Benq w6000 - Page 64

I had a unit last weekend and I measured the lag from my LCD monitor to the DLP as 31ms. This is a bit better than my Optoma HD70 which measured 30-50ms and I've been using for gaming for 4 years.

Anyhow I played a bit of MW3 online (first time playing deathmatch since MW2) and taking into account a bit of network lag and my rusty skills everything felt about right.

So I got my replacement W6000 yesterday (first one had a broken auto-iris.. it would step all the way down to complete black regardless of a scene).

This one's autoiris seems to be working okay. But here's a few concerns I have with this unit in order of priority.

First off.. I did a rough greyscale (with DB/Iris off of course) with my eye-one and ColorHFCR. 80 and 30 IRE are very good and just about anything in between. Below 30 there's still a bit too much blue, but it's a 0 hr pj and I'll have to calibrate in 100 hrs, so I'm not too concerned there for purposes of evaluating whether to keep and mount this thing.

Settings are Gamma 2.2, Brilliant Color off, Econo Lamp, User1 w/Cinema and then calibrated color, brightness and contrast. Fully light controlled room (pitch black)

1a) Iris issues - When the iris steps down in dark scenes (usually a title card or fade to black) if there's a bit of white text on the screen, it looks a little red. You can also see the black kinda turn greenish at one point too (but that's with no picture data). When the scene brightens up, you don't see that anymore.

But these are the areas in the range with DB on that are the most noticeable. When the iris is working in the brighter scenes, the iris action is barely noticeable and there's certainly no color shift.

1b) Now in addition to this.. take for example the PS3, when you push the button to quit watching a blu-ray the screen is mostly black with a couple of horizontal white lines and some white text.. the options "Yes" and "No", pulse. Now whenever this screen is up, this problem occurs.. the text has a faint red tinge to it, but even more peculiar is the text ends up looking umm.. blob-y. However, if I hit the menu button, opening the iris up, that text then looks nice and sharp and the burst pulsing of the options looks as it's supposed to.

What's the deal here?

2) Sharpness - The first PJ (Sept 2011 mfc date, v1.02FW) I think was sharper. I could see massive moire on my AT screen with that PJ. A new screen was pretty much mandatory with that. However this replacement unit (July 2011 mfc date, v1.01FW) doesn't seem as sharp. Movies still look great (I think if I had them side by side, I wouldn't notice a difference watching a movie) but even the menu text doesn't seem (literally) razor sharp. Did I read somewhere the optics may have been changed in newer units. How much should I really care about this?

3) Light Output - So first lets talk about the actual image data vs the actual projected light. There's a bit of a line (for arguments sake, say 20pixels) on either side of the picture data. On my CIH screen, it's very easy to see (I haven't put my A-Lens in front of the unit yet) against the lightless areas of my screen. With black on the screen, I turn the brightness down so that the picture area matches this thin piece of light on either side of the image. Turns out, of course, this is the right brightness setting when you use plume or the AVSHD disc with the flashing bars).

Now on my original unit, when the iris stepped down, that area could get to a point where you could not see the lightbar brighter than the lightless areas on the screen. This is what I expected the iris would do. But of course with the iris broken there, it was outputting almost no light to the point where I could look into the lens (and had to) to see menu options (upside down and backwards) when this happened.

I never calibrated the first unit as it was defective, but on this one I took the contrast down to about 18ftL (with 100IRE window) in my calibration.

But still on this unit, the iris never steps down to a point where you can't see that light on a black scene (or 0 IRE). You can tell the iris is stepping down (subtly), but nothing substantial is happening with that light on the screen. 0 IRE is measuring about 0.1ftL

So call me a bit confused here. Is this right?

Is there no way to eliminate grey-blacks?

My existing PJ, Optoma HD70 is 720p, no iris and right now only putting out about 9ftL at 100IRE in eco mode. Black there is pretty much as black as you can get as there's no contrast between the picture area blacks and the unlit portion of the screen.

