Panasonic PT-AE4000 MSRP $1999 - Page 7

Hmmm, I wonder if they'll take $1300 for that open box 3000.

Yea but the resolution is not their to start with so you can't increase it any, what it is, it is. You are adding the extra lines digitally, makeing them up out of information that is their, stretching and distorting the image and then using the lense to compress it back down. Now I have never seem a lens set-up, but on paper it seems like all the extra digital processing and lenses would degrade the image more then help it. Doesn't using a lense also require a curved screen to be displayed correct also?

^ I reiterate once again... ^
I will even provide a link this time.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=554901

November? Noooooooooooooooo, no 4000 by halloween horror fest.....scary thought

Ah, no. Not the way it works at all. Nothing is being added. What you are doing it taking full advantage of your projector's resolution and brightness and Optically, restoring AR. The image is only processed to stretch it - nothing added/removed/modified in any way.

CIH is the holy grail of HT. If you don't get it or want it fine, but don't spread mis-information.

Huh? PP is saying end of this month. Are you saying not until end of November??

Perhaps with over 100 preorders...the initial shipment may be all sold. I'm kinda waiting for the Canadian dollar to keep rising....every little bit helps!

Too bad PP charge right away with a preorder...there are other stores that offer preorder without full payment but they don't ship to Canada....vis-ap (see projector central)

^I could have sworn I just read on PP's website yesterday that they do not charge until shipment.[/headscratch]

Hello
Even if I read this forum regularly, this is my 1st post.
I am on the market for a 1080p projector between 1500 and 2000 $. I though I have decided to go with the epson 8100 but this Panasonic is very tempting.
I plan to have a 90in screen projected from 9 ft. Is it correct to say that I will not feel the ae4000's lack of luminosity thanks to the short throwing distance and small screen ? I plan to use it in ambient light so luminosity is important to me but If I can also have very good black this would be perfect ...

Unless they changed their policy, and I would be very surprised if they have, they do not charge until shipment.

A quick story about this Forum sponsor. Almost 4 years ago I bought my BenQ PE-7700 from PP. At the time had a question before ordering so I called instead of ordering online. Perhaps a wise move.

Eleven days after the unit arrived BenQ had a price reduction of $400. That represented a 20% drop. At first I thought well that's life, the product is what I expected it to be and prices drop without notice to anyone, including vendors.

Sent an email to the salesperson in thanks for a pleasant transaction with a mention of mild frustration concerning the price drop.

To PP's credit this sales rep took ownership of the concern and about a month later a check for $400 arrived in the mail. I was impressed.

I'm sure other sponsors are as good. Jason at AV Science comes to mind.

Noticed that the Panny 3000 is no longer listed on PP.

With only the one year warranty are some of you considering an extended service contract with a purchase of this pj? My BenQ came with a 3 year warranty. Used 3 times, last time with 1 day to go.

Joe

Will this PJ have any problem throwing a 97.5" screen from 10 feet?

One of the calculators from Projector Central says that it will work (but just barely) and another one says it won't.

Can anyone clarify?

haha same happened to me, i got it 2500$ 2 months ago from eBay now the 4000 is out and 500$ cheaper! i think i'll just stick with what i got.

Try the calculator Panasonic has on their site:

http://www.panasonic.net/avc/project.../cal_menu.html

I agree that CIH is the 'holy grail' of HT of sorts. I am doing CIH in my personal theater.

However, the poster you quoted was correct. You are interpolating the VERTICAL resolution with the image processor...and interpolating means that you are adding data to the video that wasn't originally there.


How can you stretch video vertically without adding information? This 'stretching' process is called interpolation and you are definitely adding information that wasn't there to begin with.

A blu-ray movie has a set resolution and a 2.35:1 blu-ray is wasting some of the vertical resolution with black bars on top/bottom. For a 1080p movie, the video processor just takes the ~720 vertical lines of ACTUAL VIDEO, cropping off the black bars, and stretches (interpolates) them to fit the full 1080 vertical lines of the PJ. Then the a.lens just stretches the image horizontally to correct for the screwed up AR after the vertical stretching.

