Hello again everyone. I had a post on that was very actvie for about 1 year, but I went away for a while, and I guess its been removed for beeing inactve. So let me fill you in, and give you all an update.

What's a HUGHES JVC ILA?

Well its not a new technology, as a matter of fact its quite old. Im sure everyone knows about D-ILA, which is JVC's implemetation of LCOS. If you dont know what D-ILA and LCOS are, do some searching on it because its a great alternitve to LCD and even DLP projector technology. D-ILA is Digital-Image-Light-Amplilfication. ILA is the about 15 year technolgy that is the analog version.

Don't HUGHES make air craft? Why would they be in the projector buesiness?

Yes, and they are not any more, but 15 years ago the military needed to build flight simulator video projectors that where able to project high-res, extreemly bright, color images onto a dome. This tooks some amazing technology to pull off, and thats why HUGHES was involved. These are turelly military grade projectors.

Why would anyone want a 15 year projector is isint based on today's digital technology?

#1 - Extreemly high res, up to and beyond 1080p, no problem.
#2 - Extreemly bright, up to 12,000 lumens on the very high-end model.
#3 - Because they are now obsoleet, they are dirt cheep. ($500 - $2000 used)

WHAT? A 1080p full res projector at 6000 lumens for under $100,000???? Why dont I have one of these now, why did it go out of production, whats the catch?

Sadly, there are indeed a lot of catch's on doing something like this for home use.
First and formost is the size of the unit. Its about the same size as your average snow-mobile. It weights in at just under 400 pound.

Next is the venting - My unit at full power prodcues about 16,000 BTUS of heat, and that heat if not properly vented will cause issues with the reliablity.

Next is the power requirements - 240 vots, signal phase (comptable with home power) but draws in at beween 25 amps on the low site, and up to 35 amps on the high side. This is an extreem amount of power draw for anything in a residential envirement.

Next is finding parts, including the very exotic and rather dangers xenon arc lamp.

Finialy, and this cant be understated enough, is the VERY VERY VERY difficult calibration procedure that takes 100's of hours to tweeking to get it just right.


OK, how in the world can you get 1080p at 6000 or more lumens, how dose it work?

This technology is a cross between an old CRT 3 gun projector and a LCD projetor using a white light souce to drive the output.

CRT projectors offer two huge advantages over today's bulb based projectors, and they are HIGH RES, and unbeatable BLACK LEVEL. But CRT's have a HUGH dissadvantage over todays projectors and that is brightness sucks. A really good CRT unit might be able to do 700 lumens, and if you have the room, you could stack two or more of them up, and get maybe 2000 lumens from CRT projectors all showign the same picture. But in order to get any brightness out of a CRT you have to drive the hell out of it, causing it to have a short life span. Also, if you drive it too far, you sacrafice foucus because and over-driven CRT gets blurry.

LCD/DLP projectors take a different approach to video projection. They using digital plates with pixels on then and shine bright red green and blue light thu the plates (lcd) or chips with tiny mirrors and shine the rgb lights onto the mirrors. The advantage to this apporach is that the light on the screen comes from a bulb, and thus only the brightness of the buld is the factor that control the lumens. Zero problems with focus, and no lenghy convergence issues as you would have with CRT systems. Most of us have this type of system active in our homes now.

The big problem with LCD/DLP is that up until just the past year or so, most of them are 4:3 native. When you put them into 16:9 your loosing about 1/3rd of you total number of lines avaible to make up the screen. If your lucky enough to have a 16:9 native DLP system you dont have this probelm. The other thing I noticed is that almost all of these are 720p units, and a lot of those unit wont do the ture 1280x720. If you want 1920 x 1080---there are like only a few choices, and they are all extreemly big bucks. ($15000 - $30000---and most of those units run under 1000 total lumens!!! ACK!!)

What if it would be possible to take all of the full-res of a CRT projetor, and combine it with the full brighness of today's digital projectors. Well, thats exacly what this unit dose.

How??

There are two magic parts to this technolgy. Sadly, they where both VERY VERY expesnive to manufacture, as a matter of fact the 6000 lumen unit I have in my house cost $160,000 new. The main reason the price is so high is because of the two magic parts.

#1 - The ILA.
#2 - The Prismatic polorized beam splitter.

The ILA is a crytal plate that has only two wires on it. (unlike the D-ILA plates that have millions of pixels, the analog ila plate has no pixes (and thus no screen-door effect---AT ALL, even D-ILA's have a screen door effect, but you have to be sittign right at the screen to see it).

This crystal plate has two sides, and front side and a back side. The back sides is dark, and obsorbes photons. The other side is a mirror, reflectiing back 100% of the photons that hit it. What makes this part magic is that for every photn on the back(dark) side of the plate, the reflected mirror side will horizontially polarize the refelected light, dependig on the birghtness of the photon on the back side, will determin how much horizonal polarization the reflected light gets polarized.

The prism is a three port device. There is an source input port on the top, that very bright green light, or red light, or blue light shines down. (three are 3 seperate primis, one for each RGandB). There is an IN/OUT port.
At this point, 100% of the bright green light flows from in IN port at the top, and flows OUT the in/out port. This is shined onto the mirror side of the ILA.
Since its a mirror, 100% of this bight green light is reflective back INTO the in/out port, and if any of this refelected light happes to be polorized horitontally, its allowed to pass to the OUTPUT port---where its passed thru the projection lense onto the screen.

I know this is hard to visulaize, but the CRT for GREEN has a full res picture (low brightness---remember the CRT dose not project light onto the screnn) of what is to be GREEN on the screen, and this picture is shown onto the black side of the ila.

Bright green light is shown down the prism, shot out to the ila, and is modulated horizontally based on picture of whats on the back of the ila plate. All the bright green light is reflected back into the in/out port, some of it polarized, some of it not---only the polorized stuff (determined by the green crt) gets passed thru.

While all this is happening for green, its also happening for red and blue on seperate crts, ilas, and prisms.

OK, sounds complex, witha all that going on, what kinda picture quality dose this thing acutally do?

If its done right, simply put, its the very best projected picture I'v ever seen any place any where anytime.

Black level and contrast ratio are not as good as the $50,000 units, comming in at a max of 1200:1 (if your extreemly lucky), but even at 200:1 when your talking about peek white levels over 5000 ansi lumens, its still just an amazing picture.

Keep in mind this model is designd for a 50 FOOT screen size. Im doing about 15 foot, and so its acutally way TOO bright for my envirmonet, but you can control that at the lamp power suply.

How much dose a replacement bulb cost, how long do you get out of it?


The retail price was $15,000 for the bulb in its housing, youd send it to JVC and they would relamp it for you. At full power the buld will be at 80% of full brightness at 1000 hours of burn time. My bulb is a 3000 watt xenon arc lamp.
Im only running at about 1000 watts due to the smaller screen size. (smaller then 50 feet!!). My run time should be much longer.

JVC no longer supports this model, but luckly there is a company in Maryland that can provide not only re-lamping, but support and all parts. Relamping a 360 unit thru him will be much less. He gives quotes if your in need.

Can you hook up HDTV, DVD, Tivo and other home electronics to it?

Video/Svideo ports are provided, but only support SDTV at 480i. There is no built in scaler at all, so you will turelly get 480i lines, and fully see scan-lines. If your going to use NTSC video, dont even bother with this projector, as it will look horrid.

HDTV/COMPUTER inputs are done thru its 5 bnc connectors for R G B H V.
Computer is easy, just get a DB15 vga break-out cable and hook it up and go.
HDTV via Y Pb Pr is much tuffer as you will need an out-board scaler, and youll need one the supports HDTV at 1080i or 1080p. I use a lumagen 1080i for now.
The 1080p unit is very expensive.

=====

Update

Iv spent the better part of 1 year in my free time tweeking this thing. Its a major job and requires high amount of dedication. But the results are stunning. Its been way worht the efforts. Im flying in Leo Bassett from Electronic Cimema Service in Maryland this weekend to show off my work to the master. Im also purcahsing from him a set of high contrast ila plates that should push my contast ratio to over 1000:1.

I aborted on the "under ground projection room" project, after consulting with some friends, we found a much simpler mounting solution.

