CRE X1000 Worlds First 3 LED 3 LCD 1080p Projector..Anybody heard of these guys? - Page 41

Not sure how relevant this thread is anymore, emailed Han this week, the X1000 is no longer being made, plus no more updates to it. Then X2000 is the only thing being made now, which supposedly is an inferior built projector (thus cheaper), but no updates have been made to the X2000 since my last talking about it's issues.

On my X1000 ran into a couple new issues, the other day switching from PC output 1920x1200 to projector the projector couldn't figure out what to do, so had really wierd almost non-visible output. Turns out it lost it's mind and the various settings that showed up in the user adjustments weren't actually the one being used, and I had to switch to some other preset and back to correct itself.

After that the red has for a bit a streaky quality that showed up on some scenes, though it's always been possible to see a ghosting at times in dark scenes, as it feels like the active matrix in the LCD is passive matrix so for example if there are strongly activated section at the bottom the ones at the top are weaker/brigher than then should be

I'm still mixed on the price/value ratio. It really bugs me how often I have to fiddle with the projector to get it to display right when my machine changes resolution, or shuts down. So far the best I've been able to figure out is just to leave the laptop it's connected to on all the time.

The display *IS* HD from pixel tests but the quality of the HD is so poor, makes things like reading the web or any sort of data (excel) like running it through a fuzz filter. The lack of precise color calibration and overall medicore color contrast are a 1-2 punch to make things almost unreadible, even if properly focused. The best solution is just cranking up the text size or lowering the resolution on the projector which takes half the fun outof having a HD projector and it's not massively better than having my old SVGA projector aside from noise level.

But overall the direction these projectors are going is still encouraging, and in movie watching mode and game mode, my Girlfriend and I have gotten a lot of enjoyment from this... I can't wait to see what we get a couple years from now.

When i remember back to my display issues, The ati cataylst panel solved it, i had to make a custom 1080p setting and set it to set it to 60hz or 24fps etc,tho i dont think ye olde x1000 supports 1920 x1200, tho i`ve never used it.
Text wise i`ve never had too much issue with reading text on it, for the most part is pretty crisp even small fonts. tho the top right corner has become a little blurry on mine, tho for data and text i ve had few probs,

Sadly i spent the whole evening fiddling with the factory color menu, which didnt produce nothing remarkable. I was excited at one point as i found a good setting for the white balance at 75% grey, but the excitement was short lived as it made the blacks even worse.
I spent alot of cash goofing around with this thing, i have the xirite calibration meter, a C-1 spectracal meter, and a 2nd hand VideoEQ, but only get marginal color improvement.

I do hope the later models are wey better than this, For me this has been a stop gap, until the prices come down and technology improves, i even tried a sony Hmz T-2 virtual theater gizmo which was an amazing picture but very uncomfortable, so still i come back to the x1000 even if the colors arent as good,
For general; day to day the x1000 has brought some enjoyment, visiting friends are always amazed and dont notice any color issues,
Anyways i`m done fiddling with this projector, i`m sure it will last me another 2-3 years (fingers crossed) and by then there will be something awesome available. I heard that acer hybrid has a 20,000 bulb life,for me its always been about the bulbs, some bulbs cost just as much a new projector, which is how i happened upon this one, No ones want to pay hundreds of dollars on lamps, Hopefully in a couple of years there will be some awesome projectors with much better bulb life,

I reduced this annoying bluish by hardware modding.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1307577/cre-x1000-worlds-first-3-led-3-lcd-1080p-projector-anybody-heard-of-these-guys/1140
Think, that you can not acheeve good results by modif settings of that serv menu.

Hey Ledmaster, thxs i saw those mods you made,Its great you have an electronics background to tinker like you did looks good, did u manage to install that ex cinema type lens u bought from ebay?
It is certainly odder than usual your earlier pictures showed alot of green, compared to mine and some other which was tad blue, but not overly so.
Its great you have an electronics background,
Its a shame that the factory menu color temp numbers dont go past 255, if they could go higher it could have had some potential.
Also i tried hue but didnt see much difference.I had hooked up my spectracal C-1 meter to take a actual reading of the white, but hue only changed the white delta values in very small quantity, whilst the white point reading did not change at all on the color chart.

