screen door from 1X the screen width. For some strange reason the Hitachi MSRP is lower in Canada than the U.S. so it's a no brainer for me. I'm off tomorrow after work to buy my first projector. Thanks to all, for your wisdom and opinions, this is a great site!

Thanks for your input Liquid. This is exactly the kind of info I have been looking for. :D I have been trying to decide between the Panny 900U, HDPJ52, Z4 and the Mits -hc3000. But the relatively long throw and price (here in Canada) was a deal breaker on the Mits.
What were you watching that helped you determine that the black levels were so much better on the Hitachi vs the 900 ?

Phaselocd, Im in exactly the same boat you are.

I just purchased my PJ-TX200. First i was looking for the HC3000, but i wouldn't find a way to mount it in my room. The HC3000 has an offset of 33% of screen height. So the image would be starting 1ft abouve floor level in my basement, cause ceiling is only at 7ft 4" . Without lensshift the HC3000 was a no go.

The picture of the HC3000 was brilliant, but i was constantly seeing rainbows.

I'm very happy with my TX200. It is much quieter than the Z4 and the Epson TW600 when mounted upside down on the ceiling.

Picture is great with good contrast and colors.

How does the picture compare though with the HC3000? In brightness and contrast, and color?

THanks.

How does the picture compare though with the HC3000? In brightness and contrast, and color?

THanks.


excellent question.

For Liquid,



Thanks for your input Liquid. This is exactly the kind of info I have been looking for. :D I have been trying to decide between the Panny 900U, HDPJ52, Z4 and the Mits -hc3000. But the relatively long throw and price (here in Canada) was a deal breaker on the Mits.
What were you watching that helped you determine that the black levels were so much better on the Hitachi vs the 900 ?
Star Wars Ep. 3. Lots of city shots at night plus the obvious space shots. To my eyes and another guy who was watching at the same time, it was just as bright with better blacks. Plus it's shiny and black :D

Could I have a throw distance of 17' if my screen is going to be 92"?
Thanks!

Could I have a throw distance of 17' if my screen is going to be 92"?
Thanks!

No from what I remember. Mine is at 13' and the screen size could be at 92". At 17' I am sure you cannot. The minimum size you will get at this distance is 120" according to the manual.

Anyone have any news for Australian availability of the 200?

This was asked earlier in this thread, but no real answer came out of it. Since I saw this unit for sale recently at a local shop, I saw that the contrast rating is 4000:1, even confirmed that on the Canadian Hitachi website. I thought the HDPJ52 is the twin of TX200? Why is the TX200 rated at 7000:1? Is that just marketing?

This was asked earlier in this thread, but no real answer came out of it. Since I saw this unit for sale recently at a local shop, I saw that the contrast rating is 4000:1, even confirmed that on the Canadian Hitachi website. I thought the HDPJ52 is the twin of TX200? Why is the TX200 rated at 7000:1? Is that just marketing?


Another great question, there really is a lack of information on this projector, and I would still like to hear how it stacks up against the HC3000 from the person who seen both.

We also need some reviews or something we dont even have a manual for it!

Re: Australian release

I spoke to a dealer this afternoon who stated that Hitachi told him today that it would be very late December, into January before there is an Oz release.
He hinted that he felt that Hitachi are holding them back in order
to clear the remaining TX100's.

Hey Upnorth, hurry up and put pen to paper.
We're all waiting for your review .

Having technical difficulties at home, my computer lost it's internet connection, and crashed. Had it looked at by a tech...we both agree it is a goner!! I have been trying for two days to get it up and running. I have all the pics done and most of the review formulated, just need a way to get it on the forum!! So I will try my best to swap in a new hard drive this weekend and reformat the old and get it up and running again by Monday.

For those that can not wait..here is a tid bit.

The PJTX200 wins hands down..no contest

This was asked earlier in this thread, but no real answer came out of it. Since I saw this unit for sale recently at a local shop, I saw that the contrast rating is 4000:1, even confirmed that on the Canadian Hitachi website. I thought the HDPJ52 is the twin of TX200? Why is the TX200 rated at 7000:1? Is that just marketing?