======

Web site with screen shots

http://bbs.flagnet.org
http://67.177.183.215

link 1:

boards
boards2

This a picture of the circut board card cage. There are 4 boards.
horiz deflective board
vert deflective board
system controller board (mother board)
raster timing generator board.

box

This is a picture of me sitting on the large box the unit came in. I got my uint on ebay for $1000 as is. Its a D360 unit. Dont see many 360/370 units on ebay, but most people would rather want a 340 for home use anyways, the 360 is way to bright for home use. I got it because it was a good deal.

burnt-chip ila light valve

This is a photo of a light valve assy. Also for fun, a picture of a corn chip that held in front of the main arc lamp output before its split into red green and blue. The corn chip was cooked in a matter of 1 second at 3000 watts at full power when exposed to the light beem.

computer

This is just a picutre of my computer I used to control the thing. It has a VT100 RS232 port on it.

crt-hdnet

This is a picutre of the internal CRT for the blue. It looks red because all the CRT's light controls the ila, no color (including green blue or red) comes from the crt, only a red/infrared represntation of what is to be shown in blue is visitable hear as red photons. did the make sence??

crt-necks

This is picture of the backs of the crts with the card cage open.

crt-on

This a nice pic of the three crts running. Again, they all look red to you and me.

front mirrors

This is a pic of the front of the unit with the lid off. Notice the three mirrors that down-shoot very bright red green and blue light into the input port of the prisms. (the prisms are under the mirrors and really cant be seen in this photo)

hdnet-color bar

This is a very early on screen shot of hdtv video. It way better then this now.

hdnet-girl

Also a very elary on screen shot. Way better now.

hdnet-overscan

Same.

liteon liteon2

Very cool pictures of the lid off with the unit running.

mainboard

crappy pciture of the main system control board.

on-floor

This is a great pic of the actuall unit with me stepping ontop of it to show releive size. Im 5`9 at 220 pounds.

onan-transfer-switch

This is not part of the projector, but its where I tapped off the 240volt 50 amp cicruit to power the unit.

plug plug2

A photo of the acutally plug.

smokepuff

Look right above the green center mirror and you will see a small puff of smoke, this is my frying the corn chip.


+++++++++++++++++

2nd link on the page...

These are all screen shots of acutal video.

gtbunny gtbunny+carey

These are the latest pix, just a few days old. Sadly they are only 640x480, but still give a good idea of how good this thing is doing.

Please please please post your commnets/questions.

ctfm

ctreesh

David just did a large purge to help keep the forum up to speed. The stuff he removed will go into the archives. It should be available with in the next week. Performing a simple search will find it once its ready.

Thanks!!

You may want to contact Scott (tse) about the light valves. He was working on and designing these things back in the 90's.

Ericglo

Great to see you enjoying your ILA, Ctreesh.

It was a wonderful, and truely insane technology.

So out of curiosity......what does contrast look loke on this puppy....Do you have any kind of number to share with us???

The D360 unit came with 'nomral contrast ila's'. They are about 200:1.
I upgraded by putting "quater wave plates" onto my cheep ila's and this proabaly pushed it to 500:1 or so.

This weekend, Im getting real "SC" (super contrast) ILA's and that should push it to over 1000:1.

But even at 200:1, with extreem brightness it looks really sweet. Dark sceens are effected by background light spillage tho. Im afraid it will never be as good as a real CRT projector.

Carey

If you happen to visist the web site and view some/all pix, please post a quick reply here. I'd like to track the interest level in this project, if its high enough I will re-do the website and make it more professional, but if its just a few people, I will proably leave it alone.

Carey

Congrats on your setup.

I take it you're single.
No woman would put up with that. lol!

Awesome review. thank you!

Im extreemly happy to share with everyone that the projector is now done and complete, and Im very happy with the way things came out. Its been just over 1 year of work, but the results are amazing, just as I hoped they would be.

The latest updates are that I was able to get Leo Bassett to fly into town and pay me a visit. Durring his visit he gave me an offical training on the unit---he used to teach class's at JVC and trained the other techs on these procedures.

When he discvoerd how far I had gotten with the unit, and how close I was to having a good picture out of it, plus when he found out one the main reasons I have this unit in my house is because I work with kids, giving them a safe place to be off the streets, to come over and watch movies and stuff, he acutally GAVE ME a set of used, slightly burnned in, Cinema Grade high speed light valves. The burn-in shaded right out during the shading process, so you cant see it at all. The high speed means there is no noticable lag on moving objects, and the Cinema grade give them a very nice contrast ratio and good blacks.

Using his Colormeter, we set up the Sensitivity controls to get a perfect 6500 kelvin white. Then we set up the Threshold controls to get a perfect 6500 kelvin.
This is not easy, since each one effects the other one, and you have to adjust R G and B Sen and Thresh to get that. This took a few hours to get it perfect.

We did a good cleaning, removing all the dust off all the parts, and found a few coils and pots on the analog boards that needed tweeked to get a perfect pin and key ballence. We then did a prefect convergence.

Foucus was something I was doing completely wrong from the start. In the manual, it says to look for "spacer balls" on the screeen, and I thought these where the 10 or 15 black dots that would show up----NOPE!!! Spacerballs are more like the 10 or 15 THOUSAND tiny tiny tiny little specs of black that are all over the screen. The foucs of these tiny speces are touchy, and this takes time to get it just right. You gotta do it for R G and B.

Foucus part 2 is to project a 480i image so you can see the scan lines. Then adjust the focus rods for each CRT. There are 3 focus rods for each CRT. The idea is to get the face of the tube to be perectly flat with the face of the light valve input side. This takes a few hours to get it done right.

Focus part 3 is to fine tune it even more with the pots on the high voltage power supply. A turn of just 1 milimeter makes a huge differecne on this 360 model. The other models have 10-turn pots that makes this job alot easier and more accurate, sadly, I got a 360, so it was very very touchy and tuff.

With convergecne down, and focus done, 20% threshold color ballence and 80% sensivitiy ballence all complete, it was time to do the shading.

We used his main board and camra. The auto shade camra is am amazing tool. But it was only a prototype at best, so its kinda buggy. One thing that is interesting is that the camra (ccd) needs to warm up for 20 mins or so, BUT it should not be mounted in its mount-point. If you do, it will get TOO HOT, and that messes things up even more.

Leo had a hand-built a cool tri-pod type thing that he puts his camra unit onto.

Shading went prefect for all three colors.

(For those of you who dont know what shading is, see my other post, but I can tell you that if you dont do shading right, the effect it has is just like taking a magnet to a color TV set with a nomral picture tube in it. You will get a rainbow effect that uauly requires a de-gaus to fix it.)

Poor shading has nothing to do with a magicntic field. Its a result of the light valves not beeing completely prefect across the suface of the valve. If the red left corner is a bit darker then the center, then the red left corrner of the red CRT needs to be brighter to compensate for this----this projector lets you adjust brightness (threshold) and contrast(sensitivity) at 1024 differenct spots on the R G and B crts.

To do this by hand would be 1024 spots x 3(r g and b) = 3072 spots, 3072 x 2 (contrast and brighness of each spot) = 6144 adjustments needed. And as if this was not bad enough, each adjustment effects the other one,so you need to go back and forth over and over to get it just right.

The auto shade camra is a must!!!

With shading now done, the picture it makes is spectacular, but we we can do even better yet!!

Next step was to run the auto-setup tool. This uses the camra unit, plus a technician installed fiberoptic feedback cable, and has a built in software program that we plug figures into---figures like contrast ratio, and valve effecincey, and the projector acutally re-does all of the 100's of settings---trying and testing each one, making adjustmetns as needed, to achive the desired values.

This is great, but sadly, very very very few main boards actually had the right firmware, and debugged hardware to support this thing.

So, Leo has one known good board, and puts it into my projector and we start plugging in numbers. It would be cool if we could just tell my projector to run at 100% effincency and do 1000:1 contrast ratio. So we did.

What happens next is the program (on our vt 100 terminal screen) tells us to hook up the fiber optic cable to the blue output, and feed directly into the camra. Then it starts to adjust the blue settings for Bias, Threshold, Sensitivy, and CRT G2 (high voltage) settings {it tells us what the target value is, we turn the pot}.
It gose thru this over and over again trying to make our goal (100% and 1000:1). After about 20 mins it fails.

So, we try again, this time we try 99%. Fails.
50% pass--but we want higher, so we try 90 %...

You get the idea, we plug in as high a number as we think the unit will pass at, and keep trying as it fails try a little less each time---each 20 min time!!

