Official Planar PD8150 Owners Thread - Page 2

Hello,

I own a Planar 8150, and in my setup I need to use overscan, in the crop mode, but 3% on each side is by far too much. Do you know if there is any way to change the crop overscan amount?

Thanks!
Fab

If you guys are interested: Here is my comparison of the planar with its biggest competitors currently in this price-range...to make it short: It is an impressive machine.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1109060

One question to the owners: Wit hthe unit I had on hand, wI experienced to my surprise: When I enabled "DynamicBlack", the whole picture became much dimmer even when the picture was of mixed content. From the Sonys I have a very different experience, there you can hardly tell if the dynamic iris is active or not...you recognize only in very dark scenes that it improves the blacks, that is all.

So...have you recognized the same thing ? Is there a way to cutsomize the agressiveness of the Iris in the PLanar ?

I use dynamic black and do not experience this problem. I even use the projector in low lamp mode. Perhaps you have a setting in combination with dynamic black that's causing this overly dark effect. Have you tried other settings with dynamic black with the same results?

Not a whole lot of action going on here. Either everyone is extremely satisfied or there are not very many owners of the 8150.

Thanks to smithfarmer I just discovered this thread. I've had the PD8150 since about the middle of May and have been part of the more recent activity going on in the few other 8150 threads. A lot of what has been discussed there would be useful to 8150 owners - maybe we'll start to see more posting here if we revive this thread.

The 8150 was my 1st 1080P - upgraded from a 720P. I did see the RS20 and thought it had a fine image, but I've been a DLP fan at heart.

I remember reading about the Planar when they 1st came out. Then in February, Kris Deering re-visited (and very favorably) his evaluation here. Mark , Darin, Tom, and many more you know contributed and the Planar began to sound really nice. So, once again, sight unseen, I bought it.

I'm certainly happy I did. Sure the Marantz might be sharper, the JVC has better blacks... but this is a great picture. I have it on so much I'll need a new bulb by Christmas.

I haven't seen that many 8150 owners posting on AVS, maybe we are a small lot or just to busy watching. Wouldn't mind seeing that change.

Mike

No complaints here. Works great. Have it setup with an anamorphic lens and have never had a any problems. There's been a couple firmware updates, but I've yet to implement them. Every time I have someone new come over, they're always blown away by the picture and think I've purchased a 25K+ projector.

The guys at Planar did a great job with the 8150. Its a solid performer and they balanced
the use of the dynamic iris to the point its very hard to detect any negativity when using it yet it yields worthwhile results. I never turn it off on our Demo system.

Hi guys!

I have owned a Planar 8150 for about 2 months now and have been silent so far. The reason is that I always find myself excited when I get a new projector and I am very impressed by the "new and improved" look of it over my last projector. It is only after extended viewing that I get over the newness and start to really view the PQ critically and see its faults. This time I decided to wait until I had logged quite a bit (about 50 hours) of viewing time before posting my thoughts.

This thing rocks!

Unlike most of my previous projectors, I am growing to enjoy the picture quality more each time that I watch it. I was initially VERY impressed, and the more material I view on it, the more I appreciate its qualities. The picture is bright, punchy, incredibly sharp, has no added video noise or grain, has great black level and contrast (both on/off and ANSI), and has beautiful, ACCURATE color right out of the box.

I took some measurements when I first set it up and it measured the grayscale within dE of 5 across the board, and more often within dE of 2 or 3. Since I would assume that Planar used better measuring equipment than I own, I thought it best to leave it alone and not touch it at all. My measuring tools could very well account for the small errors I measured. Decoding was almost spot on and primary and secondary coordinates very very close as well. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Visual observation confirmed what my equipment told me. The color rendition is just fantastic - bright, punchy colors that are EXTREMELY ACCURATE. I am used to viewing accurate displays, so I am pretty confident of spotting inaccuracies if I see them, and this display is a rock solid performer. I am especially sensitive to color inaccuracies in the low IREs, and the 8150 looks better to me than any of the ones I have calibrated myself. Dark scenes remain color perfect!

The most impressive aspect of this unit is the crystal clarity and rock solid image that it delivers. When I view high quality Blu-ray discs, on most any projector I can see what appears to me to be compression artifacts (artificial graininess and/or slightly moving pixels on solid colors). While they are still there on the 8150, they are not exacerbated like they are on other displays. That is, everything that is on the film is still there, but the image appears sharper (with no artificial sharpness or ringing added), yet is rock solid (for lack of a better term), and the compression artifacts are not "in my face" like with other projectors. The resulting image is extremely easy and enjoyable to watch without becoming fatiguing, even though I am viewing a somewhat overly bright image (~20 ftLs) which would tend to make such artifacts more apparent. I am viewing 143" diagonal 2.35:1 High Power screen at a viewing distance of about 1.3X of the screen width.

I really like having the options of both 2.2 and 2.5 gamma available. I find that I use both of them pretty much equally, though I also own a Crystalio 2, so in the future I will play around with the many gamma choices available through it. The 8501 also allows the user to manually select the color space for HDMI, RGB, and component connections to either REC 709, REC 601, RGB-PC, or RGB-Video matrices. I haven't really experimented very much with those options yet, but it is in my list of fun things to do...

