CRE X1000 Worlds First 3 LED 3 LCD 1080p Projector..Anybody heard of these guys? - Page 39

I now own one of these new, ordered back in October 2012, arrived promptly. Wanted to share my experience so far.

I'm new to the forum, thanks so much everybody on this tread for all their previous contributions, that really helped me decide to bite the bullet.

I'm a creative/engineer/entrepreneur type who wanted a new display system for my work/play. About 70% work coding, 5% video games, and 25% movie watching material as typical use. Coming from a variant of Mac and PC, DVD and eventual Blueray sources.

Of the two models/lenses. I chose the 'long throw' so that I could have a smaller screen/brighter as I wanted to use it during the day. . I ordered 1 projector, with the potential use of 3-4 of them in a seamless display to replace my desktop 4 multimonitor setup.

It's a 73" diagonal at 9'ft distance, max the room will allow.

SUMMARY: The projector is goodish value but not without it's significant drawbacks.

PROS

• very quiet, way quieter than my normal room fans.
• small + light weight,
• relatively fast on/off, about 30-1minute trips, no worries about about the bulb.
• runs cool, especially relative to my conventional projector exhause.
• bright, daylight viewable if not direct sunlight.
• good color intensity/range.
• 100% optical image shift up/down, very helpful in many projector setups vs keystone in software.

CONS

• mediocre color convergence, red is like 2pixels to the left and green 1 pixel from the right. On most DVD material when scaled up it's mostly unnoticable, on data (e.g. windows) you get undesirable edges, or mini rainbow on white stars on dark. This comes from the 3 color system ..most projectors have just one lcd which means that you end up with 3 colors side by side. In theory this should produce a superior display, one on screen pixel for one expected pixel. Instead I have talked with Han about it getting it fixed and was told "this is as good as it's going to get, any change will make it worse". Which I don't entirely buy as having 3 color projectors in the past which have either mechanical or software based (tedious) color calibration.
• the left edge is significantly distractingly darker (10%?) than the rest for about 3" in. It might be actually just bluer that is particularly annoying on flat field shots
• the right edge is a tad yellower similar to the left edge
• the bottom and top have a much lesser darker but is mostly unnoticeable.
• focus across the screen is not consistent, making it hard to impossible for tiny data.
• color is almost oversaturated, with the tools i have I find it tricky to balance it, from being overblown. Still working on it.
• black (projected on a conventional wall or flat matte white projection sheet) is blue/green, and things tend to get lost in it, which is often accentuated on 'low res" eg. dvd. I'm never sure sometimes if I'm seeing what's intended or miscalibrated.
• gamma is tricky to impossible to calibrate so far, no controls exist in the projector either.
• the zoom/focus are combined and a bit tricky, the focus uses these indents which is somewhat helpful but enough friction to try and get one, it often overshoots.
• the dust cap is poorly designed being very snug it's impossible to put on and off for me without also affecting focus.
• plasticy shell, makes it feel more flimsy than the interior is built at least from photos.
• have to output 60hz for the projector to pick it up
• no saturation controls enabled (why?) in menu.
• mediocre IR remote control, rubbery buttons are hard to tell if pressing does anything or not, and often don't work unless pointed directly at the projector.
• the onboard settings seem to be forgotten when the display is disconnected
• when a display is disconnected it goes to a blue splash screen with green i guess half brightness, makes everything white look yellow.

Ordered it directly from Hans, paid via Western Union payment which was less than the paypal overhead and a slower fedex option that still arrived in about a 7 -10 days from China to California, combined these saved about $50 provided you have cash instead of credit.

I'm using it with laptop sources:, XP, Windows7 and Mac mini. VGA and HDMI.
Calibration is actually tricky with the stack of stuff between sources and the projector: 1) PowerDVD having color calibration, 2) Nvidia having significant color controls (separate in desktop and video playback), and the 3) projectors onboard stuff in the (a) normal menu and (b) 'service menu'.

I have a variety of other sources, from DLP projector to LED backlight flat panel, ipad etc, this projector feels like a older generation LCD panel glued to the wall. The colors/and details seem better on more recent displays (e.g. IPS displays), but I hope it can be improved with additional calibration.