It looks like the Canadian web site is using the ANSI contrast (4000:1) and the American web site is using the On/Off contrast (7000:1). Even then, an ANSI contrast ration of 4000:1 seems to be too high to be believable. The upcoming reviews will tell the story.

UpNorth,

We all hope that your computer problems are soon worked out and look forward to your comparison review between the TX100 and the TX200

I have gone through the TX100 thread and noticed that you werre using a color corrective filter. Will you be using it for the 200?

And you generously posted your tweaked gamma, and I think, rgb gain and offset settings. I certainly hope that you do likewise with your 200.

Many of us without calibration equipment and experience depend on these custom setttings by forum members. CKL's reviews always show his settings, and many memberrs here have been generous with theirs through the years.

I am hoping that the TX PJ52 is the one for me.

Shelly

Does anyone know if there are noise reduction adjustments on the TX200, I think the AE900 or Z4 does.
I’ve upgraded to a Denon 1920 DVD player and have found the amount of video noisevery anoying. I’m using HDMI and I’ve been able to reduce the amount of noise allot by changing the signal from YPbPc to RGB for the HDMI output. The component output from the Denon is also noisy. My cheap JVC using component has less noise.

But have no doubt the TX200 itself puts out an awesome picture

Does the TX200 have adjustments to get rid of color shading? I watch a lot hockey and this is important to me. Apparently the Z4 and AE900 are not adjustable in this respect so it is hit or miss if you get a good one or not.

I've been "borrowing" a TX-200 for about 10 days now (waiting on Sony Ruby), and I can tell you this: SDE is pretty darn good for LCD, but if you can't see it at 1X width, you need to see the eye doctor. I've got good vision (as long as I wear my contacts...) and I need to be about 1.7X away for it to really go away. I've been de-focusing slightly, and that works pretty well. SDE is slightly worse than 720p DLP - but very close. I prefer D-iLA / SXRD for several reasons, but SDE is a big one.

There are no shading issues on my unit, and no VB either. No dead pixels. I am not keeping this thing, but its a "good" one apparently.

You can see the iris open and close, but not often (depends on material you are viewing) - this using "Auto 1". "Auto 2" is way too aggressive. Overall, the contrast and viewing experience is enhanced significantly by the iris - its worth the artifacts it creates, as you don't see them much, and anyone who isn't a video guru probably would never see it, but they WILL admire the punchy, contrasty image that the mechanism provides.

BTW, I've been viewing on a 8' wide, Stewart Aeroview 100 (rear projection, 1.0 gain), and with the iris on "5" (half way closed) the image is plenty bright in my light-controlled room.

I have been considering a small / portable PJ that could also be used for backup, and this things good enough to have me thinking about keeping it. I would, however really like to see the Panny, because its a little cheaper and I like the fact that the SDE is a non-issue on it. I will say the build quality on the Hitachi seems very good (lens is huge). Haven't noticed any quirks or things that bug me, really.

- Chris

Could somebody go into the extended service menu of the TX200 to see if the C.UNIF , STRIPE and other related adjustments are there like they were in the TX100?

SDE is highly subjective. I admidt I sit far away from the screen in my setup and my screen is small (92" diagonal, 82" wide). I sit about 1.75x to just under 2.00x screen width away. But I have to walk up to at least 1.5x to see any screen door.

Does anyone know the size and type of color corrective filter used on the TX100, assuming that it would be the same size fit for the TX200?

Thanks.

Shelly

I may get to see the PJ52 in a couple of weeks as the dealerr will be mounting it once he sells his currently mounted Sim pj.

I'm concerned about the visibility of iris movement, not at all about the quality of the rest of the picture. Could it be that, since some report seing it and others not, that there is a bit of variablility in quality control with the Hitachi pj?

Shelly

I'd say there is plenty of variability in the levels of dvd player outputs as far as various IRE outputs levels go, along with variable settings on the projector such as brightness, contrast and iris, not to mention the light or reflective properties of the room and of course, the screen.

How do you get into the extended service menu?

I'd say there is plenty of variability in the levels of dvd player outputs as far as various IRE outputs levels go, along with variable settings on the projector such as brightness, contrast and iris, not to mention the light or reflective properties of the room and of course, the screen.

