Panasonic PT-AE3000 info and video here

[tryingtimes]

News and Video here.
I think the MRSP is just over the $3000 mark so hope this is the right forum. To be honest I think it will get talked about more on the other forum though due to street pricing.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=816193

[tryingtimes]

I'm pretty sure that the 2.35 feature will help some users and it's nice to see them adding features like this.
I'm not convinced about frame interpolation, but then they allow it to be turned off so it's fine. There seem to be quite a few who like Sony's MotionFlow with sports, so I'm sure it will get used.
Phil seemed impressed with the CR, and it does sound like they've managed to reduce light leakage which should also help ANSI CR. Glad they haven't just added a more aggressive iris.

Definitely interesting

[Sherardp]

the 2:35 will definitely come in handy for those wanting to try this type of setup without worrying about costs of a sled and lens type setup.

[Alan Gouger]

Amazing. This thing is feature packed including frame inteprolation similar to Sonys 120hz trick. With its high contrast and 235:1 zoomed motorized memory this has to be one of the best performance values of all time. Wow.

[tryingtimes]

It's funny, I've always thought of Panasonic as trailing their immediate competitors in the last couple of generations (Epson and Mitsubishi for example), but I imagine they sell well from b&m dealers.
However, this does look like a very well specified model.
We've already seen specs for the Mits HC7000 and although it looks great, it doesn't have these little extra features which can make all the difference to some users.

With Sony and JVC releasing lower priced units into this sector, it's going to get very competitive this year!

[nydennis]

I hope the dust blob issues are addressed in the new projector. I'm sure they have heard lots of complaints about it over the past year.

Lot of nice improvements to the projector and would certainly consider it.

[mc man]

Sounds like a nice f/p I can't wait to see it!!!

[conradjohnsonfan]

As far as picture fidelity in a 2.35:1 setup, this may offer better quality than using one of the cheap sub 1k anamorphic lens setups....

I am intrigued...

Originally Posted by tryingtimes

I'm pretty sure that the 2.35 feature will help some users and it's nice to see them adding features like this.
I'm not convinced about frame interpolation, but then they allow it to be turned off so it's fine. There seem to be quite a few who like Sony's MotionFlow with sports, so I'm sure it will get used.
Phil seemed impressed with the CR, and it does sound like they've managed to reduce light leakage which should also help ANSI CR. Glad they haven't just added a more aggressive iris.

Definitely interesting

[Tweakophyte]

The video said it was D7 panels. Isn't D7 the current tech?

Thanks,

[buddahead]

Wow'I really have to put this on my list.This is really a leap forward in user friendly fp for 2.35.If this sell in the 2k range it will be hard to beat.

[Jason Turk]

Looks great!

[darinp2]

Originally Posted by Alan Gouger

Amazing. This thing is feature packed including frame inteprolation similar to Sonys 120hz trick. With its high contrast and 235:1 zoomed motorized memory this has to be one of the best performance values of all time. Wow.

And after having an AE1000 for a month or so, the waveform monitor is like crack to me. I will probably have at least one projector with that feature from now on. I love being able to look at the levels things are encoded at. Like whether a background is raised because it is in the source, or for some other reason. Or whether a cab is supposed to be pure yellow (the yellow secondary), or has some blue encoded in it. Or whether Lightning in Cars is encoded as pure red, or has some of the other primaries too. I have found some things I personally find interesting, like that near the beginning of the second Alien vs Predator movie, one or more scenes with a very bright object on a starfield background actually has the bright object encoded way lower than 100 IRE even though it looks like something they would make as bright as possible. And the waveform monitor is useful for setting the black level if it seems to be wrong in the source (like one Blu-ray I have, unless the PS3 was messing up that day). I'm a nerd for this stuff, but I bet some others here would like that feature too if they tried it out for a little while.

And for Panasonic prices, I'll probably be upgrading to an AE3000. I hope they can do at least 30k:1 dynamic on/off CR with the filter in place in a movie mode. And that link mentioned 100Hz which would be useful for Europe. I hope they have 120Hz too. I also hope they have some gamma choices above 2.2, but I don't recall what the AE1000 has for those and it doesn't have that much on/off CR to support higher values anyway.

--Darin

[Kris Deering]

Looks like it is just 96hz from 24p sources, which isn't too bad.

Based on the video it looks like you can dial in the gamma so you may be able to tweak it higher than 2.2 on your own.

