Official 2011 Mitsubishi Laservue L75-A94 Owner's Thread - Page 20

@buzzard767 - I'm hoping you meant that my unit was bad in a manner typical of these models, because I've already ordered a pickup/return and a replacement has been shipped.

No, what I meant was that the pale yellow probably indicates low saturation for what is being called for. These things can usually be fixed in the grayscale and color management systems but it takes a meter. I've had both an A91 which was replaced by an A94. The reason was an oddball bad screen. Both units calibrated quite well.

So would a calibrator fix the greyscale and/or color management system or would that have to be a service tech?

Also, would fixing that effect the preset modes or only the ISF video modes?

Honestly, that sounds like something that should have been correct right out of the box.

(Oh, and thanks for the help on this. I have felt sort of out of my depth handling this TV.)

A calibrator would fix the grayscale and color to reference standards, that's what they do. Service techs change parts and troubleshoot electrical problems. Some service techs are also calibrators, but it's not common.

The ISF video modes are there for the calibrator to use. That's why Mits put them there.

TVs are often not correct out of the box because manufacturers use different settings to make their TVs stand out among the many on the showroom floor. Once home, one can adjust it to that environment, and these sets adjust well if one knows what they are doing.

A full on calibration,will make a difference on all sets, and a big difference on most. I spent less than $200 on some equipment and learned how to do it myself as a hobby. What I was able to attain on my own showed me that a professional calibration is well worth the usual price of $300-$500 for non-hobbyists. I even toyed with the idea of doing it professionally myself, though then it would no longer be an enjoyable hobby, but would become "work" instead.

I'm aware the ISF modes are what calibrators set, but the other presets have their place (especially natural). My question was if correcting the greyscale or color management system would only fix the ISF mode or would all the presets be altered by that adjustment (i.e., is it a global setting).

Many better TVs have a mode fairly close to accurate out of the box. While they can be improved on by a professional calibrator, the quality can be quite good. This is true of Panasonic's plasmas (with their THX modes), and Sony's 850 and 929 models.

The Laservue's Natural mode is supposed to be pretty accurate. I can't imagine extreme calibration should be needed on a TV that retails for $5-6k.
And if there is that much variation between produced sets, there is something fairly wrong at the Mitsubishi factory.

I'll be in Naples around mid October. Where are you in S. FL?

Very few TVs arrive close to HDTV standards. Although you are correct about the Panasonic plasmas even the THX modes can be improved more than you would imagine.

If your set had the ADV1 &2 modes calibrated you wouldn't bother using other modes, and at your option, the calibrator can change ADV to ISF which locks the settings so the kids can't mess up a calibration.

The other coast. It's a bit of a drive.

So no one knows if those settings are global or video mode specific?

At least on the bright side, the whole return/replacement has caused a complication with the price match thing (don't ask) making it $200 cheaper for the replacement. So at least that was worth the effort.

But seriously, if the new one proves to be as far off as this one, I'm not going to bother with a calibration.
I'm not sure what a good alternative is to this (I hate to go smaller, and I don't consider anything by Sharp a consideration), but there's some things a manufacturer must get right to convince me that they build a good product.

Edit: Your second post came in while I was typing.
While I agree calibration is the way to go, not all sources are created equal. As such, alternate video modes can be a nice alternative to be available.
Edited by DoctorM - 8/19/12 at 12:42pm

A calibrator typically calibrates multiple inputs, so you'll have settings for Bluray, Cable/Sat, Antenna, etc. The TV remembers the settings for each input, so you get the best picture no matter what source you're watching. He'll probably do two for each input, a Day(or 3D) and a Night (or 2D) as well.

That's not what I meant.

My question was if a tweak to the color management system (or grey scale, whichever was the cause of the problem) is done on say only ADV1 or would a tweak to the color management effect all modes at once (Bright, Natural, ADV1, ADV2, etc.)?

I'm trying to understand if this is something that would across the board balance all inputs and modes or is it a professionally calibrated setting on a per mode per input basis.

And damn, Augerhandle, I wasn't even thinking that each input will need to be professionally calibrated separately.
Considering components will come and go, that really kind of blows.

