The Offical Epson 8350 Owners Thread - Page 142

I know a (zoom) lens has a "sweet spot" based on iris and focal length. The further you get away from this "sweet spot" the better chance to get chromatic aberration. I assume that the lens on the 8350 would also have a "sweet spot" too.

How do you tell the difference between convergence issues and chromatic aberration?

Is there a optimal placement distance for this projector and how would one determine that? The online placement calculators gives quite a range where you can put the projector. I would think that the design of a lens like this would provide the best performance at a particular focal length.

Good question. I would also think this depends on what image size you want to project.

hi folks!

just ordered mine 8350 from crutchfield. 30 days for testing. hopefully it will stay :-) now waiting for Acer H5360BD release in USA for 3D evaluation.

I am considering 2 screens: Da-Lite HP 2.4 and Grandview Tab Tensioned screen, both at 125". Considering I have 2 small children who can not stay at one place too long is the HP a good solution (viewing angle is not wide).

Both projectors will be installed in a living room (not bright one), so some light present during the day.
Usage:
50% gaming in the evening
20% movies in the evening
20% cartoons during the day

Please, send me your comments.

see the HP thread, there is one thread dedicated to the 2.4. If you are ceiling mounted the HP may not work for you. I use it, but I have lowered my Projector with a telescopic mount to keep it near eye level. Honestly the 8350 is so bright anyways, even in cinema mode, you won't need the extra brightness at all until bulb ages. As for viewing angle, assuming your couch is in center of screen, and so is your PJ, you will notice a bit of brightness as you go a couch length back and forth with the 2.4. But it really depends on how close you are to screen as well. Lots of variables with the HP. If your table mounting....then there's no doubt, get the HP

I thought it may help for daytime viewing. My couch and PJ is in the cetner of the screen. I may go for ceiling mount with mount extension to lower the PJ 2 feet above eye level or go for wall mount. I will be using same screen for 3D once I get the Acer H5360BD.

My throw distance is 14', and I will be sitting 12' from the screen.

Greetings and thx for comments!

There is an air inlet at the back of this unit. What is the closest, safe distance this projector can placed against the back wall? My current projector is placed less than 2'' from the back wall. Thanks.

Chances will increase, that your lamp will serve 500 hours, instead of 4000 hours.

Really? I would say that 2 inches is not bad at all, provided that the pj is on an "open" shelf and air is passing back there! In such a case, what would be the difference between 2 inches and 1 mt? I really don´t see any!

And is it over heating?

It is not surprising, that the theme turns to a theme of complaints.
Can it is necessary to esteem instructions and to think of a thermal mode?

So I got my 8350 last night paired with my fixed frame 106 monoprice screen and I have to say I'm really impressed. this being my first projector I really have nothing o compare it to especially upgrading from a 5 year old 22 inch samsung that got me thru college. I'm still working on setting up speakers but am using headphones in the meantime. Really happy with the purchase any upkeep maintenance issues I should worry about beyond what's in the manual?

It is amusing to read translation. Especially interpretation of our turns of speech. But I hope so more clearly, than to play broken phone.
Thank you very much!

Coderguy

I "requested" they send new. I also requested they let me return it, but I was 8 days beyond the 30. So it was like...let me return it or send a new one. Luckily I had a decent guy to deal with. A little hard to get a hold of, but he was what Epson service has a rep for being...good. Keep in mid my original only had 40 hrs on it when I made the call, 60 when I actually packed it up, and the 2nd they sent me never had any more then maybe 3 hrs tops.

I found a great medium between cheap and expensive mounts I think the DIYers will like. I found a chief rpa mount on ebay for 20 ducks that was the mount plus plate for some obscure HP model that no one wants (thus the low price). The swivelling units are universal I think, and depend on the plate to be projector specific. So I made a template out of a cereal box, went to the local metal shop and bought a scrap piece of 1/8" steel for $6. I came home, trimmed it to size, traced and remeasured where the holes would be, drilled 4 for the PJ and 4 (tapped) for the mount. At home depot I bought a piece of 1.5" NPT pipe and a flange for like 15 more dollars. a can of spray paint later and it all looks pretty good! The security and adjustability of a chief mount for like 50 dollarinos! Also, I noticed that since teh PJ has been mounted upside down, the iris grinding sound has gone from almost completely inaudible to unacceptably loud and had to be turned off. I wonder if that's soley my machine or an engineered fault in all of them. No big loss either way. Finally, while I have little to compare it to, it seems to throw a fantastic image at 150" (15+- feet away, eco mode, cinema setting with Art's calibrations) on my el cheapo elite manual pull down. At some point I intend to throw a coat of (insert appropriate paint recipe here) to make it pop, but for now, no complaints. Go big!
Cheers,
Alex

Have delivered EPSON 8350. I owner EPSON, as well as you .
After connection, I shall estimate convergence of the projector... For statistics.
Photos are necessary, this time ?
Me will understand?