After hours of trying, we finialy ended up with 85% eff with a 550:1 contrast ratio.

This is for BLUE only! ACK!!

But the good news is that blue is the worst of the three valves, and chances are if it worked for blue, it WILL work for G and R too.......and it did!

When autosetup was done, it had come up with numbers for Thresh and Sen and Bias that where close to ours, but these number should give even better results then our hand-picked-eye-ball'ed figures.

And they did.

The results speak for themself.

Leo said the only projected video pictures that are better then mine would be from his own equipment, and a few extreemly high end clienet (like NASA). He said my projector as it sits right now is in his opnion in the top 10 of all video projectors.

I dont know if thats ture or not, but its the very best video I have ever seen from a projector. I'd describe it as nearlly as good as my 21inch 1600x1200 4:3 computer monitor, but way bigger picture (8 feet wide 16x9), higher res (1920 x 1080i), CRAZZY BRIGHT (70 foot candels per his meter---I think thats right).
Black level is no were near as good as a ture CRT or CRT projector, but still is not bad.

Note on Leo: Leo saved me on this project. I never would have been able to do this without him. His donation of parts, tech support, and most of all his trip to my home are something I will always be in indebted to him for. If I where one of his nomral clients who had a 360 that needed a full calibration and upgrade to cinema valves (even used valves) this would have cost me $20,000 in parts and labor. His donation of time and parts WILL make a differecne for the youth of my city and he deserves full public credit for his efforts! Thanks Leo.



See for yourself. check the new 3rd link up today at :

http://bbs.flagnet.org

am-dad-flag - Fox's American Dad cartoon in hdtv. 720p.
audiomix - Discovery HD tv show caled "Home Theator Revolution" 1080i
pool - same show, pic of an outdoor pool 1080i
tvroom - same show, pic of his oringal tv set room before the makeover. 1080i
carshow - Discovery HD tv speical "Ultimate car show" 1080i
disney* - pictures from Discovery HD tv show "Undiscoveryed walt disney" 1080i
done - not a screen shot--projector running in its new home.
dreamworks - blue baloons dreamworks logo with me next to screen 1080i
dust* - not a screen shot - pictures of the cones of light comming from the unit.
hicks - Fox's american idol Taylor Hix 720p.
idol3 - Fox's American Idol 720p
madi* - screen shots of DirectTV PPV Madigascar (1080i I think).
sre* - Discovery HD's tv show "Sun Rise Earth" Myan Temple eipsode 1080i.

* - Indicates multipal photo's of this show.





Again, any questions or comments, please reply!
The more feedback I see on here, the less insane I feel for doing this!

And yes, Im very very single.

Carey

Carey

Ive always shared an interest in these machines. If I had more room and a larger screen Id opt for one of these. Considering what they originally cost they are available relatively cheap and look like a CRT on steroids.
Pictures look great. Thanks for keeping us up to date through your journey with the ILA. I do not understand why more people do not consider one of these for a large screen.

Great going Carey and stay single.:)

"Shading" technique reviled (sorta)

CRT > ILA ..ILA to CRT. I don't get it ?
......................

EDIT: OK, I should read threads from the top down. Got it.

Wow. I so wish I had the resources to replicate your setup.

Talk about some serious energy and DIY dedication. Now when you watch your incredible picture you can take pleasure in having contributed to making it possible. Very cool, though the level of "tweaking" seems just a tad deeper than adjusting levels on a digital projector like my AE900 :).

Do you know how often you will readjust/refocus? Do you have thoughts on whether this display technology is going to gain in popularity? You comments on the firmware/hardware revisions lead me to think that the setup process could become much more automated and automagically hardware assisted if the manufacturers were interested in pursuing that.

Enjoy your beautiful setup.

-brian

Sadly, the technlolgy is dead. The main reason is becasue of the high costs of manufacturing the crazzy optics needed to make this system work. The ila plates where $16,000 each (you need 3) and the prismis where close to $10,000 (you need three), man, even the 3 projector lense set was $10,000 for non-zoom fixed lense.

The amount of work it takes to properly calibarte one is also a big set back. With the right traning, and all the right equipment it still took us almost 15 hours.

Power consumption is insane too.

As for why people dont do what I have done, well shipping alone will be between $330 and $1000 depending on where you needs to go. Finding parts is tuff, without Leo, I would be dead in the water with this thing.

Leo wont just help any bozo who buys one of these on ebay, he will make you work your tail off and prove to him your worhty of his time and effort. He tells me most of the people who buy these on ebay end up giving up and junking then---or selling the valubale parts to Leo and junking the rest.

There is NOTHING easy about this project.

To pump HDTV into this thing you need a $300 adapter for a cheap one, or a $1900 scaler for a good one. (mine ins a middle of the road $700 one).

As for re-tweeking, focus and convergence should not be a problem so long as the unit is ever moved. Color ballence will fade at about the same rate as a nomral CRT televions's CRT burns out.

I may be wrong on that, w'll have to see where it at a year from now.

Its lasted 2 weeks so far an still pumps out a stunning picture.

Carey

Carey, fantastic thread. :eek:

I had a chance to see a Hughes projector like yours at a trade show years ago, what an unbelievable picture. They were only showing a very slowly moving nature shot, then later on with different material the image lag of this particular model became apparent. I guess that unit didn't have the high-speed ILA devices.

Was this technology a direct descendant of the old oil-film-reflective stuff, or the GE Talaria?


BTW, here's the other thread, from the archives:

http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=560000

Carey,

Your posts brought back a lot of memories. I had two of these beasts over the years as my main projector. I spent countless hours calibrating, even after I had the auto setup tool. The ILA finally wore me out. The ratio of calibrating to actually viewing movies was very poor. Leo is a great guy. You may have even gotten some of my old digital cinema parts.

Congratulations. Now go and enjoy your picture! :D

I dont know very much about the oil-based video system (eldorphor I think?), but it has kinda the same idea, but gose at it a completely different way. I do think that the GE system was also based on "analog light valve" technology. I have found very little info on the GE systems, and have no clue where to get support for them, or how they compare to the HJT (hughes/jvc technology) in terms of preformance.

My HDTV stuff looks amazing on the system. My DVD stuff is ok, but this unit is so high end now that its shoing the short-commings of my DVD player.

Im consdering getting a DVD player off ebay that has the SDI interface on it and getting the SDI card for my Lumagen scaler. Total price will be more then I paid for the projector, but I think it will proabaly be wroth it for movies on dvd to really shine.

Carey

This is SO cool... I've had my nose to the corporate grindstone for so many years I was completely unaware that anyone would stick a big ILA projector in their home. I've been doing visual systems for flight simulation for many (MANY) years and I've been lucky to have seen so many different technologies. The ILA is still pretty dang cool. The GE Talaria was a lot of "fun" too. Many hours spent tuning those flat fields, oh yeah!

Been a while since I gave an update on this project---Iv been watching a lot of stuff on it.

I have been able to save my pennys and got myself some new video hardware to feed my monster.

First and formost, I got a ture 1080p scaler with HDMI and SDI (not hd) inputs. I got a good deal on a brand new DVDO iScan VP50. This really rocks. I set the output on this thing to RGBHV, and scale everything to 1920x1080p/60. Thats the highest output res this scaler will do. My JVC 360 loves it.

Next I got a deal on a used Denon DVD player equipped with SDI video output.

My DVD's are feed to the scaler as SDI, and scaled to 1080p RGB, and have never looked so good.

StarWar Ep 2 Attack of the Clones.....TOTALLY AMAZING, it was so good I could hardly tell it was upscalled, it looked like ture HDTV!

My HD Tivo from DirectTV got a good PQ boost when I hooked it up with HDMI. I did have to tell my VP50 to disable the HDCP on the HDMI port---otherwise hdcp kicks in, and that prevents my VP50 from outputting RGBHV from an HDMI source.
I got very lucky in that my HD-Tivo plays nice with my VP50 with HDCP turnned off.

Its been my observation that this is the ONLY HDMI device that works just find with or without hdcp.

I got a Sony PS3 to play with, and I was not so lucky. The HDMI port on that requires hdcp to be on to make any video outout. But with hdcp on, the VP50 kills off the RGBHV. The only fix I could find for this was to beg for a hdcp stripper---something that very hard to find these days. I did find one, and it works well.