I don't think I'll order more or get into reselling it based on it's current state, but I do think this projector is a good sign as to where things are going, and certainly relative to other projects I've seen/have a viable entry.
Edited by TroyWorks - 11/26/12 at 12:59am

Looks like a pretty decent write up. However, the authors single LCD comment ""most projectors have just one LCD which means that you end up with 3 colors side by side"". Is incorrect. There are Generally three LCD's that have to be aligned to get the convergence correct. It also appears that Cre didn't put a whole lot into the actual signal processing chain. I'm also wondering if the convergence comment is related to a scan rate issue. The authors comment """I'm using it with laptop sources:, XP, Windows7 and Mac mini. VGA and HDMI. Calibration is actually tricky with the stack of stuff between sources and the projector"""" This could have a huge effect on the projectors performance and MAY be the reason behind some of the Con's. The most troubling thing is the authors forgotten onboard settings comment. If this is true having to re tweak it every time it gets disconnected from a source is a problem. Does anybody know if there is a save settings option?

Bohanna

I normally disconnect my projector totally and put it away in a drawer for up to a week and have not noticed settings being lost. There is no specific save setting, it saves all settings on the fly and it is not possible to cancel any changed settings once increased/decreased.

I will take this opportunity to comment on my own machine too

I purchased my short throw CRE-X1000PX while on a 3 week holiday in Hong Kong last month. First got in contact with them by Alibaba email and then arranged delivery to a HK relative for USD$1150 inclusive and paid by Paypal. Had some problems with Paypal and only managed to get Paypal to unfreeze the funds after a little more than 1 week. Is this cheaper than others have paid?

Wanted the black version, but was told that they only had the white one in stock.

My living room is only 4.5m wide and the sofa backs onto the wall so it is not possible to project from behind the seating area and I do not want a projector permanently attached to the ceiling. I had intended to place the projector on a coffee table in front of the seating area and was able to use the zoom from ~3m to get a 100 inch image on my motorised glass beaded screen, but if I use the manual keystone to move the picture to its maximum height and use the zoom to enlarge the image the top left and right corners of the projected image would be shadowed by the projector outer case. The case could have been better designed as the case should not interfere with the image. I have now purchased a projector stand and view the screen from either side of the projector. It might be possible to dremel the sharp edge of the projector case to remove the shadow, but I won't be doing this now I have bought a stand.

The audio outputs shown in the brochure seem to be missing from the back of my machine. I was told that they were removed due to lack of space inside which cannot be true unless the short throw version is a lot different from the long throw version.

There seem to be a remote infra-red receiver both on the top and back of the machine. Only the back one seems to work.

There isn't an inbuilt speaker even though there are volume controls on the remote and menu settings.

This is my first real projector so I don't have any experience in this area, but I do have a toy in the form of a 80 lumens pocket Philips Picopix PPX2480. Of course the X1000 is brighter than the PPX2480 and the benefit of the 1080p could be clearly seen. I have spent many hours during the month I have had the machine and have been using the hidden Advanced Menu settings to try to better the picture quality.

When initially setup there was definitely a blue tint to the image, but I'm not sure whether if it is due to being accustomed to it or changes in my settings but I'm now happy with the colour quality.

I have managed to change the settings to what I feel comfortable with by using the Grey and Colour Scale videos from the forum played through my PC's Media Player Classic Homecinema and the greys appear to show no tint. As well as by changing the normal contrast, brightness and saturation levels I have also changed the RGB, RGB Offset and Non-Linear Brightness figures under the Advance Menu.

I believe it is possible to change the gamma settings using the Non-Linear Brightness, but found that anything near Gamma 2.2 crushes the blacks, so have had to compromise by disregarding gamma. Gamma could also be further refined using the PC video card. I have only been able to measure the gamma using utilities such as QuickGamma and I am not sure whether if it is accurate. At the moment I have settings which give a good movie experience through MPC-HC, but the desktop itself looks too high a contrast.

One thing I am definitely unhappy about is that there seems to be a default overscan on 1080p HDMI. I did not notice this until this weekend as I have been spending all my time trying to get good colours. I had wondered why it was not possible to get a decent read on the gamma using QuickGamma and had thought it was due to convergence issues, but finally noticed the overscanning. I have always used larger icons and windows settings geared to enlarge everything so had not noticed the border desktop icons being slightly cut off.

Overscan is present using my PC, Xbox360 and PS3 and could be seen clearly when also plugged into my Amp and dual HDMI output sent to both my Sony LCD and projector at the same time.

Messed around the whole weekend and finally noticed overscan wasn't present for some lower resolutions and managed to accidentally change custom resolution timings to get a 1:1 mapping for 1080p (but only for 30Hz) from the PC, but of course this is not possible on other devices unless there is an option to change overscan on the projector itself. Currently the projector has FULL, ZOOM1 and ZOOM2 for HDMI sources and all have overscan.