In summary, a lens setup does use the full 1080 lines of the projector...although you don't really have anymore data than what was there before because you had to interpolate in order to fill those 1080 lines. There was never 1080 vertical lines in the source movie...so the benefit of stretching to 1080 and then shrinking optically is debatable... The clearer advantage to using a lens is that since you are using all 1080 vertical lines...you get that much more light from your projector actually being used on the video image instead of being wasted on the masking above and below screen. So you get a brighter image (although this isn't 1:1 because you do lose some light going through a lens, and there are arguments that zooming also gives you a brighter image because of the lens position...but all arguments on the table, I do believe you get a slightly brighter image overall using a lens.)

Long story short...if money is no concern, a lens setup is probably the best way to go. You can get a slightly brighter image and more importantly you can choose between a much wider range of PJ's.

If money is a concern, then the panny is a great way to go. You get nearly as good of an image compared to a lens setup. You cost will be at least half that of a lens setup. The biggest problem to a zoomed 'CIH' setup is that you are limited to ONE projector...this panny. (not counting those that manually zoom a projector by hand, that would get old real fast for me)

I am doing the zoomed CIH setup using the panny. I think its by far the best bang for the buck CIH setup and I will be very happy with it.

Thanks a lot, exactly what I needed.

It said I could do it from as little as 9.53 feet so it looks like I'm in the clear.

I've never bought a PJ and definitely never been through an anticipated release. Can anyone tell me:

1) It looks like you can pre-order for $1999, is there usually places that will discount even further right after release to $1800-$1900 or are the prices usually uniform across online dealers?

2) Is it possible that these would actually sell out if I don't pre-order?

If there's no chance to get it much cheaper, and it's feasible that it may actually sell out I'll go ahead and put in my order now to one of the two sponsors currently offering the pre-order.

1) sometimes, though typically not with hot products. However you may get things like free shipping, which PP does not offer for preorders. Keep in mind I don't think we're supposed to talk about street prices here, just MRSP, which is higher than you quoted.
2) For an initial launch maybe - you might have to wait a few weeks to get one after launch. If you're not desperate for one then not as big a deal. For me, I'm dead in the water until this gets here so I sure hope I'm in on the initial shipments.

One thing to consider - like many products sometimes the initial launch has bugs. typically firmware upgrades will fix these, but personally unless I really need something, I tend to wait a bit to make sure real world users don't have problems and that the product lives up to the pre-launch hype.

Bob - I'm actually looking forward to trying this projector without my lens. The lens I own (a prismasonic) does induce some barrel distortion and a bit of trapezoidal distortion as well. It's pretty minimal but on a 9 foot wide 2.35 screen it adds up.

If I can get good lux levels and resolution without the lens, then that will make one less thing to worry about in my HT. The lens is always a topic of conversation however with folks who've never seen the theater....

I've never seen the 3000 in action, but based on what I have read and heard...
If you don't mind sacrificing just the bits of the benefits that the lens does offer, in exchange for the more uniform picture you will get without the lens, I think you will most likely be happy without the lens.
What would discount that theory maybe, is if you are throwing a large pic from a long distance. If that is the case, thens may be more beneficial.
Imagine though, that if you sold your lens, then subtract that $$ from the price you pay for the pj.

This projector sounds fantastic, and the price makes it sound incredible !

I'm quite excited for this projector. I expect to begin building my home theater room in the Spring, hopefully finishing by Autumn.

Unless the AE5000 is released then (3D?), there's a very good chance this will be my first projector purchase!

Not for everyone.

For me CIH is still limited.

To me the Holy Grail of HT is to have an extra large screen with 4 way masking (automated being ideal), to vary the image size to suit my mood, the movie or the source quality. That way I can have a "just right" experience of each source/movie. Projection is the only display technology that allows one to change the size of the image this way - I say why not take advantage?

And on that note the Panasonic and it's zoom/lens memory features sounds
like it would be a great benefit to the approach I just outlined.

This is exactly what I am going for. But I was thinking 3 way not 4. Keeping the top fixed. I want to have as many options as possible.

I was thinking of going with a High Power screen with this projector 2.40:1 (6'x14.4') am I ok or is there a better choice? Also I have total light control.

I get it now. Too bad they don't have versions of the 2.35:1 movies that are anamorically squeezed into 1920x1080 on the BluRay disc instead of 1920 x 720 with black bars on top and bottom. Then we truly would get more true resolution out of an anamorphic lense.

One thing you might gain besides brightness with an anamorphic lense is less Screen-door effect. Since you are interpolating the 1920 x 720 image over the entire 1920 x 1080 panel, there are more pixels represented on the screen (and more blur). Of course the 4000's smooth screen feature probably makes this a unecessary.

