Official BenQ W7000 Owners Thread

Horrible shots with iphone, ignore the wall I moved my shelf down to accomodate the projector Without tweaking any settings the colors are surprisingly pretty nice out of the box, much better than the HD33. I definitely can notice a difference in output between the BenQ and the Epson 3010, the 3010 was much brighter in 3D IMO but so far I have seen 0 crosstalk on the BenQ and the FI is a nice touch.

Quick notes as I've spent about 30 minutes with it so far:

-FI stays enabled for low/medium/high in 3D. Without FI you can notice a difference in smoothness in monsters vs. aliens
-My firmware is 1.00
-If you play with the 3D settings manually say to side-by-side or top-to-bottom the projector acts like it wants to lock up and takes a very long time to correct itself. When set to auto, it is taking about 25-30 seconds to display a 3D picture from my Samsung bluray player
-My viewsonic/optoma glasses (DLP-Link) work fine with this projector
-3D looks good so far with no ghosting in Monsters vs. Aliens on the usual scenes.

More to come.

Happy to report that all DirecTV channels work perfect in "auto" mode. When swiching from a 3D station back to a 2D takes wayyyyyyyy too long so I hope they fix it with an update (assuming this is what Art was referring to.)

Switching the color temp from normal to "warm" has made the picture much nicer without doing any calibrations, I will be interested to see what people use for final calibration settings. I have a meter and software but will be oging out of town for the holidays so hopefully someone else can do some preliminary calibration steps.

Interesting thing to note, on some source material without FI the image appears ja tad erky on my screen. It is almost like the projector is lagging a little bit but I think it is because FI is fairly well done on this unit. Not a big deal because on low the picture motion looks great.

I really can't describe how awesome the colors look on this projector outside of a lot of them have a "sizzle" or "neon" look to them. I am not sure if calibration will lower some of that effect but I am fairly pleased thus far with 2D on my 140" screen. I am not going to go into full comment on black levels yet because I haven't watched enough material, but I'd say initial observations are they around the Epson 3010 territory.

Going to dive into more 3D movies and gaming so I will post back later. If you have any 3D movies you want me to test let me know.

why is this in the 3000$ and above section?

The initial previews of the Benq has me just about ready to purchase the Acer H9500BD. Kraine bought one for his personal use and claims it has the best 2D to 3D conversion of anything he's seen so far and he's seen lots! For me its been one big disappointment after another -- the best pjs at 2D more or less fall down in 3D and the best at 3D are not so good at 2D. Too bad the RS-45 has problems with 3D because I would have bought one.

4x CW is a downer to me which is what has me thinking twice about the Acer, especially when a projector has an IRIS. In my experience, the darker the blacks, the more annoying the RBE is (the more perceptibly brighter it flashes).

I'm just playing the waiting game for now, then I may grab me that ACER if I find a good deal (say sub $1400).

When people report reviews can you please include: screen size, aspect ratio, gain, throw distance, CIH? Also stating which picture mode you're using is a good idea

Is the Dynamic Iris available in 3D? When you're watching 3D there is a 3D picture mode and it cannot be changed?

I'd be curious if someone plays the opening scene from one of the Star Wars movies with the dark background or some dark scenes from Fifth Element if the blacks subjectively look black or dark grey to them

Anyone who has the projector, can you comment on what you find when you try what Art stated and post results?:

Back to 3D and brightness. I’m hoping this will change, but the single 3D mode that exists isn’t near as bright on the screen as the brightest 2D mode, and that’s before you put on the glasses. This may well change.

So is it true that without putting glasses on and having a 3D image on screen it is noticeably more dim than the brightest 2D mode?

Art also mentions there is no adjustment on the BenQ glasses. Are adjustments available on ANY DLP-Link glasses since I'm guessing any DLP-Link glasses should be usable with the W7000?

It would also be helpful if Zombie can measure native contrast and dynamic contrast.

What screen size/gain/aspect will you guys be using?

1.2 gain, 140" although the final screen it will end up on is a HP 120".

Fun fact, I just had a friend from work come over to see the projector and his mouth was open the entire time. I showed him blurays, the xbox 360, and even DirecTV he was blown away compared to his old Panasonic projector. He is not a huge black-levels guy so he didn't say anything, but for the "pop" and "wow" factor he was simply amazed.

I won't lie, this DLP puts on a good show if the source content allows it to. I did notice some judder with FI on with Transformers 3 on bluray but it is the first I've really seen it.

3D is not as bright as the Epson (at least not from what I remember) but the color saturation looks wonderful on the BenQ. The 3D bug is very, very annoying and I am really hoping BenQ fixes it. When swapping between 3D modes it can take up to a minute sometimes. I tried playing gears of war 3 on my 360 and putting the projector into side-by-side took well over 6 minutes to finally get it working because every time you swap to a new 3D mode it pauses for about a minute and other times it doesn't even change modes.