It's true that everyone's setup and room is differrent, as is the conditions of a dealer's showroom. Are you attributing this to why some see the iris movement and others do not? I always prefer to read that the iris movement is noticable once in a while but not bothersome.

Are you suggesting that even if one sees the movement of the iris, there are enough controls on the pj that it can be dialed down or eliminated? I would want this to be so.

Shelly

Shelly,

Missed your post. I am not saying you can lessen or eliminate it for sure, I'm just saying wait and see for yourself. Don't get scared off just yet. The variability that exists may explain some of what we are seeing. I would have to see the iris opening and closing myself to know for sure what it would mean to me.

....

Do not go fiddling around with settings in the extended menu without first writing things down. Look into it, search the TX100 thread and know what you are doing first.

To get into the extended menu, go to the part of the easy menu that says reset and go into the reset menu. Don't chose reset via the menu! Just reach up to your projector and press the button labeled "reset" and it will go into the extended menu. Others say they press the reset button on the remote (again, the button labeled reset) at that point, but that never works for me and I must press the button on the projector itself.

Again, I make the distinction that you are not using the onscreen menu to move the cursor to the "reset" portion of the menu to reset it, you are pressing one of either of the buttons labeled "reset" on the projector, or the remote, and only when the cursor is just inside the reset menu of the easy menu.

I don't think you will be able to eliminate the iris effects on the video - thats why it works - it changes the picture.

Its a simpler system than, say, the Sony Ruby, which changes lots of things simultaneously (not the least of which is gamma / video levels) along with the iris.

In the Hitachi, its just basically the iris itself. Close it down, the picture (and black level) darkens. Open it up, the picture lightens.

I also think, based on my use of the unit, that "seeing" the iris do its thing is hugely dependent on what scene and what movie you are watching. When I saw it, I could rewind and watch and see the iris do the same thing every time.

If you calibrate black and white levels on your DVD player / TX200, you should see the iris open / close just like me or anybody else does, given the right scene.

As I said before, all the "tricks" and smoke and mirrors that these newer PJs (even the higher-end Ruby) are doing actually help 99.9% of the video you pipe through them. Is it worth it for a very rare observation of the system not working perfectly transparently ? I think in this case yes.

Plasmas do the same thing in many ways, Pioneer has "DRE", Panasonic doesn't even name it, and I'm sure the other players have their schemes, but the bottom line is that all of the effort is to give the picture a "better" (contrastier) look with the least amount of side effects. I can see the effects on EVERY one of these devices in my home, but I think all things considered, the approaches work very well.

I tried watching the TX200 with the auto iris "off" and the depth of picture and involvement just weren't there, compared to "auto 1". But there weren't any "side effects", other than the big one - very low contrast. Take your pick. I think at this price point the system works pretty well, but if you look you WILL see it - esp. if you are looking for it.

If you buy one of these, just enjoy it and don't look for it. I quit noticing it after a few movies.

YMMV.

- Chris

I agree with Iamjcl about the iris, after a couple of movies I’ve forgotten about it so now I very rarely notice it. Or maybe I'm so focused on the noise in the picture I don’t notice the iris.
What setting on my TX200 can I mess with to try and reduce the noise?

widseth,

That's a couple of times you've mentioned noise in the picture.

Is this going to be a deal breaker for you ? How bad really is it ?

Any other variables coming into play ie. power cord up against HDMI cable
etc. etc..

Is it just that the image is that sharp maybe. What screen size are you again ?

I'm teetering between a TX200 from Japan or a local (Australian buy)
of a HS60.

Any extra info appreciated.

Waingro

Just receive a call from the dealer that TX200 just arrive HK. I will go to have a look tomorrow.

Waingro
It’s defiantly not the Projector, the amount of noise depends on the source. But I’m beginning to think that maybe the picture is to sharp, the noise is nowhere near as bad when using component rather than HDMI. Ill check the power cord thing near the HDMI cable too.

But i do find the noise very anoying, i am considering taking back my Denon 1920 DVD player for a Denon 2910 with its noise reduction feature.