Projector is detected only as a Generic PnP Monitor by Win7 and native resolution suggested as 1280x800. This might be one reason why no proper non-overscan 1080p resolution is present as there does not seem to be a proper driver. I have noticed from pictures posted by other owners of their computer desktops that none have shown any overscanning, so I don't know whether if it is specific to my short throw PX model or maybe newer models or maybe only present in Win7 (but of course that doesn't explain the reason for overscanning of Xbox360/PS3 and it not being present on my Sony LCD when I do dual HDMI output). I have tried using both a Acer Revo with Nvidia ION graphics and a HP desktop using Intel onboard graphics (both Win7 unfortunately) and both have overscanning of 1080p by default. Before fiddling the timing the only way to "correct" the image was to scale the desktop smaller to fit a smaller sub-section of the 1920x1080 resolution so that it would appear to not be overscanned.

Tried emailing CRE, but my only contact is Janet and I have needed to give her a crash course on the meaning of overscanning as she seems to have not heard of the term before. Does not look good. I have asked her whether if Mr Hans is available as he seems to be the technical one, but she almost seems as if she is trying to avoid answering that. Weird!

[Edit 28/11/12 Previously tried using 2 different Windows 7 machines (one Nvidia ION and the other onboard Intel graphics), both had overscan at 1080p. Managed to try a 3rd PC dual-boot XP and Vista (Nvidia 8800GTS). Both these OS manage to detect 1080p automatically without overscan. Still have problem with overscan on my main Windows 7 PC (unless 30Hz) and all other equipment though, so have emailed CRE asking whether if it could be a EDID problem and requested a monitor.inf to override the EDID temporarily on the Win7 PC. Hopefully the EDID is not corrupt or if so not write-protected and that they would agree to send an updated working EDID if necessary.]

After fixing the timing and disabling 1080p overscanning on the PC I noticed the image is even clearer and tried some of the 1 pixel vertical and horizontal resolution video tests. The vertical resolution test is perfect. Each horizontal white and black row could be seen without any overlap or tint. The horizontal resolution showed convergence problems. The 2pixel horizontal test was better and it could be seen that the colours are out by a tiny amount.

I have not noticed any edge being darker or of a different tint as mentioned by TroyWorks

I have no problem with focus sharpness except for slight convergence problems and I am satisfied with my projector. The outline for each individual pixel could be seen throughout the screen if looked at from a few inches away.

Zoom/focus controls seem quite stiff and stay in place once adjusted even after each time I store projector away. Though I have found it not necessary to re-adjust that often since I always replace projector on stand in its marked position.

Dustcap for me is relatively loose and looks cheap, but does its job and so far does not seem to affect focus/zoom rings.

Saturation controls appear for me, but it would seem when I tried to use a particular PC with XBMC installed via HDMI the projector picture settings recognised it as a PC and because of that had different menu settings. When I connected another PC the settings were no different from the settings a PS3 or Xbox360.

I will work on my settings some more next weekend and share them here and look forward to hearing comments from other owners (based on the fact that I have a lot of ambient light in my room including an unavoidable red led in the other corner of the room which gives off a noticeable red glow).
Edited by luvclub - 11/28/12 at 5:25am

I have been doing some playing/tweaking. Many of the things i have been trying area result of great information available from this forum.

*****Wondering***** Is it possible that CRE is using 3 1280x800 LCD panels and somehow electronically aligning the pixel mapping which would for all practical purposes be the same as 1920x1080? The reason I ask is because cell phones have been doing this for years where they drop a single color pixel every third dot.....this way to the human eye they can get away with a nearly identical picture with less density.....? It works out mathematically perfectly and would explain why computers report this projector with a resolution of 1280x800...... just a thought.

As for the focus problems.....
I have lowered the projector 1 " and rasied my screen 5" in an effort to use less vertical shift. So far the results look promising. It has reduced the amount of blur offset from corner to middle enough that I can now bump the resolution back to 1920x1080 and increase the font size to 125% and at least be able to mostly read the screen text. This is ok at this point for me as I have many other computers to use...but it is nice to use this one as well. I am gussing that when they align these at the factory they are aligned lens wise so that the best picture is achieved with zero vertical offest?? This isn't usually possible in a home theatre environment as the projector is more often than not mounted high so we don't obstruct the projected image..... but oh well! Back to the drawing board on that one!

