OWNERS Thread for the Panasonic PT-AE7000U 3D Projector - Page 141

Thanks, I got it working right after all.

I'm not certain if this has been discussed yet, but I'm trying to figure out CIH with multi-aspect movies (Dark Knight, etc)

I have a 136" CIH screen that I use my PT-AE7000U on. How do I crop the spill (onto the wall) on the bottom for those multi aspect movies? I've tried to use the 'bottom masking' on the projector, but it leaves a good foot or so still exposed (on the wall)...

I really don't want to leave the projector in 16:9 mode the whole time and would rather crop all content to 2:35:1 in muli-aspect movies.

Any suggestions on how to do this?

I just use the 16x9 aspect ratio and deal with the black bars. The auto-ratio feature doesn't work fast enough and shows that "auto adjusting" message.

Your only option would be to get a physical masking system that absorbs most of the light.

^ I tried to 'mask' near the lens to simply eliminate any light from being projected below the screen and it resulted is a very fuzzy line onscreen, even if it was considerably lower. I wish the bottom masking would come up significantly higher. I'm surprised Panasonic didn't anticipate this.

For dark Knight I left it wide and dealt with the spillover. No way could I deal with letter boxing again.

I went away from that auto adjust setting almost immediately, it kept changing during certain commercials.

I'm not sure where everybody is getting this crosstalk from. It's likely a source issue and not the projector itself. I've just watched Sammy's Adventure and I only noted one instance of crosstalk right at the beginning of the movie, the rest was rock solid 3D and absolutely amazingly well done. Seriously, if you don't have this movie, get it. The 3D is absolutely spectacular.
I have about 350 hours on my unit and have had it for over a year, I actually think the brightness has improved since I first purchased it. I'm starting to watch some 3D movies in Cinema 2 where previously I was watching them in Normal mode. 2D is superb. I'm using a matte white 1.0 screen.

^I've stopped watching 3D, there is tons of crosstalk and it makes my eyes go wonky.

I'm using the Panasonic glasses and I even tried connecting the Blu-ray directly.

Well then there's something wrong somewhere. Something in your setup is faulty and you need to work out what it is, I wouldn't just accept that 3D doesn't work on this unit, it does work and it looks great.

I disagree. The crosstalk in this projector is really bad. I'm watching it on a Da-lite High Power screen with a 2.4 gain. I see everything this projector has to offer and it offers horrible crosstalk in 3D. I am using the 2nd and 3rd generation Panasonic glasses with the exact same results. Calibrated in 2D using the Disney WOW BD and verified by the Spears & Munsil BD and then minor adjustments made in 3D. I plan to recalibrate once the new Spears & Munsil 3D calibration BD hits the market and I have hope that a new 3D calibration will yield much less crosstalk, but I am really expecting the calibration disc to verify the settings that I already have.

It is possible that people with the projector running hotter are seeing more Crosstalk

"hotter" as in temperature hot or "hotter" as in brighter or higher contrast calibration settings & screen?

I could always turn down the brightness and reduce a little of the crosstalk, but I have done that before and it causes the picture to be too dark and makes the details difficult to see. Once the brightness is turned down, it is no longer within the calibration speciation.

So, I can watch the movie at the proper brightness with a TON of crosstalk OR really dark with a little crosstalk. I have to pick my poison.

Others here have verified that the crosstalk exists and attribute it to the fact that this is an LCD projector. I also have a Panasonic VT30 Plasma and the crosstalk only exist on pop-out 3D that comes real close to your face.

Equipment below.

I have had the PT-AE7000 since last fall, but have not posted. For most of the last year, this was the primary and sole display for the condo (and everyone in it), already on new bulb, over 3000 hours on projector. Was in West Los Angeles area very close to major construction (405 / Wilshire), dust was pretty high. This area is about 200" above sea level with very constant temperatures. Have since moved to north of LA (Santa Clarita), roughly 1100" above sea level, but recently the room gets cold at night, even when in use (low 60's). Dedicated room now, use has dropped significantly for more special use.

I have read quite a bit of the thread, but not all yet. I wanted to give a quick summary of issues I have seen as datapoints for others as I continue to read:

Major Issues

• Flickering (uneven light, not white flashes) came around maybe 1000 hours on bulb. I was not surprised by this since I had not cleaned the filter for a bit too long. Was spoiled by previous projector's clean filter nag. Flicker is completely gone, cleaning filter is important. New bulb not flickering.
• "Stutter", "Frame Dropping", "Frame Skipping" all seen on specific sources, more below.
• Ghosting in 3D both seen and not, more info below
• Total washout and lockup a couple times (on XBox360 while messing with Halo Anniversary in 3D mode and the 3D Balance menu).
• Recent loss of color uniformity - upper corners are slight red, bottom corners are slight greeen. Since the move to 1100 feet. Came on suddenly maybe a month after, changed bulb and filter, didn't really help, maybe reduced the discoloration a little bit.