I was able get the white point exactly in the center box of the calman chart using the color temp
r 255
g 0
b 0
r o (offset)255
g o 154
b o 2
contrast 43
brightness 39
saturation 24

using grey 75% chart

I only experimented with the white point,at this stage, but even tho i got the white in the central box of the calman chart, the overal picture result still looked abit reddish.
and if yours is more green than blue my settings are probably useless to you, (write down your values before u begin). (should anyone experiment with theirs)

I probably will have a little more play with the meter, and factory menu to try saturation as thats one option i didnt play with yet. Would be nice if i could find the proper RGB controls, as i dont think color temp is it.

factory menu: about hue,

I had thought the hue settings didnt have any effect, however, in the middle of playing with it, i went to feed the cats, and powered down to conserve energy. On my return i came back and switched it on, and low and behold the display colors looked pastel, so changed them back to how they were originally rebooted and it went back to normal.

Its still an impossible task to figure out, but none the less a discovery i thought to share.

Also i attempted to research what afecd4,afecd5 was etc from the VD standard menu, and seems to be something to do with the color
http://www.colorhexa.com/afecd5
http://www.colorh.com/color/AFECD4

i dont know if i`m brave to play with that yet as i didnt understand the links well.

Sellmejank, the settings of the service menu are intended only to fine-tune the color balance and may not be used for a serious correction. In fact, the brightness of the red diode is significantly below that is necessary for the correct color balance with the luminosities, which develop green and blue diodes. When you maximum lower the values of g 0, b 0, the transparency of the relevant matrixces reduced to the minimum possible values. But it can not increase the brightness of the red diode. Besides, with these values, the linearity of the matrix is reduced. Matrix LCD generally have a nonlinear dependence of transparency from the applied to voltage. Some correction-emphasis curve is entered in the control of the processor, but in General it's a very compromising function. Besides, we should not forget that in addition to the static white balance, there is also a dynamic balance. That is why, when you put on the correct white with your instrument, the picture seemed to be reddish. More even result can be achieved simply by installing the red filter on the lens. But this is, of course, would reduce the brightness of the picture. Or you can lower the brightness of the green and blue diodes. Well, finally increasing the light flux from the red diode. And so I did.
After a couple of days I`ll provide some photos of using a different lens. At once I`ll tell, that the use of other lens, was nessesery only because I had to adjust the distance projection to the size of already finished screen in the room of my customer. And to improve the colour that has nothing to do.

Hi guys, been reading this forum for a while and just had to register, to write something up. Anybody has any information about the picture quality of those 'newer' models x2000, they seem to be a lot cheaper..

I myself have been talking with Hans for while asking about hows the x1000 going on, he replyed "yes ,there was some problem ,some customer thinks it is bluish , and yellow spot after use . but it was 1year ago's matter . the quality o f X1000 isvery stable now ."

Now im asking about the x2000-VX and hoping he would send me some photos of the image quality on that projector. So hopefully getting some more info about the x2000 because google doesn't come with any reviews.. btw what happens to the chinese products that no one buys?

i bet the x2000 will still have that blue-ish tint.
in the early stages of my x1000 i attempted many times to communicate to hans that they need to get their projectors properly calibrated to rec-709 color standards. I think i even found a Chinese page describing what is rec 709 to avoid miscommunication. and told them to invest in calibration equipment and perhaps hire a technician who knows how to do this.
Sadly from their later models, stil Il heard people on the forum say the same thing about the colour ;so doubt he understood or passed on the info i sent him.
It would be great if we had a Chinese speaker to communicate these issues and also to push for a proper CMS color management system.

I am very angry and PLEASE DO NOT BUY ANY PROJECTOR FROM CRE.

For some reason I have never had the opportunity to communicate with Hans even though I have requested so. All communication that I have had with CRE from my initial order inquiries to subsequent post purchase "user support" were done via a lady called Janet.

