Official Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 5010 / 6010 thread - Page 32

WOW.... I am utterly disappointed with the quality control of these units. Much like the earlier posts (499 I think) I am having the same issues with fuzziness around text. I just received a replacement projector from Crutchfield, and the replacement is WORSE! I aligned the pixels, which were actually fairly well aligned, but the almost fogginess of the image is terribly disappointing. Not sure if Crutchfield has a bad lot or not, but I guess I'll go back to the 8350 and wait for bit for a sharper projector with great black level. Sucks, because everything else about this projector was great, including the price. What I don't get is the 8350 was ceiling mounted as well with the same amount of lens shift and had zero issues like this.

Here are some pics.... And no, the camera is not out of focus, that is how the text appears on the screen. For reference, the screen is a Carada classic cinema white.

WOW, that third pic looks WAY out of convergence. CRAZY!

Tried changing to side by side in Menu but did'nt seem to help. Still hard to leave or change (103 to 107) 3D Directv channels. IR interference from glasses is not a problem with Samsung LCD.


mark

That looks like a lens issue to me, not necessarily convergence.

Hmm, I get my 5010 today, but if mine looks anything like that when it's ceiling mounted upside down, it's going right back the next day. Upright shelf mounting is not an option - if it doesn't like hanging upside down with some vertical lens shift applied (lens will be mounted at the same height as the top edge of my screen), then I don't want it.

My lowly Optoma HD20 I have now has pefect "convergence" and a very sharp image (DLP); if the 5010 is less sharp at all, perhaps I'd be more happy with an HD33, and save myself at least $1300 to boot. I don't really mind the black levels of the HD20, and the HD33 is supposed to have a bit better black levels, even... I'll just lose the brightness for 3D...

Man, I'm hoping Jugdish's unit was just badly man-handled, or fell off the back of the truck at highway speeds, during shipping... keeping my fingers crossed, I'll find out tonight after I pick mine up at the local Fedex store after work...

I'm looking at the right-most close-up right now. What makes that picture particularly useful to study is that it is misconverged enough to see what is going on with each color. Specifically, you can see that there is little or no smear on the red pixels. It isn't so clear on the green since the red and blue do overlap it some. However, the blue is smearing up vertically. Note that blue does not smear down or left or right.

On my screen, I've noticed that the smear occurs in specific directions: in some places to the right, in other places downward. But it is never smeared uniformly in all directions as would normally be the case with a lens being out of focus or other lens issues.

I have an hypothesis that what may be going on is that electronic/software convergence is smearing pixels. Someone (42Plasmaman?) expressed his opinion toward the beginning of this thread that the 5010/6010 uses electronic (software) convergence, not motorized mechanical convergence and it does this by gradually increasing the intensity of pixels in the direction you are moving them when aligning pixels. To prevent that smear, he said to change convergence in increments of 8. I'm not yet convinced that it is as simple as that but I'll do some more experimentation this weekend.

Yep, thus the reason I put "convergence" inside quotes...

My screen is 120", and my viewing distance for the front row seating is 9 feet from eyeballs to screen... both myself and most of my guests enjoy basically a 1:1 screen width to seating distance ratio. SO, LCD convergance and sharpness may be a bit more apparant in my setup... but of course, the best way to make a final determination is just to setup the 5010 and do a side-by-side comparison - that's what they created weekends for, right?!?

That looks like what I have with mine too.

Does yours clear up after half an hour to an hour of use?

It's almost like the warm up / cool down focussing issue that the 6100/6500 had a few years ago, except it only affects about 1/4 of the image.

It looks like the convergence wasn't adjusted right, hence the seperation of colors. Go back into the panel alignment and pick red to adjust and R/G for pattern color and start adjustements. I like to move the red way up/left so you get a single red grid and green grid. On my projector the red and green on the right side are laser thin perfect lines, on the left red is thin, but green is smudged. Green is not adjustable (you adjust red and blue to it.) Besides being fun to see the colors seperated like that it is easier to determine the problem, as my case seeing that green is smudged. Align it up best you can like that, then do the same for blue, using pattern color G/B. Then use it and see if it is a problem. In my case, even with green smudged a bit on the left I find the sharpness quite an improvment from my old Panny ae-2000 and not enough to warrant sending it back for another.

Screen Distance - more than lens issues the distance from projector to screen is a tradeoff between brightness/black level. The Epson has a very good brightness factor at mid zoom. Some projectors are much dimmer even at half zoom. With lots of ambient you want more brightness so it makes sense to put the projector closer to the screen. However, the best cure for ambient light is a high gain screen. I got a Vutec Silverstar high gain screen which was an amazing cure for the ambient light here in the desert where we always have sun. With a high gain screen though, you can get hot spotting if the projector is close, so then you want the projector moved further back. That BD 1.4 screen isn't really high gain, but considering the Epson's great brightness I would still go mid zoom. 15 feet or whatever works best in your room.

Thank you!!

I went back and forth between 1.4 and their 2.7 gain screens. I heard 2.7 has some "artifact" (I dont know if this is the right word) and seem a little cloudy. Given the BD rejects and ambient light coming from sides, I assume I should be ok.

I will put the PJ around 16 ft and see how this will do.

Quick silly question, or not.