I purchased a Luxcine projector about a year ago that is only 720P and also LED with a single LCD panel. Had the LCD panel not died on it I think this unit actually had a better picture for focus and color. The unit only cost about $350.00 shipped but their service is absolutely horrible. I have email chains from them stating they will send a new LCD panel and once I requested they make good they stopped responding.......(sort of like CRE eh? LOL)

I wish there was a manual that explained the advacned menus and what all the extra settings are. I have looked in there and just don't have the balls to start adjusting anything as I know one wrong setting and good bye projector!!! The one that gets me the most is the RGB settings. You can adjust the individual color and then there is also an ffset for each color.....My Visio TV's also have this setting but I have yet to find any good tutorial on what is achieved by setting them differently.

Anyone know?

If you adjust these settings while viewing a colour scale chart (or even a grey scale chart) you would see the adjustments take effect in real time. The individual RGB settings are like individual contrast control for each colour and the offset are the equivalent of the brightness control. For example if your grey scale whites show a tint of red then you would reduce the setting for R. If your blacks show a tint of green then you would reduce the G Offset. At the end your grey scale should show no colour and you should be able to see all the different shades for all RGB under the colour scale. Once you have done that you could mess about with the gamma (non-linear brightness) to increase/decrease the gamma depending on your preference, though you would need to repeat the previous adjustments and brightness/contrast again until the settings settle down.

I have adjusted these settings to practically every single combination between the minimum 0 and max 255 hundreds of times and have not encountered any problems. Just make sure you write down the original settings just in case you want to restore the settings. The non-linear contrast and brightness settings could also be changed quite safely. So far (touch wood) I have had no problems with changing these either.

I find using the projector controls more responsive than using the remote when it is necessary to increase or decrease the settings by a large amount.
Edited by luvclub - 11/30/12 at 10:35am

I was referring to old1 panel LCD projectors where RGB pixels are side by side, rather than 3 panel with convergence, which is typically not found at this cost level. or ..single panel DLP with sequential color which is the other approach.

I should be clearer that it doesn't forget everything just some things that I think are display source specific. Like on my Windows7 it is having issues in Vsynch so that part of the top menu (where the X to close is) and when I correct it with the projector, if the laptop turns off the monitor (as a part of power save) the projector loses it's settings so once the laptop turns the signal back on, it's lost it's position. It's quite annoying, but only happens on my Windows7 right now.

>USD$1150 inclusive and paid by Paypal.

That's a Good deal, ...to compare I paid $1670 TOTAL USD : $1600 1000NX projector + $55 fedex slow + $15 for western union payment (via online billpay option). They do have volume discounts, If I had gotten 3 it would have been $1550 for the projectors. In comparison the other projector I was considering what the Viewsonic PRO 9000 Laser/LED Hybrid which for similar features runs about 2x that.

My NX is definitely showing HD 1920x1080, the panels from epson D7 I think are HD, the projector reports it on screen, Windows XP at least sees it, and is mirroring the HD laptop monitor and the pixels are compareable. The issues others are having with the monitor info is likely due to the PX being I'd wager older stock. Creating these monitor.inf can be done with various display utilities.

I was told the the black shell is the only option now (for NX) as they were tired of the fingerprints or dust showing up or something.

It's entirely possible that the focus issues I have (at edges of screeen) are due to the image shift, I'll have to play with it. The data being VGA or HDMI wouldn't explain why a perfectly focused cursor middle of the screeen has clear pixels of R shifted away from the green.

The color convergence are not likely due to source, but rather LCD panel alignment. I'm just guessing that in manufacture they either glue or solder the panels in place to the dichoric prism (I'd guessing they are using) just based on the mechanical form factor of the panels as delivered from epson. As they are a factory and trying to make lots of these, they probably don't calibrate each projector at all normally, and the whole thing is assembled before the ability for the projector to even turn on.

As I am an engineer I've contemplated opening up and seeing how they do it to maybe improve the convergence, but if they are soldered/glued on deep in a sealed optic engine that's not trivial.

I agree that the projectors controls are more responsive than the remote, which is a bit annoying to use when sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

>I have managed to change the settings to what I feel comfortable with by using the Grey and Colour Scale videos from the forum

Are there links handy for this?

In my calibration, I found that the projector's onboard brightness and contrast were almost worthless in the THX optimizer that came with my Tron DVD. I chose the "Soft" setting in the projector then did the majority of calibration in the Nvidia control panel, which has separate settings for desktop and video. The trick with video is that it has to be playing and using hardware acceleration, else the desktop/CPU options is the one that's in effect.