Naturally in order to get the sell she would respond in a very timely manner, but later on after I had made my purchase and had "problems" with the projector I was shocked by the apparent change in the helpfulness of her replies.

I had noticed I was unable to get a 1:1 pixel mapping to a PS3, Xbox360, Sony Blu-Ray player and Windows 7 PC (unless 30Hz). However I was able to get 1:1 pixel mapping on PCs using XP and Vista.

So I fired an email to her and boy was it difficult to explain the problem to her. You would of thought just saying there was an overscan issue and that would be enough, but at the end I had to email pictures of the overscanning and send her links to the wiki for "overscan" before she understood what the problem was.

To summarize, would you want to purchase a projector from a Company who do the following:
1) They don't seem to have tested their projectors for compatibility with PS3, Xbox360 and Windows 7 PC.
2) They do not test for overscanning or have not noticed overscan on standalone Bluray players.
3) The EDID could be wrong and not compatible with equipment to generate a 1:1 pixel mapping.
4) They don't know what overscan is.
5) They believe the max resolution of Win7 is 1280*1084,
6) And all the issues with RGB convergence, blue-ish tint and grey blacks.

At first I was willing to take the risk with an unknown branded projector as it did seem a good deal for a 1080p and LED projector and hopefully support would be excellent going by the comments about Hans which have been mainly good, but how wrong could I have been!

Following are some excerpts from my emails with Janet:

and this is the reply:
Amazed that they have not tested the projector using either a PS3 or Xbox360 and not ever tested for overscan on standalone Bluray Players. Also mentioning some rubbish about Win7, so I sent them a link to the AVS HD 709 calibration disk for use with a Bluray player and/or windows. Then I received this reply.

So, it is a "Thanks for helping us test the projector and don't think we would help you with any of your questions". I sent another email mentioning that I was very disappointed in not getting any of my questions answered and I would really like to write some good comments about the projector on this forum (which I had done so far before this post) and pressed for a reply from the engineer, but I got this reply and no more:

Ha, that is ordinary chinise circus. They are absolutely don`t know what are you talking about.

Quote:
1) PC with Windows 7 (Nvidia ION graphics) - overscans when 1920x1080 60Hz or 24Hz used. Somehow managed to get custom resolution 1920x1080 30Hz to show no overscanning, but 30Hz isn't a refresh rate I would like to use permanently.
2) Another PC with Windows 7 (on-board Intel graphics) - overscans when 1920x1080 60Hz or 24Hz used. Somehow managed to get custom resolution 1920x1080 30Hz to show no overscanning!
3) Borrowed another PC with XP and Vista (Nvidia 8800GTS graphics) - these OS seem to be able automatically detect 1920x1080 without overscan!

Yeh i remember win7 suxs at detecting the projector at 1920 x1080, i have an ATI card so i am not sure what options are available to you in the Nvidia control panel.
You can try powerstrip http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm you can tweak stuff to get custom resolution. its useful at telling you the capabilities and viewing your EDID. information. Once installed right click it from your system tray to access its features.Its shareware but fully functional.(tho be careful with the timings settings best avoided )

edit,
I did a search yeh seems the newer nvdia drivers took out the option for overscan compensation
i came across this dunno if its useful
[http://www.majorgeeks.com/TV_Tool_d403.html
Edited by sellmejunk - 3/18/13 at 11:44pm

Under the Nvidia control panel there are settings which allow you to compensate for the overscan, but in doing so you would lose the 1:1 mapping

I have tried using powerstrip but find it difficult to understand how it works! Have tried to create custom resolutions but the projector or windows seems to be very picky. If I remember correctly, when I created a new resolution and it didn't work out (ie out of range and displays a blank screen) it should automatically revert to the original resolution if you do not press anything to accept the tested resolution. But on my system it seems to crash randomly and half the time I need to reset the PC to try again. After a while I gave up, but maybe I need to go back and give it another go now.

If they had properly tested their projectors and made sure the EDID worked correctly with common equipment then there wouldn't be any problems like these.

PLEASE DO NOT BUY ANY PROJECTOR FROM CRE.

