How are folks doing that have tried to hook up a PC to the AE2000? I have a Vista Media Center with an ati1300 video card and I feed the signal to the AE2000 projector via a dvi to hdmi cable. The projector will sync to 720p at 60 hz and 1080i at 30 hz, but will not do 1080p at 60hz (which is the main reason I upgraded from the ae700 to the ae2000). I've tried a couple of different cables and video cards so far and tried various tech support but no help here...

You may want to look at the HTPC portion of this forum...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=30&f=26

I can confirm that it works with an x850 ATI card from DVI->HDMI. It syncs to 1920x1080p 60hz. I'm not using Media center though. Have you tried upgrading to the latest Catalyst drivers, although I can't confirm if that is what allowed it to work. Enable the ae2000 menu and it should display the signal the panasonic is seeing.

So...You can't sync it in real 24p(1080) from the HTPC?

I second that question. But why shouldn't it be possible if you can get 24p from a standalone player:confused:

:-) I hope...but i will have it confirmed so there is no change for the Ae2000 how it work with a normal player and a connected HTPC via HDMI. And if it works, does it show it in 48/72 or 96 hz? And finaly how is the picture from this installation with a internal BD/HDDVD.

Thanks

The Problem is your ATI1300! With Ati2xxx or Nvidia 8600 or 8500 you can show it on 24P. And the Picture Quality is very good.

Best Regards
Michael

The Problem is your ATI1300! With Ati2xxx or Nvidia 8600 or 8500 you can show it on 24P. And the Picture Quality is very good.

What if you have the 7600GT ?

What if you have the 7600GT ?

I don´t know. I don´t have one of these to test.

Thanks for your suggestions. Here is what I've found after a painful weekend:

1) My two year old mega-expensive heavy duty 33 foot DVI cable has gone bad. :( Signal jumps when I flex the cable by the computer end plug. Higher resolution signals can tend to "black out". This was part of the problem but not all of it.
2) Even with a new short DVI-HDMI cable the 1080p/60hz signal from the ati1300 still does not work with the ae2000. (I installed latest drivers from ati site.)
3) I tried an ati 2400 pro and a nvidia 8500gt video cards. Both of these do work with the ae2000 with a 1080p/60hz signal. :)

I still don't understand why my ati1300 didn't work but that's what my results show.

Now - the sad thing is that the level of crispness I was expecting to see at that resolution is not as high as I wanted. Reading text is painful as it's small and not as focused as I'd like. Increasing the DPI has helped some with text size but the focus still isn't there. Actually in general although the picture looks great for playing video when I display computer text it's not as crisp as I would like. I suspect this is a convergence issue (or my expectations may be too high.) I'm going to dig into some other threads on this site to see what experience people are having with the ae2000 and computer text.

I am also struggling to get my PC to drive my new AE2000. So far I have tried two different cables unsuccessful.

When I connect a monitor with a DVI cable 1080p@60 works just fine but with a 25feet HDMI cable and a passive DVI->HDMI adapter there is no signal at the AE2000. I have an active DVI-HDMI converter on order and hope this will solve my problem.

The best I have been able to get so far is 1080i@30Hz and the focus is a relatively poor compared to my old JVC G11U. I don't kow yet whether this is the effect of Smoothscreen or an artefact of using interlaced resolution.

Cheers

Thomas

Thomas, when I did my experiments over the weekend I tried to reduce the variables by temporarily connecting the computer to the projector with a high quality 6 foot dvi-hdmi cord. Once I knew what worked and didn't work at that short length I then proceeded with figuring out the cable issue.

As I mentioned my 33 foot heavy gauge DVI cable has worn out (cable fatigue I guess from all the plugging/unplugging I've done at the computer end) so I have ordered a 40 foot length of the new flat hdmi cable from Atlona which is HDMI 1.3b certified at 10.2Gbps. I figured I'd give myself some headroom and hopefully some room for expansion. They claim the cable works at up to 66 feet at that data rate so I'll see how my 40 foot length works.

Regarding computer text I do definitely think that I have a convergence problem. The black text has a significant green tinge to the left and on top and has a blue tinge on the bottom. Even when the pixels are "focused" the composite image appears blurry. I am calling the retailer today to discuss that further.

The focus problem is not just color fringing but there seems to be an issue about on-off contrast. If you have a single black pixel on a white background all the surrounding white pixels are grey not white.