Also I've been sort of shocked how bad the color range is on some DVD's like Avengers, it's not the projector, it's like they stylize then overcompress so that way more than I'd like gets merged into the lowest level of black...there's simply not enough black data there to begin with, It feels almost a bit like a 256 color gif posterized. But until blown up to 73" I never really noticed this before. That or they are increasingly compressing DVD's to make BlueRay sales

I have not been brave enough to open the can of worms of non-linear brightness control, but should be safe, they are just more nuanced brightness and contrast. I can see it's value as the greyscale at different brightness levels currently isn't quite uniformly grey, but suspect that getting this dialed in would be somewhat difficult as there are only 4 controls. Basically as you go on a grayscale from white to black the color balance at different shades of grey aren't uniformly grey, one band might be slightly red, or slightly blue. Not enough to really bother me, and I wonder over time on the LED lifecycle and even as it heats up how much this balance shifts, meaning to get it 100% right I'm guessing it has to be done on say every 500 hours of watching. It's a pity that there is no easy way to self-calibrate itself.

Bringing up my issues with Han @ Cre who's email is cre-hans at hotmail ...com, he's friendly but seemingly powerless. I have offered to ship in the projector and pay to get whatever changes fixed, but most the answers I get are non answers/deflectory:, "that's normal" "it's the best it can be", "it isn't designed for that/data", "i've passed it only to my engineer", "My engineer says it's as good as it can be and it's only going to get worse if we change it." Not exactly encouraging, though that said it's odd for factories to have any sort of customer support, or 2 year warranty.

Displays and projectors seem to be moving pretty fast, so I figure this is a 2 year use, by then 4k projectors will probably be out

Most Chinese directly marketed, i.e. not OEM/ODM, projectors are still VGA or SVGA single LCD plastic lensed '1080P capable' projectors. of course these retail voor 200-300, eventhough they are often marked-up as 1-2K, and 'now only...';-).

The convergense on the first unit discussed here last year was horrendous and the French guy had o ship it back to China two times, for many problems and the unit quickly failing.

Who isn't getting spam from Chinese vendors, so they all have online sales staff;-).

I assume this is when connecting by VGA. Have not experienced this problem under HDMI as there are no controls on the projector to fix any vsync problems anyway.

>That's a Good deal, ...to compare I paid $1670 TOTAL USD : $1600 1000NX projector + $55 fedex slow + $15 for western union payment (via online billpay option). They do have volume discounts, If I had gotten 3 it would have been $1550 for the projectors.

Weird, I was quoted $1350 for the NX. Maybe it was because I ordered through a chinese friend and all correspondence was by chinese email. Managed to save shipping as it was delivered to Hong Kong for free and then I brought it back to the UK in my luggage.

>The issues others are having with the monitor info is likely due to the PX being I'd wager older stock. Creating these monitor.inf can be done with various display utilities.

Unfortunately a new monitor.inf file won't help when using other equipment such as Bluray Players, PS3 and XBOX360. I have emailed CRE about the overscanning problem and told them to download the AVSHD calibration disk. They replied: "thank you for help us with test the projector and let me know the hiden problem of this projector. and i will download the AVhd and then test."(!)

>It's entirely possible that the focus issues I have (at edges of screeen) are due to the image shift, I'll have to play with it. The data being VGA or HDMI wouldn't explain why a perfectly focused cursor middle of the screeen has clear pixels of R shifted away from the green.

While watching a movie last night I finally noticed the tinted band along the edges that you mentioned in a previous post. It is there but barely noticeable when focused on the movie and I only noticed it once when starting up the movie and the image is a very specific colour.
I also have convergence problems. Everything seems correctly aligned on the left edge but red and green alignment shifts in opposite directions while moving across to the right edge. On the right edge it is almost rbg (or gbr, can't remember) pixel wise. On a 100inch screen and sitting 4m away it is not noticeable for me though. Focusing/sharpness of all the misaligned pixels isn't a problem though.

>>I have managed to change the settings to what I feel comfortable with by using the Grey and Colour Scale videos from the forum
>Are there links handy for this?
http://www.avsforum.com/t/948496/avs-hd-709-blu-ray-mp4-calibration
You can download the MP4 files if you do not want to burn a disk.

