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Toshiba TDPMT700

317K views 3K replies 202 participants last post by  JeremyMc 
#1 ·
Anyone know anything about the Toshiba TDPMT700 front projector? It seems like it's coming in under the radar thanx to the popularity of the Panasonic AE700U. I for one held of my purchase of the 700 because of the buzz it's getting from CES held in early January.
 
#153 ·

Quote:
Originally posted by Jeffcom

I would need to have the PJ somewhere between 18"-24" from ceiling.

I think it's obvious that I subscribe to the Home Depot school of home theater accessories. You can also consider a steel pipe solution. Get two flanges and the length off threaded steel pipe you need. Get a board cut to 15" by 12" (they have pre-painted white
). Screw the pj to the board with 6mm bolts. Screw the one flange to board, one flange to the ceiling, and the pipe in between.


I've built this in reverse on the floor for a mount for my LCD monitor arm. My wife really loves my decorating.


BTW, here's a picture of what I'm talking about for a flange (at least I think that's what it's called).
 
#154 ·
Given how small this thing is, I wonder if one could find a low power scissor lift type of mount that would raise/lower it an appropriate amount (~2' max, I would think) when in use? I've seen similar for TVs, but those are way to expensive for such a light load as this.


I'm curious how much this will cost: http://www.displaydevices.com/produc...100/index.html


Mike - thanks for leading the pack on this!


Later,

Bill
 
#155 ·

Quote:
It's just too... WHITE.




From a practical standpoint you're absolutely right - black would be far better if you have control of the wall paint color. Sadly I don't. My wife puts up with a lot of crap, but black/dark walls is a no no. I have been slowly putting up dark velvet curtains and so far she hasn't complained - muhaha.


A lot of my reaction may be that I've been wanting an HD2+ pj for so long and finally have it in my hands. However I do think it really looks better in person then the pictures I've seen.


An easy way to darken it up would be this dark stick on film I've seen (not glue it just peels off). This stuff turns white to fairly black. You could cut all the holes you want in it for venting and the lens. My wife used it on the microwave control panel when she decided she wanted a black microwave instead of a white one. If you're interested I can find out what it's called and where she got it.
 
#156 ·
I know of this system, the PJ disappears into the ceiling, motorized/remote control, but would cost about as much as the PJ itself. Anyone heard of a DIY setup?


Thanks FlyingGimp for your suggestion. Will consider along with other options. Yours most certainly will work fine.
 
#157 ·
FlyingGimp: I would be interested in whatever that film is. I don't want a big white blister in my nice light-controlled room.
 
#158 ·

Quote:
Originally posted by FlyingGimp
I'm just using 24"x15"x5/8" pine planks from Home Depot. They do the cuts so I don't even have to worry about chopping off a hand or foot. I have it hung from the ceiling (bonus room, sloped ceiling) by chains now to adjust. Once I have the pj and screen aligned I'll screw the back of the shelf into the ceiling for added stability.

I've currently got a TV wall mount that I'm hanging a 4805 from, but it's too high for the MT700 and I don't want to hang the projector down from it. I was thinking of just moving this mount down, but I'm thinking that a nice shelf (and possibly a box) would look better. Maybe I'll just hang it from the shelf with some longer bolts and use them to adjust for height and angle like I currently do (see attachment).
 
#161 ·
Well I think I need a change of underwear. Maybe it would be easier to just start wearing brown boxers.


Hooked this up to my HTPC and all I got was a green screen. The pj detected the proper resolution (displayed in the lower right of the screen), but all I got was green. This is apparently a symptom that occurs when HDMI doesn't sync up. 1280x720, 800x600, everything did the same thing. I was fairly convinced I'd be stuck with a restocking fee.


As a last gasp I downloaded the latest drivers for my Nvidia vanilla 6800. They include expanded HDTV support. It includes HDTV standard 1280x720 (@59.94hz). This did the trick.


At first blush the screen looks 1:1 mapped. I need to track down a 1:1 mapping test screen to verify 100%.