Stutter, Frame Dropping, Frame Skipping

Source dependent, definitely.

• FIlmed content from ABC, both via Directv HR20-700 and Bluray (e.g. PanAm off DTV and Lost via Bluray)
• Filmed content from Fox (Fringe) and SciFi (Stargate Universe) off AppleTV (3rd Gen, using 1080p), not sure if I saw same off DTV

Note that the AppleTV's floating album cover screen saver is 100% always totally smooth , which tells me it is not fundamentally the ATV. Other content of the DTV unit is smooth as well, never a problem. To me, this sort of exonerates the source devices, and really points to a producer - consumer rate mismatch issue of some sort with certain types of content, perhaps exacerbated by crystal rate drifts at different temps in the various equipment?

I have done all the various things like bypassing the processor, altering output resolutions of DTV box, changing cables (cheap to expensive with boosters), etc. I have recently (last night) dumped over to "Game" mode, and am trying that, so far no issues with test content I use for this of ATV and DTV.

I will continue to track and post findings. I have my old Benq W10000, should throw it up for comparison sake.

3D Ghosting / Crosstalk

Absolutely not at all any part of the signal chain to the projector what so ever. First disc we put in was "Brave" in 3D, and used the setup screens. There is an absolutely perfect image for use with this problem - it's the Buzz and Woody left eye / right eye polarity test. If you haven't seen it, you should. Basically, close one eye and all you will see is Buzz, and close the other and all you will see is Woody. No inspection of doubled vertical lines in a scene needed. Buzz and Woody are big and on a white background. Super easy to use.

On Buzz / Woody when Brave was in (and projector and room were 70-80F and running for hours), great picture, no ghosting during entire movie. Late last night, audio muted (2KW of amps not pumping out heat) and nighttime temp down to 40s, the room was in 60s, the projector was ghosting significantly. Extremely noteworthy is that only ghosted one direction. Ghost Woody, but no Ghost Buzz. BTW, ECO mode on projector, and Light / Normal / Dark glasses did not do anything to remove the ghost, just made it darker.

Using the waveform monitor (line mode only in 3D), it was easy to see that ghost was not in the incoming signal (as monitored).

Summary
Still happy with projector, just ordered a calibrator (Display 3 Pro) to do all that stuff too. Spent hours with DVE last night on this. Anybody already have a read as to the "Game" gamma?

As for "Game" mode, I am pretty sure this is the projector's bypass mode. Lots of engineering intuition on this, but looking for more proof.

Lastly, WTF is up with no FW updateability? Did anyone resolve this? Sadly, I am out of warranty due to the hours (post 2000), and was months ago. WTF.

Will post more as I learn more.

If anyone has pointers to fix 3D I'm open to suggestions.

I'm usually on Cinema 1, ECO and light mode with the 3rd gen Panasonic glasses.

I watched Avengers 3D the other day, the night time scenes were so dark I could barely see anything.

The ghosting was so bad I thought I was going cross eyed. I put the 2D disc in after about 20 minutes of torture.

For 3D I use Normal (for extra brightness) with medium glasses setting (vs light or dark)..on Panasonic 3d gen glasses. Plenty of light on 106 inch 1.3 gain screen with 12 ft throw. Good 3d movies (filmed in 3d, e.g. Avatar, Prometheus, Hugo) look awesome for me.

Quick question how does this projector compare to overall picture quality to say the vt50 plasma?

Blacks and detail are a million times better on the VT50. I have the VT30 and the ae7000u. 3D crosstalk is much less on the VT30 as well, but the screen is smaller (depending on your screen of course).

Ultimately, it comes down to screen size. If you want better Picture Quality, go with the plasma. If you want larger screen for gaming, movies and lens memory, go with the projector.

Thanks for the comment any more views on this

The consensus way back was to save your 3D movies for the summer time. This projector needs a warm environment to be ghost free.

So I was thinking of getting this projector but now I just dont know after reading these more recent post, so with that in mind and a budget of $2k usd for a projector what would some now recommend? Is this guy still worth it or is there something else in the pipeline that would be better.

For that price, nothing is better. If you're OK with higher pricing, get the AE8000U. It's advertised as 20% brighter but it's actually about 32% brighter than the 7000 (according to my meter), much better 3D performance and better iris.

As far as bulb flicker, it happens with all projectors. Even commercial Christie's 4K projector bulb experience the same thing, especially when these bulbs are running at less than 100% brightness

I'm interested in hearing more about the 3D improvement. Can you explain?

Hi all

I've had the AE7000 for about 3 months now, so thought I'd weigh in on our experience with it. Overall, we're extremely happy with it. We're using it in a dedicated theater room with a 16' throw to a black concrete wall with a white 10' wide screen painted on it. I cant' even imagine what it will look like when we get the screen installed.

Here are our thoughts:

1) We upgraded from an 8 year-old AE900 to this bad boy.... so, perhaps not a fair assessment, given that my iPhone screen would be a radical improvement on the AE900.