The black level, though not as good as the RS-20, is hands down the best I have seen from a DLP at this level of brightness. I can not detect any artifacts from the dynamic iris, but I am not particularly sensitive to them in the first place. Black level is the one area where I feel that the 8150 significantly beats my previous Sim2 HT-380. They were similarly bright, but the black level on the 8150 is very noticeably lower.

Like I said, the more I watch this projector, the more impressed I am with it. I have owned about a half dozen DLPs in the past, most of which I have been very happy with, but this one simply kicks butt. Is it better than the RS-20? That is for the individual to decide, but if you want an EXTREMELY accurate display *out of the box*, then this is the one to own. The RS-20 would need professional calibration, but it is brighter (if you need the extra brightness) and has a better black level, but the 8150 has the cleanest (in terms of adding things that are not present in the original transfer) image I have seen from a display to date.

How is the rainbow effect on the Planar? Better/worse than other comparably priced DLPs?

Bob,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

"I really like having the options of both 2.2 and 2.5 gamma available. "

Do you ever wish for a smaller jump in between? Can it be adjusted?

Can you say how the black level and brightness compare w/an RS1?

I see less rainbows with the 8150 than any other DLP I have seen to date. For me, they are so few, far between, and slight that I consider them to be non existent. As you noticed, I forgot to even mention them in my first post...

Yes...I would like to see 2.3 and 2.4 as well, as I feel that they would have their uses depending on the source material. My Crystalio is capable of just about anything gamma-wise, so I will do some experimenting in the near future.

Just measuring on/off quickly and without much caution for contamination from stray light (though my theater is pretty darned good.... ), I got ~14k:1, which bested my old RS-1, as it only measured ~9.5k:1. I guess it the comparison to an RS-1 would depend on how your individual unit measures.

As far as lumens go, I am getting about 400 lumens on low and 589 on high. My RS-1 measured 424 on low, but I don't know the high figure. Again, the comparison will depend on how your actual RS-1 measures.

Sounds like it would best my RS1, which I think is toward the low end.

But I was really wondering about subjective impression.

I'm guessing the blacls correspond with the numbers pretty well, but how about the brightness compression that seems like has to accompany the black level benefit.

For example, do stars and city lights at night seem dimmer than on the JVC's?

To be honest, I can't really tell that there is a DI in use. To me it appears as if the on/off is native, though I know that it is being accomplished by use of a DI. Star fields look to be just how I remembered them on my RS-1 (though that memory is pretty old now). I have recently had the opportunity to compare the 8150 to a Sony VPL VW-50 and there is no contest. The 8150 has better black level, is considerably brighter, and stars on a black background look MUCH better. I don't know how Planar does it, but you really need to see it to believe it.

As far as comparisons to the RS series, I would need to have them side by side to give you a reliable answer. Maybe Darin could give you better info, as he had an 8150 side by side with an RS-20 for quite some time.

If anyone is interested, I posted a mini-review on the 8150 on a blog that I started here: www.videovantage.com

I agree with Bob's comments. I found the dynamic black implementation to be the most artifact free dynamic technology that I've seen so far. The iris movements are almost impossible to spot and it's not very aggressive so that it doesn't suffer from BC and changing white levels like most other implementations. The color wheel is also exceptional.

I also did a lot of comparisons to it with an RS20. The Planar is noticeably sharper and the impression that I get is not so much because of the lens but because of the larger DMD. I have another post that I'm working on that talks about this in more detail.

The RS20 has better blacks and more intra-image contrast at the bottom in dark scenes, but the situation is reversed in brighter scenes because of the higher ANSI contrast on the 8150. For both Darin and I, it was a tough decision on which machine we liked better, although I eventually decided on the RS20 because of it's unrivaled dark scene performance. If the 8150 had a more aggressive DB setting that lowered the black level more in some scenes I may have ended up preferring the 8150. Although a more agressive DB mode would also have more noticeable artifacts so it's hard to say.

All in all though, I can see how someone may prefer the 8150 over the RS20. Each has strengths where the other has weaknesses so it really comes down to how a person weighs the individual picture qualities like sharpness over other qualities such as black levels.

I'd love to see the Planar, out of curiosity. I wonder if it's a single chipper I could actually live with. But I don't think it is available in Toronto.

BTW, I didn't see any description of the Planar's lens mechanism in Mark's mini-review - i.e. whether it was manual or automated, zoom ratio etc. So I looked up another review on projectorreviews and I see it is a manual zoom. That's too bad. I'd hope for
automated lens features at that price point.

Also, one thing Art mentioned in his review is that the Planar has some lens shift available whereas most DLP's don't. I'm quite baffled by this. How is it most DLPs don't offer lens shift? Why would that be? Unless I'm missing something (which I probably am) it would seem to me to be crucial to have lens shift, especially given most projectors are going to be ceiling mounted, higher than the center of the screen.