I am still using the old background screen for the JVC DLAs that was used for fine tuning pixel perfect settings. This mage has a lot single pixel structures which where extremely sharp on the JVC but are completely washed out on the AE2000.

I hope this gets better with 1080p timings but the inability to read text on this projector right now is rather dissapointing.

Cheers

Thomas

As i read in the main thread...one guy just got his AE2000 replaced with the november build. The october build of the projector have some problems...

The Problem is your ATI1300! With Ati2xxx or Nvidia 8600 or 8500 you can show it on 24P. And the Picture Quality is very good.

Best Regards
Michael

That is wrong. I can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray at 24 fps with my ATI 1300 using Powerdvd.

...Regarding computer text I do definitely think that I have a convergence problem. The black text has a significant green tinge to the left and on top and has a blue tinge on the bottom. Even when the pixels are "focused" the composite image appears blurry. I am calling the retailer today to discuss that further.

Hi mikesch
If video looks fine but PC text is blurry, you should check if the OVER SCAN function in the Position Menu (user manual page 38) is turned off. For computers it must be turned off. Fernando

My overlay setting is at 0 but the text is still blurry. I played a bit more and MPEG noise reduction also need to be set to 0. Any other value increases the gray halo around a black pixel in the surrounding white pixel that washes out the contrast.

The sharpness algorithm also makes things worse by adding ringing for any setting other than 0.


My external DVI to HDMI converter will arrive next Monday and I hope I can do 1080p by then. I will report whether that addresses the soft text. Btw. I am usig Mark Rejhon DILA test pattern (http://www.marky.com/main/index.html)
Ideally you can look at this at a laptop screen at native resolution to get an idea how this is supposed to look. My old JVC pretty much matched that picture on the large screen.

I am also seeing non uniform focus. I can seem to get the left side of the picture into focus. Then center and right are okay.


Cheers

Thomas

Thanks ferbal. I tried adjusting the overscan but it was already at 0 and I didn't see any affect on the text image when I ran it through its range of settings.

I would really love to know if what I'm seeing is typical of what this projector is capable of or if I have a bad unit. I have attached the digital photo of the text image that illustrates the problem pretty well. If folks want to take a look and comment and/or post a similar picture of their projector displaying text that would be most helpful. I haven't heard back from the rep yet on how they evaluate the digital photo showing how the text is displayed by this projector.

This is actually at 720p since I can't display 1080p until my new cable gets in without unplugging the whole mess and sticking the PC on top of a table under the projector. The screen is 108", throw distance 15 feet. Text is standard text size and font typed into Notepad near the center of the screen.

Thomas, that DILA pattern looks like crap on my projector. Same problem where there are green and blue tinges around the white and black spots.

Haven't really noticed serious focus uniformity problems but given my other issue it's more difficult to tell.

Okay here is left and right side of the screen in 1920x1080i@30Hz.

That looks comparable to yours. There are no sharp pixel borders with this projector. Is this the effect of smoothscreen?

Cheers

Thomas

The test pattern looks like crap on mine as well. I am used to calibrate and focus to that picture for many years so this is a real let down with this new projector.

It looks like the pixels are bleeding into each other.

Cheers

Thomas

Update: The rep got back to me after reviewing the digital image of the problem. They agree the unit is out of spec and they are sending me a replacement projector (after doing a quality check on it) today. :)

Thomas, you should probably pursue the same path with the company you bought your projector from.

Hmm,

I'd love to see someone post a photo from an AE2000 that actually produces sharp pixels.

I am afraid I return this unit and get one back that has larger conversion issues and color non uniformity like many people on the main thread are reporting.

Let us know how this works out for you. So as soon as you have the replacement and can drive it at 1080p please post new pictures. I expect my external DVI->HDMI next Monday and will take another set of pictures if I get 1080p to work.

Cheers

Thomas

Hmm,
I'd love to see someone post a photo from an AE2000 that actually produces sharp pixels...
Hi Thomas
You can't see the pixels (the lines that separate them) because of the smooth screen.
Do you see the color separation in the letters when you are at "your" normal viewing distance? If not, I would say that you have a good pj.

I am having a pretty hard time reading text on the screen especially on the left side that is permanently slightly off focus.

This is only my second projector after the JVC DLA-G11 so I don't have a lot of experience but the G11 and all the projectors at my workplace do look a lot sharper than this. As I said before there really is not a sharp contrast at pixel boundaries but a gradual transition from black to white which makes edges look a bit soft. This effect makes small text hard to read.

