Benq w6000 - Page 25

I bought my Harmony One for $162 a few months ago

Has benQ released a new firmware for the w6000 yet?

Not as I know. I found out there is a bug in the current firmware. Sometimes, when I boot up the projector, the DB is turn off. You can see that the iris didn't close down. But when you go into the menu and under ISF, it'll show DB On and iris will work again without changing the settings. If you go straight to service menu, you will see that DB is off and iris is open at max position +12 regardless of your DB Max and DB min range.

W6000 need at least 50 hours for lamp to settle down. I found out during 10, 30 and 50 hours, the greyscale I tune keep on changing level and for the last 50 hours, the changes had been minimize. So for those hiring an ISF calibrator, you might want to wait for at least 50 hours.

my w6000 arrived last night.
i'm coming from an optoma hd72., and a sharp m20x before that.
so i enjoy DLP. did a side by side years ago with a DLP and LCD and the DLP was my favorite. not sure where it stands nowadays...without being to see these projectors set up for comparisons anywhere that i know of.

noise: the w6000 not that loud, it's not whisper quiet, but i sat right next to it, the projector at my seated head level and it was a basic fan noise...until and an hour in, then a constant high pitched whine was added to the din. that does bug me. i will play with it more tonight to see if it persists. similar to the sound some old hard drives begin to make before they die.

dynamic black / iris: the "zip" of the dynamic iris i didn't mind, but i did not like the performance of the iris. it seemed to act too much and leave a scene looking quite washed out after coming from a slightly darker camera angle of the same scene. i have not adjusted much for settings at this point so maybe that can improve. but i think i will find it distracting more than anything.
i used zombieland as a test movie and the initial meeting scene between the guys and the girls (indoor) is where i noticed this. i turned it on and off throughout poking around the movie.

DLP rainbows: i see them. not that much but they are hardly perceptible on the HD72 and i'm not sure if i've gotten used to them or if it's a step backwards. it's not that often but they are there, seemingly more than i'm used to. but i feel i have to look for them and i was trying to.

lens shift: the stick is a cheapish solution but it works. i wish there was a firm centered position to return it to true center. and the twist to tighten/loosen the stick mentioned in the manual i'm not clear on what that is supposed to do for me.

although odd looking, the giant adjustment rings are great as you can easily make minor tweaks the focus and zoom.

i'm ultimately going to flush ceiling mount it if i keep it so i'm psyched to not have to keystone the picture as i do now with the HD72.
which i realize has nothing to do with the lens shift but it's nice it's there.

in my setup i will shoot from ~23 feet, making about ~13 feet wide of a screen (i hope, based on the tables of figure i may see a slightly smaller screen), and this thing is bright...almost too bright, some daylight scenes the sky was washed out. i've never seen zombieland so maybe that was the director's intended effect?
and i'm going to tweak the settings based on what is suggested in this thread...who knows where that will bring me.

i did up the brightness a few clicks as i was losing detail in the dark areas and that surely exasperated the issue.

i'm tempted to order an optoma HD80 (or something more) just to see if the $1500 more i'm paying for the w6000 is worth it.

one thing that was disturbing and a potential deal breaker is the VGA input.
i watch a lot of content directly off my Apple iMac.
i have had excellent results on my previous two projectors.
on this one there is ghosting and the image doesn't sync properly and is subsequently shifted way right. i am sending a 1920x1080 signal from the iMac. i'll try the HP HDX16 laptop tonight and see what that serves up.

any idea why this is happening or a way to fix?
i adjusted the resolution a few times and the same thing happened.
the PS3 was dead on and crisp, through HDMI however.
i tried the shift image setting and it wouldn't go far enough left. and i don't think i should have to correct the image sent form the iMac at all based on my experience.

i'll post some pics of the issue in a bit.

Good first impression. Almost similar to mine observation when I first fire up the projector except I'm not sensitive to rainbow. Read my posting on tuning and you will start to appreciate the quality of this projector.

Some suggestion is to use low lamp mode and turn off BC. Do a simple brightness and contrast check using AVS 709 test patterrn. Use warm color temp and set gamma to 2.2. Goto service menu and reduce the iris max to +35 and iris min to +75 (this will help you reduce the color crush you mention earlier and also reduce the iris movement sensitivity).

After 50 hours, do a proper greyscale and CCA tuning.

When I hookup my mini mac to my TV I use a DVI to HDMI adapter and it work great! It seems this would give you a simple method for you to use the mac with the projector.

Im wondering if that firmware update Art is talking even excist?..

rjyap does the iris settings you applied help against that high pitched sound the iris makes? I cant stand that sound and it really pisses me off

Just a few comments:

There may have been some changes in the pre-production models, but I believe everyone has firmware 1.0

I don't know what people are talking about regarding the iris. I don't hear much from the iris and it works for me going from bright to dark material and back again. Guess I'm just not sensitive to the noise.