[tvted]

Originally Posted by Alan Gouger

Amazing. This thing is feature packed including frame inteprolation similar to Sonys 120hz trick. With its high contrast and 235:1 zoomed motorized memory this has to be one of the best performance values of all time. Wow.

As long as I can turn the damn thing off. (my biases are showing)

I do hope they retained the vertical stretch mode for those who have or want the extra hardware.

Does this sound like D8 with wiregrid polarizers to anyone?
Native please.

ted

[tvted]

Originally Posted by darinp2

And after having an AE1000 for a month or so, the waveform monitor is like crack to me.

Darin,
Can the waveform monitor be selected to be pre and post processing? Your comments imply as much.

Originally Posted by darinp2

I also hope they have some gamma choices above 2.2,

--Darin

Yes the higher On/Off if correct, should allow for it in subterranean setups.

ted

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by tvted

As long as I can turn the damn thing off. (my biases are showing)

I do hope they retained the vertical stretch mode for those who have or want the extra hardware.

Does this sound like D8 with wiregrid polarizers to anyone?
Native please.

ted

The engineer says you can turn off the frame rate conversion for anyone that doesn't want it.

[gandley]

Originally Posted by tvted

As long as I can turn the damn thing off. (my biases are showing)

I do hope they retained the vertical stretch mode for those who have or want the extra hardware.

Does this sound like D8 with wiregrid polarizers to anyone?
Native please.

ted

Its not D8 but tweaked D7

Lot of PJ for the money considering its at the cheaper end of quality 1080p. Like to see one in action.

[tvted]

Originally Posted by gandley

Its not D8 but tweaked D7

Lot of PJ for the money considering its at the cheaper end of quality 1080p. Like to see one in action.

From the linked AVForums thread:

The first and probably most important new feature is the Pure Contrast Plate technology (PCP) which eliminates any stray light from the optical path.

Any chance this refers to wiregrid polarizers?
I am hoping for much higer native as 60K:1 via more agressive DI sounds a little unwieldy to me plus it would obviate any heat related polarizer issues that LCD's have been in the past prone to.

ted

[olinda cat]

WOW! I wonder if it will use the whole panel for 2.35?.

[conradjohnsonfan]

Originally Posted by olinda cat

WOW! I wonder if it will use the whole panel for 2.35?.

No. It is just a motorized zoom/ focus with programable stops. A simple concept that IMO is an ingenious addition.

[Daniel Hutnicki]

i am going to try to get a demo model for my HT. I usually get one every year

[R Harkness]

[OT]

conradjohnsonfan "tubes still sound better"

Hello from another ConradJohnson fan. I've used CJ tube amps for many years and still use the Premier 12 monoblocks for my stereo listening. Now that I'm converting my listening room to a projection-based HT room, I'm thinking of buying another premier 12 to power my Left/Center/Right speakers with CJ tube glory!

[/OT]

[darinp2]

Originally Posted by tvted

Darin,
Can the waveform monitor be selected to be pre and post processing? Your comments imply as much.

With the AE1000 it is after some processing is included (like Brightness, Contrast, individual color offsets, ...) but before gamma or the dynamic iris functions are applied, from what I can tell. I can use test patterns to determine certain things and then compare to those. For instance, test patterns of all black or all white will show up at certain places on the waveform monitor for white or for other colors while just displaying one of the primaries. Then if I run a movie and it ends up at the same place, I know it is the same level as the test pattern. There are markings for 0%, 50%, and 100% and so I can eyeball approximately where each color is encoded. If I wanted to get more accurate there I could use test patterns with known levels other than 0% and 100% (video 16 and video 235).

As an example, with one IMAX Blu-ray disc (Seamonsters) I found that the picture never contained anything below about 15 IRE (or 15%stim). It looked like it was encoded with that as the black level. So, I just adjusted the Brightness until the backgrounds which should have been black or very close to it lined up with 0% on the waveform monitor. Another time a disc was showing the black level way below 0% on the monitor (and the images were very dark). Somehow (I still don't know how) the PS3 must have been putting out PC levels instead of video levels. I thought that the disc was encoded wrong (especially since The Fifth Element showed the levels I expected) and just adjusted the Brightness in the AE1000 to compensate for that with this one disc and didn't change anything in the PS3. But the next day when I started everything again and played the same disc the levels coming into the projector were back to the normal video I expected, so I put the Brightness back to where I normally have it for video (at 0). I haven't noticed any other discs where I seemed to get PC levels from the PS3, but if I thought something seemed wrong I would bring up the waveform monitor and check.