Is this the issue with a bright pj, is having to deal with bright blacks? I mean I get that if I mask the sides or I'm watching a 2.4:1 movie through the A-Lens the contrast is more or less gone (save for my velvet frame on the screen). But I also kind of expect the iris in a dark scene with a bit of text to be closer to the unlit screen black.

4) The Firmware Version - 1st one was 1.02, this one is 1.01. Anyone know the differences between them? The Auto Iris also seems much more quiet on this unit but then again the iris was not working properly on the first unit. This unit the changes are rarely noticable.

5) Picture grain - This may be a result of my AT screen texture exacerbating the new sharpness of the image but I am finding movies to appear much more grainy that I would expect. Of course, throw something like Toy Story 3 on and there's no grain... is it simply that these units with 10bit color vs my 8bit on the HD70 and the sharpness and better optics is just showing the source film grain that much more? I did try Live Free or Die Hard which is a Tier 0 rated picture and it certainly is much better than something like Kill Bill Vol 1 which is Tier 1. But is this characteristic of just a newer unit with all around better specifications? Changing the sharpness level in the unit doesn't seem to make much of a difference on the grain.

Anyhow I could see me keeping this but the 1st item is really bothering me.

Thanks for any help you can provide on any of my concerns.

When projecting to a grey screen with the W6000 (or any projector for that matter), from an off angle with the projector (left of the screen completely by a couple inches), is a grey screen an ok choice? It's probably going to be shooting from an angle of about 25 degrees. Im of course going to use the max lens shift. I'm concerned the grey screen won't reflect enough light back to the viewing area, as grey screens are supposed to reject ambient light from the sides (where my projector is shooting from essentially). Should I consider a white screen instead?

Does anyone have any info on Firmware 1.02 and what it changes or fixes? The W6000 I just received from Benq has 1.01 on it. Picture looks beautiful but I'm a little unhappy that it only has 1.01 on it.

Is the firmware user upgradeable via USB?

Edit: talked to Benq and they said that 1.02 just updated the load screen graphics. Does anyone know if that is correct? I guess it could make sense since the W6000 has been out for a while.

I am pretty sure I read earlier in this thread that 1.02 is a minimal firmware update and that no one with 1.01 should feel the need to update.

Anyone know the degree of the 6000's Horizontal lens shift? THX

Pretty generous.
Without having it in front of me, I think it's about half picture-width each way, maybe a bit less.

Makes sense, but also makes you wonder why they'd bother.
I would have thought some operational tweaks from the W7000 might have been carried across (not 3D, alas)

Tweaks to the DI would be MOST welcome!!
I still haven't figured out how to dial in the settings I mentioned HERE, then globally wind down the iris.... and make the settings stick!

What color paint is that? Looks great

It's a Ralph Lauren color. It's kind of an rich orange color. I think we got the paint at Home Depot.

I thought I would wait for w7000, but while waiting I got curious and decided to order w6000 from Amazon.com. When UPS delivered the projector, I thought I would see what this was like and re-pack the projector back to Amazon.com. But whoa! This projector is really something! After several days and 24 hours on the lamp, I decided to keep w6000.
No serious tweaking so far. Econo-mode, gamma 2.4, and trying Cinema as well as Standard. Brightness definitely great; and even with lamp dimming evenually, this should be bright. One great suprise was the remote, which seemed far better than I had expected.
Just checked Amazon.com. They still have 17 units at an excellent price.

aaannnnd my second one is going back.

I think I'm going to try something else. I mean the same thing happened with my Optoma (took 2 returns until I got a good one) and it's been good for over 4 years but this is getting ridiculous.

Quick question. My W6000 is connected via HDMI from my AVR. Film Mode is not available as a selection. Searched the manual, but no luck. Why isn't Film Mode available? Thanks

Hold the presses. So I spoke to Benq yesterday and the support guy agreed it was broken and shouldn't be doing this. So I decided I was going to pack it up by Monday and send it back.

But I wasn't wholly convinced this wasn't some sort of fixable problem. I started doing some searches and saw some comments on other projectors causing a temperature shift with the iris. Which that part doesn't bother me quite as much as the blotchy look I"m seeing.