I do wish folks would post their calibrations, so others could get a sense of how people are using the PJ.

mine is a nov 09 build and the firmware is 1.0.
not sure if there is an update.


the "zip" of the iris is not too annoying to me, but present.
sounds similar to an autofocus on my canon sd940 point and shoot camera.
just the sound of a servo kicking in and gearing the aperture adjustment.

the iris adjustment will make it happen less frequently.
it still opens and closes but it doesn't wash out the scene when going from dark to light (for me anyway). and still goes real dark.

you can also turn off Dynamic Black and it will shut the iris down completely if i'm not mistaken.

that's what i use...actually a mini DVI (or whatever is in the newer macs now) to vga.

the image just wasn't syncing properly for whatever reason.
the image was cut off on the right and there was excessive grey/black area on the left.
yesterday it worked. nothing changed on my end. i did hook it up to a laptop.
who knows.

hopefully it will continue to play nice.
there may have been some ghosting still i didn't scrutinize it again...yet!

VGA is 23 years old. I think it's time to move on.

I believe Art caused a little bit of confusion on the firmware issue. His first sample was a pre-production unit. He did not mention what the fw version was on that sample. In his follow-up report that the problem was, for the most part, solved he again did not mention the fw version on that second sample.

Before I ordered my 6000 on 12/01/2009 I called BenQ. It was confirmed that Art's pre-production unit did have an earlier fw that was never used on production units. At least at that time the shipping fw was v.1.0. Was also told that no new fw version was being anticipated.

I also do not understand the concern over the Dynamic Iris function. Everything I've read suggests that no manufacturer has a DI that is perfect.

My main seating position is just behind and about 3' under the pj. Yes at times one can see the iris in action if you're really looking for it. With audio muted you can also hear it's action. I watch movies at close to reference level audio. The noise is a non issue concerning both the DI and the fans.

One option for those annoyed would be a hush box.

I have watched with the DI turned off. I'll take the much better black level over the less than perfect iris action and be happy. I had a PE-7700 prior to the 6000. The 6000 is, of course, better in every way. Black level may be the biggest improvement.

The other major plus is the lumen output. In economic mode shooting to a 133" screen it is very bright.

I did a quick calibration with my colorimeter at 100 hours. Measured quite well. Must have about 200 hours on the lamp at this point. Time for a more serious calibration. I'll report back.

Joe

I only hear the iris noise (someone describe the sound correctly, more like autofocus of DSLR camera) if I play test pattern from very bright to very dark directly. During normal movie watching, I hear nothing from the iris. If you constantly hear iris noise, I would advice you send in for service. Try out the iris tuning and see if it reduce the iris noise.

I'm not sure how you guys test the noise level, but normally if you had your speaker on, I'm surprise you guys notice the iris and fan noise. To me my air conditioner fan is louder.

Yesterday I play Mass Effect 2 straight 4 hours and didn't I hear iris noise nor notice the iris movement. But I know the iris is working cause the white subtitle brightness is lower when iris closing down and the black level is very good.

Yes, why not?

I Have had 2 dlp projectors with dead pixel issues. Have a new W6000 on RMA right now with 2 dead pixels out of the box...

Not god...

And performance wise i actually think my old W10000 trumps the W6000 in Sharpness, black levels, noice, installation, and its even not much dimmer when putting out max lumen in a fairly calibrated colour output. Sure, you can be an idiot and put the W6000 in native lamp mode but thats just crazy, it looks like a horses ass. Why even have this mode?? You cant use it for anything? I would think that max lumen output is somewhere around 1200-1400 if you want a fairly good colour balance...
And with the W10000 you com really close to this as well.... maybe 1000-1100 lumens... not bad...

So, I´m actually thinking about selling the W6000 again and just keep my W1000 which I think is superiour in many ways... The quality feeling is definitely much higher!

And since I just use it with HD material upscaling is a no issue for me...

I'm sitting right below my projector and i can clearly hear it, even my friends who are sitting further away complain about the noise. This really sounds like a faulty iris although im far from the only one that noticed it in this thread, so its hard to say if people are sensitive to high pitched sounds or that the iris doesnt behave like it should on some units.

As said earlier in this thread i've send my w6000 to RMA for different reasons, so i hope for a new replacement. Else im considering selling it and get a Sanyo Z3000 instead, but im not sure if it can match the picture quality of the w6000.

Went for the bundle, I expect to sell the mount and remote.

Yes you can hear the DI but to me it is not louder than a PC drive access. Currently the W6000 is on a ladder right behind my seat and the noise is not a problem. When the screen arrives I will set the projector on a shelf about six feet behind my seat so it should not be noticeable for me or my most important critic. Speaking of WAF I took my wife to look at a couple of projectors at BB and CC before that. NONE of them were set up well enough to make a positive impression this slowed the purchase for a couple of years. This evening after two days of looking at the W6000 she admits it looks good. (slowly becoming an a reluctant fan)

Several modes are useless out of the box, as it is my first projector this will take some time to calibrate.

