Sony 10HT & HTPC Hook Up Problem - Could Use Some help - Page 6

In my actual situation with the 3rca connect to the 10ht i still have a black screen in 1080I mode (gbr) ! In fact i tried all the resolutions and frequencies but always a black screen and the message : frenquency over limit......

Use PS and select their custom rez for 1184x666 w/720 timings. Getting 1080 timing to work is difficult at best... besides, the 10HT is a 1366x768 panel. Do you have the 720 timing working yet? I use a 5BNC breakout cable and a set of BNC-to-RCA adapters. Did you adjust the TILING mode as described earlier?

No i dit not found the "tiling" mode ! sorry i'm french and newbie...
Thanks for response.

I have two questions for the pros here.

1) In order to get 1080i or 720p displayed on the 10ht, are you using the YPbPr cables or the VGA blown out to all 5 plugs?
2) I'd like to setup a REALLY simple and basic HTPC. Does anyone have a simple setup that will work practically out of the box? I'm technically inclined, but I hate fidgetting with hardware and device drivers. If there's a graphics card with a standard display format that will work quickly and easily, I'm all ears!

btw, I'm a total newbie here, though I've been using and loving my 10ht for a very long time, just limited to 480p for DVDs and 4:3 display with my laptop.

I've read through the past few years of posts on this thread and I've found two setups which were described as working nearly out of the box with minimal helper apps, for a 1080i setup.

source- Mr. KBE, 04-06-06
graphics card - ATI 1800XL
resolution - 1920 x 1080, 30Hz (no powerstrip)
cables - vga
comments - "I have installed Catalyst 6.3 and set the resolution to 1920 x 1080, 30 Hz. The 10HT-projector is connected to the VGA output, from my ATI 1800XL graphic card. (No powerstrip installed.) The picture is great, and the projector confirms the resolution by displaying HDTV in the setup menu."
problems - some overscan

source- tpfarr, 12-16-05
graphics card - NVidia GeForce 6600GT
resolution - "1080i" (presumable 1920 x 1080)
cables - ?
comments - "I'm using a 6600gt with MCE and the latest nvidia driver that now directly supports 1080i very nicely without powerstrip, ffdshow, zp, 6 different audio/video codecs....I've had the 6600GT for 6 months and the latest 81.95 driver is the first one that has worked for me out of the box with no tweeking and had the correct 59.94 refresh rate. "
problems - ?

Does anyone else out there have any other setups (possibly using more current video cards?) which work out of the box like these?

Thanks in advance!

I just got my first 1080i image projected on my 10ht and thought I'd share the details on how I did it. This post does not summarize the wealth of knowledge in this thread nor am I trying to say this is the best way of going about getting a 1080i display on your 10ht. For example, I have made no attempt to address the vertical overscan. This post is simply intended to be a straightforward soup to nuts easy solution, so here goes.

1. Get a vga to bnc5 breakout cable and connect the vga plug on your computer to the five inputs on the 10ht.
2. Turn on your computer and the projector. On the 10ht, select the "COMPUTER" input type. You should see your computer display on your projector locked into 4:3. You might make sure your computer display is set to 1024x768 before you hook it up to the projector.
3. Get an nVidia GeForce 6600gt video card (the one with a vga plug, not the dual dvi kind). I'm quite sure many models (both nVidia and ATI) will work, but this one is cheap and someone on this thread mentioned they'd gotten it to work with no helper apps. No PowerStrip. Nothing other than the drivers from nVidia. I got one used on ebay for $35.
4. (turn off your computer and) Plug the graphics card into your motherboard.
5. Boot up windows (xp) and install the lastest drivers from the nVidia website. When I installed them, the driver version was 93.71 dated Nov 2 2006, but it probably doesn't really matter so long as you install the latest driver.
6. Set your display monitor to be a SONY GDM-W900. To do this, go to Control Panel/System/[Hardware tab]/[Device Manager button] and expand Monitors. Right click on the single monitor there and select "Update Driver...". The Hardware update wizard pops up, click on "No, not this time" for the driver auto search and click next. Select "Install from a list or specific location" and next button. Click the radio button "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install" and next button. Uncheck "Show compatible hardware", click "SONY Corporation" in the listbox on the left, then the "SONY GDM-W900" in the listbox on the right. Then click the next button. Click finish.
7. Right click on the desktop and select Properties. On the Settings tab, click the Advanced button. On the Adapter tab, click the "List All Modes" button. Scroll down to the "1920 by 1080, True Color (32 bit), 30 Hertz (Interlaced)" mode and double click on it then click the Apply button. At this point the 10ht will stop displaying your computer screen and go black. Bring up the 10ht menu and change the input type to "DTR GBR". As soon as you've selected this input, you should see your computer screen in all its glory on your project, filling the display from side to side and top to bottom.
8. If your experience was like mine, you'll have quite a bit of overscan both horizontally and vertically.
9. The horizontal overscan you can fix easily. Go into the 10ht menus and adjust the horizontal size and shift until you see as much of your desktop horizontally as possible. Also, you can adjust the vertical shift so you see which part of the desktop you find useful.
10. Fixing the vertical overscan (I believe) requires creating a custom display mode. For help with that, you'll have to delve into the archives of this thread. I tried a couple of the custom 1766x1000 resolutions in the thread and couldn't get them to work. I can't say I tried terribly hard and I only tried via the NVidia Control Panel. With PowerStrip and/or more persistence you may well be able to get a display without any vertical overscan. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

jasonmphoto said, when describing a fresh new way to get 1080i with nVidia

"Set your display monitor to be a SONY GDM-W900. To do this, go to Control Panel/System/[Hardware tab]/[Device Manager button] and expand Monitors. Right click on the singlesingle monitor"


This is completely new territory for me. However, when I followed his excellent directions and got as far as the above I found I have FOUR monitors. I'm not sure how this came about. Perhaps from updates to nVidia drivers or when I changed to a different monitor. Not completely knowing what I'm doing I'm not game to proceed. I did right-click and look at the Properties of each monitor and they all seem to be the same. Can someone advise what I should do next?