This maybe useful
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/417607/overscan-with-ion-card-none-of-the-other-methods-worked-/
tho you probably seen it i`m guessing,.
Otherwise the only other thing off the top of my head is pick up a an ATI radeon HD 5 series upwards (probably affordable on ebay) seems some of the Nvidia Ion crowd had similar issues.I know the options in the projector suck. doesn't have a "just scan" option.
Edited by sellmejunk - 3/19/13 at 6:01am

Thanks. Yes I've tried the methods stated, but maybe I've overlooked something so I'll definitely try again. I do have a spare ATI card lying around somewhere, but don't really fancy using it as then I would need to use a bigger PC as my HTPC. I would prefer to use my Acer Revo which is smaller and is able to handle all my 1080p albeit at the moment has overscan issues with this crappy projector.

PLEASE DO NOT BUY ANY PROJECTOR FROM CRE.

You didn't have to add this. Your post itself (as well as most others in this thread) is more than enough to deter anybody in his right mind. It's pretty obvious that they (just like most other Chinese designers/manufacturers) have ultra-loose quality control, which only lessens with time.

No surprise they've fooled sellmejunk, who couldn't even get my nickname right, but how they fooled Bohanna, who has an extensive experience with projectors, is a bit of a mystery.

i called you B-52 Admirer, excuse me B-2 admirer. Sings Loveshack is a little ole place)

After 2 years of having owned my CRE X-1000, i still believe i have made the right purchase. Tho i use it as a computer monitor, i would say this gives a more 2nd rate club/ pub HD feel rather than a precise color monitor. if its 60,000 hours of bar time HD ,Overall for me this fulfills my cinematic experience i will have no problem with putting on a bluray Of Battle Star Galactice space battles!
The color is not rec 709, but still very watchable. The only thing missing from this would be a full CMS colour managment system, and by no means would i say the picture is off but its still excellent color. I would not describe myself as a Projector enthusiast, but i do expect reliability and more so longevity, which i get in spades.

Longevity in the form of 60,000 hours(Its Wriitten on the CRE Box!!) still shames more reputable companies that want to cash in on lamp life. The average lamplife of a projector is around 2000 hours, which milks the life of the time you spend to watch your " relaxing " movie.
Some of the high end costing many thousands of pounds worth i.e Sony`s energy saving laser LED hybrid has a 15,000 hour lamp life, and thats a Sony so imagine how much a bulb would be for this.
Would someone watch movies on them, for sure, but to have it as a computer monitor?, well u best make some superstar money

Give me a beer , and if i walked into a bar /pub and they showed this1080p 60" screen Sports in HD i`d be pretty happy.

The controls are basic, the options are limited.
My 1080p runs win 8- 64bit screen is on underscan and so doesnt fill the entire screen, and i have an ATi control panel that allows to fill the corners.

I believe Luvclub issue with overscan resulted in blurry text, but on mine i can easily do y everyday pc tasks, write letters in regualar font from 78" screen 9ft away on my couch.
And honestly whether its overscan or underscan on Xbox dont matter to me as its still HD++ .
The amusing thing is CRE are doing a a much nicer job of using Epson own LCD LED parts + Other technologies implemented. such as Mid High end PC style Heatsink more which CRE have heavily invested!
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1307577/cre-x1000-worlds-first-3-led-3-lcd-1080p-projector-anybody-heard-of-these-guys/630#post_20553485

There a bunch of pics and some great discussion over this thread about cooling,, temperature measurements,cinema still ,





I will have to stand firm i made the right choice,

At the timeof purchase, i was looking at getting a benq w1000 but veered away from DLP which causes huge eyestrain and headaches in sensetive people, so with the CRE X1000 being 3LCD +3 LED seems like a no brainer.. The epson i was bidding on ebay got bid out of reach. and costly on bulb,
Edited by sellmejunk - 3/25/13 at 3:38pm

I own the x1000 as well, and despite it's many issues it's produced many hours of enjoyment for me and my girlfriend. Given the cost of a DVD/BlueRay on amazon is $10 and the price of a theater outting is $14-$17 (no food/drinks) it's still a decent investment, and compariable or less cost than flat screens of similar size, with less mounting issues.