My settings if anyone is interested:
contrast 20
brightness 57
saturation 23
sharpness 50
R 255
G 225
B 0
R OFFSET 128
G OFFSET 128
B OFFSET 143

Decided to not change non-linear brightness and contrast, as difficult to calibrate. Normal contrast and brightness settings do not give full scale but I find I prefer a bit more black clipping than too much banding in lower blacks. Contrast is already high from upped R and G (to negate some of the blue tint). These are the settings for watching movies in MPC-HC (output range 0-255).
Edited by luvclub - 12/2/12 at 1:36pm

There should not be any issues with the color of the LEDs and how they handle heat and or change color over time either at one sitting or over long times. I have a high end LED projector and I have not a single issue that this one has. That being said a Runco Q-750 has the firmware, software, and hardware needed to make sure there are not issues.

The LEDs are stable for years and thousands of hours. I and others with SIM2, Runco, DP, and Vango have measured the brightness, sat, and lum at many intervals and in a DLP projector it does not change. If there is an issue it is due to the LCDs and or the hardware.

For the price it is up to the buyer to determine if it is a good buy. to me no for all the reasons you listed above. Does that mean I only think a Runco will work NOT at all. there are many projectors between that offer a great picture that can be calibrated properly; they are however not LED.

I decided I will be getting rid of mine. Although it's been less than 30 days of having it, Han says he can't accept it back, not even with restocking fees so I guess I'll put it on Ebay.

I need stronger compatibility with prolonged computer work (e.g. text/spreadsheet) I wear reasonably thick glasses, and between the two the rainbow/blur is hard to read for extended times, as well I really want multiple ones and the darker edges won't tile well.

Comparisons are so tricky, I could compare it to my old Hughes/Ampro lightvalve projector which while had convergence utilities but was a bitch to converge. This does similar amounts of visual muck, but is MUCH brighter,. MUCH smaller and MUCH cheaper.

I did try the vertical shift and found it did affect the focus on extremes. At least for me, it oddly seemed better in the upper +100% rather than the middle or shifted -100%, note it takes about 29 turns to go from either extreme.
Edited by TroyWorks - 12/3/12 at 12:50am

Thank you for this very intuative and thorough explanation and now it all makes perfect sense. I adjusted some of the non-linear contrast and brightness settings.......Did you notice that #3 is the only setting in there of the 5 that has ANY effect on the observed picture?? Is this by design perhaps? Is this simply a more granular adjustment than the 0-100 in the main menu? Or does this somehow kickin some other way?

Here are my RGB settings after running the calibration disks ffom this forum and eyeballing the image:
R= 135
G=100
B=122
RO= 129
GO=106
BO= 129

Does this very LOW green number concern anyone? Is it possible because this room and an adjacent room are painted green (VERY DARK in the theatre room, near black) adjacent room is a nice warm green.....can reflected light add to the green I am experiencing???? it would make sense that it does..... the screen is simply curtain blackout material over a perfect size frame for the image. It is about 120" Diaganol. The image brightness is very good.....BUT I have been fighting with this green thing now since I got it.....

Remember your RGB settings are also dependent on your normal brightness/contrast settings. So unless someone is coincidentally using identical brightness/contrast settings to yours the final image would look different even if the RGB settings are set to the same as yours. If I were to max out the RGB then the normal contrast setting would be lower. If I were to max out the RGB Offset then the brightness setting would be lower and vice versa of course.

These settings are also dependent on the ambience light and screen, so naturally if you have a green light reflected in the room it would not be necessary for the projector to output so much green and therefore you would have lower green settings.

As for the non-linear settings, yes I have also noticed the changing the 3rd normally affects the image the most. You must first make sure your brightness and contrast are set to the correct levels. The non-linear brightness are just points on a graph and describes the rate of increase of brightness from min to max, so you could make brightness increase at a slower rate initially then quickly (darker = higher gamma), or even rate, or maybe quickly then slowly (lighter = lower gamma). Unfortunately changing the lower or upper settings would mainly achieve very fine adjustments to the darker or lighter ranges of the picture and it is less obvious to see unless you have very accurately calibrated black and white endpoints (by calibrating the brightness/contrast settings correctly) otherwise any changes may just be clipped off the end of the viewable scale.

I have ordered a ND2 filter and would be testing my projector with it to see whether if it could improve blacks. Currently the main problem with the projector for me is that sometimes blacks aren't black enough. This hopefully would also improve the contrast.

What about overscan? I have noticed that my ATI 6570HD video card is set to about 5% underscan so that the image doesn't spill over the edge of the projected image. Is there a setting in the Projector to turn this off? I have seen in other forums where re-naming inputs....things like that will force 1:1 pixel mapping.