It doesn't blow, really. I calibrated from my PS3 (Bluray) input and just copied the settings to the other inputs. The settings are a reference standard that the studios also use, so in theory they should be fine on all inputs, and all sources. Some networks, cable companies, Dish providers and other sources can send wacked out pictures though, and the quality can vary from channel to channel, so (to paraphrase) "what you get is what you see". Blu-rays are always stunning, and even with variation in programming quality, the calibrated picture is the best you can get.

The color management is done in ADV1 and ADV2, and you can switch in and out at will if you want, but you won't want. Also, if you're coming from an eye-bleeding, oversatuarted LCD, don't bother with calibration unless you're willing to take the time to get used to the change. Many Newbies who don't research think that the realistic colors and depth on a calibrated set looks washed out and dull, because they are used to such a jacked up overblown picture from their old set. You'll notice the depth right away, and after about a week, you'll really appreciate the realism.
Edited by Augerhandle - 8/20/12 at 11:05am

So you are saying that whatever is wrong with TV #1 must be fixed on an input by input basis? Okay, bad set then. No question about it and no qualms about returning it.
I don't want to hear variation between sets, at this level that's BS. Variation between sets should be the sort of thing that takes instruments to detect, not an eyeball.

As I've stated before, I'm replacing CRTs that have outstanding non-eyebleeding pictures.
I'm not a fan of LCDs which is why the LaserVue was on the short list.
There's muted colors and then there is dull. Grass and foliage look like it's dying, candy apple red cars look rust colored. It's not a minor issue or my perception because of what I'm used to. That's not realism unless your house has dirty windows.

Thanks for the info guys. I'll let you know how the next one works out.

I looked at the pic you posted again and yeah, that looks wrong. Your red bar looks orange, the blue bar looks green, and the gray bar looks yellow.

My gut feeling is that maybe there is nothing "wrong" with your present TV but we'll see how the replacement looks to you. Perhaps you need to take a half day in October, drive to Naples, and see what a full calibration looks like.

Having an actual bad set is a bad thing.
Having individual Input calibration is a good thing, not a bad thing. Different input devices send different video signals. I guess If you were going to have 4 blu-ray players hooked to the inputs,then it seems like duplicate effort for no good reason. But, typically you have a blu-ray, xbox/ps3/wii, DVD player maybe and we still have a VCR. The calibration to get the closest to spec picture from a blu-ray will be drastically different than that for a VCR on a different input.

This picture does look like someone played with the PerfecTing (not PerfectColor) settings. The PerfecTint is is the same menu but you highlight the name of PerfectColor and then press left or right to change to Tint settings instead of color (intensity) setting. Check to see if there is some there that is changed, the center position is default.

Nope. Everything was default... and the set was picked up today so I can't do much more for it.

Replacement coming on Thursday. Fingers are firmly crossed.

Edit: LaserVues numbers 2 & 3 refused. Pilot shipping delivered the boxes smashed with the bottoms gaping open and the foam supports falling out. Sigh.
Edited by DoctorM - 8/28/12 at 12:06pm

Homer's The Odyssey
Translated by Richmond Lattimore, adapted by ERI3K

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many RMAs, who was driven
near crazy, after he had bought Mitsubishi's sacred Laservue.
Many were they whose apathy he saw, whose idiocy he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit for the wide screen. . . .

I'll leave the dactylic hexameter to Homer at this point, but my quest for an acceptable L75-A94 has been one hell of an odyssey.

I ordered an open-box L75-A94 from One Call in late February. The Laservue was intended as an upgrade from a beloved Samsung HL61A750A1 LED DLP. Although One Call is based in Spokane and I am in California, the TV shipped from West Virginia. I paid for white glove delivery since I live in a second story apartment with rather tricky stairs that will just barely accommodate a packaged L75-A94.

The leisurely cross-country journey burned up nearly three weeks of my 1-year warranty, but the set arrived in good condition. It took two big delivery guys and me to get the TV up the stairs, but get it in we did. Definitely a three-man job.

My first impression of the Laservue was awe at its sheer size and vibrancy. That ardor quickly cooled due to an intermittent, piercing whine in the 3-4 kHz range that varied depending on what colors were on the screen. The worst thing about an intermittent noise is that you can't tune it out; you are aware of it every time it stops or starts. On top of this there were some substantial geometry issues. Panning across a stadium, it appeared as if everyone was doing the wave, including the seats and the field.

