LCD Panel Alignment, how bad is bad enough?

it depends on how bad it bothers you. I use the PC on occassion with my mitsubishi 5500 and my first 2 projectors looked like the picture below. The 3rd was much better and the text now appear white, not purple/green. With these assembly line projectors, I think it's luck of the draw. The next one you get could be worse.

i'm not sure how noticable it was during normal movie viewing, but it bothered me just the same.

I know the Sony's can be adjusted, but I told myself I would pay for QC from a company like AVS for my next big ticket projector. Certain things bother me and poor convergence is one of them.

One pixel is considered good in general. It looks like you have close to two pixels of mis-alignment. You'll have to decide whether that's acceptable to you. (I agree that mis-alignment is especially annoyig for computer usage.)

There is always single chip DLP ...

Your new projector looks much better aligned. Is the new picture from the center of the screen or a corner?

Like you, I'm on the fence whether to exchange my projector at BB because of panel misalignment. I would really appreciate if you could post pics of the center and all four corners, so I can see what a "good" unit looks like.

I am in the same boat as the two of you guys. I purchased my 8100 at BB and noticed the same 1-2 pixel misalignment that you have shown in your pictures.

I came from an HD70 that was pixel-perfect and am a little unhappy with the 8100. I fear that even close to perfect won't be good enough as my only source for all content is my HTPC.

What are your guys thoughts?

I wish BB had the Mitsu 3800, as I like the DLP look and have never had any of my friends or family comment on RBE (honestly, I have never experienced it myself so I wouldn't even know what to tell them to look for). I may end up returning the 8100 and hold off until something comes along that will better suit my needs. The BB financing was the only reason I even considered upgrading though, so unfortunately a different retailer is out of the question.

I made new test patterns for LCD panel misalignment and/or chromatic aberration in both LCD and DLP projectors. Please feel free to use them on your projector and post some closeup pictures in this thread. That way we can get a feeling of how much panel misalignment is normal.

I posted closeup pictures of my Epson 8100 for both patterns (black and white background). To me the alignment looks acceptable only in the center bottom and center of the image. All other areas seem to have at least 2~3 pixels divergence, especially visible in the right bottom and right top. It may still be acceptable for movie watching but not so great for computer use. What do you think? Is this amount of color divergence normal for LCD?

Also, could someone with a Mitsubishi HC3800 (DLP) please post some closeup pictures using these test patterns? I had a HC3800 a while ago which had some pretty strong chromatic aberration on the left side of the image that looked almost as bad as the LCD panel misalignment of my current Epson 8100.

 

Epson8100_Convergence_White.zip 488.6875k . file

 

Epson8100_Convergence_Black.zip 255.1787109375k . file

 

TestPattern4.zip 66.1357421875k . file

 

Epson8100_ConvergenceLarge_Black.zip 133.9658203125k . file

 

Epson8100_ConvergenceLarge_White.zip 497.931640625k . file

I had two 8500UBs. The first was off three pixels or so across the entire screen. The second was within one even at the edges. Still it wasn't close to the convergence on the Sony HW15 I was checking out at the same time. You can see their images here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...=#post17725227

I didn't check the first one real close but the second one suffered from a lack of color uniformity. Top two-thirds of the screen shifted to red and the bottom third blue.

My Optoma HD80 (DLP) was a pixel or more off at the edges and based on which part of the image you focussed a fourth or so (of the entire image) would be fairly out of focus.

I think the government should step in and make the manufacturers rate their convergence/chromatic aberration per projector. Perhaps 1-5. They could even charge extra for the best units. Which is exactly what JVC is doing with their top of the line models... hand picked parts.

How the heck can a single DLP chip have convergence issues?? Please explain, I was under the impression this is not a problem with a single chip unit.
Thanks!

It's typically called chromatic aberration... where the lens causes the three colors not to align (converge) properly.

I was afraid this was going to happen with the new Epson's. I remember when the 1080UB's came out, people were swapping them left and right with Epson in the attempt to get one with decent convergence.

I sent back two Mitsubishi 5500's until the 3rd has decent convergence. Some people are more sensitive to this than others. Using an HTPC it become pretty obvious right away. The next projector I buy, I am definately paying a company like AVS for a QC check, it's frustrating to think that luck is a factor in getting one with good convergence.

I wish more companies followed Sony's ability to manually control the convergence.

I'm trying a Sony VPL-HW15 right now and so far the convergence appears so good I don't think I'll need to use the utility. It appears to be less than a third off even at the edges and since it isn't off the same amount (in the same direction) across the entire image any adjustments might simply make it worse.

This thread scares the **** out of me.

Diggin up this slightly older thread for my 2 cents...

For starters, thanks for the feedback datobin1. I'm glad you were able to get a better unit.

For everyone else.... don't stress about it too much. Here's my take on it,

I finally got mine set up and running this weekend. I'M IN LOVE WITH THE BIG SCREEN! haha... 100" of bliss @10' sitting & 15' projection... but now for the "picky" part. I do have a slight alignment issue (i guess). I got my HTPC rigged up and if I walk up to the screen when a website like AVS up, I see the red, green, blue on the dotted "i"'s and some other text. Step back a foot or two and its not noticeable. So how many sit that close to the screen? ... Anyone? haha I look at this as only being an issue if you want it to be an issue. Reminds me of the old debate of LCD back-light for the Dell Ultrasharp 20" screens when they first hit the market 5 years ago. I bought 2 from the first generation. (still using today) They have a little back light in the corners, if you are looking at a blank screen. But the moment you input a signal/picture, you don't notice it. Same as this alignment issue. Once you sit back at a typical viewing distance, or even closer, and/or watch some programing, you won't notice it. Can it be better? sure, perfection is better ... but it definitely can be worse!... how about 2-5 pixels off!? That could suck.

So, yes, I have a pixel or two alignment issue. Does it bother me? Heck no! To think I was really getting worried and stressed about this for the last month or so while I prepared my room. I don't even notice it unless I look for it from up close. I don't plan on using this for my PC needs, but only for Prime-Time TV & Movies. Its not made for doing my Autocad/GIS design work on ...(hmm... that could be cool ), that's what a desktop is for. It just doesn't effect me enough to go through the exchange process... hoping for better projector but likely to get worse.

... Perhaps my vision isn't as good as others. Here I am sitting on the sofa typing this on the 100" beast and I don't notice a blemish. At 1920x1080 resolution, I need my "driving" glasses on to even read this small text. I don't need glasses to enjoy a movie. These glasses are only for my driving needs as I'm "near-sighted", very slightly.

So I would like to sum this up and say... don't stress about it too much. For this price, with this much performance, i don't see a pixel or so off being an issue ... two or more, maybe try an exchange, but one off is pretty damn sweet if you ask me.


*EDIT.... A few hours after this post, I just got done tweaking my settings a bit more. Found a menu I didn't notice before for additional "sharpness" tweaks. In the menu, you are defaulted to the STANDARD view. Click on that to go to the Advanced menu where you will now have 4 additional sliders to play with. The bottom two tweak the vertical and horizontal sharpness. After tweaking these, I couldn't be more satisfied. It almost eliminated any alignment issues i thought I had. Just a slight blur of color around the "box" now instead of the pixel width coloring. I set my Ver to 7 and horz to 2 initially. Then I tweaked the contrast and brightness just a bit and returned to adjust the vert/horz to 3 (vert) and -1 (horz). I also slid the "Thin Line Enhancement" to 0. I'll post the rest of my settings in the Epson 8100 Owners thread shortly. Right now... i got to get back to the football game.