The Official Acer H9500BD Thread - Page 142

InCali, does Cory have any information on whether they will ever address the single user save problem and that menu that disappears way too fast without any activity? Also a signal in and out information function would be nice instead of that 1 second blip that you have to be quick to catch. I guess it is obvious I have been using my Epson for TV viewing lately. That has a proper menu and I could go on and on. Oh well, I suppose we ought to be glad what got what we got out of Acer so far. The picture still rocks and the 3D is killer. Avengers looked really good the other night.

I am not sure what your friend is talking about as far as screen color and wall color. Of course there is a relationship but screen gain is screen gain regardless of wall color. No matter the screen color, the gain or light reflected back is what you have to work with and the difference being in the darkest blacks and and whitest whites it can display. There is a lot more to this than what I can explain here but the best way to illustrate what your friend is talking about is to turn on the lights and look at the image being washed out. Reflected light from white walls will also have a deleterious effect with the only difference between that being the reflective properties of the screen. So a grey screen may be for some, I do not think I would be happy with it especially for 3D. That is just my opinion and I have not tried a grey screen. I am using a 120" 1.1 gain matte white screen and cannot imagine I would be happy with any image less bright than I have now for 3D viewing. Of course there are high performance grey screens but I am simply too cheap for that so I went room treatment route for better light control.

Let me see if I can sum this up. Whatever the screen color, the gain is pretty much what you can expect to see viewing content. Any screen that reflects less ambient light will reflect less projected light as a general rule. With the 9500 I believe you need all the gain you can get for 3D. There are good high performance grey screens but they can be pricey and even with them you always want to get good room light control for optimum viewing. Your mileage may vary but keep in mind lumens will fall off over the life of the bulb as I am sure you know so some reading in the screen section may be in order for you because there are people a lot smarter than I am about this over there. Those same people will probably tell you that the number one issue affecting the image quality is ambient light control or at least it is right at the top of the list. If I am wrong I am sure others will chime in here.

hi mike,

Below in the link is the screen detail which i plan to purchased it.

PS Series High Definition (HD) White Fabric and PS Grey Fabric and both have screen gain 1.0

http://www.grandviewscreen.ca/glossary?pgid=1

watched avatar tonight and it was ouitstanding, haven,t had chance ti watch hugo but its on my list. So far my projector has been flawless except for the "getting signal message until the movie starts From what I read I sure hope I don't have to deal with level one support. btw it was my battery in the acer glasses so I am using the optima glasses. thanks for advice

Hello squall. Is this still the same question? Those Grandviews look like nice screens. My earlier comments still stand. Of course those will work. You could also use your white wall and turn off the lights and get an idea about the lumens available and the impact of light reflection from the other walls on the projected image. If I were to recommend anything I would get a bargain 1.1 screen or if you feel the need to spend the money then invest in a higher gain higher end one. I would visit the screen threads because those folks have been there, tried that, done that. They can answer the questions. White walls will be your biggest enemy regardless of what screen you buy because you will always have that reflected light. Having said that, there are 9500 owners here who have light, even white walls in their viewing area. Perhaps they can comment.

The biggest improvement I made in my room was to paint it in darker flat colors. Major difference and it is now the "Chocolate Factory". Good luck.

hi mike,

ok thanks for answering all my question as i am very new in projector area so i want to make it right for the first times as i afraid buying wrong screen which later will impact the quality of this nice acer projector...i did asked the same question on the screen forum but so far no reply from anyone yet.

I have a 120" 1.1 gain "Elite" screen. Why they are allowed to call it "Elite" is anyone's guess (that's a joke by the way....) because it cost me about $110. I have side and back walls painted a flat, dark green, but my ceiling is white (which I am considering repainting to a darker color). My windows have heavy drapers which block virtually all light when they are closed. I also have a door opening to the outside which I like to have open when possible (I'm a hound for fresh(er) air.....I do live in the LA area after all....). I believe the white ceiling reflects a lot of light when it's bright out and the door is open. When I shut the door, the picture is just fine. it's plenty bright for me (even in 3D.....though people have commented that Prometheus was somewhat dark.....don't know what kind of setups they have). I think I'd go along with Mike in this case. Don't go below a 1.1 gain screen. If you want to spend a couple more bucks, I'd go with a slightly higher gain screen.

I have a sharp picture with great colors (timduru's settings and my WoW disk) using an inexpensive 1.1 screen. I suspect things will get noticeably better when I paint my ceiling. Painting is something I never considered until my recent readings on this thread (thanks once again folks).

hi Incali,

my place have very limited choice which limit option so either i go with the grandview screen (Grey) 1.0 gain or i buy online for better screen.