Cant seem to start my projector up tonight, the temperature light keeps flashing. Tried putting the Air Con on but that hasn’t worked. Im using a 92" grandview screen.

The HS60 with its RRP $400 AU less than the AE900 in Australia is very tempting indeed

CKL will you be doing a review

Widseth,

Haven't noticed the noise you mention - what type are you seeing ? MPEG, Video noise or edge ringing ? FWIW, I've been only using an Oppo @ 720p via DVI->HDMI with the Hitachi, so I can't comment on any other source or input.


I like this PJ, but would love to see a Panasonic 900, as the SDE is the worst issue IMO. If the Panny had the image quality of the Hitachi without the SDE, it would be a bargain. (SDE is certainly a lot better than it used to be on LCD, though).

- Chris

My TX100 is connected via VGA to my iScan Ultra which is connected to a 5 year old interlaced Panasonic dvd player via component cables. The iScan Ultra has noise reduction. Some dvd's have noise in them. Its hardly an issue unless the noise is in areas of the foreground that are crucially important. I never see noise except in background areas, and its rarely bothersome. I can't defeat the noise reduction of the iScan so I have no idea what it looks like without it. Newer Panasonic dvd player also have noise reduction. Anyways, I don't have a TX200, so back to your regularly sheduled thread discussion...

:)

If its performance of the first impression is not bad, I will write a detail report on it.

" If its performance of the first impression is not bad, I will write a detail report on it."

I'd think there have been enough good reports to warrant a test; and it's quite common for good pj's to look bad with poor setup.

When the Cine4home shootout comes out, there will be lots to read...once translated :)

Iamjcl
The noise is Video Noise, Very noticable on light backgrounds. I have also noticed on peoples faces.
Im using a Denon 1920 @ 720p with HDMI.
Ive got a bigger problem my projector wont start up. The fan will start up a couple of times then the "Temp" light will begin flashing red. Ill download the TX100 manual and see what it says.

The best of D5 so far. More later.

regards,

Li On

The best of D5 so far. More later.

regards,

Li On

What a teaser! Are you including the Sony HS60 in with the D5s?

Shelly

Well my TX200 is off to get fixed. I had the "Power" light red with the "Temp" light flashing. The TX100 manual which I assume is the same as the TX200 in this regards says to check if there is anything in the fan, failing that send it to a Hitachi service centre. I have about 20 hours on it now and it had been faultless, I have not touched the unit since installation except to put the lens cap on and off.

Hi,

Some photo photo (http://www.avbuzz.com/audio-video/200511/hitachipjtx200/index.htm) of the TX200.

The case looks wonderful! Silent in low lamp mode. Good optical quality.

The unit me and CKL saw has NO vertical banding! Very clean and clear. And I didn't notice any typical scanline artifact during vertical motion. Excellent greyscale and color rendition out of box (eyeballs only!). Super bright picture with static iris open. We settle on iris 4 on DVD and 5 (from dimmest 1 to brightest 10 I think) on HD viewing. Still gives a bright picture (slightly brighter than a calibrated AE900 I think) on CKL's 92" diag Stewart StudioTek.

On the other hand, absolute black level is not that impressive. I think it rates behind AE900 and Z4 but better than Epson TW600. There is another auto iris (lamp iris?) Auto1/2/Off which controls the absolute black level. Auto 2 gives the darkest black but it seems affect too much shadow detail, and the auto iris close down is easy to detect in many bright to dark scene change. At Off the black level is very HIGH! We settle on Auto 1 which gives reasonable black level without seeing the iris action much.

Other viewing settings are Standard gamma, Sharpness at 5 (default 4, range 1-7) and I hand tweaked a tiny bit of R/G/B color temp based on it's 7500K perset. Brightness/Contrast at default 0 already pass AVIA test.

Source is CKL's Panasonic RP82 SDI modded to Crystalio VPS2300 scaler 1280x720 1:1 mapping DVI to the Hitachi HDMI input.

All the other LCD projectors (AE900, Z4, TW600) using Epson new D5 panel have heavy abnormal video noise in the picture. The TX200 has NO such problem! Video noise level is just tiny bit higher than D4 panel on noisy source and free of noise on noise free content.