PS3 games in 1080p on my projector---killer.
BluRay movies in 1080p native into the VP50 and out as RGBHV----killer.

The PS3 is not mine, and I will be retruing it to my friend---Im thinking about going with the LG BH-100. since it can do BluRay and HD-DVD. Wtih my stripper, life should be sweet for video. Audio will go Analog 5.1 out, and I will use the built in HD-Audio decoders in the unit to get the new audio formats.

I just have to make sure my VP50 will take 1080p/24 since thats the only 1080p that thing will output.

More 1080p photos will be put up on the web site once I get some ture 1080p content going on that screen.

This is quite cool!!!!

Couple of questions:

What is your estimated cost per hour to run this thing?

How much cash do you think you have invested in it so far?

I love these crazy huge projects!

Wow,

Been a while since I have been back an re-visited this post. I just got the Blu-Ray DVD of Cars, and let me tell you guys, that is the BEST DEMO DISC you can get to date...go get it NOW if you have a blu ray player. Truly amazing video quality.

Not too much new has happened since I added the the VP50.

My setup now looks like this...

HD-Tivo (orignal Hr10-250) with hdmi out.
Dvhs Jvc VCR 1080i via Y Pb Pr out. (d-theator tapes look real good!)
Denon 3190 with SDI. (amazing dvd player)
LG BH-100 HD-DVD/Blu Ray player. (sweet video at 1080p/24)
DVDO VP50

I will get some 1080p photos up on the web site soon. I have been waiting to find the perfect demo to use, and CARS WINS!!

I have about $5000 into the projector and VP50. This also includes some spare parts for the best.

My power bill is about $130.00 per month on the budget plan, normal power bills for people in this area are about $25 - $50 per month.

Was it worth it?

Y E S !!

I know a woman who lives with 12 pit bulls. I don't understand her and I do not understand your interest in obsolete, ridiculously costly, and inefficient technology. Some people watch women's golf on TV. I don't understand that either. Oh well.

IB

I know someone whose biggest and most challenging technological project for years has been having to "turn his indoor antenna around".

I don't understand that at all.
Oh, well. :rolleyes:

My reasons where theses..

1080p full widescreen projector.
6000+ lumens
no pixels at all.
$1000.00 used.

It took a hell of a lot work, but the picture out of this is far better then anything I have seen any place else. Even the HD-projections at the Pepsi Center (large venue DPL units that cost upwards $50,000 each).

At 6,000+ lumens do you have a 20-30 foot screen?
How close do you sit?
What's the contrast ratio of the projector?
Do you have 60 lumen blacks?

Congrats on your adventurous spirit, you must be single... ;)
At least you won't need heating during the Indiana winters...

I for one commend ctreesh for toying around with one of these monsters. I'd like to see the screenshots when they are ready. I don't think he needs to justify his reasons for doing so to anyone on the forum. Most of the people here on AVS are all about overkill anyway. In fact, most of my neighbors think I'm nuts for having a dedicated HT with an RS-1 :)

I have and 8 foot screen at the moment, 16 x 9. Its a hung of wall panneling, painted white. This room is also used for a full-contact sport. A real screen would get ripped or damaged.

I have the bulb current set to about 75 amps, thus limits the output to about 2000 watts. This results in about 63 ft-lamberts at peek white across the 8 foot screen. (Still way to bright for the size, but if I drop much under this, the 3000 watt bulb will run less stable and result in flicker---besides, I love it bright).

The measured contrast ratio is about 550:1, I will be getting my hands on some higher grade optical beam splittes, that should at least double the CR. It will never beet a true CRT for CR or black level, but I don't dont think I will ever be able to purchase a projector that can do 1920x1080p native widescreen that will do over 2000 lumens for less then $10,000 EVER. Much less one that will do over 6000.

My room is too small for an 8 foot screen, as I can only sit about 15 feet back from it at max. But at 1080p, I see zero artifacts. Scaled SDTV looks pretty bad on it however.

720p scaled to 1080p is great.
1080i to 1080p is greater.
1080p/24 to 1080p/60 is stunning.
CARS on blu ray was by far the best video I have EVER seen in my life on this or any system.

I hope to have screen shots of CARS on line for you too look at on my white-painted screen. (Dutch-Boy Flat White). You will seen them in the 1080p part of the site. I hope to have them on line by this Sunday.

I will make a post when they are up.

If you want to see the current shots, the active web site is:

http://bbs.flagnet.org

Carey

Intresting thread but that thing is HUGH!!!! and would definitely cut down on seating space. :D

Grrr...

I took 20 shots tonight of cars from blu ray in 1080p over hdmi.
All 20 of these suck.

The brightness of the screen must have over-whelmed the camra. Almost all shots are blury, and the blue's are bloating, causing color errors. The real screen looks amazing, but these photos are horrid.

Im going to have them re-done with better settings on the camra.

Sorry for the delay, but this has to be done right, else you will get a very poor idea of the quality of this movie and this system.

Im afraid most of the 'cars' shots came out really poor. Im not sure why, but Im working with my guy to have him come over and take some better ones.

But for now, I thought I would at least let you look at the few that did come out ok. Also, I got plenty of new shots of the unit itself and the room it lives in, and the room we watch it in..

Also, I took some time to clean up and toss out the old crappy screen shots from before the professional calibration, and the install of the killer light valves. In so doing, I have re-organized the web site into two main parts...

Link 1 is "Parts and Construction". I have moved over all the photos you have already seen, plus added about 10 new ones. Photos of the rooms, and of myself, even a poor one of my big dog in the screen room. The room photos also include several of the screen shots of 'cars' that I was not happy with, I figure they are good enough to show off the room photos, but I would not put them with my other screen shots.

Link 2 is "Screen Shots". I kept only the best photos from the past, and tossed out the poor ones. A few 'cars' shots where good enough to make this list, but dont worry, Im getting more soon.

Note that all screen shots are direct-dump from the camera, they have not been edited in any way. Not even cropped. Most photo's are very large in size, this was to get Greater then 1080p video res captures of the screen shots. Two where done in 640x480, but I kept them because they came out very nice ("Greg the Bunny" shots).

link is up with new photos:

http://bbs.flagnet.org

Please let me know what you think. Again, if there is enough interest, I will keep more photos coming on-line.

NEW PHOTOS ON-LINE NOW!!

I put all the new photos into the next construction area of the web site to sort them from the old ones. These are the high quality photos from the movie "CARS" and they came out really nice.

Cars is a 2.35x1 aspect ratio, so even tho the moive is 1080p, its got black bars on the top and bottom that waste a lot of those res lines, still this IS the best video I have seen yet despite the wasted lines.

The cool part is, in the extra features I got some shots in 1.85x1 full wide screen full 1080p. We even took one WITH FLASH to show how well a >6000 lumen projector can withstand a flash.

The camera is a 7 Megapixel.

Let me know what you all think.

http://bbs.flagnet.org/pix3

Looks OK,

I run CRT and have always wanted to get one of these machines.

However I think an 8' wide screen is way way too small for the brightness you have. I would love to see how one of these machines would look on a larger screen, say 20+ feet wide.

Erik

Ya, me too...

Maybe someday if I ever move to a new house with a big enough wall, and the right throw distance, For now Im kinda stuck at 8ft.

I can go 16, but I cant sit far enough back from the screen to enjoy it.

I did try it once, and played some 3d fps shooter games on it with my pc, then I promptly got sick and thru up. 16ft of Unreal Tournament is insane.

My kids loved it tho!

Carey

What size screen do you plan on running for your final setup? I'd imagine it will be quite impressive!

Only question I have(sorry have to ask).. Do you have a backup bulb for this machine? From what I hear they are crazy expensive:(.

I'd love to have one of these myself.. there is one on Ebay right now, but there's no way I could afford to ship it from Washington state to Pa..:(

If its done right, simply put, its the very best projected picture I'v ever seen any place any where anytime.

At 1200:1 On-Off? I don't think so. Maybe if you watch sports all day. Most people watch films...

Ideal screen size would be 60foot, that what its built for. I would love to see mine run 16 someday. But biggest problem is that it dont have zoom lenses, you have to swap out all-three to change screen size.

Im currently running 3:1 fixed. I also have on hand 1:1.5 and a 1:5.
The 1.5 would need a throw distance of over 50 feet to get above 8 feet of screen, and the 5:1 would have to have the unit about 10 feet away---both of these are no practical and totaly unusable in my home environment.