I think Zombie has a 28 ft wide Da-lite HP 2.8, maybe a tad less wide than that.

Let's initially try and keep this thread to a discussion of the new BenQ W7000 instead of a wow, based on whatever, I am gonna buy me something else.

It will take us several days to get a full handle on this projector and I won't start working on it with Zombie until Sunday noon. We will then do some A/Bs with some other projectors as well if we can keep the various different glasses and 3D glasses either full or straight, respectively. I plan on working with this projector with Zombie for about 36 straight hours from Sunday morning through Monday evening catching a few ZZZs late Sunday night. By the time I drive home Monday night we should have a pretty good handle on it.

Tom Huffman and I will do a factory reset and full calibration of it on the fourth with full before and after calibration reports.

BTW. I want to express my appreciation to Roger G., the Commissioner of the NFL, for moving almost all of the NFL games from Sunday to Saturday, so that I can do our testing without missing any of the games. My wife didn't understand that Roger made Saturday into Sunday, and has me going to the ballet Saturday afternoon and and dinner on Saturday night.

PowerDvd->settings->information reports the Transformers frame rate to be 23Hz.
HTPC users need to manually change the refresh from the default 60Hz to 23/24Hz.

MS was very late to use HDMI with the 360. Can it even do 24Hz? (slap!)

Mine is unpacked and setup on my table. Kinda nervous to fire it up. My trusty Sanyo Z-5 almost let out a wimper when I moved it to the corner. Will post reaction later tonight.

Only a 12 ft wide screen (less 2 inches)?

I think he likes it.

I am bringing a second pair of the BenQ DLP link glasses with me.

Agreed zombie, I am liking this projector so much that I really have no desire to open the JVC other than the fact the BenQ cannot fill my home theater screen.

Can you give us a break down on the black levels? On my screen I think they are decent and go back and forth. Some things look really dark and other times they definitely have a gray huy to them.

If you have an Xbox 360 or PS3 download Sonic Generations demo and put it in 3D mode, the colors will make your eyes explode I haven't done any official tests but input lag feels low on this unit which is definitely a good thing.

Forgot to mention, you can turn this thing on and fire up 3D without any warmup and I've yet to see it ghost.

I have been gaming most the night and am about to fire up some movies. Another game that shows off color reproduction on this unit is rayman origins. It almost looks like there is a sheet of glass on my screen because the colors are so sharp.

Finally 3D done right! I'm grateful for your passion and astute observations.
I too have a HP screen with a ceiling mounted Mitsubishi 4000 with glass lens and DC3. Both this and the BenQ are small in size so its easy to mount the BenQ just above and behind my head.

The next question is how much of a hit there is with the 2D contrast/black level. Hopefully better than the Mitsubishi 7800 or the Sharp 17000.

Is the Dynamic Iris available in 3D? When you're watching 3D there is a 3D picture mode and it cannot be changed?

I'd be curious if someone plays the opening scene from one of the Star Wars movies with the dark background or some dark scenes from Fifth Element if the blacks subjectively look black or dark grey to them

Anyone who has the projector, can you comment on what you find when you try what Art stated and post results?:

Back to 3D and brightness. I’m hoping this will change, but the single 3D mode that exists isn’t near as bright on the screen as the brightest 2D mode, and that’s before you put on the glasses. This may well change.

So is it true that without putting glasses on and having a 3D image on screen it is noticeably more dim than the brightest 2D mode?

Art also mentions there is no adjustment on the BenQ glasses. Are adjustments available on ANY DLP-Link glasses since I'm guessing any DLP-Link glasses should be usable with the W7000?

zombie10k's comments are really exciting but the problem I see is he's displaying on a 2.8 gain high power screen with the projector dead center vertically for maximum gain so for others like myself who have ceiling mounted projectors with low gain screens such a 1.0-1.3 the impression could be quite different. With this projector having 2000 lumens I still find it surprising that it isn't bright in 3D even with a large screen, especially since it's reported you cannot adjust the picture mode so I would think BenQ would have a bright 3D mode that takes advantage of the 2000 lumens.

Why can't the W7000 fill your 140" screen? Is the throw the problem whereby you can't get projector far enough from screen? I know you said you're going to 120" HP screen so am curious if throw is current issue.

4x3?
Them 4TB drives run hot and are pretty unreliable, so surely you have another 12TB offline for backup. I only have 6TB, purchased before the flood, of course.

Zombie can you try the 2D to 3D conversion and give us an idea if its worthwhile or not?

Also, what are the black levels like in 3D mode. This would be an exclusive 3D projector for me. My 120" HP screen is just waiting for a 1080p 3D projector.

Are the glasses rechargeable?

Before I forget can you playback 3D material from a hard drive (computer set up for Nvidia) using PowerDVD 11 (1080p/24hz)?

Thanks

It is so difficult to make real changes to improve your quality of life.
Such wonderful (and funny) Christmas news.
Patience is once again rewarded.