PLV-Z3 Tweak Thread - Page 31

Hi,

That is a wonderful thread !

I took the rOne filterless settings (with the corrected Gain R from +15 to -15), as I have no filter and only a HDMI output (oppo 981HD).

Just a question:

I am living in a PAL area. So do I need to change something from rOne settings who is living in NTSC area?

thanks
francois

OK I give up.

I have looked and looked but I cant seem to find a thread with regards to the z3 service menu. I have had my Z3 blue panel fixed and it came back out of alignment. The blue is pretty much 4 pixels out in the SW direction. I have managed to get into the service menu which was an effort in itself due to the fact my remote is going funny. And no I cant send it back to the repairer - I just dont want to go there again.

Please does anyone know what the hell the service menu means (or a link to a page that does) and how I can simply shift my blue panel. I dont realy want to fiddle to much (more) with the settings in this mysterious menu mode seeing as I just know I could really kill my little trooper z3.

Cheers

Os

Hope this helps:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...80#post9588080

In my setup, it looks like the Sharpness setting on the Z3 can be turned up to as high as +2 with HD DVD content, yielding a significant upgrade in picture clarity and detail without seeing unnatural edge enhancement or artifacts.

FWIW I had been running the cc30r filter settings with the Sharpness setting at -4 for my Oppo 971H and SA 8300HDC cable box connected through HDMI. Main seats are 8-12' from a 92" screen.

Recently I picked up a Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player and with the -4 Sharpness setting saw a major improvement over standard DVD, but did not see much of a difference vs. HD cable. Too soft for what I was expecting, even at 720p.

I found that upping the Sharpness to +2 really brought out the detail in HD DVD disks. It's too much for HDTV and upscaled DVDs, so I keep a separate preset for each.

I'd be interested in hearing anyone else's results.

My Bulb recently died in my Z3 and I purchased a replacement from myprojectorlamps.com, when I attempted to replace the bulb I can't seem to figure out how to remove the old one from the plastic carriage, it has a metal clip that seems to be holding the bulb in the carriage that I can't remove? Am I supposed to be replacing the entire plastic carriage (with the little metal handle?)

any help will be greatly appreciated!

marc - see my reply to your pm

So I tried a bunch of the tweaks listed here, and to my eyes they all come out looking kind dull. Scenes that are supposed to be sunny outdoor scenes come off looking more gloomy, overcast and rainy. Depressing to look at.

In fact even when I first set up the projector, the only preset that even came close to looking bright enough was Powerful. I have to set my iris to 100% open, select the brightest bulb mode, and turn up the brightness setting in order to get a reasonable perception of light. This is with multiple sources, using HDMI, VGA, and component connections (I'm using VGA and HD almost exclusively now). And this is with a 103" high gain VuTec SilverStar screen, in a very dark room.

I wonder if I got a defective bulb or something; What is the difference in brightness between a brand new bulb and one that's quite old?

Here are some thoughts and questions:

It sounds like a lamp issue to me. As I understand it, a new lamp starts out "too bright" and takes somewhere around 50-200 hours to settle in to it's normal brightness. The brightness then degrades gradually (maybe even imperceptibly) over time. Finally, just before it is ready to go out for good, there is a significant drop in output (kind of like what you may be describing) and it gets very dim. How many hours are on yours?

Fishing for other potential issues here, but, is your Z3 ceiling mounted? I believe that high-gain screens reflect light back towards the projector, which means that ceiling mounting negates the gain properties, and could possibly even make your picture dimmer (although I don't suspect that is culprit here). Is it just as dim when you project on a wall?

There are about 1,000 hours on my Z3's first lamp and it's still looking great running in Eco mode using ROne's settings with the cc30r filter. Contrast and Brightness settings are both within +/-2, and Iris is around -30. It's paired with a 92" matte white Severtson pull-down screen (1.1 gain).

Most people think they're looking at a giant TV when they first see it and can't believe it's a projector. I'll have it running before company arrives, and when they come down the stairs and turn the corner, the typical response is, "Wow!", then, "How big of a screen is that?", then "That's a projector?", then finally they walk up to the side of the screen and look behind it to confirm that it really is just a pull-down screen.