The thing I'm still not sure about is why all the fuss over constant HEIGHT? In my proposed theater space I have a limit as to the width that I can make the screen, not the height. With the 4000 as my projector, wouldn't I be better off with a constant WIDTH screen? That way 2.35:1 and 16:9 would both be at there max size. I also think it would be easier to construct a removeable matte for the bottom of the screen when I'm in 2:35:1 than two side sliding mattes if I were to go with a constant HEIGH setup.

Julst like everyone I am awaiting the delivery of AE4000. I am building a 120" diagonal 2.4AR screen. I used the distance calculator and it suggests min of 12.8 ft and max of 18.8 ft. I can pretty much mount anywhere between those distances but to the pros out there what's the optimal distance. My screen is Seymour AV center stage XD. It's in the basement so pretty well light controlled.
Thanks!

Yeah, the "CIH Superiority" belief hinges on the pre-supposition that all 2.35:1 movies should be the largest image you view in your setup, just as the director intended, and all that...in this scenario all HDTV and HD movies (1.78 and 1.85) are irrelevant...which is not applicable to most of us (and also why the CIH thread had 1/10 the traffic of the other threads...flame away!) With the AE4000 though, everyone gets what they want I think because it can do CIH by zooming out enough for 2.35 movies to be the same height as HDTV. Those who insist on the external lens could do it, but at a huge added expense (and I don't think they would be looking at this pj if they had $3-5K to throw away). I have a friend that use to say "you can go 1st Class, for only 85% more"...which pretty much sums up animorphic lens use these days.

I assure you, if Panasonic incorporated an internal animorphic lens into the AE5000, there are CIH enthusiasts that would have a problems with something about it.

I believe you two are using different definitions for what 'all of the pixels are used' refers to.


I believe what Ecidious means by that is to say, all the pixels are active no matter what mode you are in. There isn't a physical shutter or anything. However, some of the pixels are simply showing black as you suspect. ie, it's letterboxed. The zoom modes are not doing any sort of anamorphic stretching (though it does have that option if you actually have a lens).

Yep...if there was a way to do this, you WOULD actually benefit from using a lens. Although this would never happen because it wouldn't play correctly on a normal 16:9 screen (99+% of displays). So we will always be stuck with 16:9 video sources in the foreseeable future (even though many movies, maybe even a majority of new releases, are a 2.35:1 AR...they are still actually 16:9 video sources with black bars on top and bottom).


Yes...this is another incremental benefit to using a lens.


There are several reasons for constant height being the primary focus. Most 'epic' big blockbuster movies are in a 2.35:1 AR. So people with CIH systems want these 'epic' movies to feel more grand than a more run of the mill movie that is 1.78:1 AR. Doing a constant WIDTH system will yield a much larger image for your 1.78 AR material vs 2.35:1 AR material. So there is a mental thing here where the bigger blockbuster movies are usually 2.35:1...so these are the types of movies that you'd want to get the most oooo's and awww's from.

So one reason for constant image height is a mental thing as I touched on above. However...the other more technical reason is that our eyesight/peripheral vision is more sensitive to height than width. So it is easier to go wider than taller w/o getting an image that is too overwhelming. For instance, if you are sitting 10-12 feet back and you personally find that a 100" (49.5" high x 87.5" wide) 16:9 screen is the perfect size. You could probably use a 125" (49" high x 115" wide) 2.35:1 screen and not be overwhelmed by the extra width. However...if you had a 132" (64.5" high x 115" wide) 16:9 screen...the extra height of 15 inches would probably be too much and the image would be too overwhelming.
So long story short...since humans tend to be more sensitive to image height than width, in a CIH system, it tends to be generally more reliable to size your screen via height. So you pick a height that you like best for your seating position and then everything you watch will be the same height.

As stated before, everyone has different tastes and the 'holy grail' of anything in theater varies from person to person.

I personally like the idea of CIH because I want the more epic/blockbuster films to 'feel' the grandest in my theater. I DON'T want the anamorphic movies to have less viewing area than 'chick-flicks'.

CIA (Constant image area) is a way to maximize every single AR in either vertical or horizontal directions...but doing a 4-way masking system just wasn't worth it to me. And I actually like the idea of movies with 1.3, 1.78, 2.35 AR's respectively getting more viewable area and an increasing grandeur feel.

Also, can the mods bump this thread? 200 posts in a week counts as serious traffic I would think...