On/Off contrast seems nothing special with our viewing setting and ANSI contrast seems very good with a very 3D picture (maybe partly due to a brighter picture). As long as there is some light on screen, the overall picture contrast looks very good. Texture contrast/layering looks excellent. Overall picture looks very solid and realistic.

Overall there is not much to complain about. There is some minor color uniformity around the corners in 20-40IRE. The auto iris can be better. Still, I think the TX200 (at least the one I saw) gives a overall better picture than the AE900, Z4 and TW600 I saw.

Compare Sony HS60 to the Hitachi TX200:

TX200 pro:
- slightly better color
- no vertical banding
- much brighter picture

HS60 pro:
- better on/off contrast
- better black level
- a bit cleaner and less video noise

The TX200 has the shortest throw among these 720p LCD projectors. It may even work in my tiny bedroom for a ~104" diag 16x9 from around 3 meter screen to lens distance. I'll try to arrange a in home audition! :D

regards,

Li On

Thanks for the review li on potential purchasers like me were waiting for this. I am thinking of selling my 8700+ for this, and was wondering if you have seen both to compare.

My 8700+ is very good, I just want something with better colors, and a brighter picture with more punch.

Hi,

...and I hand tweaked a tiny bit of R/G/B color temp based on it's 7500K perset. Brightness/Contrast at default 0 already pass AVIA test Li On

Thanks for the review.

Can you share the RBG color temp values you used?

Did you use the 7500K preset beause it is actually closer to D6500 than the 6500K preset?

Is CKL going to post a complete review on his site?

I'm almost ready to pull the trigger on the PJ52.

Shelly

CKL said it's 7500K preset looks close to 6500K so we started with that. I think CKL will do a detail calibration and review.

I like bright picture, great color and hate video artifact. As long as ANSI contrast looks good, decent On/Off contrast is good enough for me.

For me the only issue for the TX200 we saw is the minor color uniformity around corners in low IRE but the problem isn't much noticable in actual viewing. And I hope the lack of vertical banding is consistence among units.

regards,

Li On

Well I decided to jump into the FP realm, picked up the HDPJ52 tonight. Going to try to have installed on friday, just have to find the proper distance to throw a 90" image, figure how I'm going to route my cables and find a stud for the ceiling mount.

I hope I get a better picture out of it then what I saw at the store I purchased it from, I assume they just didn't have it set up properly. I can't wait to see what this baby can do.

BTW any tips for a first time FP owner?

As what Li On said, TX200 shows good performance at color rendering, noise level control, ANSI contrast, vertical banding and picture detail. Its weaknesses are not lower enough black and the operation of auto iris is not fast enough. I will try to tweak it with filter to lower black and maximize the on/off contrast. A detail report will be posted in next week I hoped.

Li On / CKL,

Looks like you guys saw pretty much exactly what I noted in my mini-review on the last page. I have taken my TX-200 back (still waiting on Ruby), but I enjoyed using it.

I had assumed that the TX-200 was on par with the other "new" LCD units out there ATM, but, according to you guys (who have seen them all), its a cut above. It certainly seemed to me that if you could get the kind of performance I saw out of the TX-200 for the same price as an AE-900, it would be a bargain.
It appears that the AE-900 is not quite in the same class, I take it ? And, at least from my dealer, the TX-200 is about $400 more expensive.

I'm just amazed at the performance of this "inexpensive" PJ - It was really quite good, IMO. I bet with a cygnus lens it would be much improved for my purposes.

Just curious, you said brighter than AE-900, but when I measured lumens (using Extech EA33 meter) I got a maximum UNCALIBRATED of about 850 (high color temp). On "6500" setting, and black / white level calibrated I got about 550 with the Iris on "10" (open all the way). At Iris 5 / 6500, IIRC, it was about 450.

What kind of lumen figures did you measure ?

- Chris

Upnoarth,

I hope that you can soon resolve your computer problems. Computer crashes can be the most frustrating experience for us all. Especially those of us old enough to remember life without computers (and crashes.)

I saw some of your fantastic TX100 screen shots, and that helped push the Hitachi to the top of my list.