2) Picture in 2D is fantastic. We were totally blown away the first time we watched a Bluray and continue to be amazed by the incredibly picture quality and viewing experience. We primarily watch content from 3rd Gen AppleTV (in HD). Keep in mind we're watching this on a painted concrete wall.

3) We haven't watched a lot of content in 3D, but what we've seen has been incredible. Our first movie was NASA's Hubble documentary, followed by Avatar and Titanic. From the opening title screens (particularly the iMax one) till the credits, it was a spectacular experience. We're using the latest Panasonic 3D glasses. We've never had any crosstalk or anything but fantastic picture quality in 3D. Having said that, the theater room is generally quite warm ( we live in the tropics and it's too expensive to run air conditioners throughout the house all day), so the room stays around 90 degrees every day. Even when we run the aircon, it's still around 80 degrees... so maybe that validates the above point connecting warm ambient temps with lack of cross talk?

4) We have had technical issues. When we start the projector up, I get either a bright white light or a blue screen with vertical green stripes. The remote and all else is unresponsive - with the exception of the power button. I have to shut down the projector then wait for it to cool, then restart it. 2nd restart seems to work fine and we're all good. I bought this in the USA and live in Singapore, so my warranty is not valid here.... which totally bites, of course as we can't send in for warranty repairs without being charged (a lot).

5) I haven't done a proper set up nor calibrated the projector and would really like to hear from anyone on the forum on how to do this without hiring a $300 an hour tech to do it for us. Any suggestions?

Sure about that? The Warranty should be worldwide Panasonic!

http://panasonic.net/support/general_faqs/warranty/warranty1.html

Oh... I was told by a friend of mine (who also purchased in the US) that it was only for the US.. I should have checked first!

Using this PJ for a 142" diagonal 2.35:1 Screen with Electric "Triggered" Black Velvet Curtains and Adjustable Bottom Black Velvet Mask Panel (Black Velvet Valance too)

I'm looking to get an optimal 16:9 / 2:35:1 Lens Memory Set-up, and I want to get it set up right on the first attempt.Once I get there, I can adjust my Velvet masking on every side to accommodate the image format /size. Setting up the Lens Memory correctly according to my "installation criteria" is my primary concern / need.

The screen is a painted expanse of skimmed / sanded Drywall. I outlined and painted more than enough area for 135" diagonal, and at my current Throw distance, at maximum Zoom I can achieve 142" Diagonal. Those referenced Diagonal numbers represent 2.35:1 formatting

My chief concerns / questions:

* Lens is approx 4" below Screen's top edge. Adequate?
* Lens is centered (...+/- a whisker...) on Screen. Degree of importance? Any lee way?
* Suggested Maximum size and still be able to accommodate effective Lens Memory set-up.


Much of the above was recently asked about by Member kimera http://www.avsforum.com/t/1363959/owners-thread-for-the-panasonic-pt-ae7000u-3d-projector/4170#post_22551757
....... but I didn't see a response.

dmoneyman2323's post.....
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1363959/owners-thread-for-the-panasonic-pt-ae7000u-3d-projector/4170#post_22604288
......outlined the procedure, but seem to infer that the maximum amount of zoom cannot be employed (...in 16:9 or 2:35:1...or both?)

I left "fudge room" on all sides, but obviously I want the biggest 2.35:1 image possible without risking a smooth transition to 16:9 w/Curtain Masking

So I'm in need of experience or knowledge driven input. I have a Darby Doublet waiting in the wings, but this is something I need to get down and settled asap.

Please for now....thanks in advance.

Thanks so much I found this quite useful

I have just bought a PT-AT5000 and it is a big improvement on my old Sony. However I have a problem as briefly mentioned above. My picture keeps cutting out especially when first turned on. It seems especially bad on cartoons, possibly because the majority of the picture stays the same. It is also preceded sometimes by left to right bleeding. It also seems to be sensitive to temperature. When the house is hot the picture cuts out more often. I put the projector in Eco mode which was better than normal mode. I have also put it in high ceiling mode which increases the fan speed and helps. The projector is suspended from the ceiling at 2.55 mtrs (below the 2.7 mtrs max). This to me all indicates a thermal cut out problem although I am not sure about the bleed proble ( but this only really happens on cartoons). Anybody any ideas? There seems to be a mention of a service menus to adjust the fan speed, can anybody advise how to access this.

*Cough*..... I know someone who built a kick azz screen for this projector with help from someone... just sayin....

Welcome to awsome HD Mississippiman

Service menus can be found a few pages back however there is not much adjusting to do there.
How long are your HDMI cables?
Did you try a different source like:
Lower res picture or Component / VGA inputs, different HDMI cable??

Hi,

are the mounting holes (M4 size) in the same places as with PT-AE3000 / AE4000? I have a self-made ceiling mount (screw locations are in fixed positions based on AE3000 mounting points) and was wondering if I can use the same ceiling mount with AE7000.