I have a 16:9 screen and can't stand the black bars with 2.35 blurays. What is the best way to "fill up" the screen? I don't want a manual masking system and the manual image adjustment throws the left and right portion of the movie off the screen.

For some reason, 8350 seems to "lock out" any zoom or stretch options in the aspect menu.

My softball sized green dust blob disappeared!

Yes, the menu seems to be locked -at least when playing hd media.
Do you actually want to stretch the image, or just zoom in a bit? Either case, did you try doing that with the BD-player menus or the Epson´s "overscan"?

If that´s the case, I´m in trouble. The farthest from the wall I can place it is about 4 inches, on a shelf I´ve made. But then, there are no absolutely obstructions to the sides or upwards, so air should be blowing well back there, and I only use the pj to watch movies at night in Cinema and ECO mode (ie. the less hot sets). Would you say I´m pushing the envelop here?

if your high speed fan kicks on while in eco mode you might end up with a problem to solve. if not i'd say your OK.

Thanks so much. So you think that the fan would automatically turn to high speed in case of overheating, even when the lamp is working in the less brighter mode? That would be a nice indicator of thermal problem. As far as I can tell, there are two independent fans: one for cold air-in (back) and another for hot air-out (front). I guess the speed is the same for both. In any case, I´ll run some tests.
For starters, I can tell you that if I turn off eco mode, noise becomes clearly higher.

I asked a similar question to EPSON support and they told me you should generally have 6" of clearance on all sides. However it's not as important on the back as most of the hot air gets pushed out through the front-side vents. The 4" clearance you have on the back is not ideal but should be fine unless you have the projector in a room with harsh temperature conditions (i.e. it becomes a sweatbox in the room with your projector during the summer).

Thanks A LOT for your answer. Now, 6 inches sounds much more like it than 12! I´ll keep this in mind during summer, though. The good thing is that the pj stands right below the air conditioner, so I can easily keep it cool.

I was told (by Visual Apex, where I purchased mine) that my softball-sized, green spot was a "dust blob". But the Epson rep tells me it is NOT that, and that the "dust blob" problem is "a misconception". He says it's a pixel issue. They're sending me a "new" one (probably refurbished, although I requested a brand new one); with seven days to return my "old" (only four months) one.

What refresh rates/resolution will it accept


for instance via a HTPC i would like to force 1920x1080x72Hz and 75Hz

Wish to test CVP ?
Unfortunately, 72Hz and 75Hz it is not possible with a projector.
48Hz and 60Hz work without artefacts for SVP. If, I have correctly understood your desires.

thanks, looks like you got what i meant

in order to get smooth playback i set desktop to 1080p24 as this is the only option in the ATI menu. it works, but using WMC the onscreen menus are very jerky. i assumed this is down to the low refresh rate as 50hz look smooth.
setting it to 48 would i imagine do the trick but there is no option for it in the ati menus. i assume it can be done but how difficult it is i have yet to work out so i needed to find out if it was possible before a tried it. so thanks for clearing that up for me

Finally got fed up with measuring, calculating and day-dreaming whether an Epson 8350 would work with my family room so I bought one last night from a place with no restocking fee to test it out for real. Not too shabby.

10.5 ft viewing distance with a throw of 12 or so ft. Projected it on a cream wall opposite a very large window (open area to the left of this wall, a dark red wall to right of it, white ceiling, light carpet, dark brown furniture and black out curtains for the big window). Even with the curtain open and late afternoon, cloudy-day light flooding the room, it projected a decently viewable picture.

The convergence was perhaps a pixel or so off. Obviously, I didn't notice it from my seating distance. The picture was sharp, although I expect it would be much, much sharper on a screen as opposed to my lightly textured wall. My room setup requires the use of a lot of lens shift, which is why I really needed to try one out for real to see if my math was workable. At times I had both vertical and horizontal at their max. I closely inspected the image for issues with extreme lens shift and could not see any.

I dialed in a few settings (auto iris: fast - yes I did notice it lag on pure black screens, but not during live content; 2:2 on; HDMI range was automatic (although, expanded would blow out the blacks); superwhite off; rgb on; played with the contrast and few other setting, and used cinema for my all-dark viewing -- sometimes with eco mode and sometimes not. Overall, not remotely fine tuned, but probably slightly better than out of the box - for a cream wall.