I'm certainly no expert on this, but I'd probably try removing the extra three monitors (via the right mouse menu Uninstall option), leaving the one monitor you actually have plugged in.. then follow the rest of the steps.

Thanks,
I'll try Uninstall with the "roll back" option to be on the safe side as soon as I get the computer back from repair.

Hi guys -- I've made a business decision and have decided to retire my 10HT. I decided it was cheaper for me to buy a new VPL-AW15 ($1,080) than to keep buying $450 bulbs for this ol' gal. My theatre's equipment has migrated a bit as well... my new D* HD-DVR has HDMI, as does my Onkyo A/V receiver, and I've considered an upgrade route for my HTPC to include a new video card with DVI, or to built a new one in the upcoming months.

How are you all coping with this? I hope I've made the right one... but I calculated it was more cost effective to jump ship to the AW15 and take advantage of its cheaper, longer-life bulbs. I'd also like to think the increased contrast ratio of the AW15 will more than make up for the decrease in pixels -- these are 1280 x 720 panels.

BigPicture, this is good news for the ATI users here.

For people using NVidia cards, I believe that it is possible to get custom resolutions directly from the NVidia drivers (without the need for Powerstrip), provided one uses Windows XP

I've just discovered a workaround for Vista which requires connecting the projector via the NVidia component dongle (I'm using a component to HD15 adapter so that I don't even have to change the cabling to the projector - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-Cable-A.../dp/B0002W6942)

With this setup (which is enabled through the NVidia Control Panel - Display - Set up multiple display - HDTV), one gains access to a few new custom resolutions such as 1768x992i, 1360 x 768p, 1176 x 664p and to a few more refresh frequencies (25i, 29.x i) on top of the more conventional 1080iat 30Hz interlaced and 720p.

Via the resize HDTV desktop option in the NVidia control panel (and the projector's HPOS, VPOS and HSIZE settings), it is possible to have the desktop fill perfectly the projected image.

I haven't compared the picture this produces with what I used to have with my ATI 9600 (or done a full oscilloscope calibration), but it looks quite good.

Big Picture,

I still have my 10HT (and won't replace it as long as the lamp lasts...)

With my NVidia setup, I prefer the 1768 x 992 resolution, as reading text marginally better than with 1080i, possibly because the text is sightly bigger (~10%). I haven't done any extensive testing though!

Does anyone know which Display Mode Timing is preferred by our projector?

Many have tried & failed when attempting to set a 1080i res but I do not recall anyone mentioning whether to use GTF, DMT or CVT as mentioned in the help of my nVidia6600 graphics card.

A couple of years ago I achieved a 720p/no-overscan and today, on discovering these variables I tried them all with it today and they all worked.

I have never been able to get a 1080i going with many attempts off and on, some with PowerStrip. As I created so many problems for myself I'm not game to try again. I am wondering now if success or failure with 1080i depends on this GTF, DMT or CVT business, in which case I will try again.

" General Timing Formula (GTF) is an older but widely used timing standard.
However, newer display are switching to the CVT standard.
Discrete Monitor Timings (DMT) timing is a set of pre-defined VESA timings.
VESA updates this standard every year. If DMT timing is available for a specific
mode, the NVIDIA display driver normally selects it instead of the GTF standard.
Coordinated Video Timings (CVT) became the VESA standard on March 2003.
CVT supports higher resolutions better than other timing standards."

Big Picture,
I'm using CCC v.8.12 with an ASUS Radeon HD 3450 card and I can't seem to get the same results you did. I forced the HDTV output to 1920x1080 @ 30Hz and all I get is a black screen. I'm using a VGA to component cable by the way. Every once in a while, for a brief second, the 10HT will click and I can see my desktop but that's it. I'm not getting the "frequency out of range error" that I used to get so I guess I'm heading in the right direction. On the 10HT, what should I have Input A set to: Computer, Component.....? Any suggestions as to what's going on?

Thanks

I can confirm that CCC 8.12 is working fine.

I have more or less the same set up as I had when I last wrote in this thread back in 2006.
Using a Radeon 1800 XL graphic card connected via a VGA-cable to the projector (involving all 5 connections (red, green, blue + 2 sync)).
As Big Picture writes You have to set the input A to GBRTV.

I have now forced the resolution to 1080, 25 Hz, works very smooth when showing blu-ray movies. (1080, 30 Hz is also working fine with Catalyst 8.12)
Has now updated the HTPC with a quad-processor, Xonar HDAV 1.3 audio card and a blu-ray drive. All just to be able to enjoy Blu-ray movies on the vw10HT, also with HD-audio. (Unfortunately I Need to use Anydvd HD to get rid of the HDCP protection).
It is very nice, and it is fantastic that this old projector still can show-off a bit....



/Mr. KBE

Still fooling around with a 10HT, eh? As you see I jumped ship. Interested in buying my old one?