Perhaps in this advanced menu there is a setting for overscan?? Did you see page 38 of this forum where all the menu's screen shots are posted.....do any of these loook as though it could turn overscan off for any given input?

I don't know about your "5% underscan", but I have experienced overscan which using your term "spills" over the edge of projected image. Read my post #1143 about overscan (I believe ~2%). I guess you are using Win7, like me. For some reason the problem doesn't seem to appear under XP or Vista (on the ones that I've tried anyway). Try selecting or forcing 1920x1080 32bit to 30Hz. This is the only refresh rate that seems to work for me without overscan on Win7.

Last question i promise!

When I ran the Calibration disk I burned from this forum and was doing the basic setup.....I can set the black bars no problem with brightness so that from #17 up they flash. Trying to get ANYTHING to flash on the next chapter (Setting whites) is another story.....i believe it says any bars above 30-34 flashing is good.......It doesn't matter where I set my contrast...there aren't any flashing bars!!!! nothing....nada....

Even in the non-linear area nothing i do with brightness or contrast yield flashing bars. Is there something I am missing? Is this chapter defective or some sort of sick joke that I missed???? :P

First of all copy down all your settings and then turn down your brightness and contrast. If you still don't see anything flashing on the white scale video then the output from your PC might already be clipped. Try to look through your graphics card settings and make sure output is set to RGB or 0-255. Also make sure your media player is also using the same. You should now be able to see the full range. Re-calibrate the brightness and contrast settings to your liking.

Played ALL NIGHT again! I have a pretty robust HTPC so I did a system image restore from the initial Graphics card install to insure no settings were messed with and WALLA! I have white flashing bars! Matter of fact it works pretty good now and seems to respond much better to adjustments.

I contacted CRE about the overscan issue and he pretty much copy and pasted the solutions from this thread.....problem is.....I have adjusted my ATI card (hd6750) for 24,25,29,30,50,60 and 72 hz...they ALL overscan. Even the Blu-Ray player (Vizio) has about 2%....is THAT normal? This would indicate that no matter WHAT you put into the projector it is getting overscanned a little bit.

My solution so far has been to create a new resolution of 1856x1044 and it shows perfect without any adjustments to scanning in the PC.

Another ODD thing: I have TMT5 and I can play Blu-Ray with no issue from the PC.....Running their Blu-Ray assistant program however shows that I should NOT be able to play Blu-Ray because it says I have an Analog Video connection and my Video Drivers aren't compatible??

I have ONE HDMI connection from my PC directly to the Projector.......I also have the latest ATI drivers (9.XXX) which ATI claims are HDCP compliant......Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? Is it possible the input to the projector is f'd up???

I hooked up this up last night via VGA....oh BOY! I selected use EDID from the ATI control Panel.....it locks in at 1280x1024 60hz and nothing else......that is IT! Un-selecting use EDID and no matter what you TELL the display to adjust to.....YEP you get 1280x1024......I find this QUITE Odd.....???

I have opened it. Shall post some photos soon, but now can say, that the matrix is
L3D07U-82G00. That means 1280X800.
http://global.epson.com/products/htps/products/index.html

Wow, you scared me there! Luckily I found this
http://www.datasheetarchive.com/L3D07U-datasheet.html

It seems L3D07U is 1920x1080 and the one in your link is the L3D07X.

But thank you anyway for being brave enough to open it up and confirming the LCD module used.
Edited by luvclub - 12/11/12 at 9:59am

Many thanks for a link and sorry for my mistake. Jast began to study it. The most interesting for me is LEDs control.
By the way, the quality of the picture of X1000 is terrible. I`ll poste some measurements soon

Thanks for the great pictures. What would be amazing would be if there was an easy way re-align the LCDs to fix the convergence problem (maybe the modules are attached in a way where tightening or loosening some screws would shift the whole alignment?). I think the LG PA70G has focus issues which was fixed easily by adjusting a few screws.

I took the mainboard off. Is this photo usefull for you?

Great pictures. It would seem each module is fixed to the central block (which probably has mirrors to redirect everything forwards?) by 4 screws. I wonder if it would be possible to re-align the RGB by loosening or tightening the left pair or right of screws on each module. Could you make out whether if the screws are normal screws or welded? Currently on my projector everything seems correctly aligned on the left edge and then the alignment of the red and green seems to mis-align in opposite directions as you move to the right edge. I'm guessing if the red alignment is correct on the left side of the projected image and then it moves to the left relative to the other colours, tightening the screws on the left and/or loosening the right screws might fix the alignment. I wonder if it would be possible to do this while the projector is powered and projecting an image or would looking at the leaked light be too dangerous for the eyes as well as electrocuting one self.