--Darin

[tvted]

Thanks for the overview Darin.

I stare at waveform monitors much of the day and have often wondered what one attacted to a pj might tell me.

I've no idea how sophisticated the implementation is - does it do Vector as well, i.e. Colour Phase relationships? Can it do line select i.e. view the waveform on a line by line basis rather than field/frame?

It would be nice if pjs provided an accessible "scope" port. Scopes with this sort of bandwidth are not overly expensive - for the inveterate gearhead who wants just that little more.

ted

My apologies for the O/T folks - it might be a reason for a bozo like me to look at LCDs again - even if I have to clean the optical path once in a while.

[tvted]

Originally Posted by gandley

Its not D8 but tweaked D7

So, is Epson hoarding the D8's for themselves?

Any comparison out there for D7 vs D8? I can't find much of worth from the usual sources.

ted

[CreativeHT]

I agree the zoom feature for the 2.35 format is a good idea for the money, but won't the fact that it is only using a percentage of the native pixels to fill the entire screen degrade the picture. I can do this on my 50" plasma, but it chops off the sides and blows up the pixels. Maybe this will not be noticeable, but it feels like it would impact picture quality.

Just my thoughts

[kriktsemaj99]

Originally Posted by CreativeHT

I agree the zoom feature for the 2.35 format is a good idea for the money, but won't the fact that it is only using a percentage of the native pixels to fill the entire screen degrade the picture. I can do this on my 50" plasma, but it chops off the sides and blows up the pixels. Maybe this will not be noticeable, but it feels like it would impact picture quality.

It's an optical zoom that doesn't degrade the image, and the 2.35 picture is wider. Not the same as a digital zoom on your fixed size TV. Lots of people already have constant height setups using zooming, but they have to manually adjust the zoom and lens shift (and sometimes focus) when switching between aspect ratios. Having everything motorized with memories will be a huge advantage in such a setup.

It's a pity that in the video the screen was 16:9, so when they demoed the zoom to 2.35:1 the sides were cut off. Obviously if they had used a wider 2.35:1 screen the sides wouldn't have been cut off, and the effect would have been more impressive.

[conradjohnsonfan]

Originally Posted by CreativeHT

I agree the zoom feature for the 2.35 format is a good idea for the money, but won't the fact that it is only using a percentage of the native pixels to fill the entire screen degrade the picture. I can do this on my 50" plasma, but it chops off the sides and blows up the pixels. Maybe this will not be noticeable, but it feels like it would impact picture quality.

Just my thoughts

Actually, every native pixel of the 2.35:1 image on a disc will be used. The rest are lost in black bars otherwise, anyway. It wil be mapped to pixel perfection, and in that regard can look better for scope that those that scale and use and anamorphic lens.

The downside is you loose some brightness both from the zoom, and the fact that the whole panel is not used as it would be with an anamorphic lens.

It also has effect on viewing distance/ visual acuity, meaning pixels will be potentially more visible, and the eye will resolve more detail, possibly making the perceived image quality a little lower. But if you plan accordingly your screen size/ seating distance, this should not be an issue.

As someone who believes in minimal or no digital scaling, and prefers the look of a pixel-perfect mapped image, I am inclined to prefer this solution over an anamorphic lens setup. I'll take the tradeoffs and run.

So, after all that being said, no, it is nothing like the digital zoom on your plasma.

[conradjohnsonfan]

Originally Posted by R Harkness

[OT]

conradjohnsonfan "tubes still sound better"

Hello from another ConradJohnson fan. I've used CJ tube amps for many years and still use the Premier 12 monoblocks for my stereo listening. Now that I'm converting my listening room to a projection-based HT room, I'm thinking of buying another premier 12 to power my Left/Center/Right speakers with CJ tube glory!

[/OT]

Yeah, I love my CJ gear... just a lowly PV-15 preamp and an MV60SE stereo amp, here running Von Schweikert VR-4 jrs. Not extravagant, but still beautiful sound to me ears....

[R Harkness]

Heh...I used to own the VR-4s powered by a CJ MV55 amp. Fabulous sound.

Ok, enough of this tube love-fest derail...:-)