I just learned a painful lesson replacing the lamp on my 3.5 year old Z3 at 3000 hours. Spent $300 on a replacement lamp only to have the blue panel go bad shortly after - the picture now looks horrible and the repair cost is not likely justifiable.
I think others have had this experience too... lcd panel failure after lamp replacement possibly due to the heat of a new lamp. I've cleaned the filters regularly, but never found any appreciable accumulation of dust. The projector is ceiling mounted.

I wish I'd known of this issue before replacing the lamp on an older projector. I could have put the $300 towards the Panny 200U I will probably be replacing it with.

Did you buy the Z3 with an American Express? Your warranty could be automatically extended by one year (to 4 years) and you could still get it repaired.

What can we do avoid this, I'm on the original lamp, coming up on 3 years.. hate to loose it when I replace the lamp.

I'm not sure what can be done to avoid problems... make sure there is nothing inhibiting cooling, make sure to clean the filters. Using low lamp as much as possible surely helps, but I found this too dim for gaming.
The main thing I would have done differently is to ignore the "replace lamp" LED, which apparently triggers based on 3000 hours (rather than any sensor-based measurement) and wait until the lamp fails. If the lamp becomes unacceptably dim, weigh the lamp replacement cost and risk of replacement against the cost of a newer, better projector. Don't assume (as I did) that a new lamp will give you another couple of years to think about it.

Since I bought my Z3 I've been constantly fudging with the settings trying to get a decent amount of brightness, but it seems the only way I can get near tolerable image brightness is to set Gama to 4 or higher, open the iris, set bulb to full, and crank the contrast. But then I get crushed "blooming" whites and a predominance of yellows. And even with those settings cranked up, the outdoor scenes still have a deceivingly overcast look -- almost like the sky isn't blue enough, or the greens aren't green enough, or like there's a "smog" covering the entire scene... No amount of fiddling with the RBG has helped in this regard either. Even ROne's filterless settings looked terrible. So now I'm almost out of ideas.

What's puzzling is that ostensibly there is no reason why this should be happening. I think I've covered all the bases. Here are the specifics of my setup:

• I have a light-controlled room, and my viewing condions are pitch black
• My screen is mounted on a flat black wall
• My screen is a fixed 16:9 high-gain Vutec Silverstar, 103"
• The projector is mounted 13' away from the screen, on a 9' ceiling.
• The connections are HDMI from my PS3, and VGA from my XBox360

Here are some of the things I've tried:

• I've tried different cables and different connection types, with different playback sources (XBox360, PS3, and DVD player). All yield the same results.
• I installed a brand new Sanyo bulb! This hardly made a difference at all.
• I tried ROne's filterless settings from this thread. The results were unwatchably gloomy and dull.
• I tried cleaning out the panels, and the air filters as well. No difference.

So the only possibilities I haven't crossed off my list yet are...;

• I have noticed that there is a slight smudge on the lense. My low-tech lens cleaner couldn't seem to remove it so I probably need something stronger. Doesn't look like it should cause the issue I'm seeing though.
• My ceiling is flat white. Is it possible that this could cause such a severe issue?
• I noticed that my firmware is 1.00. When you guys got your firmware updated to 1.01, did it make a huge difference in colors and luminance?

My warranty has long expired, so unfortunately I've got to look at this one myself. Any suggestions would be appreciated, as I'm about to put this PJ into storage and never use it again...

Hi shanksworthy - I was wondering if things ever worked out for you, and unfortunately, they haven't. Maybe it's your screen? Have you tried a plain white sheet (or the wall) instead of the Vutec Silverstar? See post #27 from Jason in this thread (you may want to PM him). Maybe the reflection from the white ceiling is washing out the image:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=867594

As I said, I have a basic 92" Severtson matte white pull-down screen, my room has very light walls, carpet, and ceiling (see link below), but when the lights are off, it's bright-enough that everyone thinks it's a huge TV, not a projector. I'm using a cc30r filter with Rone's recommended settings; however, from your description, I don't think that the filter and settings alone would close the gap, even if you include the fact that your screen is 25% larger.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m.../HTPhoto02.jpg

No idea about the impact of upgrading the Firmware. My PJ shipped with 1.01 and I haven't updated.