There was some confusion about the delivery of the screen but it will arrive about a week after I ordered it.

old or not, it should be able to provide a clean signal to the projector, as it does for computer displays. we are not talking composite video here.
it did for my past two projectors!

anyway, apple doesn't currently make a minDVI to HDMI connector.
i have seen a third party. i did get miniDVI to DVI and then a DVI to HDMI and the signal was improved.

cable length could have been the issue, but then i wonder if a long HDMI cable will exhibit the same issues.

other observations...since i moved it to my house.

i ended up getting a optoma hd20 to compare.
i wanted to see if it was "worth" $1500 extra for the benq.

i'm not sure it is...but the w6000 is a better picture, but not more than twice as better.
it could be i'm not looking for the right stuff, i don't use a screen, and my image is 13 feet wide.

the benq has more shadow detail, but i wonder if it's partially due to the brightness in some cases.

i don't like the iris bringing in title credits that should be white as grey (first noticed it on the wall-e opening credits). not a huge issue, but irksome.

i'm assuming the noise people compare about is not noise at all but the compression on the image?
i read that in this thread i believe.
i'm lead to believe this hypothesis because my PS3 menu image is super crisp and clean as is the image from the computer. no noise at all.
i freaked on some movies where i saw the ants scrambling all over scenes.
first noticed it a lot in the dark knight. the courtroom scene early on in the film.
however, the imax scenes look insane.

placing the benq is a dream.
i have nearly TWO feet of play with the manual lens shift at my distance.
so it's not even properly mounted yet, just sitting on a shelf.
it's so great to have a picture that is not keystone corrected.

rainbows persist on both for me.
i'm assuming brightness and the speed of the color wheel are the issues.

are there any other similar classed DLPs that have a faster color wheel?

Nater:

You say that you bought the bundle. There was a bundle available from Amazon but that deal expired last Sunday. Where did you purchase your bundle from?

Thanks.

I don't think BENQ W6000 is adding image noise to video. As mentioned, using computer game or picture doesn't show any hint of noise. The noise should be from the video source. I suspect some projector had better noise reduction which surpress the image noise from certain scene. I do a simple experiment with my HTPC using ATI video card. I turn of denoise from CCC and the image noise become worst. Noise reduction sometimes do soften the picture so use with caution.

I bought the Amazon bundle last week. Seemed like a good combination. The screen went up last night. We love it. The instructions leave a lot to the reader to figure out. If I had the manual sent to me before the purchase I would have not bought the package. But the construction quality is MUCH better than the documentation, the writer was not a native English writer. The EZFRAME material and packing were very well done.

nater

New firmware 1.01

Well, I had to send my W6000 back. It shut off twice automatically during
two different movies. It was nearing the end of the 30 day exchange
policy and I did not want to wait for it to happen a third time.
It had a Sept build date and Firmware 1.0.

My new replacement arrived today. November build date and it has a
new firmware number. (1.01). I have only had a bit of time to test it out &
the new one works much better.

My old w6000 v1.0 had a noticeable iris action that I did get use too.
Bangkok Dangerous was the worst. I saw it everywhere.
The new v1.01 has no problems at all with that movie. I can't
see it working and I am looking for it. To the point I thought it
might not be working at all. I had to go into the menu and turn it
off to be sure. It is definitely working and working much better.

I will know more once I have played with it some more and watched a few movies.

Hello there! can you still hear the DI's zipping sound...is it absolutely silent? did the new one's fan noise deminish in comparison to your old one?

Can you post the DB settings in service menu? Just want to compare the settings. I would wait until few firmware version later before upgrade.

Well here we go.

1.0 Vs. 1.01. What changed? Truth is I'm happy with 1.0 . No doubt someone will find out what has been changed.

Joe

I really hope the zipping sound from the iris is gone or at least reduced.

http://benq.dk/products/Projector/in...m/product/1147

Never heard of the W6500 :/ It's the same as 6000 but with a little higher contrast ratio 60,000:1 instead of 50,000:1

looks sexy in white.

Doesn't this information make you wonder if the second unit Art reviewed had the 1.01 firmware in it?


"Verrrry Interesting"......... as Artie Johnson used to say...........

Not really, the timing would not seem to fit.

Joe

The reason with the "timing" issue (at least in my personal conspiracy theory) is due to the fact that so few of the W6K's have been sold that all of them in service were part of the initial shipment which had firmware 1.0 on them... and until everyone's inventory is used up that is all you are going to see. (because once again my personal opinion was the company did not think it worth the effort to go out and modify the firmware on every projector they had shipped to dealers or distributors... if they get complaints they will do something... otherwise they will just say the problem is fixed and move on..... IMHO of course)

Unless you get a new one directly from BenQ... in which case it will have the latest firmware on it... which if it improves the iris operation and I was BenQ... then for sure that is what I would have sent to the reviewer. Unfortunately Art never checked or at least published what the firmware number was on his second "fixed" W6K projector. I did email him at the time and asked him to check... but never received or saw a posted response to that question.