After hours of fiddling I discovered that I could eliminate the noise by turning the color setting all the way to zero or cranking the tint all the way to green. The L75-A95 is expensive for an HDTV. It's certainly too expensive for a black-and-white HDTV (not to mention a black-and-green HDTV).

The polite-but-clueless customer support drone ran me through the script. No, a factory reset did not resolve the issue. I mentioned offhand that I suspected the power supply. The next day Mitsubishi called me to tell me it might be the power supply and they want to replace it, only it will take them three weeks to ship the part.

Three weeks later a technician shows up with a power supply. Unfortunately he was quite old with coke-bottle glasses ("What image distortion?") and hearing loss ("I can't hear much above 1 kHz."). Despite this he managed to get the new supply in (with only two screws left over!), and it did reduce the noise . . . for about a week.

Mitsubishi then wanted to replace the light source assembly. In mid April, after a week of silence, I called the repair company for an update. They said Mitsubishi wouldn't have the LSA in stock until mid May. Irrate, I called Mitsubishi to give them a swift kick in the posterior. It was during this call that I learned the arrival date had slipped another four weeks to mid June. I proceeded to call Mitsubishi weekly urging them to replace the set. In mid June, half an hour after the tech called to schedule an appointment now that he had the part, Mitsubishi calls to tell me they are sending a replacement.

I told Mitsubishi I live on the second floor and it is a three-man job. I told the same thing to the freight company, AIT Worldwide Logistics. I repeated this to the dispatcher at the home delivery company, CTS Advantage Logistics, when they called to schedule delivery. How many guys did they send? Two. An elderly gentleman and a puny little guy, neither of whom I trusted to lift 50 lbs up stairs. Chalk up another three days until their next delivery window.

The second set is eventually installed, and they cleared off with the first one. A few minutes after they left, I hear the familiar whine start to rise in pitch. Even worse are the geometry problems, which exactly match those of darf_nader. Mitsubishi sends out a tech for an "evaluation visit". He took one look at the image and said, "Yep, you're hosed."

For some reason Mitsubishi thought that replacing the light source assembly would address both the noise and the distortion. Another week for what is probably the same LSA to be shipped back up north. The tech installs it (getting better: only one screw left over this time!) and amazingly the noise is gone (and stays gone) but the distortion is unaffected. He maxes out the mechanical adjustment screws, which fixes the right side and improves the left but leaves the bottom edge of the image a weird curved line.

I suggested to Mitsubishi that we just try a longer screw. Instead they propose replacing the mirror. Another two weeks and a different tech shows up with a big, flat package. We disassemble the TV only to find that Mitsubishi sent just the mirror and did not include the supporting L-bracket that should be permanently epoxied to the mirror. He spent two hours in my living room on the phone to their technical advisers trying without luck to find someone who knew anything about replacing a mirror. The reassembled television was entirely unwatchable.



It was a week and a half before Mitsubishi authorized a second replacement and informed me that of course mirrors aren't field replaceable. My third L75-A94 arrived in late July. Unfortunately Mitsubishi or AIT neglected to tell CTS they were taking the old set away and they would not take it without authorization. I had to spend another day at home just to help the ONE guy they sent haul away the carcass of the deceased Laservue.

All three of the units I received arrived with geometry issues, although I was able to fix this third one using the service menu. My current unit also makes the whining noise, but I'm not going to complain about being exactly back where I started in March. I've had three L75-A94s, and this almost adequate Laservue beats the average.

Never again.

Wow, I'd be pissed as well. Fortunately, the one I got from Walt's arrived in less than a week and has been flawless. BTW, the manufacture date on mine, purchased end of June, is Nov. 2011.

On a different topic, if anyone gets the Xpand XG-103 3D glasses, you need to set the glasses on "4 blinks", which the manual states is for Panasonic/Toshiba TVs, not on "1 blink" which is supposed to be for Mitsubishi TVs. I found this trolling the Xpand community forums trying to figure out why my 3D wasn't working.

