Thanks for the in-depth review graafish. A few questions for you.
1) If you run the beamer without the dongle, and without using wi-fi mode to stream anything (i.e., just a direct feed from a blu-ray player or a computer via HDMI), does it still sound like a vacuum or hair blower? I ask this in an attempt to isolate the source of the heat as either being the CPU processing the video stream (streaming is very cpu-intensive) or if it is simply the design.
2) I agree though, the built in video player is ****** (even on the HX350t). If the file isn't in 16:9 format, it'll attempt to stretch and fill the screen. So essentially, shows like Inception which uses the wider screen format would look horrible.
1) If you run the beamer without the dongle, and without using wi-fi mode to stream anything (i.e., just a direct feed from a blu-ray player or a computer via HDMI), does it still sound like a vacuum or hair blower? I ask this in an attempt to isolate the source of the heat as either being the CPU processing the video stream (streaming is very cpu-intensive) or if it is simply the design.
2) I agree though, the built in video player is ****** (even on the HX350t). If the file isn't in 16:9 format, it'll attempt to stretch and fill the screen. So essentially, shows like Inception which uses the wider screen format would look horrible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by graafish 
Hey all...
I've been playing with the LG HW300Y last weekend and i'm still not sure if i like it... or hate it.
First the pros:
Bright enough to get a nice picture in a light controlled room in eco mode.
Distance beamer -> wall is 210 cm (6.8 feet) and gives me a 150x85 cm picture (68 inch).
Projection is on a white painted wall.
The colours this little beamer produces... just wow.
Nice sharp high resolution picture, although not so for text. If you watch a lot of movies with subtitels you have to get used at the diamond shaped pixels.. text looked jagged, especially white text on a dark background, like subtitels. Personally i'm fine with it because video really looks that good, it's only a small compromise.
The build in media player is pretty good, plays almost anything you feed it. The only problem i had was with MKV that includes DTS audio.. you'll get video but no sound. But DTS audio is not part of the beamer specs so i can not complain.
Control freaks also gonna love this beamer, lots of settings to play with in the expert mode.
Stays pretty cool (but that's more then logical with two fast spinning noisy fans).
And now (my) cons:
Fan noise is NOT quiet as advertised, in eco mode is sounds like a hair blower and in standard & presentation mode it sounds like someone is vacuuming the room while i'm watching a movie.
Wifi (dongle) reception is a joke. I especially bought the DLNA verion of this beamer so i could mount it to the ceiling and then only needed a power cable. Videostreams are constantly buffering, where my laptop is having no problem at all with the same videostreams. Sadly the beamer only accepts a LG AN-WF100 Wi-Fi Dongle and if you google it you'll find a lot of bad reviews about it.
Aspect ratio is bugged.. this is for me the biggest dealbreaker!!. Video (16:9) when playing from USB has the correct aspect ratio, video height is 720 pixels with 40 pixels black on top and bottom... so this is okay. But playing video trough HDMI is getting stretched vertical to fit the native 800 pixel height. I tested this with test patterns on a HTPC, Boxee Box and Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray Player and they all gave the same results.. round becomes oval. None of the aspect ratio settings on both the LG HW300Y and video players could solve the wrong aspect ratio.
And last thing is about the refresh rate. You can feed almost any refresh rate to his beamer. I tried 23.976/24/25/30/50/60 and they all worked.. but i did not really see any difference. On my TV i can easily distinguish the different refresh rates... but on this beamer they all look the same. Like a light judder. Maybe refresh rates work different with beamers and i'm wrong... but video is not as smooth as on my TV.
I really hope some of this problems can be fixed with a new firmware.
If not i'm probably not going to keep this beamer.
Ooh and someone should correct the topic name of this thread and change 1200x800 to 1280x800
Hey all...
I've been playing with the LG HW300Y last weekend and i'm still not sure if i like it... or hate it.
First the pros:
Bright enough to get a nice picture in a light controlled room in eco mode.
Distance beamer -> wall is 210 cm (6.8 feet) and gives me a 150x85 cm picture (68 inch).
Projection is on a white painted wall.
The colours this little beamer produces... just wow.
Nice sharp high resolution picture, although not so for text. If you watch a lot of movies with subtitels you have to get used at the diamond shaped pixels.. text looked jagged, especially white text on a dark background, like subtitels. Personally i'm fine with it because video really looks that good, it's only a small compromise.
The build in media player is pretty good, plays almost anything you feed it. The only problem i had was with MKV that includes DTS audio.. you'll get video but no sound. But DTS audio is not part of the beamer specs so i can not complain.
Control freaks also gonna love this beamer, lots of settings to play with in the expert mode.
Stays pretty cool (but that's more then logical with two fast spinning noisy fans).
And now (my) cons:
Fan noise is NOT quiet as advertised, in eco mode is sounds like a hair blower and in standard & presentation mode it sounds like someone is vacuuming the room while i'm watching a movie.
Wifi (dongle) reception is a joke. I especially bought the DLNA verion of this beamer so i could mount it to the ceiling and then only needed a power cable. Videostreams are constantly buffering, where my laptop is having no problem at all with the same videostreams. Sadly the beamer only accepts a LG AN-WF100 Wi-Fi Dongle and if you google it you'll find a lot of bad reviews about it.
Aspect ratio is bugged.. this is for me the biggest dealbreaker!!. Video (16:9) when playing from USB has the correct aspect ratio, video height is 720 pixels with 40 pixels black on top and bottom... so this is okay. But playing video trough HDMI is getting stretched vertical to fit the native 800 pixel height. I tested this with test patterns on a HTPC, Boxee Box and Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray Player and they all gave the same results.. round becomes oval. None of the aspect ratio settings on both the LG HW300Y and video players could solve the wrong aspect ratio.
And last thing is about the refresh rate. You can feed almost any refresh rate to his beamer. I tried 23.976/24/25/30/50/60 and they all worked.. but i did not really see any difference. On my TV i can easily distinguish the different refresh rates... but on this beamer they all look the same. Like a light judder. Maybe refresh rates work different with beamers and i'm wrong... but video is not as smooth as on my TV.
I really hope some of this problems can be fixed with a new firmware.
If not i'm probably not going to keep this beamer.
Ooh and someone should correct the topic name of this thread and change 1200x800 to 1280x800
And talking about PAL.. all my 25fps PAL content look terrible @60Hz. They invented 3:2 pulldown for 24fps@60hz, but there’s no such thing for 25fps@60hz so video (for me) is unwatchable. I would expect that all video players sold in Europe should have decent 50Hz output.