So this morning I was trying to get some photos and video to post on AVS and I was successful, but looking at the menu I noticed the default settings were on (I plugged everything into a different HDMI input this time). So I moved it back over to HDMI 2 to get my original settings. Suddenly, it wasn't happening. But I KNOW I saw it the past couple days. Anyhow this was 1080p60Hz as it was a BD menu I was flipping past to get to the PS3 Close BD screen. So I threw in another disc, let it select 24p, paused it, pushed the PS3 remote button to close and bam.. there it was again.

But.. it wasn't there a second ago at 60p. What's going on?

So then I start thinking that maybe this is a contrast issue as the blotchyness is almost like a crushed white. So I turn down the contrast a few notches and it's gone. I turn it back up.. it's back. Turns out 1 notch down from how I calibrated it and it's "perfect". Anything above that number (in my case 43 under Cinema mode, 30-80IRE near perfectly calibrated) and it's a mess. But at 42.. the white pulsing is clean, I can still read "Yes" when it blooms it's highest. Back to 43 and it's just a blob at full bloom.

Anyhow I'll have to throw in a full movie later to see if I notice the color shift as much anymore or maybe try to adjust the lower IRE greyscale to get it closer (which I wasn't going to bother doing until I had 50-100 hours on the bulb).

So... I may be keeping this after all.

I'll throw up the pictures regardless so you can see the insane difference 1 notch on contrast when the IRIS is stepped down a bit can have on the image.

The projectorcentral calculator says this projector is on the bright side for a 120" screen in a light-controlled room. Does the calculator assume the econo mode?

Would you owners recommend this at the C$1500 price point? I will sit 10 feet away from the screen and haven't exactly decided on the screen yet. Likely 120" Elunevision AT electric.

I'm shooting on a 120" screen, PJ mounted at 15' and sitting about 10' away. PJ in econo mode and it's not overly bright to me. Screen gain (Visual Apex) is 1.1 I believe.

Still looking for someone to chime in on why Film Mode is grayed out for me. Only for component input maybe?

Thanks legierk! Guess I'll pull the trigger then! Seems like a great deal!

I have been really enjoying my projector. Da-lite and carada sent me some screen samples. So far I am liking the high contrast cinemavision from da-lite, the blacks are a bit better and its still really bright.

Because the W6000 is so bright it really gives the effect that I have a giant plasma tv on my wall. Anyone that comes over is blown away by how sharp and bright it is. I have a friend who saw rainbows the second night I had it up and now he claims he barley sees them at all unless he moves his eyes back and forth a lot. Maybe the bulb settling down helped that?

I have put over 100 hours on it and most of that is gaming. I am not sure what the input lag is, so far I notice none. My KD ration in MW3 is actually higher than black ops and MW2, I think its because I can see everything so much better haha.

I just watched Avatar for the first time, not the best movie imo but omg it looks phenomenal. The dark knight movies are also amazing, this projector may not have the best blacks out there, but I think it does a fantastic job. I am curious if the W7000 will have better blacks than this unit.

So far I am extremely happy with this unit

The web page says:
Vertical: +/- 120% / Horizontal: +/-40%

Does that mean it can be ceiling-mounted up to 20% above the top edge of the screen?

I just pulled the trigger, so I hope that was right. If not, well, I'll make it work.

Also looks like I was able to address my issue via changing the Min/Max on the DI down to 65 (I haven't tried to pinpoint what setting is optimal).

I still find it strange the unit does this at all. I wouldn't expect it to be acceptable, but it seems several others here have seen it at one time or another so I guess this is the new trade off (before it was lumens and shadow detail on the HD70, now on this it looks to be lumens (hah!) and crushed whites). I'm still only on about page 35 or so of this thread, but if at the end there's no photos, I'll post some.

Taylor, not sure if you've read my posts yet, but the settings I posted here should get you a big reduction in Iris artifacts.