I am dissapointed in many aspects of the projector as a data projector, it's certainly not that really useable as a HD projector, and the sync issues (e.g. every time I turn it on, I need to futz with the menu is less than ideal .but then it's still fun, and better in some aspects than my older Benq 600X800 projector.

cre and china are typical or better than most direct from china retailers/manufactureres, compared to spending say 2x for a laser/led hybrid it still seems like a fair cost/reward for the one I got.

As could be seen from my initial posts I wasn't completely unhappy with the performance of the CRE-X1000 projector. There are things you should put up with considering what you're getting (a 3 LED/LCD projector) for the price which is reasonable and there are work-arounds for other problems/issues.

1) Misconvergence (I have maybe 0.5-1mm horizontal misconvergence which isn't noticeable at all while watching movies), but still sharp enough for desktop use.
2) Blueish tint (this could be compensated for by adjusting settings, but never truly eliminated. However after a while your eyes would not notice it.)
3) Overscanning on everything I have tested except Win7 (30Hz) and Xp/Vista. Maybe problem with HDMI ports' EDID but CRE would not answer any questions about this.
4) Slight feathering(?) of colour/hue along border of projection which is most noticeable when used for desktop use.
5) Greyish blue blacks, no way to calibrate greyscale, no CMS and no way to change gamma.
6) I however have never experienced any of the syncing problems mentioned by TroyWorks.

What I cannot forgive though is the initial pretense of customer service and asking for feedback, but when feedback was given they basically refused to answer any basic questions that their engineer should know off the top of their head which could imply they have never really tested the projector at all.

The most important questions that I want answered are:

1) Has the EDID been tested with common equipment e.g for full pixel mapping. (I have found overscan on PS3, Xbox360, Bluray player and Win7 unless 30Hz).
2) Is there anyway to reflash the EDID?

PLEASE DO NOT BUY ANY PROJECTOR FROM CRE

About the 1) point.
This is not misconvergence. This is an optical effect due to cheap optics solution.

Hi guys,

Been watching this for a while now, and just had to make the order. I will not write a review but i will write my first thoughts about this, never owned projector before so hopefully i will have real newbie reaction to the quality of this thing.

I think some of these example settings will be useful to get started, even tho they are selling viewsonic pro9000 but it still costs twice as much as this one does, so if i can survive 2-3 years with this one i think its money well spent .

As one of the ORIGINAL posters on this Projector the good seem to out far weigh the bad since they fixed the original blue LCD overheating issue. I have a LGPA70 that uses LEDs that I bought for a song at frys. It is NOT anyway near as Bright as my Lamp Based projectors but the LED's supposiedly last forever so NO problem or worry leaving it on for long periods of time. The Cre unit seems to have its quirks but the longevity of the thing and the Epson panels are the main selling feature. If I DIDN'T have a lifetime supply of UHP Lamps and several high quality Sanyo projectors I would buy the Cre in a heart beat. The ONLY thing that concerns me is that they don't use the more expensive inorganic epson Panels. If they did it would make things even SWEETER.

Bohanna

You mean battlestar GREYlactica?


Can't believe this thread is still around, superior led projectors on sale at frys for 1/10th the price. Insane.

Care to give the make and Model numbers of the projectors you are talking about? Inquiring minds want to know???

I have the PA70 that I bought for 499.00 but I don't think its as bright as the Cre even with the overstated Lumen numbers. I think the General consensus is that the Cre does somewhere between 1000 and 1200 actual lumens. The THING that separates this Projector from The DLPs is it has three separate LCD panels, a red, a green and a blue as opposed to a 6500K white light behind the image.

Bohanna.

Cre has no any 1000 -1200 lm. Less then 500 lm. Don`t let you froud.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1307577/lightbox/post/22695713/id/106041

And deplorable contrast.

Not sure how this thread is alive.

Hello,

I got the projector and its all good came pretty fast, total cost about 1200 euros (includes customs and ceiling mount).