So if I watch TV say for an hour at 7 PM on my 5010, then I take a break and am going to be away for 45 minutes from the projector to watch a movie. Am I better off leaving it ON in some fashion, or should I just turn it off, like a regular TV.

I know there are all kinds of opinions, but looking to those with this specific projector for your opinions.

IMO - Stability is what works good for a PJ. A short time
away - I would leave it on but that is MY OPINION.

I have read that this is bad, such that I no longer turn my projector on on my lunch breaks. That said, I have not noticed a difference in bulb life either way...........yet.

I have a 142" BD screen and it is 16' away from my 6010 and I have hot spotting on Dynamic, my friend has the same screen and projector and his is 21' back, there is quite a bit less hot spotting with his set up.

My BD 115" 1.4 gain is on the way. What gain is yours?

There are two separate issues in Jugdish69's pictures. Certainly convergence is off, though by only about one pixel or less. The real issue, though, is the smear that is especially evident on the blue pixels in his pictures. It looks like one pixel is being smeared up about 2-3 pixels in places.
For example, look at the top of the R in the right-most picture. Also look at the lines above the letters. It isn't just misconverged, it is also smeared. The smearing won't go away even if it is perfectly converged.

1.4, The ambient light rejection is something to behold.

Thanks dna.... that was my point. The convergence is not nearly as annoying as the smearing. It's everywhere and even when I put the lens dead center of the screen it remains. I just can't believe that the 8350 which cost less than half has a much sharper image than the 2 5010's I've had. I'd love to see a 5010 that has as sharp an image as the 8350....

hello guys,
Received my epson TW9000 too couple days ago. It replaced my sanyo z2000 i had.

I am very disappointed too with the sharpness of the projector.
I am using ceiling mounting and lens shift is not close to center and to my bad surprise the sharpness to the right top corner is totally different that the left bottom corner.
I didnt expect miracles, i knew that sharpness wouldnt be the same to all the screen when using vertical lens shift but didnt expect so bad quality.
By trying to fix the bottom left corner with focus its almost impossible to get as sharp as the top right corner

Here is what i mean:
left bottom:


right top


Problem is not located only to the left bottom corner but to all the left side. In bottom left its much worse though.

Pixel alignment (aka convergence) can result in blurred pictures. This has been noticed and stated by others on this and probably other forums. What many may not realize is that "perfect pixel alignment" on the Epson 5010/6010 usually results in a more blurred picture.

Epson 5010/6010 owners can easily see this for themselves. The two pictures below are blowups of the cross-hairs in the pixel alignment screen. I choose it because you can see single lines of pixels of just one color. However, if you look carefully, you can see the same effect on the lines as well.

The left-most picture is of red with 0 vertical and 0 horizontal offsets. It looks exactly like this, however, if you set in any multiple of 8. That is, -24, -16, -8, 0, 8, 16, and 24 offsets all produce the same single lines of pixels.

The picture to the right is with a vertical and horizontal offset of 4. Again, it looks exactly like this if you have any multiple of 8 (-20, -12, -4, 4, 12, and 20). Other values than these all result in some degree of double pixel blur.

Attachment 236921 Attachment 236922

The question is, which is more important, avoiding double pixel blur by using multiples of 8 values or ignoring that and getting best pixel alignment? If you don't use exact multiples of 8 you are lighting up two pixels so what is actually happening is that you are getting part of one red and blue pixel on one side of green and part of the second red and get pixel on the other side of green.

Therefore, as others have said before, you will have a sharper picture if you eliminate double pixel blur by only using exact multiples of 8. This goes for all grids including the corners. (I tested this hoping that the corners were an exception. No such luck.) The worst case if you use exact multiples of eight is that you will be off by half a pixel. If you are more than half a pixel, move to the other side of green by 8 counts and you will now be off less than half a pixel. Being off by at most half a pixel on one side is much better than being off on both sides which is what will happen if you use some value other than an exact multiple of 8.

Is the Epson 5010/6010 pixel alignment adjust feature useless? Being off at most a half-pixel at the grid points (it might get a little worse in-between) is certainly better than being off by 2 or more pixels which is not unusual in 3-panel projectors. It is not ideal but I doubt you can see the effect of 1/2 pixel misalignment at any normal viewing distance. Your 5 year old kid with 20/5 vision sitting 3' from the screen might.

In summary, if you want the sharpest picture from your Epson 5010/6010, only use pixel alignment offset values of -24, -16, -8, 0, 8, 16, and 24.

That is a bit odd, how far are you sitting from the screen? Is the spot in the middle? Why only on dynamic? I noticed the 6010 is a bright projector sometimes I wind up calibrating them in ecno and the image is perfect.

The Black Diamond 1.4 is the best cure for ambiant light, paired witha bright projector. A high gain screen use to be the only choice but a high gain screen also has terrable blacks. The higher gain screen you have the worse the blacks and more artifacts you get. The BD 2.5 for instance has limited light rejection so usally in a sunny room the 1.4 is still the best option.

Man, that sucks - I just bought my 5010 on February 7th... But, I didn't recieve it until the 10th - wonder if I could still get the discount?

EDIT: Nope. just checked the purchase policy of the vendor - they don't do any price protection.

Does that apply to the 6010 I'm about to take delivery of?