Panasonic PT-AX100 - Page 15

I saw a movie projected by a LCD beamer and the blacks where lighting up on the screen like grey.
In a cinema theatre it's the same way, thats why I liked Star Wars and I-Robot in D-Cinema so much.
Thats why I wanted a DLP beamer, so I can get deeper blacks and have that sparkling effect you see on your TV with Logo's at the beginning of most movies.
They pop of your screen.

Now the AX100U seems to have blacker blacks than the HD72.
Will that AX100U give me the same sparkling effects too, like DLPs already can give.

If so than I'm in.

Hello Art.

I'm a reader of your review-site for over a year now.
Most of the time I compare the reviews with Projector Central.
The specs. are easier to find there at ones, because it's short and compact.
Than, when a beamer is interesting, I want to know all the details and go to your site.
The pictures are very pleasing.
I know it's not that accurate but we understand you are witnessing the real thing there and use only the pictures that gives us the best impression of what you see there.
Go ahead with what you do best.

PS, I have a BIG problem here, can you help me?

I want to buy the AX100U too, because of the brightness and the possibility to project a big picture thats still beautiful.
My room is not that big, but just like you,I want to sit in the movie too.
So iff I use the lens at the widest point I can fill up a 120'' screen.
I know it's best to use a lens in the middle of his range but my room is not that big.
Is this a bad thing?
Is it better to use a 106'' screen than, or is the picture still very good with the lens in the widest point?
I don't know if you have done this.

Another thing is this.
The 120'' screen is white, gain 1.0.
The 106'' screen can be delivered with High contrast Grey, gain 1.0
I think that the picture will be more beautiful and deeper on the grey one,... but it is not that big and overwhelming.
I can also buy a 120'' High contrast grey screen, but the gain will be 0,8 than, and I think this will dim the picture too much.
Or is the AX100U powerful enough to make this a very beautiful combination, better than using the 120'' white?

What do you recommend?
I think we both want the same thing if it comes to make a cinema from your home.
A bit of IMAX experience. hahaha

I know,... here in Holland we do not have that many choices for screens.
The gain 1.0 is not that bad compared with the 2.8 because you can view movies from a wider angle, and there is no spotlight in the middle, I hope.




Thank you very much

OK Im throwing this out to all you knowledgable FP owners and any/all PT-AX100 owners. I have a great room with a twenty foot cieling. Going to rear shelf mount and throw image on the opposing wall 18 feet away. Id like to go as big a screen as will show a high quaility picture. Do you think I can get away with 150" screen or should I stay with something closer to the 106 or 120 inch size since I am projecting across the room at 18 feet? Also, anybody know where to get a spiffy rear shelf to put the projector on? Thanks in advance!

150" is too big for that projector it, I would stick to no larger than 120". A rule of thumb is the first row of seating should be 1.5x the width of the screen. So a 120" diag is 8.75 feet across so you seating shouldn't be closer than 13.125. Where is your seating in the room?

I have a 92" diag screen, so thats 6'8" across , 1.5 times that is 10+ feet and we sit 11 to 13 feet back, It's plenty big. I might have gone a little larger but I needed space on the sides for my tower speakers and I didn't want to cram them in the corner.

That sounds like my setup. I am about 16 feet away with my projector mounted on a shelf about 10 feet high. My ceiling is 20 feet high.

I had a 135" screen with the AE900 and upped it to 150" screen with the AX100. Yes that is too large for every guidline I have ever seen, but I like it. Overwhelming is a good thing. People have raved about the screen size and quality, so I must have done something right.

Found the above comments in another thread and was wondering for those of you who've received your AX100's, have you noticed the vertical banding ? I had seen this on the 900's and was hoping that Panny corrected it on the Ax100.

I was also thinking of the Pearl, but it's at least twice the cost of the Panasonic and has feeble light output, relatively speaking (the Panny can produce double the actual light output of the Pearl).

I'm not asking about the pearl, I'm more interesting in knowing if VB in the AX100 is still a problem as it was on the AE900. VB can be VERY annoying.

Those of you with AX-100s, can you do me a favor and look at the test pattern for a minute? I'm curious if when you look up close at the image (<12 in away from screen) if the test pattern actually looks black or if you can see red and blue edges to the image. On my ax100 and the 4 plus's in the corners of the test image, the center looks dark black, but the edges look blue or red. Is it possible that I have panel misalignment?

It's probable! Nearly all LCD projectors will have this problem to some degree. Usually (hopefully) its not noticeable once you back away a couple feet. Every manufacturer has a different policy as far as how many pixels off a color needs to be before it's out of 'spec'. Not sure what Panasonic's policy is.