I do have a spare bulb--as I acutally purcahsed two of these, one for use, and one for spare parts. Bulbs are about $1300 retail, and I have a buddy who can get them at about $600.00 for a 3000 watt xenon.

These bulbs are very hazardous to replace. Even dead, they are packed with so much pressure that if it did blow up, it could take your arm with it.

I can use 2000 watt bulbs since Im only running 8foot, and just back off the power to it. Bulb life is 1000 hours at full power, for each 1000 watts you drop, the bulb life tripples. Im running mine at about 1500 watts or 1/2 its rate, and I have way more then 1000 hours on it, no problems at all so far.

Current CR is about 450:1. I have very high quality valves in the unit, but the prismatic-beam-splitters are low-grade. This is keeping my CR poor.
I will be getting some very high quality ones this June, and that should pump my CR up to about 12000:1 or higher.

I know its not ever going to be as good as a real CRT for black level, and right now, thats my only real PQ complaint.

450:1 at about 4000 lumes makes for some very not-black blacks...:mad:

But overall, this things has been an amazing machine, and I use it every day.

Bluray/hdvd looks best on it, with 1080i by hdtv being next, then 720p hdtv, then normal dvd via sdi. 480i over hdmi scaled to 1080p is so-so at best comming from direct tv, but that is a crap source anyways.

Carey

I don't get it, though; for the amount of money you've put into this thing, you could have gotten a pretty damn good 9" CRT projector, with much less time doing setup, let alone not having to replace bulbs and using significantly less power...

The GE Talaria was a lot of "fun" too. Many hours spent tuning those flat fields, oh yeah!

They sure look like fun!

Here they are:

http://www.hi-def.com/3LV.html

I don't get it, though; for the amount of money you've put into this thing, you could have gotten a pretty damn good 9" CRT projector, with much less time doing setup, let alone not having to replace bulbs and using significantly less power...

He wouldn't have gotten the brightness, though. This was the original reason for these pjs being developed. Of course, he may just like a challenge.:)

Some people buy beat up old cars and tinker around with them. I am betting his interest in this old projector is similar to that.

And a hidden bonus is if his furnace ever goes out he has a spare.

I don't dont think I will ever be able to purchase a projector that can do 1920x1080p native widescreen that will do over 2000 lumens for less then $10,000 EVER.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/Epson-PowerLite_Home_Cinema_1080_UB_.htm

Is 1500 OK? :p

(All right, I'm sure it's not 1500 when calibrated, but if I had to bet I'd say you'll be able to get true 2k at 1k:1 for under 5k within a year. Saying 'ever' in the tech business is a bad idea - like the guy who said there'd be a market for "four or maybe five computers worldwide".)

Part of my deal is my past history with projectors.

My very first was an Epson LCD with svideo, and it did 600x800 at 500 lumens.

Way back then this cost big bucks (over $2000) and for Laserdisc and VHS it was fine, but it was so dim.

Then a few years later I figured I would upgrade, and got a Kodak 1000 lumen that did 1024 x 768. It also had hdtv compatible inputs up to 1080i. I was not feeding it any hdtv, but I loved how much better the picture quality was.

Then I saw this $18500.00 JVC G20 going for about $4000.00 on ebay.
2000 lumens 1365x1024. Also accepted HDTV. Buy now I had some hdtv sources, and man this was just aswome.

But knowing that it was only a 4:3 native projector and putting into 16:9 mode would drop my line count alot bugged me. Plus knowing that it still was a far cry from 1920x1080i----much less P.

Then ebay came up with this $168,000 unit for only $1000.00 (not including the $550 shipping)!

When I saw this one saying it could do 1080p and had 3 times the brightness, and was no limited to 4:3 with a matrix, I went on a mission.

Pain the butt---yes.
worht it in the end to me - WAY YES.

My bulb failed to fire one night last week. It ticked and ticked so I knew the high-voltage (15000 volt) starter was going, but that faded away after about 30 seconds of trying to start up the arc.

Lucky for me I had purchased the 2nd projector as spare parts including a fresh new bulb. (xenon arc lamp 25 volt 120 amp 3000 watt).

I swapped the lamp house cuz I didnt want to mess around with handling the very dangerous bulb itself, and it would be simpler to hook up. A few screws, and the lamp house just slides out. A few simple (big huge) wires and I would be back up and running.

No such luck, the new lamp was just spiffy, but something had gone wrong with the starter circuit as it started only once and never again. Didnt even try to fire up after the first run with it.

I did something really stupid...I actually pulled the dead bulb out of its lamp house and did the same with the new bulb, and traded places.

This was really stupid thing to do without a bullet proof vest, safety gloves, and helmet. Xenon bulbs of this size are like handling live nitro cuz of the very high pressure. If they burst in your hand, you will most likely loose your arm.

Lucky for me, it went just fine.

I was amazed at what I saw in terms of brightness with a new bulb installed. I guess my first one had more hours on it then I thought it did, cuz this new one was showing me brightness like I had never seen before.

Its so bright that its on the edge of painfull to watch it in a darken room now.

I cant say without testing it (I dont have the gear handy) but I would venture to guess its about 90ftlbts.

Just for fun I put a 5.25 inch old floppy diskette in front of the output before its breaks the white light into RGB.....Man, it B U R S T into flames in less then 3 seconds!

I had to quickly pull it away and put the fire out. I wont do that again!

I also have a real screen for it now.

Nothing special, a simple 10 foot DaLite screen, no frills.

This with the new bulb....man, Im in HDTV heaven.

Carey

website still up, no new pix yet, but I think its time to post up some more soon with the new bulb and screen and I will make an update soon.

http://bbs.flagnet.org

Carey,
I'm new to this forum, but love your posts. As a guy who used to work on Quadruplex and newer VTRs, Transmitters, cameras, CRT PJs, and all kinds of big stuff, I'm a huge fan of these projectors. Clearly you've gone beyond the pale to make yours work.
I was at Infocomm—I think it was in 1995—when the Hughes guys showed the very first prototype 300 series. They showed 'True Lies' with some kind of prototype Faroudja line quadrupler, on about a 20 ft screen in full convention center lighting.
Since every other projector at the show was either CRT, or very early LCD, all the other manufacturers were pretty freaked out. Hughes stole the show in every way. Of course, the image quality was nowhere near as good as later SC models. . .
I am in the process of taking possession of eight (that's right, eight!) 340SCs, complete, in unknown working states. All appear to have 3:1 lenses. I also got a trailer load of spares, mainly lamp housings, 2KW lamps, boards, about 5 CRTs (3 look new), a couple prisms and a technician remote. I think there was also at least one spare ILA.
I plan to get a couple working, keep some parts, trade/sell the rest, and put one of them in our upstairs media room. If you're still messing with your 360 and have some time, I'd like to pick your brain. If there is a number to reach you at, I'd be grateful for some guidance. I'm also on Skype as jsaw0727.
John

Today I got an email from the AVS site indicating that someone had made a new reply. I figured it was probably a good time to post an update on how things are going and where things are at with the monster.

About 1 year ago I made a trip out to Maryland to visit Leo at his shop. We did some trading of services, I helped him out with his office PC setup, wireless internet, shared printer, and data backup in exchange for some JVC parts.

I need to tell you all about his system.

If you think what I have done is over-the-top, you ain't seen nothing! As an industry expert in the video projection field, and with a much higher knowledge and spending budget that I have access to, Leo Bassest's system is true cinema "commercial grade" install indeed.

First, it's not in his house, its in its own dedicated facility, a custom built from scratch brand-new building the size of a medium size-barn. Complete with full heating/air and dedicate bathroom.

The room boasts a 30 foot screen, dedicated projector equipment room, and stadium-style seating. Professional movie chairs with cup holders, "decks" and even a bar with stools. The room looks and feels like a high-class movie house room you would sit in at the real movies only better.

I don't have details about his actual equipment other then the video system, but I can tell you the speakers are very large movie-house audio system.

It's still a work in progress, but already its a very stunning system.

The normal name for my website is : bbs.flagnet.org My ipaddress changes a few times a year and sometimes my internet name gets disassociated. For now, you can use my ip address.

A picture of Leo's theator room is here:

http://67.177.121.9/pix4/Theator1.jpg

Take a look at his screen size, peek at the files with "bigscreen" in the name. The one with video on it, look right in the center bottom of the screen to see me getting toasted by the video beam!! I could sun tan off this system!