LuvClub i've found a way to fix overscan issue (win7), here is a tutorial
http://users.telenet.be/byeclan//FIXED%20ASPECT%20RATIO%20OPTION%20FIX.pdf

Ill help you a little our EDID code is: 49 54 00 02


btw.. the menu changes on depending what resolution im using, when i did that overscan fix, appeared a rgb color balance mode to menu :/..

Ill write more about what i think about this projector later on .

Some sample shots:




have only used the settings available within projector, might try some powerstripping later on to get better color balance if its even possible.. the black is bluish grey..
Edited by omaa - 4/25/13 at 2:40pm

Hi again,

Been playing with this projector for couple days now, its ok not the A++ product but for the price its ok for watching movies! Hans was a great person and answering everything what was asked 'as good as he could'. Overscan issue is the most annoying one tho i got rid of it by using win7 override regedit, i've been thinking of ways to reflash EDID so it would fix the 'native resolution' bug and overscan issue. The edid might actually be corrupted.. Blueish tint is there, mostly on darker scenes, not really that noticable.

I've been trying to change Non-Linear Settings and i have no idea how they actually work but i've actually made some improvements using nonlinear settings. Chinese companies dont 'lie' about the specs they are actually just telling the components maximum capabilities (which is actually a false information as the end product will not produce that much..)

A quick pros and cons:

Prös:
-Cheap
-Good Customer Service
-LED Projector
-Fast Shipment
-1080p / Medium image quality
-Light Weight
-Quick On/off

Cons:
-Color calibration takes ages, and no real guide how to work with the non-linear settings
-Blueish effect on black
-Black is dark grey / depending on settings it can be dark blueish gray
-Not easily focused / i kinda got it focused almost no blurry spots, when zoomed at max.. i get it focused 95% the biggest problem is the left corner (upside down so in SMJ its the bottom right)
-EDID needs to be flashed by the end user
-Overscan issue and no FullMapping Zoom-option in menus / most tv have this problem too but they have the option to fix it / could be fixed with EDID Flash..
-Native resolution is not correctly set on EDID so default resolution is 1280x768..

This is the packet i got, mount and the projector:


I opened it instantly and then i had to go back to work :'(


And here are the latest image with settings (tho no non-linear settings are shown, srry guys, im playing with those all the time)


UPDATE 3.5.13
All photos taken with the latest color and nonlinear settings:
Hockey sport shot (not this dark in real):

Some serie, no idea what just took shots from HD channel..



I've actually managed to get rid of that blueish tint (almost ), it took a lot of non-linear settings, the one im still figuring out is nonlinear brightness it boosts up sometimes way too high so gotta get it lower too . Skin tones are ok by now sometimes a bit yellowish.. Takes a lot time to configure this projector..
Edited by omaa - 5/3/13 at 11:01am

If so, you must have been a very special case for him.

BTW, it's kind of strange that you managed to get the projector, if it's really "no longer being made" as, according to the poster quoted below, Hans said earlier.

Maybe they're just selling the remaining stock.

BTW, thank you Omaa for the info relating to the EDID. I would try it out once I have time to dig out the old projector.

And for others:

PLEASE DO NOT BUY ANY PROJECTOR FROM CRE

Hi Omma,
Oh hey i wouldn't have thought you would have bought an X1000 Series when their newer ones was out?
Like I mentioned i bought my projector 2 years ago, the new one: i think its called the X2000-VX ?
i am unsure of price, perhaps it was more expensive, tho hopefully after reading some of the frustrations and mediocre posts on performance of the x1000, that you would have opted for the next (hopefully improved) version.

Pushing the tech forward is where i`m curious, did they fix the colours, did they take on board all the e-mails, feedback and suggestions to better the projector.

The x1000 maybe better anyways as in the x2000-VX they have reduced the bulb life by 10,000 hours down to 50,000 hours (which is still 24 times longer than a traditional bulb of 2,000 hours) tho on the plus side the X2000 -VX has a horizontal and vertical shift. You wouldn't have needed those mounting brackets they painfully included. I`d write to them and complain.
Edited by sellmejunk - 5/4/13 at 1:16pm