The colour temp shifting is always a byproduct of DynamicBlack, but with these settings, it's rarely noticeable (at least for me).
(My old Benq W5000 wasn't adjustable in this way, and was frequently annoying with its shifts.)

Mind you, I'd still like to know if anyone has successfully wound the Aperture Position down for lower global picture level & deeper blacks - and got the settings to stick???

Anyone?

I ordered from newegg.ca yesterday when I saw it at C$1499 and got the email that it had shipped (from NJ) this morning. I checked the web site just after and they were sold out! Can't wait to get it (and find out if I see rainbows LOL!)

Just purchased the W6000. I had the two (2) W1200 PJs for a few weeks, but sent them back (defective).

The W1200 ISF password was, using the remote arrow buttons, up down up down left right.

Does the W6000 use the same pattern?

-T

EDIT: I had buyer's remorse, and cancelled. Went with a 3D.

Yes.

Okay so I've finally read through this behemoth thread.

It still leaves some questions about DI and it's expected behavior.

If I go in the service menu, turn off DB and adjust the Aperture Position it can go dark in the single digits and around 86.

Otherwise it seems that it's very bright at the lower values and then dims the higher up you go.

My settings are currently 12 and 66.

I'm not noticing a lot of iris movement.

I noticed that Coolme did a fairly extensive ISF calibration on his (I just looked at the ISF menu for the first time last night) but also noticed he claimed he didn't think the iris was actually adjusting to content anymore.

I guess what I'm wondering is, if we're lowering the Max value to eliminate the white-crush problems, we're also eliminating the ability for the DB (iris) function to blackout or near black out. Would that not be the most noticeable iris action we're eliminating? Unfortunately with DB on, you can't check the Aperture position in various scenes without popping the menu on the screen which opens the iris up usually around 53.

I suppose I could try 10% or 25% greyscale windows and look for changes there.

Anyone know how/what the DB Calibration or Reset options do?

From what I've seen, I think that the number represent the position the iris was before the menu was opened. Because I've seen that this value will change depending on the image projected, but will not go higher or lower than the min and max position. I really think that we should just worry about the max and min of the aperture position and not the actual position (unless you turned of DI and then, I would not know how to manually set up the aperture position).

I don't know if that is absolutely right but that's the best I can come right now.

hello guys, fyi amazon has it for 120 dollar less then everybody else.

I did a quick HCFR/Spyder 2/AVCHD calibration last night in the ISF menu. I have a few questions:

1) Should I be at 0 IRE or 7.5 IRE?
2) Turn Dynamic Black off during calibration, right?
3) Never have seen a DI (Dynamic Iris) control in any menu yet. Where is it?
4) Gamma 2.4 is a little dark for me. Will try 2.2 and see how that looks.
5) Why do many posts here say "Low" lamp mode? Mine has Normal (I think that's what it's called) and Economy. Did they change the wording with a firmware update?
6) I have no idea how to use the CCA controls in the ISF menu, but I played with them. At first I thought they weren't doing anything, then I really screwed up Cyan....I fixed it, but still not sure how. I don't think the changes stick until you click "Apply"...but not completely sure. Anybody?
7) Since I really don't know what I'm doing in the ISF menu (Although I got the gray scale almost spot on using the RGB gains and offsets), I may go back to User mode and go from there. (Because I understand the terminology better in the Uer modes)
8) I actually screwed up and did all my testing/adjusting last night using 601 color space in HCFR instead of 709. Will redo tonight using the correct color space. This may have something to do with it being too dark, but shouldn't be the cause.
9) I faced the colorometer toward the PJ, but now I'm reading I really should angle it to the screen so it reads what's actually being reflected. Any suggestions?

I am happy with the results, even with adjustments made in the analog color space. I think setting gamma to 2.2 instead of 2.4 would probably fix 80% of my concerns.

I have yet to read anyone that has done a complete ISF/HCFR calibration that explains each of the controls and how to adjust them to achieve a given outcome. (i.e. Luminance is too high at 80IRE for blue...what button do I push to fix it?)

Will post calibration results if there is any interest. Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on the above questions.