Note there still is a problem here. With straight connection via 6800 DVI -> MT700 HDMI on boot up, I get no signal from the pj. When I then swap the DVI connection to my LCD monitor I also get no signal. To get this to work I've got to boot with my LCD monitor connected and then swap cables to the pj. This is no big deal for me because I only have one DVI output so I have to swap cables back and forth anyway.


Flipping to other resolutions (like 1280x768) with the pj connected causes the 6800 to lock up my PC hard.


As a side note the new Nvidia drivers also seem to have a lot of Powerstrip-like timing functionality.
 
#162 ·
I have almost 30 hours on my Mt700 already and decided to see what it would look like on a white screen as opposed to my grey goo screen.


I covered about 1/3rd the screen with a piece of unpainted white gatorboard. The screen itself is actually painted gatorboard.


What I saw was similar to comparisons of white vs grey with my Z2.


Even the Mt700, with its great black levels, still needs a grey screen in my estimation. Now sure I am giving up some color accuracy, and some midrange punch that I saw with the white screen.


But the foundation of the image, the blacks, simply looked so much more realistic with the goo screen. (note I have digital grey, not the light grey version)


On the white screen the blacks didn;'t seem to even have as much detail in some shots.


I think anyone with this projector owes it to themselves to see it on something like a goo screen.


I;m not sure if even something like the grey daylite would even give the same effect, since the goo has a grey base and a reflective coating.


I'd of course love to see the MT700 on a Firehawk or greyhawk.


Incidentally I rented a disk with a THX optomizer on it and went through the tests. Turns out I had the unit's black and white levels already set perfectly even though I did it by eye The default setting of standard and cinema 1 and 2 all had much to high a black level, and dynamic crushed the blacks way to much.
 
#163 ·
Emailists - Would you mind getting a sample of Da-Lite's HCMW and comparing it to your goo screen? You can email Da-Lite at info@da-lite.com - they'll send you 2'x2' sample if you ask for it.


I think I'm going to buy a 70"x70" Model B HCMW because it's dirt cheap and I have my hushbox to build. However I am very curious how the HCMW compares to a darker gray screen. I'm always looking for a new project, so maybe a goo screen will be in my future.


Last night I compared a HCMW sample to my white screen. Blacks improved a good bit, and the whites looked very similar. Since I have a mostly white room (well I admit it, a *very* light pink actually) I think the blacks will improve a bit more with the full screen being gray. I was pretty happy with the color accuracy as well. Since I'm shooting on such a small screen I think, for me, gray is the way to go.
 
#164 ·
More initial impressions:


I moved from a ~58" wide screen to a 70" wide screen. Viewing distance moved from ~1.9 screen width to ~1.5 screen width. At the moment I'm comparing the 4805 to the MT700 by memory. At some point I may hook up both to compare. It was odd not to have to slightly defocus (lifetime low-res pj owner: PLV-Z1 then 4805).


Overall the MT700 with a new bulb on low lamp looked brighter than my 4805 low lamp with 150 hours. Blacks seems commeasurably slightly worse (since an overall brighter image brightens the blacks as well). I did notice more temporal dithering noise, though this is mostly visible at closer than my viewing distance. Some of this is due to the larger screen size. I'll have to reduce the screen size down to get a better comparison here. I also noticed rainbows slightly more, though not to a bothersome extent. I'm sure the screen size (eyes moving around) and brightness increase factored in here.


I played a couple games of Xbox Burnout 3 and it looked good. Slightly more aliasing compared to the 4805, but within what I'd expect from moving to a larger screen. I still need to throw in some 720p games.


HD looked pretty good. I did have one issue using the HDTivo via component: A 1080i source converted to 720p by the Tivo caused the pj to flash up it's 720p signal detected message quite often during viewing. I still need to see whether this happens with native 720p and whether it occurs over hdmi from the Tivo. I also need to remove my component switcher from the video chain.


I think I still have some adjustments to do on the HTPC side. The Nvidia supplied 720p brightened my LCD up significantly - to the point where the desktop look white-side crushed. I'll try out powerstrip to see if that helps and also play around with timings. Color was still okay - just not perfect. Resolution wise DVDs looked quite good with ffdshow (Lanczos 2: 1280x720, denoise3d). I definitely noticed significantly less aliasing in my reference film: SpongeBob Squarepants (just kidding, that happened to be in the HTPC).