I was thinking that the grey screen was like .8 or something. Still, you know your pocket book better than anyone else. If you aren't getting any reflections off the walls, maybe a 1.0 screen would work??? I just don't have experience in this area. I think I'd look around online for a screen that has a little more gain, but they can be expensive to ship. When I bought my screen for a little over $100, they wanted to charge me almost that much to ship it. Basically I said "Frell that", took a vacation day, drove about 25 miles to the warehouse, had lunch with my wife, and brought it home myself.

Don't know about online and/or shipping costs where you live, but you don't want to buy something that won't work the way you want it to.

yep that i am still searching the correct screen for my room and projector to make sure no mistake when purchased the screen, anyhow my place got selling elite screen as well which currently checking the model cinetension 2 with cinewhite 1.1 gain for 100 inch.

As long as you can control the light reasonably well, the elite screen will work just fine. I have a 120" screen so yours will be a little brighter than mine. My screen can handle a low to moderate level of interior lighting as long as it isn't shining on the screen. Where I run into trouble is with reflected sunlight. It really washes out my screen. Maybe when I paint the ceiling, that will help out.

The elite screens are inexpensive and I think they work well. I might very well change my mind if I saw some really expensive screens, but I get a sharp picture with very good colors and I'm completely satisfied.

I was just looking at the reviews (and prices!!!) for the cinetension 2 screens. The motorized feature kicks up the price substantially. The price I saw was anywhere from $800-1000. The manual screen (which I have) runs a little over $100. For that money, I'll skip the motor..... I leave mine down 99% of the time anyway. It may also be a superior screen to the one I have also as mine was purchased years ago.


Edit.....one of them that I was looking at had a 2.2 gain screen ($845).....clearly a different screen than my 1.1 gain screen.

Between the time I logged on and the time I found my way back to this discussion I got an email that my machine has been repaired. Halleluya!

InCali had graciously sent me the address of his 2nd tier contact. However I didn't want to burn up this resource on what might prove to be just a routine delay. Thanks InCali.

My machine was only two weeks old when I started getting these strange vertical stripes on start up. After a couple days they stayed on permanently. I sent it back on the 12th but got no notice until today 10 days later. The email does not say what was wrong. Perhaps there will be a note with it when it comes back.

In the meantime my three year old Onkyo TX-SR507 AW receiver fails to go on. I tried to find some advice online and I ran into this site that wanted to tell me what was wrong for $39. I looked them up before I entered my credit card info. Good thing I'm cautious. There are a lot of horror stories on the web about this outfit. In any case when my projector gets back later this week I need a new or fixed reciever. I'm leaning towards another Onkyo - the 515 which has two HDMI outputs. I want to mount my flat screen near the back wall and then pull down the sceen for the projector in front. Apparently the Onkyo 515 as had its share of firmware issues too.

I still want to watch Avatar at home in 3D. For the first two weeks I tried this I had terrible trouble getting my Panasonic Blu-ray player to work with the projector. It worked with the flat screen. I think it's something to do with the Logitech Universal remote. I tink their code sequence around the Acer may be wrong. Has anyone else had a similar problem?

When InCali sent me his note I learned that I had violated this site's political speech guidelines. That was a couple years ago. Who knew? I had written a long discussion about incandescent versus LED versus florescent lights and mentioned in passing that the political parties took sides on this technical issue. Last year I mentioned that Comcast owns MSNBC and that in my area Comcast is a monopoly. This was is a posting asking about cutting the cable and using Netflix instead.

If they are going to be so touchy about politics - why not just tell me? They had sent their warnings to mailbox I never knew I had. This forum has been my lifeline. I don't want to get banned.

Regarding screens:

It seems to me that gray screens were popular about five years ago when many projectors couldn't produce good blacks. The idea was that if you projector shot up a dark gray spot the gray screen would show it as black. Of course you would lose pure white at the top end too. I think gray screens are now obsolete.

I experimented for months with screen materials. I ordered swatches and I projected onto different kinds of paper and cardboard. Pure white gave me the best image. This was with an InFocus X-1 - everyones favorite starter projector. Then I got intrigued with silver screens and retroflective screens. I read most of the material about these on this site. I tried to paint my wall with retroflective sign paint. The road signs are painted with very high gain special paint. I bought a big bucket of it. Alas it was rather like tapioca. The reflecting glass balls were like big lumps in the mix. Hardly appropriate for my needs. I never used it.

I eventually bought a Da-Lite Hi-Power screen. I'm not sure if I have the 2.4 new one or the 2.8 older one. It's great. It does have the problem that it works best when it shoots right over your shoulder. If you ceiling mount your projector it will send most of the light right back to the ceiling. In my modest HT I mount it between my two recliners at just about head height. The biggest advantage is probably lamp life. When my projector lamp is down to half power it's still brighter than an ordinary screen with a new lamp.