Can't wait to read your comparative review, especially since the "WoW! teaser you gave us.

Shelly

Video noise is killing me on the AE900. I have the option to switch out to the HDPJ52 . Would it be worth it?? pros/ cons. Flicker issues that has been discussed seems to be an issue but again I notice that on the 900 from switching from dark to light scenes. (irus adjustment)

I had to return my 900 same problem video noise was terrible, maybe i had a bad unit, dont know but i couldnt justify the price when i could get a hs51 or 60 for a bit more cash. Still on the fence between hs60 or this hitachi tx200. waiting for ckl to bust out the review. I know hs60 will prob top it but for a alittle less dough the tx200 maybe viable alternative til sony releases the hs61 in the states with the bina6 panels and blows the competion out of the water. (well hopefully the bina6 panels will be in there, just a guess) lol jeff

Question regarding the specs that Hitachi has posted on the HDPJ52:
HDPJ52 Product Specs (http://www.hitachi.us/tv/browse/lcd_projector/pdf/HDPJ52.pdf)

Under projection sizes for a 80" screen size one has to place the projector @ 7' to 11'-10" Does that mean with my 74" screen size I can no longer place the projector at roughly 13-6" as it is now for my AE900?

Went to see this unit in action, yes I can also confrim slow irus adjustment when the unit is set to auto2 (dark to light scene very slow transition). The store actually set up the HDPJ52 @ off! Could not make a decision on this projector video feed was split the image looked blurred even when lense was adjusted. SDE noticable but faded as you increased viewing distance. Video feed was 480i which also could attribute to bad picture and ambient lighting could not be controlled. Video noise was also present in the picture. AE900 hooked up to same feed looked better.

And yes I will not be able to keep this unit in same location (13'-6") as my AE900 Picture cannot be reduced to fit my custom fixed screen of (74" diag)

UpNorth,

aNone of your screen shots are showing up for me.

Can you provide a link to the web page where I can see them?

Thanks for the reiview and look forward to your tweaking results.

Shelly

UpNorth,

aNone of your screen shots are showing up for me.

Can you provide a link to the web page where I can see them?

Thanks for the reiview and look forward to your tweaking results.

Shelly

Where can I find UpNorth's review?

Thanks all, for being patient, I know this review was promised over a week ago. I believe however I may be the first to have a formal comparative review of these two projectors. My computer is alive and well now, that is what happens when you start from scratch!! The review was to large to put on this site. The pictures did not post, so I removed the whole thing. It is residing on a temporary site my daughter and I created. Hope you all enjoy, here is the link:

http://frozen-toes-home-theatre.funtigo.com/?preview=y&cr=1&rfm=y

The user's manual for the HDPJ52/PJ-TX200 can now be found at:

http://www.hitachi.ca/supportingdocs/en/forhome/projectors/HDPJ52_OG_Eng.pdf

Hitachi TX200 has dropped $500 off retail price in Canada it is selling at the same price as the Pan AE900 now !!

I still would love to here a review comparing this to the EPSON Cinema 800 ...I believe it has the fastest auto iris in the industry ...it also comes with extra bulb and ceiling mount bracket included and 24 hour service turn around with it's 3 year warranty .

P.S.
Is the EPSON TW600 the same as the Cinema 800 ? and Li On if so then you have compared them and the Hitachi TX200 is superior ?

The Epson 600 is the same as the 550, not the 800.

If you look at the cover of the Epson manual, it says Epson550/600.

Some sponser web sites are selling the 550 and the 800, both at msrp unless this had changed recently.

Shelly

Sounds reasonabley good. Looks like the black level is not spectacular, but the performance of the projector is still quite good.

Not directly related, but I was noticing the other day that I rarely ever see peak-a-boo scanline artifacts with the TX100. I really do suspect it is a weird issue resulting from a difference between the refresh rate and the way the human eye works. I notice that the few times I have caught a glimpse of the peak-a-boo scanline if I dart my eyes away from the screen. Anyhow...I imagine the TX200 is similar.