Take a look at the files with ila12K in the name, these are photos of the actual projector he is using. The ILA 12K system is twice as powerful as mine, so much so in fact that it requires 3-phase 208 volt power system to fire the bulb. The bulb is a 7000 watt xenon.

Leo had to use a phase-converter that is about the size of a beer keg. It 240 volt in, runs a large motor, that spins a large generator and outputs 208 volt 3 phase at over 50 amps per leg.

Leo also uses a JVC out-board scaler know as a "white horse". It has all the normal inputs including hdmi, dvi, and analog inputs. The output is RGBHV.

Picture quality on his system is pretty much the same as mine, slightly better due to higher grade ILA's, CRTS, and hand-picked beam splitters. His picture is H U G E at 30 feet. I do know that is is also using a "cina-perf" type screen that has a bunch of tiny holes it it to allow for sound pass-thru. This cuts screen gain down a lot. He needs a ton of power to lite up a screen that big, plus compensate for the sound holes.

As measured, he gets 24 foot lamberts on 30 foot screen. 16 is the normal count, anything above that has been shown to cause medical side effects to the viewer (head aches and eye strain). I run mine at about 24 as well, with no ill effects noticed yet.

So, having given credit to the master of ILA, I will update you on my system.

Leo give me 3 new "higher quality then mine" beam splitters. These gave me a nice boost in the contrast ratio spec. In a perfect world, no light at all would come from the projection lenses unless it was meant to be there by the video. The ILA plate and the prism as well as a "quarter wave plate" all contribute to the effectiveness in stopping the light from spilling out. I learned that there is 1 more part, a 2nd quarter wave plate that mounts onto the beam splitters output port. As much as I tried, I was not able to find any of these for myself, and Leo would not part with any. They are probably one of the rarest parts ever, and where only found in the 12K professional cinema units.

I have found that the need to gray-scale color balance this system is rather high maintenance. It is highly effected by the change of seasons. Temperature has a major effect on the ILA plates. In the winter vs in the summer, the color balance drifts. The need for a colorimeter is high, and based only on my experience with Leo, the only color meter that I know for sure that works well with this system is a "minolta CS 100". Other cheaper systems may work, but I would worry about how well they would tolerate the extreme amount of light you would be exposing them too on a system like this.

I found a CS100 on ebay. Paid a crap-ton for it it.

This is a very nice, but very expensive tool. What makes its so nice is that it works like a "point and shoot" system, rather then a sensor that you need to mount on the screen, you simply point it at the screen and gives you the reading.

The readings that it gives are color coordinates in the x and y format. There is a view finder to find your target, and trigger you pull, then after about 3 seconds of sampling, it gives you 3 number on an lcd side display. The first is a brightness in foot lamberts, then the x number and last the y number.

I'm just starting to fully understand the science of how the numbers work, but its mostly important to understand that your trying to target .313 and .329 for x and y.

x is how much red there is, and y is how much green there is. There is no coordinate for the color blue. While you can adjust R and G and Blue, the best procedure is to set blue to a fixed value that represents the very strongest amount of blue you can get out of your system without over-drive, once this is set, then you adjust red and green (x and y) to get them to achieve the color gray.

It's interesting to note that you set x and y at the 80% max level and again at the 20% max level. Your hope is that from 0 % to 100% is perfectly linear. It's not, but if you get 20% and 80% both correct at the color meter, your gonna have a very accurate color picture when your done. One big drawback to this meter system is that there is no computer interface as far as I know.

Some scalers (not the DVDO VP 50 dammit!) offer gray scale adjustments at the scaler level. This would very nice in that you could set the x and y for every video point from 1 to 100. This would be the ultimate in color accuracy.

Another maintenance thing is keeping the ila, and beam splitter optics clean. Any dust that gets in here would not necessarily show up on the screen, but it dose have a negative impact on contrast ratio. It's not hard to clean these, I do it twice per year. Big dust on the ila's may show up as blobs of color on the screen. Green especially.

I was in a battle with HDCP. While my DVD, and TIVO had no problems converting to RGBHV, the bluray player, and now DirecTV have forced me into purchasing the HD-Fury device. This is a simple DVI to RGBanalog converter. I would much rather use the RGB outputs of the scaler because I think they are of higher quality analog parts, but it was becoming an impossible battle to get all my HD content to play nice with an analog video display system.

I ended up getting a new LED TV set for the the living room, and thus using a HDMI splitter, one side feeds from the scaler output to the TV, the other side of the splitter feed a 50 foot hdmi cable, runs to the basement, that feeds into a hdmi-to-dvi dongle (passive device) that plugs into the HD-fury, and that feeds the monster with RGBHV at 1080p.

Another part I got from Leo was the digital backplane upgrade electronics. This upgrade replaced analog input circuit board with a newer (1998) board that gives Y Pb Pr (480i component) SDI (480i) and a built-in "Mirinda" scaler system for these new inputs.

I don't use the internal scaler, or the new inputs, but I did get a small boost in PQ by having a newer more updated input board.

My future plans...

I would very much like to replace the 360's picture tubes with more modern 370's. This would also require me to replace the CRT analog drivers, high voltage PS.

There are three minor reasons for wanting to do this. I think that the 360's CRT's where of the lowest quality of the ILA line. The 320,330,340,370, and 12K all used a higher quality tube. The tubes are probably higher res, have a fast phosper, and are built better. The non-360 HV Power supply has a 10-turn pot adjustment for focus and G2 voltage control. The 360's is so touchy that if you fart next to it it changes. VERY VERY annoying adjustment! Also, its my understanding that the non-360 analog boards have an auto-compensate circuit that adjusts G2 voltage with a feedback loop that compensates for heater age.

I would LOVE to get my hands on the rare-as-hell quarter wave mount plates that go onto the beam splitters, but that may never happen.


Over all, it's been a heck of an experience, and I am still please to say that were ever I go out to eat, visit a sports center, or even the freshly renovated "Joyce Center" at the University of Notre Dame, I still can safely say my screen still whomps theirs in terms of brightness and PQ.

Wow you are not kidding that screen and room are huge, the real deal.
Had no idea those ILAs could light that up.
A few questions if you dont mind.
Does Leo still offer these and do rebuilds?
If these are CRT driven how is black level.
Do they have HD SDI input.
Wondering if the image is very clean like CRT,less back ground noise and banding, something digital still has a way to go.

Thank you!
All very interesting, thanks for sharing.

No HD-SDI input, the only real useful input on these systems is RGBHV.

The video and svidoe inputs are provided, but since they are limited to 480i, thats what you will get. Its an great demo tho---I feed a 480i signal into this from my direct tv dvr. Since this projector will show it in true 480i, you can clearly see the scan lines on the big screen. Using the remote, you can switch between SD input and the RGBHV input.

The digital input board offers non-hd sdi, plus dose offer a 12 year old mirinda scaler, but I don't think the performance would be any better then using the external scaler. (I have never tried since the internal unit is limited to SD inputs).

Keep in mind that while these are CRT devices, the CRT's dont produce any of the projected light. All the light comes from the high power bulb. The CRT's job is only to control the ILA.

Actual contrast ratio is maybe between 300 to 2000. Very poor by today's standards. The only reason to pick this system over a 10K-100K CR digital system is for pure 1080p res at kickbutt brightness. Its very good at this.

Leo told me today that he is officially getting out of support for the ILA systems.

He dose have some stock of "new" parts and tons of used parts.

CRT's last a very long time since they dont have to be driven very hard like in a typical CRT projector.

Thanks for the follow up ctreesh, good stuff.

Sorry for the long delay. I tend to go in phases with my toys. After I get things working and I'm happy, I move to the next project. But when something breaks down, then my attention gets focused back on it again. That is where I am at today with the 360 ILA.

Been very happy, using it a lot with out too much trouble.

A few things to note now a few years in...

Color balance is a total pain in the butt on this thing. Its highly effected by change of seasons. About every 3 months or so, I break out the color meter and pull up a gray scale test pattern. Most of the time I can get away with a minor and simple tweak.

This is know ha a "Proportional offset adjustment". Its not hard so long as you have the right tools. I just shoot the screen and get my x and y readings, and adjust them up or down on R G B. I find that I must hit the 80% IRE, and 20% IRE. Takes only about 20 mins so long as I can still reach target values. In the rare times that I cant (because I have already maxed out a color), then it becomes a major job...more on that later.