I guess focus problems could be fixed in a similar way too. No matter, I'm not brave enough to do what you have done. It would be great if you could do a summary on how you opened the projector and whether if there were any problems that you're encountered while doing so.

For a pity it is not possible to reach this screws with mainboard is on it place and flex cables are connected. Moreover, matrixes are scewed to some metal plates, wich a glued to central core with prisms. It seems to me, that alignment is not the main problem, caurse the lens is horrible and you can`t see jast one pixel. Later I`ll poste some pictures to illustrate this, after I assemble the proj.

Moste borring me problem is the intensity of green LED in accordance to blue and red, especially red.










That is real images, no any advertising, as in the begining of the theme. Please compare the projectors.



Sorry for the chaos in my room. ;-)
And now light intensity in numbers. Hope you can read the display of luxmeter.




Left projector is 1280X800 one DLP 3xLEDs OSRAM, 22watts power, no name $650.



Now I am trying to study the powering of the LEDs scheme. At that moment I can only say, for sure, that there is no any separate controlers of the LEDs.
Any question are welcome.

Are you sure. On mine I could make out the grid of pixels.

I guess that the thikness of each line is not less then 2 or 3 pixels. Do a closer picture.

I thought that picture is already sharp enough and you could see each pixel quite clearly (it was quite difficult to photograph it at that size even, because of the low light). Can't remember what that picture is of (I think it was one of the inbuilt images within the advance menu), but it was the top left corner of the projected image. The image had 20 of these boxes spanning the width and you could even count the pixels - each box is 96 pixels wide (96x20=1920). I used this image to determine as a fact that the projector was 1920x1080 native. Since the image was from the advance menu it did not suffer from overscan. Are you sure you're not projecting an overscanned image? If you are then your horizontal rows will be blurred onto 2 rows of pixels.

Oh, only just saw your post #1165 (don't know how I managed to miss it). Your X1000 pictures look really bad - I think it is faulty as even out of the box my projector never showed such a massive green cast. If you don't mind please try calibrating using these settings:
contrast 20
brightness 57
saturation 23
sharpness 50
(The following under the advance menu - by pressing 1,2,3,4 in sequence on remote):
R 255
G 225
B 0
R OFFSET 128
G OFFSET 128
B OFFSET 143
Edited by luvclub - 12/13/12 at 7:43am

May be you are right. I am not quite sure in overscaning. I think that light intesity and color balance is more important to achive a good quality of the picture of that proj.
I` d like to admit that according to luxmeter numbers, the light intensity is less then 300 lumens. The same conclusion we can make compareing two images in my photos.
I have studyed the powering LEDs sheme.
All thre LEDs are driving together serially throw 12xLM317 at the current 6.38 amperes.




That is why the light intencity is too weak and so as the LEDs temperature. Moreover, to balance the colors, they shunted the blue LED with 8x4.3ohm resistors in parallel. But there is no any balance in red and green LEDs.
The voltage on red LED is 2.24 volt and on green LED is 4.72 volt. That gives as 6.38x2.24=14.3watts in red and 6.38x4.72=30watts in green. Besides all, light emission of green LED is two times higher then red one. Now I understud why the colors is to blueish. But I don`t know how to correct that.
In addition, you can see that 6pcs of LM317 is not inserted into the plate. That means, that we can, theoretically, encrease driving LEDs current to 6.38x1.5=9.57amperes. With high probability, on higher current levels, the colors woud be more balanced.
By the way I discovered some suspisious, not soldered connector on main board.




It looks like separate PWM controll to RGB LEDs. If it would be realised, then, may be 100 000 : 1 contrast ratio would not seems so madness.

LEDMASTER, all this technical stuff is beyond me, but nonetheless amazing to read and look at. I am sure some of the regulars here would relish poring over your new photos once they finally return to this thread. I am still sure that the previous photos of the projected pictures look wrong/faulty and don't represent a normal working X1000. Thanks!

PS I have just noticed you're not using HDMI for the comparison pics and I'm not at home with my projector at the moment, but aren't those supposed to be component connections? Are you trying to use composite or component video?

Found a pic of the connections compared to your connections
Edited by luvclub - 12/13/12 at 9:43am