I saw the movie "La vie en rose" last night on SD-DVD. The blacks were horrible, whenever the scene shifted to black (and there a lot in this movie), when people moved you could see the trailing edges of them moving, the shape of the objects "lingered" from one scene to the other. I don't know if I'm explaining it so everybody understands, I'll try to take some pics later tonight but left me worried. Is this a known issue with the Pearl? Or with the SXRD technology?

Take a look at 4:31 and from 9:02 to 9:08, in these scenes the scene shift to total dark and then there is another scene, on the Pearl the total dark is horrible with washed up images of the objects.

It could also be a mastering problem.

Any other Pearl users opinions?

For a link to the movie website click here (http://edithpiafmovie.com/)

I have the Pearl and that movie from netflix. I'll take a look at those spots tonight.

I also noticed the same artifact with the moving black bars on Avia. It freaked me out at first because I never saw this with either of my two previous projectors. But when I checked this on my 24" CRT TV, I found that I could also see it, so I assume it's a mastering issue - alothough I find it surprising that Avia would have a mastering problem.

Pip

I just played several parts of the movie on my humble Panasonic PT-L701U (an old sxga business projector bought for dust on eBay while my venerable CRT awaits replacement) and could not detect any motion anomalies. My DVD is the French edition (La Môme).

Could it be that the one released here has glitches?? Have you tried looking for these artifacts on other movies or TV programs?

Sensational performance by Marion Cotillard, btw. Hope she gets the Oscar! I have pre-ordered the HD DVD version from Amazon France (also available on BluRay, but region coded), as this one's a keeper!

the shape of the objects "lingered" from one scene to the other. I don't know if I'm explaining it so everybody understands, I'll try to take some pics later tonight but left me worried.


I have the same problem with my Optoma H79. I started seeing a more pronounced leftover imprint of light objects on dark backgrounds and I was getting concerned.

Then one day I was watching a DVD and stopped it to watch a Broadcast show. After the Broadcast I switched back to the DVD (with a DVI switcher) And the moment I switched the screen saver image had ghosts from images that had never made it to the projector. It was a epiphany that the ghosts were being caused by my Oppo DVD player.

I went into the Player menu and reviewed the various settings and discovered that I had goosed the brightness setting up a bit. I set it back to zero and the ghosts diminished significantly.

My advice to you is to compare some movie credits with moving white on black from your DVD to some other sources.

I tried setting the Black Level to High and the Iris to Manual (at 75%). That produced a reasonable black level but I thought adjusting the Black Level should not be done but it definitely made a world of difference on the Pearl.

I included a shot (Black Level was off and Iris set to Auto 1). The GIF compression exaggerates a bit but it is pretty accurate to what I see, blotches of black but not the black as it should look like.

the blh means black_level_high and manual iris at 75%. I'm afraid I could not capture that correctly so you may not see much difference to the original picture I was getting.

Sergio:

Just watched the film. I couldn't see the artifact in the places you noted, but I did notice the artifact very slightly at many other moments in the film.

I thought it was the artifact you desribe in your first post, however, the artifacting I noticed looked nothing like the photos you just posted.

I won't judge the transfer as I did not see the film in the theater, so I don't really know how it is supposed to look, but the transfer is certainly quite grainy, and many of the dark scenes seem to have a hazy look.

I have my gamma set to "Gamma 3" which diminishes low level noise compared to the other gamma settings. If you set your "Black Level" to high, that will clip (change near-black signal levels into full black) a lot of the near black signal. It can eliminate a great deal of low IRE noise. Some very old black and white films can be transfered with a great deal of near black noise. When viewing these, I turn my "Black Level" setting on temporarily.

Pip