What gives?

I'm not an optical engineer, but the folks at Optoma told me that the larger DMD impacts the range of both the throw and lens shift which is why the Optoma HD8200 with the smaller DC3 has more lens shift than most DLPs. Unfortunately I didn't have an opportunity to play around with the lens shift on the 8150.

A projector can have a fixed offset that requires that it be ceiling mounted at a certain place (not counting tilting) or that it be flipped the other way and put below the screen. The InFocus IN83 is an example of this. We would say that is a projector without lens shift since the user can't change the offset.

--Darin

Excellent mini review, Mark! I agree with you completely though I did not get the chance to do a true side by side with an RS-20, something I would have liked to do. On my wish list of changes/improvements would be a setting with a more aggressive use of the DI (like you mentioned), as I am one of those willing to tolerate a few minor artifacts, and the addition of a couple of more gamma curves between 2.2 and 2.5. I never got to see a color perfect RS-20, so I would love to see how the 8150 compares with it when the RS-20 is at its best.

Thanks Bob. The RS20 vs 8150 is probably the most interesting comparison among the current crop of projectors because both are so different yet both excel in their own areas. I'd also like to see an RS20 with near perfect convergence compared with the 8150, but I think it may be difficult to find

Also thanks Darin for letting me loan your baby for a few weeks

Thanks, Bob and Mark.

Whatever the trick is that they used to have DI CR look like native, namely better blacks w/o apparent loss of brightness in the same scene, must be the same one the Lumis uses.

I stopped following that awhile back; did anyone ever figure that out?

you can see it on display at audio one in concord. its located on steeles ave. just east of 400. i will be going there very soon for a demo.

I have explained mant times over and over and over, that lens shift, moving the chip image from the center of the lens, all other things being equal will increase CA because of entering the curvature area. The Planar designer, Bob, posted in the early threads that in order to provide lens shift, a bigger in diameter much more expensive lens was required than the Infocus he designed in the past,. The big boy $7K lenses have very large diameters and have a much much bigger sweet spot. Even then, one should not use more than 5 or so clicks of lens shift on ones of thoses. if more is used there will be some CA. Bob recommend that although it was available, one should not use the horizontal shift if one was using vertical shift. Shift is not a good thing to use EVER if you can avoid using it through livable installation options. Bob did note, that if using either of the lens shifts, a slight increase in contrast might occur because the light path would be closer in one direction to the black inside surface lens barrel.

I know Audio One! Thanks very much Anthony!

I'm curious to see the Planar, but would also like to see if there are any options out there for me, beyond the RS20 (for getting top video performance within my budget). I own the RS20 but haven't finished my theater yet.

The only yet-to-be-seen issue for me is whether I'll have issues with motion blur like a few others. I hope not, as beyond that I know I'd be extremely happy with the RS2 for quite a while. But...it would be nice to know there are some "just in case" projectors out there as options.

I had a chance to compare a nicely tuned Planar to my RS2 Pioneer clone at Darin's house recently. My previous machine was a highly modified Benq W10k and I've owned mostly DLP in my life. I found the Planar exceptional, I expected the black level to be better on my RS2 but that was not the case. Both absolute floor and the detail from Planar was on par or exceeded the Pioneer. Mind you it would be splitting hairs. Overall sharpness was very good although not at the level of my Benq where I could resolve DLP dimple easily. The brightness was comparable and on the split screen I was surprised how well the two matched. In mixed scenes Planar pulled away with the typical 3D effect of the DLP. I would say, however that the main difference from my Benq was the low level performance. I think it's the current state of the art for DLP technology. I did not have a chance to look at motion handling in great detail, but it looked on par with my Benq, which I thought was the best of the crop of all pj's I've owned. The rainbow effect was non existent and I am/used to be very sensitive to the issue. All in all an amazing machine that looks like a retro vacuum cleaner.

If the price was no object I would own it, given the value proposition of some of the competitors, it remains on the wish list. Just my 2 cents

The designer of the 9150 is top notch. I suspect they let him do what was needed to make a great machine and spend the time to get the DI right then they priced it after all the parts were added up rather than telling him to build it to a price point. Planar and Runco which it owns build good stuff, always have and always will.

I haven't had an opportunity to check out the Lumis so I can't say what they are doing, but I'm going to post some measurements on the Planar soon. The Planar is able to maintain brightness in scenes by using a less aggressive algorithm. In other words some DI's work by preserving black levels as a first priority and they do this by sacrificing bright whites in the scenes. The Planar on the other hand seems to be less aggressive and maintains whites as a first priority even if it means having to sacrifice black levels. With dark scenes that don't contain bright content both approaches will yield similar results. The Planar also has a fast iris and doesn't seem to "hunt" in scenes so iris changes are hard to spot.

"The Planar on the other hand seems to be less aggressive and maintains whites as a first priority even if it means having to sacrifice black levels."

The mystery is that it doesn't look like it is.

I wonder what the IRE of stars is. I've always assumed near max, but if appreciably dimmer then I guess that leaves the algorithm enough to work with.