Another advantage isrejection of side light. I have a big window in my HT which is often covered with my light proof drapes. But even when fully opened the window light is directed back out the window. The effect isn't perfect but it's there.

I'm hoping that I didn't do anything that got you in any sort of trouble.....correlation vs causality and all that stuff. I'm hoping my PM to you was the former. Glad to hear your PJ has been repaired. It sounds like they got it fixed within their "normal" time frame. It would seem odd to give someone the boot for an inadvertent indiscretion from last year. I think cooler heads will prevail.

Regarding monopolies, I do know that ATT and Verizon cede areas to each other. Where my mother lives, for example, she was told that they would "never" ("never" being relative) have FIOS in her neighborhood, but would have ATT Uverse (sp???) soon. She was further told she would know when because there would be a bunch of trucks in front of her house.

I don't know the rules that well, but I do try to use what little common sense (my favorite oxymoron) I have left (or have gained). Hopefully, I haven't broken any rules. Good luck to us all.

Best wishes and all that rot....

I've been getting a pulsing image lately on a white (ie. internet) screen. Called Acer support this morning to get it checked out and also get the firmware update. The support person, while friendly and helpful, did not seem to understand what I meant by pulsing. Also she said I was liable for shipping charges to the facility in Texas. I have a case number now but I'm afraid that when it gets there, the technicians won't know what to do with the unit because she wrote up the Problem Description as: " 01 - To be Defined by Technician ".

Can any of you guys with Acer Support expertise offer me some advise on what to do next. I'm kind of hesitant to send it in without them knowing what it's going in for. thanks

I'm sending you a PM which should help.

If you have trouble getting through via email, let me know and I can give you a phone number.

Last night after watching Bait i started to watch some video files that were on my computer using vga cable. I fotgot to turn off the 3d and turn on the 2d to 3d. To my surprise the 3d was better then the conversion using 2d to 3d when I checked to see if it was still in 3d and it was. Not in 2d to 3d, but 3d and it converted the files with even a little pop. Never read any post about this so I thought I would put it out there to see what anyone else thinks.

I'm not the expert here - that would be Incali - but I think this is what's going on. The first level technical support people are not Acer personnel at all. I think they are young Indians in Bangalore who cover a wide variety of products and manufacturers. The guys with whom I corresponded were both very polite and understanding but did not seem to understand the first thing about projectors. I suspect that their next case might be a problem with a toaster oven or a washing machine.

I used to have staff who were third tier support for networks and computers. They were in fact software developers and as such just about the smartest group of techno nerds in a company in which everyone was an expert. My guys were the ones who got problems that had escalated up because the were too difficult for regular humans. We would only get one or two such problems a week. It made no sense to have expensive programmers doing customer support.

I had formerly been a tech recruiter - great money, lousy job. I tried to recruit at the Vice President or manager level when I could but I had to accept client's demands for lower level positions too. The worst such job was first level customer support. No one wanted to do that job. If you actually know something it's even worse. You had to find a really desperate candidate to accept such a job. They get the same dumb problems from dumb customers all day long. They get irate customers who curse them but mostly they get clueless customers who need to be told to plug the damn thing in.I'm not surprised such jobs have gone off shore.

Thanks so much InCali for the referral...your guy got back to me within 3 hours with a link to a free shipping label, an update
to the repair notes so the techs actually now know what to do and he's "reviewing the call and coaching our Agent for improvement".

And thanks to all you guys who stuck with this blurring issue to the end to get it resolved!!

Packing up my unit later tonight after I watch Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor BD !

If you are literally packing it up, do a very good job. The odds are in your favor, but if something happens during shipping and you don't insure it, you are going to be responsible for any damage. I've advised people to use FedEx packing or insure before, but wanted to reiterate the importance of being careful when shipping a relatively delicate piece of equipment.

Glad the communication issues got resolved.

Could not find the ad... Did you list it?

Any thoughts or reservations from current owners about purchasing a refurb H9500BD directly from Acer for $1,049 ($1,135 with tax)?

I know about the firmware update; lamp hours will be a wild card; broken door hinge/panel seems like a common issue here; Anything else to look out for?

Thanks folks!

I would think a refurb would include a new lamp??? Check it out along with the firmware update. If it has a full warranty, I'd jump on it unless there's some other new kid on the block who has the low price and good picture quality. I'm not up on this year's models as I won't be in buying mode for at least a couple of years (barring my projector blowing up outside the warranty window).