More to come, though with relatives in town, my tweaking will be limited for the next week.
 
#167 ·
Snuck away for a bit more tweaking.


I watched HBO HD Carnivale last night with the wife. When she would glance at her laptop I'd mess with settings. Then she'd look up at the OSD and give me a dirty look. Something wasn't quite right with the image. I just wasn't stunned at the PQ improvement I thought I would be getting by going to 720p.


One problem I had noticed in my couple minutes pre-wife was that the HDNet test pattern had the "10" black number clipped. I could pump the brightness up, turning the blacks to medium gray, and the "10" wouldn't show. I set it as a best guess.


Turns out this was the problem. Over component I can't see the blackest blacks. When I switched to HDMI I can see the "10" on the test pattern. This is also completely obvious in real pictures. I paused a daylight scene of Deadwood with a guy in a dark suit. Over Component (calibrated as best I can) I can't see the details in his suit, it's just a black mass - even if I pump the brightness up the detail is just not there. When I switched to HDMI and looked at the exact same frame (swicth image settings to previously HDMI calibrated), I can see buttons/folds in the cloth, etc.


I use Bluejeans component cables, which I believe are decent. I also have an Inday component switcher. I don't think either of these is the culprit since this problem did not show up on the 4805's component input.


In sum, at least with an HDTivo, HDMI appears to be far superior to component. The PQ looks very good on HBO HD. Now I think the only problem I'm slightly bothered with are MPEG compression artifacts. I see them move around only when I advance frames. I do see DLP green worms, but only when much closer than my normal viewing distance,


On the 720p from HDTivo displaying the 720p sync message, this seems to go away when you have the HDTivo set to 720p and then switch the pj input to component. The problem seems to occur when I switch to component and then change the Tivo to 720p. So far I've not seen this problem at all on HDMI.
 
#170 ·

Quote:
Originally posted by FlyingGimp
Turns out this was the problem. Over component I can't see the blackest blacks. When I switched to HDMI I can see the "10" on the test pattern.

I have noticed this as well. Due to the limited range of adjustment on brightness and contrast, a component feed above 480i crushes blacks if you can't adjust brightness and contrast on the video source. For example, my Panny RP-82 does not have piture controls on 480p, so there's no way to get the deepest blacks (below 20 IRE) with the MT700's adjustments. Switching to 480i solves the problem. However, if I feed the MT700 with a DVD player that has brightness and contrast adjustments available over 480p, I can get the deeper blacks. I'm noticing the same thing with HDTV over component as well. Using HDMI for the HD STB and 480i over component for the DVD player works great.


I'm going to check some other settings that I haven't gotten into yet to see if this can be addressed by the user.
 
#171 ·
MikeSRC - for me the black over 720p component is worse: It seems to be a hard clip. I have enough play on the MT700 to get the last HDNet test square from black to medium gray, but the slightly blacker "10" that's supposed to be inside never appears. I'm going to play with my HTPC DVI->Component adapter to try another source. Are you able to see blacker than black, full black ramp, etc. on your Bravo D2 via component?


shigaloo - I see no mention of supported formats in the manual. At some point later this week I'll give 1080p@24 and 720p@48/72 a shot. If they sync I'll try out the judder test sw. I'm hopeful that 720p@48 will at least sync.
 
#172 ·
BTW, for anyone who cares, the timings I am using are:


Horizontal

Front Porch: 112

Back Porch: 216

Sync polarity: +

Sync Widt: 40

Scan Rate: 44.96kHz

Active Pixels: 1280


Vertical

Front porch: 5

Back porch: 20

Sync polarity: +

Sync width: 5

Refresh rate: 59.943

Active pixels: 720



Pixel clock: 74.09MHz
 
#175 ·
Anyone have a rec on the best mount for this unit? With the zero offset I will need the center of the lens to be about 12"-14" from the ceiling.


This will be my first PJ and I was not sure which one to buy since there are so many to choose from. I have read that the mounts w/ ball joints are more trouble. Is there anything specific to look for when considering the various models?
 
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