I'm on my 3rd bulb now. I'm pretty good at the bulb replacement procedure. I have always had to replace the "raw bulb" rather then the lamp house. Again, kinda scary job. Gotta be very careful. Big chance of major injury if something goes wrong. I have about 6 more bulbs on hand. I'm getting over 2000 hours at my power level.

I ran into a hardware issue about 2 weeks ago. This is what drew my attention back to the projector. I was having issues with all 3 CRT's dropping in output power. They would fade to almost no video, then snap right back in again. After some troubleshooting, it was the "High Voltage Block Assy" that had gone bad. Lucky I several of them on hand as spare parts.

It was not an easy repair. There are 12 HV outputs on this box. 3 main anode lines, 3 focus lines, and 3 G2 driver lines. Several hours of taking the unit down off its mount, pulling all the parts out to expose the lines, and then replacing the part, and putting it all back together.

This of course killed my convergence, so that had to be redone as well.

You CRT experts can tell me if I'm right about this, but the term "G2" I think refers to "Grid number 2". Grids are an old fashion electronics term used in vacuum tubes. Since CRT's ARE vacuum tubes, well, there ya go...

Right now I'm in a total crappy place with my beast. Because the HV power supply has been replaced with new one, all my G2 settings have been lost. As a result, my color looks like crap. G2 on the 360 is especially horrid adjustment. Its 3 simple pots, one for each color. But they are major touchy...the slightest nudge of the pot dial has a huge impact on CRT drive.
This is the main reason I'm trying to score some none 360 CRT's. The "other model {known as the "300 series tube set"} uses a HV power supply that features 10-turn pots for G2.....God, I wish I had those! I swear you can just look at these pots funny and the change!

You'd think you could just start with green, and get a nice fully contrasted picture of a green gray-bar. Then start twisting red to bring out a nice yellow (As green plus red makes yellow), then add blue to get a nice gray bar.

Oh hell no....not on this machine. It's much MUCH harder then that for a few reasons, but the main reason is that any change in G2 will off-set "shading".

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to re-calibrate the hard way.

Unfortunately, I have been doing that for about the last 5 days, and I keep ruining into a problem.

The normal procedure is supposed to go like this....

Set G2 on each CRT. (Its tempting to try to get gray scale here, but dont!)

Clear the shading and all offsets. (OMG!!) {this is like formatting your hard drive for you computer people)

Find the max blue with light meter.

Take this figure and calculate based on efficiency what max blue should be at full power output---without overdrive. (max blue as read X %eff = target)

Select 80% IRE test pattern.

Set blue Sensitivity to this target and never touch it again.

Set green and red Sensitivity with x and y on color meter to get gray. (6500K)

Select 20% IRE test pattern.

Adjust threshold of RGB to get gray. (3 adj. that all impact each other)

Go back to Select 80% IRE and repeat about twelve-thousand times.

You'd be done if this was a CRT only projector, but now the bitch part....

Engage 20% and 80% shade of each color to set flat filed.

I use the auto-shade camera tool, but the damn thing keeps failing with cell-at-limit. This means that the G2 setting, or the initial Sensitivity or the initial Threshold or any combo of these that I put in to get x and y correct are out of the range of the auto-camera....in other words the ILA plate may have a dark spot that needs to be compensated for, but my values wont allow it. There is only +128 and -128 "ticks" of compensation allowed.----so I gotta try new values, yet still be at gray. Bump up (or down) the G2, and compensate with a different Sensitivity and Threshold initial settings and try again.

I'v tried about 15 times now---remember each try and fail can be like 2 hours of watching it almost work then die with a "cell-at-limit".

At the moment, I can get perfect gray in the very center of the screen. But due to the nature of ILA crystals, this shifts to a rainbow effect all over the rest of the screen. More, or less of R G or B needs to be added or subtracted from 1024 spots on the screen to make it even and uniform.

You can do this by hand, but I would think drinking a tall glass of molten lava would be preferable. The auto-shade camera is by far the best way to go, but everything has to be just so-so prefect, or it will barf on ya.

So far, I'm covered in barf.:mad:

There is no easy way out of this. I just gotta keep at it and keep trying new settings till I find that magical set of initial settings on the pots, and on the menus that allows the camera to finish its task without error.

Once that works, then I can go back to that "proportional offset" thing, and it will be killer again. Right now, this moment...its killing me. :confused:

I know its a LONG shot, but if anyone out there has ever done this, and can lend me some tips, I really could use some help.

I really don't wanna bug Leo anymore then I already have.

Looking at your screen caps this thing looks like film very analog with no digital glare.
For your sake I hope you are able to get her dialed back in.
I was thinking of getting one of these just last year but never made the move. Your screen caps make it tempting.
Best of luck , keep us posted.

Alan. This thing won't have enough light for a 60 ft wide screen so I doubt it would work for your new theater. :) You might think about using a slightly smaller screen and sitting a tad closer. Thank you for supporting AV Science.

I bet it could push 16 ftlbts onto a 60 foot screen with a new bulb at full power.

You'd also be pulling over 23 amps at 240 volts tho.

I'm sure I will get her back and humming again, its might take weeks of trying tho.

I will keep you all posted.

Since I got things pulled a part, I will take some new part photo's and post them up.

Humm, I think I might know what the problem is now...

I think since the last time I changed a bulb, I have not had to do a full re-cal, and in changing the bulb I noticed that I now have a "hot spot" on my screen. Not only that, but that spot is not in the center of the screen.

The shading program is gonna have to try to dim that spot down, while trying to brighten up the rest of the screen. Its no wonder that Im getting cell at limit errors both on high and low on all 3 colors.

God I hope thats whats wrong. If not I'm kinda out of ideas.

The hot spot can be fixed with an "x y z" axises on the xenon mount plate and bulb focus lens. Thats not too hard to pull off.

New part photos are uploaded into link 1. Do a sort by date and look for the may 1 photos.

http://bbs.flagnet.org

I bet it could push 16 ftlbts onto a 60 foot screen with a new bulb at full power.

You'd also be pulling over 23 amps at 240 volts tho.

I'm sure I will get her back and humming again, its might take weeks of trying tho.

I will keep you all posted.

Since I got things pulled a part, I will take some new part photo's and post them up.

He was going with a 60 ft wide 0.8 gain screen, gain before perferring. He has to use a perforated screen because with the space he has, the space on either side of the screen would only allow installation of those Bose minicubes.

An ILA 12K would do it! How do you feel about 3 phase power for your lamp house?

thanks for reviving this post, this was great to read through and see the photos of the equipment, especially the fellow with the massive screen.

I love old equipment and it's great to see folks keeping them alive. I believe I spotted the Commodore SX-64 Executive computer in the background. I still have one of these in the original box.

good luck with the repairs / calibration

Good eye sir!

Yes you indeed did see that C64 there. One of my other projects is to try to strip that color monitor and mount it in the dash of my car.

I made some great progress today. I got 2 of the 3 colors to shade out perfect after a bulb focus adjustment. Blue went to almost 90% before it barfed.

The result is 100%, 100% and 90% on completely accurate shade and color balance. That result is a picture that he once again nearly perfect.

I will make a fresh post about this sub-topic (look for "WHY 16"), but since I was working on the beast, I wanted to put the petal to the metal and see what the puppy could really do.

I cranked up the bulb current to 120 amps, and pushed my ILA frequency down (this results in major brightness, but comes at the cost of major image lag). At 100% IRE I was measuring perfect gray at 116 foot Lamberts! On an 8 foot screen Im not sure how many lumens that comes out too, but I can tell you this.....my eyes hurt now, and I have had a major head ache every since this experiment. My head and face have a nice tan now as well.

I think more of my hair is starting to fall out as well.

Is it normal if my pee glows in the dark now?:confused:

JK JK...All sings are pointing towards a full restoration of the beast. Just a few more hours or plugging in numbers and crunching the shade system, Im sure I will get it now.

I got Leo to send me some 300 series CRT. They are slightly used, but no noticeable screen burn on them. I figured sine the unit is not in perfect working order, now would be the time to installed new tubes.

I got the hardware done last night and tested them out, and good news, they all work. The bad news is that this a total do-over, start-from-ground zero rebuild of the calibration.