I would think a refurb would include a new lamp??? Check it out along with the firmware update. If it has a full warranty, I'd jump on it unless there's some other new kid on the block who has the low price and good picture quality. I'm not up on this year's models as I won't be in buying mode for at least a couple of years

How would you know if you had a new bulb or that they had just reset the old one?

I don't think there will be anything better than the Acer that's affordable for several years. Right now you can get a new Panasonic which has many more features to play with. Or you can get an Epson 5000 which probably has better blacks. But both of these are close to twice as expensive as the Acer. They are also LCD machines. IMHO DLP machines look better. The Acer is probably still better than they are on 3D. The main disadvantages of DLPs has always been their short zoom and lack of lens shift. Since the Acer has these features it's pretty well immunized against early obsolesensce.

The big change everyone has been waiting for has been the LED lamp. I think that that is still several years away at least at affordable prices. I drive a old car. It does have a new engine, new transmission, new interior, and new paint job. But even though it's twenty some years old the LEDs in the center tail light have never needed replacing. This is good but OTOH all the efforts to make LED headlights have so far failed. LEDs are in every flashlight you can buy, but there is a lot of research still to be done before they become a common item in projectors.

In theory you should be able to get a fuller color spectrum from an LED but the new Viewsonic doesn't seem to have better color. It is also is too expensive. It takes years to amortize that expense through the absence of replacement bulbs. So the Viewsonic's advantage with it's LED light source is economic not visual - and it is too expensive. In five years that may change. But it may take ten or fifteen. My car's LEDs are no different from those made today - twenty five years later.

One develoment could change all this. There may be a mass market for iPad projectors. Put a bright LED light engine and a DLP chip in an iPad or Anroid tablet and they might be able to sell a million of them. That technology could trickle down to the much smaller home projector market. But no bne is likely to invest millions in research for just home projectors.

I also don't think that we will see 4K projectors any time soon. There are two reasons for this. First of all that means a quadrupling of bandwidth. Streaming movies is still mostly 720p. Verizon has cut back its rollout of FTTC. America has a rather slow Internet compared to Korea and Japan. Second Blu-ray disks are more delicate than DVDs. Netflix mailing technology developed for DVDs seems to damage a lot of Blu-rays. If there is to be a 4K disk it would probably be even more delicate.

Finally 1980p is only slightly better than 720p. Most of the better Blu-ray image is from other improvements not just higher resolution. A 4K image is deep into diminishing returns.

Oh, I almost forgot. My projector came back. They couldn't reproduce the vertical lines it had so they just returned it. No lines now. I'm not quite sure what to make of all that. I'm waiting now for my new receiver.

Good point with regard to the lamp....I guess it doesn't hurt to ask. I suppose someone could lie, but that would seem to be small potatoes for Acer. You obviously know a lot more about the technology than I do so I'm happy with my PJ.

Thanks for the overview.

Hope all is well.

Well someone beat me to it! And there were 2 available. I'll have to keep an eye out for others.
Incali & PLB - Thank you for your comments.

This projector seems interesting, anyone kno where we can pick this unit up, even the refurbished price seems attractive.

I just sent my H9500BD into Acer for a firmware update (and bulb cover door fix).

Be very careful when opening the bulb door, the latch is rather fragile and the tabs can break off. It is very important that the slide is all the way over before opening the cover or it will break.

It took about 10 days total from the time I sent it until I got it back and they paid shipping both ways for the firmware update. I just boxed it up with a lot of bubble wrap in a $1 home depot large moving box and dropped it off at a FedEx location. They do ship it signature release so make sure you are there to sign for it when it returns.

I noticed the HDMI blur while watching an NFL game at 720p. The players helmets showed kind of a double image (blur) when the game was zoomed out showing the line up for a play.


I can see rainbows on pure white on black images whenever I move my head side to side (startup screen with acer logo, end credits on movies) it is very rare during the movie unless I quickly look side to side (on certain scenes) and I am constantly looking for them (which is really a stupid and pointless thing to do).
I never actually saw rainbows until I watched the credits for the first time on the projector and jerked my head to the side for some reason.

Overall the rainbows don't really matter and I think after I stop looking for them it will be a non issue.

The good thing is that it is very rare in a movie to have things like white text on a black background so rainbows are very rare. If I hadn't been stupid and wondered what the rainbow thing was all about I might not be so good at seeing them. (never noticed through the first 2 movies)

If acer was smart they would have had their startup image be something that isn't white on black so that it doesn't immediately flash rainbows at me on startup! I doubt the rainbows would show up if it was white on blue or even white on gray...

-Rich

New Egg has them. They just dropped the price for a new unit (not refurb) to $1499. That's basically as low as we've seen. There was some sort of 10% off coupon code out there, but I don't remember the details. $1499 is a very good price.