Actually I think I remember seeing your response a few posts ago -- sorry I didn't respond to that one, I completely forgot about it. I'll give the white sheet idea a try, and I'll also PM Jason about this. Thanks for that.

I hope that's not the issue though, because my wife won't let me paint the ceiling . Jason's theory seems a little strange to me anyway; the projector beam shines down directly at the screen and away from the ceiling. So if the light takes the following path --PJ=>Screen=>Ceiling=>PJ+viewer (i.e. away from the screen) -- then at what point does the ceiling become a problem? Wouldn't the light then have to reflect back onto the screen to wash it out? Seems like it would have to take a pretty long path and reflect off many more surfaces (e.g. the walls, the floor, the back of the room...) to get back to the screen, by which time there wouldn't be enough of it to cause the issues I'm seeing... Yeah I know... at this point I'm just bargaining...

Here's an idea to test what is having the greater effect on contrast:

You could use a 50% black/50% white(or gray) test pattern from Avia or other calibration disk, and with you seated in the main viewing position, have someone hold their hand a foot or so in front of the black half of the screen to compare black levels for the following:

a) projected black, which will show you the combination of reflected/ambient light and the black-level limitations of the Z3,

b) the shadow the hand casts, which removes the Z3 from the equation, but will show you the best you can do with ambient/reflected light from a projected image on your screen, and

c) real black from the border of your screen (for reference).

If I'm saying this correctly, if b is closer in blackness to a (indicating ambient light is washing out the screen), then the screen/room is the bigger problem. If b is closer in blackness to c (indicating the Z3 black level is bad), then the Z3 is the bigger problem.

So I tried this last night, and the white sheet didn't make a difference. I also got a response from Jason and he led me to the conclusion that my issue was more a problem with brightness, than it being washed out.

Is it possible that the service menu might have a setting that could help with this? Like maybe a color saturation adjustment or something?
Can somebody walk me through the process of getting into the service menu? Also, does anybody have the service manual? I've found a few links but they all seem to be dead...

I have never played with the service menu, but hope the following is helpful.

This link to the Z3 service manual appears to work:
http://dialou.info/htpc/Materiels/Vi...serviceman.pdf

To get into the service menu hold down MENU+INPUT for 5 seconds.

Hey, one other thought based on Jason's comment regarding brightness: Is it possible the Iris is closed or frozen (maybe it's a mechanical issue)? If you change the Iris setting to "0" is the screen brighter than when it's on "-60"?

Fantastic, thanks for the manual! I've been looking everywhere for this.
Re. the service menu, actually I did try holding MENU+INPUT for 5 seconds and all I get is an "S" in the upper-left corner of the screen. Then if I bring up the menu, I don't see any new items. Am I missing a step?

Your comments about the iris are interesting... if memory serves, it does make a difference but come to think of it, maybe not as big of a difference as it used to. I'll experiment with that tonight.

Glad I could help. Found this in an old post by Jeremy Anderson: "When the S is on screen, press and hold the SCREEN button on the remote until the service menu appears."

BTW, Jeremy would be a good one to PM as well as he seems to have a lot of experience with the service menu.

I think the lamp on my Z3 may be ready to go. It's just shy of 3 years old and 1,100 hours (all but 10 hours in Economy Mode).

On Sunday, I finally built a built a 2:35 masking system for my screen and it looked great. Unfortunately, it started to look noticeably dimmer on Monday (MNF didn't have the punch I'm used to for football), and movies/TV/Wii on Tuesday and Wednesday were dull and washed out. Upon start-up last night, the countdown screen flickered, but stabilized.

Boosting contrast from its normal setting of -2 all the way up to +31 had little effect. It almost sounds like the issue that Shanksworthy has (maybe he just had two bad lamps?).

Am I risking anything (lamp exploding, other) by using the PJ until I order a new lamp?

UPDATE: Lamp went out for good on Wednesday. Ordering a new one.