I had no sound since my sound system was on the opposite side of the room. With the projector 2-3 feet above my head and directly to my right (and my loud, old style fat PS3 at head level to my right), I could hear the auto-iris grind a little like a hard drive. I have dog-like hearing (it's about my only natural talent) and I did not find it annoying, and I doubt it would be very noticeable with the sound on. However, the projector fan was noticeable (definitely more so in normal mode). Buuut. I think typical sound would cover it up and move it to background noise (like when your heater is running and you sort of forget that it is).

After removing the ambient light from the room, I ran the projector thru the paces with the expected blu-rays off my PS3 (Avatar, Dark Knight, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3) along with Netflix streaming (both Hi-Def and Standard) and DVDs (Revenge of the Sith). I continually changed the size of the picture, ranging from approx. 100" - 120".

Blu-rays looked great, as expected. Both Standard and Hi-Def Netflix streaming looked much better than I expected. I don't deny I was disappointed with DVD (it looked worse than Netflix streaming SD). Revenge of the Sith is one of the better DVD transfers, and it just felt lacking (but the PS3 has never had the best upscaler and I believe I was watching with the screen closer to around 120" -- ultimately I prefer 100-106" for best balance of clarity and size from my 10.5 ft viewing distance).

Black levels. Well, I come from using a 58" Panasonic V10 (which was their 2009 flagship model). I'm pretty good at keeping my expectations in check (especially since my room is not optimal for contrast nor was the wall I was projecting onto), so I wasn't expecting plasma level by any means. For 16:9 content, the picture has a lot of depth. However, I have mixed feelings on blacks in regards to 2.35:1 content with letterbox bars. With the plasma, I'm used to the brighter scenes making the bars appear blacker and improving overall perceived contrast and the darker scenes making them appear grayer. But with the way the iris works on projectors, it's the opposite. Dark scenes looked good (almost comparable to the plasma or a very good LCD). However lighter scenes reeeally blew out the blacks on the bars and affected the overall perceived contrast. Not exactly a deal-breaker, but I don't deny it gives me some pause on whether to perhaps wait until the next iteration of this model arrives in fall (I've been on the fence for awhile on that since I have a gut feeling the next model for the 8350 may further incorporate some of the tech currently used for the 8700 such as CFI -- at the very least the contrast will improve somewhat...or perhaps the next 8700 version will drop a few more hundred $ as they have been since the 1080, who knows?)

I digress. I've always known I needed a gray screen for my room. And I believe it would definitely help in this situation (my ceiling will never be painted black, and since it's not the 70s/80s my carpet will remain a lighter color). Although to what degree a gray screen will help, I cannot say. I'm considering gray fixed screens from Elite, Elunevision (1.1 gain), Jamestown, and even perhaps the new multi-format Monoprice one (once someone actually buys one and posts some real info and pics).

So here's my question, if anyone is still reading. Has anyone else with a similar room setup (white ceiling, light carpet, a light wall that would hold the screen) tried the 8350 with any of those gray screens (or perhaps another one from another of the more economic manufacturers)? Did they have a noticeable impact on the perceived contrast on 2.35: 1 material, especially during brighter scenes?

I totally hear what you are saying, I took a hiatus from HT for the last 3 years b/c of time I wanted to spend with my daughter, just bought an 8350 with high hopes that this would be the projector........I'm less than thrilled. I don't know if it's because I've gotten used to my Sony XBR8, which shouldn't come as anything but a surprise given it's black levels.....but my room is similar to yours. I have dark tan walls, not white, and very high ceilings. My thought was although my last room was completely a home theater room, this room would suffice for a projector and it's published 50,000:1 contrast..... My last theater room was completely dark, no windows, no light. It was painted dark, and I had a Mitsubishi HC5000 to replace my aging NEC 10PG, 9" crt. I was very impressed with it at the time........my belief now having gone through and seeing first hand the difference is room has almost EVERYTHING to do with black levels. I believe if I could go back in time and throw this EPSON into my theater room, I could really see what it is capable of. Now, without the added benefit of light spray bouncing around and hitting the screen, I am foolish to think that the 8350 can betray the physics of light reflections.... I'm sure it's a fine projector, but I can't live with it in this room, not now anyway. So, to sum up, yes, I understand you are disappointed, I am too if it makes you feel any better. I"m probably going to sell it. I think a lot of people here are content with what it can do......I wish I didn't know how important a room is in the scheme of things......but it plays a major role.