Maybe this model is just suitabe video where you do not need a really sharp picture and this softness actually helps with stairsteps. The effect is similar to turning of font smoothing in Windows.

I don't want to reinstall my G11 but I will take a few pictures at work to demonstrate the point. I still would love to see screenshots from some other people to see whether I should even talk to my dealer. It would also be interesting to compare these shots to the new Epson which has the same high contrast panels but no smoothscreen. Any volunteer to post pictures?

Cheers

Thomas

How are folks doing that have tried to hook up a PC to the AE2000? I have a Vista Media Center with an ati1300 video card and I feed the signal to the AE2000 projector via a dvi to hdmi cable. The projector will sync to 720p at 60 hz and 1080i at 30 hz, but will not do 1080p at 60hz (which is the main reason I upgraded from the ae700 to the ae2000). I've tried a couple of different cables and video cards so far and tried various tech support but no help here...

Just checking to be sure you went into the CatalystControlCenter ---> Digital PanelProperties---HDTV Support and added 1080p formats to the Display Manager.

I am having a pretty hard time reading text on the screen especially on the left side that is permanently slightly off focus.
.....
Maybe this model is just suitabe video where you do not need a really sharp picture and this softness actually helps with stairsteps. The effect is similar to turning of font smoothing in Windows.
...
Thomas

Hi Thomas
I don't have the AE2000 yet. On my AE900, the PC text (720P) is sharp, again, from my "normal" viewing distance. My former PJ, the AE500 was also sharp, but my L300 was not because it will not do 1:1 pixel mapping. Some tips: Are you using too much lens-shift? Is your PJ recognizing the signal as 1080P? Are you sure that the PJ is perfectly aligned to the screen? If the PJ is not parallel and perpendicular, you will not get a perfect focus across the screen. With 1080 the text will be smaller (JVC DLA-G11 is 1365 x 1024 but in 16:9 you are using 768 right?), so you could increase the fonts size. Hope it helps. Fernando

I finally received and tested tested the Audio Authority DVI->HDMI converter. Unfortunately I still can't connect at even 1080p@24Hz nor any other refresh rate for progressive resolution.

As a result, I still don't know whether the softness in the picture is due to the interlaced resolution or inherent with the projector. At this point I am trying to get an HD player that has native HDMI output to see whether this works at all.

Cheers

Thomas

How are folks doing that have tried to hook up a PC to the AE2000? I have a Vista Media Center with an ati1300 video card and I feed the signal to the AE2000 projector via a dvi to hdmi cable. The projector will sync to 720p at 60 hz and 1080i at 30 hz, but will not do 1080p at 60hz (which is the main reason I upgraded from the ae700 to the ae2000). I've tried a couple of different cables and video cards so far and tried various tech support but no help here...
According to ATI's website the minimum video card model that officially supports FullHD-compatible 1080P is the 2600 HD-series cards. The 2400 HD series only supports up to 720P. It appears that some older series cards may run at 1080p rates but they may not fully support the offical 1080P FullHD signal. They also will not have the necessary decoding capabilty needed to accelerate h264, VC-1 ad AVC sources from Blu-ray and HD-DVD sources.

-eB

My new unit came in last week (November model) and it's a huge improvement over the original model. The folks at the shop did a quality check on it and several others before sending me this one (so they say.) Convergence is not 100% perfect but looks very good. I can now read text without getting a headache due to it being fuzzy before. Text looks good even at 1080p/60 with the PC set to 96 dpi (no "large fonts" mode necessary).

With regard to getting the 2400 hd to work you need to go to catalyst cpl as is mentioned above. Also, the PC needs to be able to recognize the monitor as well (if catalyst doesn't say "ae2000" as the display device then it won't work when I switch into 1080p/60). Strangely that seemed to work intermittently for a while but seems good now.

Haven't tried h264 at all on the PC, I'm watching high def broadcasts. When I get around to it I'll be bummed if the card doesn't support it (but it only cost me $35 so not a big loss.)

Thomas, if you still want me to post new bitmaps let me know and I'll put some up this weekend.

What if you have the 7600GT ?

no problem with the 7600GT. synced at 1080p 60 automatically. I did not do anything except plugging it in.

p24, I don't know. Haven't tried.