Quote:
Originally Posted by
stereomandan 
Thanks for the reply Another Dad.
The problem with the 1080UB and 6500UB was that the outermost points would line up properly at the outer reference points once the projector was calibrated, but the points further inside the color triangle don't line up. (see the points inside the color gamut triangle to see how the measured points don't line up with the correct reference points, even though the outer points do.) This led to undersaturated colors in a large portion of the color gamut.
This still may be the case with the 8500UB and 9500UB, but we won't know until someone does the measurements.
It's great to hear that at least the THX mode allows MUCH more accurate color more to begin with without calibration.
Dan
DEJA VU also made comments for AVS about "color latitude" enhancement by the use of filters. There have also been comments from Germany (Cinema4Home) about special filters. As a experiment and on recommendations of specific filter types from DEJA VU, I bought 62 mm, UV, FL-D and 81A filters from CameraFilters.com; cost was $75.
To mount them, I cut a circular hole in the lens cap and epoxied the UV filter (which doesn't affect the color range at all) male threads to the inside of the cap allowing attachment of either, none or both the other two filters from the front of the mounted lens cap.
Skippng to the good news is that picture seemed far more "real". Using the Joe Kane "Digital Video Essentials" HD-DVD disc and in both THX and Theater modes, it was startling to see the demonstration materials look so great on either a Day-Lite glass bead 106 inch screen or the Wilson Kitchen laminate 110 incher. The red headed model, posed with the color tabs showed what I thought was a spectacular improvement of facial tones and there were no 'hot spots' fading from color to white. Viewing distance to the screen at maximum zoom was about 12 feet. On most initial tests, I used all three filters together, but with only the FL-D (mounted with the UV), the results were very close for the color "expansion" since the 81A seems to contribute only some additional warming.
Black and white films from Turner Classic Movies using all three filters looked like exactly the right level of filmlike 'warmth' (to me) without any of the overblue usually seen without resorting to reducing the absolute color temperature; required to match the black and white contrast range as seen in theaters.
I felt the best improvement in color quality, using all three filters together, was achieved by increasing the absolute color temperature from 6500 oK to 7500 oK, reducing the brightness to -2, increasing the contrast to +8 to boost the approximate 3/4 f/ stop brightness loss. Skin tone was a toss up from default 3 to possible 4. No change in tint or color saturation from default.
Looking at all of the test color patterns on the disc through the red/blue/green gelatin filters, there was no difference from the 8500 default results using no camera filters. All the colors seemed "improved" on both the 100% and 75% levels. Don't ask me to explain that one.
To sum up; based solely on my observations and a little help from Joe Kane's DVE disc, I think this is a worthy improvement over the default mode. Looking forward to comments.
gil
thanks.