Full re-do on the geometry. Full re-do on the concergence....everything.

Making some progress. This will take several days to get it all done.

The result should be worth it. While only a slight improvement in PQ is expected, the 10 turn pots will sure be a nice change. Also, I have been told these CRT/Driver boards have an auto-current detector that will compensate G2 for heater age.

This is a big big deal. If that works, I should only have to set my G2 one more time, and probably never have to mess with it again.

May 1st I uploaded some new hardare pictures on the first link. Just sort by date.

I have spent my entire weekend in the basement. I heave become re-acquainted with all my swear words. A full CRT replacement is a very difficult job on this projector. The hardware was not hard to install, but the config and setup were just as massive as they were the day I unboxed it for the first time. The only difference is this time I have a few years of knowledge and experience, this setup only took a week. That might seem like a long time, but read the whole post you will understand why.

It was less painful this time due to the 10 turn pots, and I had the big bonus of having my ILA bias and frequency already set to perfect. I did need to re do focus and geometry and convergence.

The results are....now my system is much more like a 370 model then a 360. The only real difference is that the 360 used a different CRT/HV power system and CRT boards. The 300 series is a big improvement over the "budget 360" model which was designed more as a very bright data display.

I have the digital back-plane in, cinema grade ILA's, and way better CRT system.

Very happy to report that all is done, complete, and kick butt again. (VERY!)

I will take some fresh screen shots, probably of "Hero's Season 2 on blu ray". That has some wonderful Picture Quality.

I also made a useful discovery that seems to help in avoiding the Cell at Limit errors. This is my refined shade procedure.

Bulb focus and uniform brightness is important. In my case, its difficult to make this adjustment while its in the mount. Its much more accurate to pull the projector down and set it up in a service/maintenance position. I have to use a different lens set, but it makes life a lot simpler to do bulb focus. The manual states center should be at the brightest with a 2 to 1 roll off. LISTEN TO THE MANUAL.

Make sure the quarter wave plates are adjusted in such a way as to avoid any hot spots on the screen, its best to set them as the procedure describes in the manual. LISTEN TO THE MANUAL. After you get shading done without errors, then you can tweak these plates a bit and get a nice boost in CR.

This is what worked for me this time...

START COLOR BALANCE/SHADE.

Sensitivity mode, menu, 6 (clear all axis).
Sensitivity mode, menu, 3 (clear all shading)
Sensitivity mode, menu, 2 (clear offset)

No need to do this on Threshold menu. Its already at default from the above procedure.


Set RGB thresholds at 100. Target the center of the screen (the center plus) with the colorimeter. Adjust G2 on all three to get x and y at .313 and .329. You wont be able to get perfect gray, but try to be in the ball park using the G2's. On an 8 foot screen with bulb current a absolute minimum, I was getting about 10 ftlbs, at 80% IRE. This should give some idea if your way off on your G2...keep in mind that Gray can happen at an infinite number of brightness's. This 80% 10Ftlbts is only a reference. The G2 gray-out should be preformed at the 20% IRE level.

Using threshold offsets, get perfect gray. Menu 6 (video quickset) is the simple way. (with no shading preset, it defaults to threshold offset).

Hit enter on the remote, and then pull up 80% Sensitivity.

Target perfect gray with RGB up and down. (with no shading present, this defaults to Sen offset).

Repeat between 20% Thresh, and 80% Sen, and try to get as close to gray on both ends as possible. Progress WONT be made if you keep targeting exact numbers. You need to stretch the gamma curve. Shoot for .300 and .310 on the high side, so then when you bump up the low side, the high side will slide into place. In real life, this is way harder. You may need to rock back and froth dozens of times. Keep an eye on your numbers (a wire'd tech remote is best), keep Thresholds between 80 and 110.(adjust G2 if needed) Keep Sensitivity's near as possible to 128.

Shade...

Camera warm up. 15 minutes.

Camera calibration with cal tube. Note then when putting the lens back in, keep the gear level, and sufficiently separated from the back wall of the camera box. Otherwise the aperture gear can get stuck.

Aim and Focus. This "momochrome green photo" should looks nice, with good blacks. Its very low res, but still, should make a clean "pixelated" picture. A 16x9 aspect ratio is ok. Center the screen shot as best as possible. Make sure camera is NOT IN THE PROJECTOR MOUNT---it gets too hot if you leave it in there. Focus is not very critical on the camera, its very low-res CCD.

Map Generation. Very important that all light in the basement is completely off. Even the CRT of the VT100 terminal should be set to lowest brightness and contrast. The theater lights need to be OFF, not just very dim....OFF.
Map generation should go smooth. DONT TRUST A PREVIOUS MAP, make a new fresh one every time you want to do a shade session. If you power off the projector, make a new one, if not, you don't have to make a new one per color, just per reboot of the projector. Its best to do all three colors in the same session as map generation.

Shade Blue. Blue tends to be the toughest color, so if there is gonna be a fail, it most likely will happen on blue. (no guarantees tho!) Corrections start at whatever Threshold offset you picked with doing threshold offsets for gray. Be wary of corrections that start to dip way low. Anything under 30 is reason for concern. Under 20 and your highly likely to get a Threshold cell at limit on the low side.

If your corrections come up too low, you need to boost blue G2. If they come up too high, you need to cut G2...either way, a fail here is a full start over on this whole procedure---clear the Thresh/Sen and clear the shading on all three, and start over----SUCKS!

On the Sensitivity shade of blue, if corrections start to go above 220, your likely to get a fail. If you get a Sen Cell at limit on the high side, you need to cut the Sen offset when setting 80% gray. A fail here is a full start over on this whole procedure---clear the Thresh/Sen and clear the shading on all three, and start over----SUCKS!

If blue comes out with no cell at limit error, then move on to green. Be aware that the same conditions hold true for green and red. EVEN IF blue is already done and perfect, any cell at limit error on red or green means START COMPLETELY OVER. You **WONT** be able to keep your blue settings that worked just great, because you will be forced into picking new values for blue, or new G2 for blue, or both to compensate for the changes in Red or Green.---REALLY SUCKS!

If Green comes thru with no errors, then move to Red.

ALL THREE MUST WORK with each others settings. NO ERRORS! Any error on any color you must start over, and redo even colors the did work--because they might not work now that you changed those numbers, and you WILL have to change those number if there is an error.---REALLY SUCKS.

Any error on any color will force you to re-do all your colors from scratch. You should keep notes of your Thresh and Sen offsets tho. Because if they did work, you should target using numbers that are as close to those "known good" initial values as possible to increase your chances of having that color work again on your re-do. KEEP NOTES !!

The math on this is simple.

R+G+B = GRAY.

But...consider that there is R G2, G G2, and B G2. Also there is R ILA bias, G ILA Bias, and B ILA bias. Don't forget there is R Sen, G Sen, and B Sen...AND there is also R Thresh, G Thresh, and B Thresh.

So the real math looks like this...

R G2 + G G2 + B G2 + R ILA + G ILA + B ILA + R Sen + G Sen + B Sen + R Thresh + G Thresh + B Thresh = Gray!

And this math only holds true for the very center of the screen. The entire rest of the screen needs to have RGB Thesh and RGB Sen added or subtracted too or from to get all of the screen to be gray. The amount of correction at max is + or - 128....and that amount of swing drops based on your initial offsets! So if you set G Threshold offset at 200....you have no room for errors....and there ARE ERROR inherent to the system. Thus the need to preform this shading task.

Shade complete...

Now you need to look at your 20% and 80% again, this time with your video source generating the test patterns, and do main menu 6, video quick set(which now will recognize that shading IS present, and will run in proportional offset mode).

Pull up a 20% IRE on the scaler, pull up 20% and adjust for gray.
Pull up a 80% IRE on the scaler, pull up 80% in the quickset menu, and adjust for gray. Some back and forth again may be needed.

Proportional offset mode has the same effect of setting gray as a normal offset mode, but this time, its not just changing the middle of the screen, its offsetting all the shaded cells proportionally. There may be very limited amount of adjustment here. The closer you can get to 128 on your initial offsets, the more room you will have for corrections here.

If you get this far, you should have one of the best projected pictures in the world. But boy, it did not come easy!


I just took a a more constructions pictures, look in link 1 and sort by date.

I took a ton of screen shots, look in link 3 and sort by date.

http://bbs.flagnet.org