I'm suddenly thankful I bought mine from a major store with 30-days no questions asked returns. I've even been able to cross-ship so my wait between sets has been 1 week or less.
Hopefully #4 will arrive by the end of this week. And in one piece.

And yeah, I don't know what is up with these shipping companies. One guy brings it up on a small dolly and is expected to unbox, situate it and haul the packing away.
How does 1 guy lift a 150 lb TV like this?

Only mild damage to the box this time. Turns out everyone was told to be careful with this. (Duh.)

First: Oh, hells, yes. Night and day difference. Even in natural mode, the colors are vibrant with the blinds open. Upscaled 480p content is sharper too. Something was definitely wrong with the first TV.

Second: @ERI3K, for some reason my TV started in one of the stretch modes. I was seeing images on the edges stretch as the camera panned and was freaking out remembering your problems. After the screaming stopped I thought to check the aspect ratio, and it wasn't set to standard. Whew, that's better.

I'm wondering if that may have been your problem. Seems silly, but it's possible.

Third: Is there something missing from the instructions regarding manual firmware updates? I unzipped the firmware to a newly format memory stick (FAT32), unplugged the TV, inserted the stick, powered up and nothing happened (besides turning on normally).

I ended up getting it via the 'net, but I can't figure out why the manual method failed.

I believe all the files need to be on the USB drive.

Did you d/l it straight to the stick? Have to d/l it to your computer, then extract from there to the stick.

Just a thought.

Hmm. Should have done all of the above with the firmware.

Watching last night I very infrequently noticed an artifact. This afternoon I'm watching a sporting event in SD and I can't stop noticing it.

When there is motion I see what looks like a thin ring about a hand span width in diameter with a center spot. Almost like you'd see from a flashlight shining on a wall.

It's very mild, but I want to know if this is typical and normal for rear projection or do I have another problem? Bad mirror?
Edited by DoctorM - 9/3/12 at 10:36pm

Watch Blu-Rays and tell us what you see. Anything else, especially standard definition, is crap in, crap out. Compression artifacts are common in high def as well. Every provider, network, program, and camera is different. The TV can't repair bad content.

Do you have any of the motion processors going? I've noticed that live sports don't seem to work well with the processors on any TV.

Hmm. Yes, but it seems to be only during bright portions and looks mostly like a slightly brighter ring. Honestly, it's still really faint, but I have a bad habit of seeing every little flaw.

Edit: It exists with the processors on and off.

Okay, I watched some more (because it's just hard to stop on these)....
What I'm seeing is more widespread than I thought. It's only visible when an effected area is bright. It's more noticeable if there is a camera pan at the same time (because then it isn't hidden by the detail of the image).

Anyway the picture below is a sort of impression of the locations and appearance. I watched an entire 2:30 movie and didn't see this once, then I watched a 1:30 film and saw all of what I've drawn a few times. Really, it's very faint, just some slightly lighter areas compared to the rest of the screen and it's hard to find even if you are looking for it.

Since the lines down the left and right side correspond with a slight buckle in the screen where it mounts in the frame (I saw this in the first TV as well), I'm assuming this is a screen distortion.

My question really is if this is common (this is my first rear projection) or do I have a crummy screen?



Any and all opinions please. If I have to try for a 5th TV I need to know before these disappear from stock.
Edited by DoctorM - 9/3/12 at 10:37pm

Can't you take a pic of the ACTUAL issue? Regardless, no, that is NOT typical of rear projection.

This is a 'solid' white field.

I think you can about see the bright portions where I indicated originally (especially the ring in the middle).

I didn't realize how much these lack uniformity of brightness just from just a center viewing position.

While photographing this I also saw a small pinky nail sized dirt scuff on the inside of the screen (not visible in these pictures). Yeah, that's wrong... not a way to clean the inside of these screens yourself, is there.





Honestly, I'm troubled by the lack of quality control with what is ostensibly a premium television.

So... normal variation in screen/mirror/optics/whatever or another TV fail?
I can't really say I would recommend a Laservue to anyone, especially if they were paying anywhere near MSRP.

Edit:
Here is an artificially enhanced one. The parenthesis looking piece can be better seen.

Edited by DoctorM - 9/8/12 at 2:19pm

I feel your pain. This was my original A91 which was replaced with an A94.