Li On,

Don't forget that the minor colour uniformity issue in the corners can be tweaked quite extensively, probably enough to reduce the problem to a level that is non longer bothersome. Gotta check the C.UNIF in the extended menu, that is, IF you have colour uniformity problems. My TX100 uniformity is close enough that I haven't bothered.

upnorth,

Nice review and comparison. I like the prospect of less vertical banding and less screen door. I cannot sell a big difference in contrast from looking at your screen shots. I would like to see the difference for myself. Thanx for the hard work. Glad you are liking your TX200.

"I believe it has the fastest auto iris in the industry "

The TX200 or the Epson 800?

Either way, I'm curious why you think that; AFAIK no one lese has claimed per frame iris control like the Pan 900.

I'm trying to figure out how far above the top of the screen you can mount this projector. The user manual isn't very detailed, but I think it's showing that it could be placed at a maximum of 25% of screen height above the screen. It's quick to point out that they recommend that the lens be centered on screen for best picture, so I'm concerned that the image quality will be significantly affected by an offset of say 20%. I need to mount the projector as close to the ceiling as possible due to room constraints, so the more offset ability I have the better. I'd appreciate any inputs.

Gregg

I was disappointed to learn that the TX200 does not allow vertical shift on the HDMI input. This is important on 2.35:1 movies that have subtitles in the bottom black bar. Without shifting the picture up, the second subtitle line cannot be read without squeezing the picture and making everybody look fat. I was seriously considering this projector until I learned of this omission.

One way around this is to use the component input, but it would be nice to use the HDMI input (especially with the new HD and Blu-Ray DVD's coming out soon). Maybe these new DVD players will have the ability to put the subtitles into either the video portion or the bottom black bar.

The pictures on the site have now hopefully been fixed !! You should be able to view them in high resolution now. The icreased contrast of the PJTX200 is more apparent in the larger image sizes. Please let me know if there are problems.

How many fans does the TX200 have, i know about the one near the lamp, where would the other ones be if their is more than 1 fan?

Upnorth,

Again, we all appreciate your efforts and sharing with forum members.

I am assuming that the 200 photos are on the left and the 100 photos are on the right. Correct?

The increase in contrast with the same amount of detail in the darks is apparent and quite good.

But the 100 color seems shifted to yellow and the 200 color seems shifted to red. The flesh tones on 200 appear overly red to me. Are photos before any tweaking? Are you using the cc30r filter in these photos?

Page 3 is empty.

Never thought that you'd become a web page designer, did you?

Shelly

If there is a good chance I will score a unit with less vertical banding (my TX100 has faint vb after tweaking) then I may upgrade. I'm not sure the contrast improvement alone is enough to justify my upgrading so soon. The reduced screendoor is a bonus too, along with good uniformity.

Is there anyone in the Toronto area, as far as Mississauga, Richmondhill or Oshawa with a TX200/HDPJ52? I'm in Ajax and I'd like to see a comparison of my own TX100 to the new WOO.

CPC,

I called the 2001 in Ajax and they are supposed to have one on display...

Thanx mwan.

Has the MSRP dropped in the US too? I see the drop in the Canadian MSRP at Canadian retailers, but I haven't seen it in the US yet. Perhaps the TX200 needs to migrate to the under $3500 forum.

In all seriousness, I think the $3500 cutoff is wrong. Its slicing markets in half. I would raise the cutoff to $4000 or $5000 USD MSRP, but thats just me. We would avoid confusion. Competing projectors are on the shoulders of the $3500 MSRP, such as the Sanyo Z4 and Pansaonic AE900 (under) and the Sony, Hitachi and Epsons (over).

I would agree with you Chris, this unit (the 200/52) does seem to be competing directly with the z4 and A900... I think that is why the price decrease in Canada... I think that the current price at 2001 includes a 92 in screen...

"I believe it has the fastest auto iris in the industry "

The TX200 or the Epson 800?


The EPSON Cinema pro 800 has the fastest iris in the industry ...

Now that my confusion over TW600 and Cinema 800 has been cleared by SHELLY - thanks .

Li On have you seen the EPSON 800 and if so how do you compare it to the Hitachi TX200 ?

I saw both at CEDIA but lets face one can not put alot of stock in that superfical comparison . One needs direct measurement review done and then weighted by street pricing ...