That's probably because we're all in a drooling vegetative state from staring at the image this thing throws.

This is my first PJ so I'm not going to be able to offer good comparisons, but I will step up and give it a shot.

Me likee. Me likee alot.

That's probably not enough details, so let me demonstrate my ignorance and hopefully deliver a nugget of truth. I'm currently watching Pulp Fiction on it, but I think that was a bad choice because Quentin Tarantino probably does wacky things like oversaturate stuff or use weird white balances.

Setup
The room is a big square with 8' ceilings. In a basement with a patio door on one side (BOC installed). Walls are "soft denim" semi-gloss (looks like slate to me). Ceiling is off-white, floor is light brown carpet.

Shelf mounted - throwing over couch from around 16' to about a 10' diagonal on the semi-gloss wall (slate color). Using just about all of the lens shift to shoot it up over my 34" CRT beast - (panasonic ct34wx50). Image ends up near the 8' ceiling, actually overlapping a little. Ultimately the CRT will be behind a pull-down screen. Probably the Dalite HCMW, probably ordering tomorrow... any thoughts?

The paint diffuses the light a bit - when I hold up a piece of printer paper on the wall the pixel edges become razor sharp - so I won't even post any (arguably meaningless) screenshots.

NOTE: I have only used the VGA input because all my HT equipment is on the other side of the room, and my 50' component cable is in the mail. So I don't know anything about component or HDMI differences that may or may not exist.

I have a CSM42 component switch which can take 4 sources to 2 seperate displays concurrently - finally I will be using both outputs ... I got it for just a couple hundred from hdtvsupply.com and it claims to be fine for 1080p - is this possible over component? Doesn't matter for now... on to the good stuff

Details
Brightness - Yes. It is watchable with light in the room - obviously not as good as dark though. I am hoping that I can choose a screen with a relatively wide viewing angle which will not hamper perceived brightness or perhaps even increase it a little with a little ambient light rejection. Am scared of the HP though - want wider angle and ambient light rejection, Don't need all that gain! Would have bought that for the AE900U - but hopefully now I have more choices.

For now, on the wall - I am running the lamp in economode. It's very quiet, but gets a bit louder when in normal mode. Not bad if you've got the sound on, but when muted it's pretty noticable. Not sure when you'd have it muted, and I'm without a frame of reference for what "loud" or "noticable" is, suffice to say it's virtually silent in econo mode.

The colors looks good to me - skin tones and all. Black is not all that black, at least out of the box in my room on my wall - but this is probably something I can correct. Colors appear uniform, but when I fired up the black and white "test pattern" included with the PJ and looked for it, there was maybe was slightly a reddish glow on the very left edge of the white/black pattern. I couldn't say for sure about the right side having any green, and the left was pretty subtle, even on the white screen. Keep in mind, I was specifically looking for something like this after seeing it mentioned in (I think) Tom's review. Otherwise I probably would not have noticed.

There is zero SDE - I can walk up to the image and stand in front of it at 10' diagonal - though I can see the pixels at point blank there is no grid. Again, the pixels are themselves sharp, when you approach the screen. But if you really don't like that I suppose you could defocus - I actually prefer to keep it sharp for desktop work and for games. Looks good for movies too - I don't want it "blurry".

I fear there is some misconvergence, as I see red on the left side of the + signs in the test image and some blue on the right. My estimate is 1 pixel red 2 pixels blue. Perhaps the green is off vertically because the top and bottom of the + edges look yellowish. It might also be off 1 horizontally because some of the vertical edges appear this yellow/green as well.

As for VB, I'm not sure how to test for this but I set the background to various gray shades, and didn't see any vertical dark lines or anything.

No pixel problems I could detect. Keep in mind this is being displayed on a regular ole wall.

I had no problem hooking up to my HTPC (eVga 7600 GT) in XP and in linux, and I have been able to watch DVDs using vlc in both, or play video games. I configured it for 1280x720 at 60 hz in windoze, and 60.1 in linux (to match the manual).

I did notice some stuttering on one DVD disk in linux, but that's hardly the fault of the PJ and was only on one disc so far. Now watching Pulp Fiction I see some issues with panning, but I think it's the source / encoding. I will try and describe this issue, though again I don't think its the projector. When panning sometimes I see the image sort of lag from top to bottom in the pan, where the bottom of the screen "catches up" to the top. I'm not sure if this is called tearing, or judder, or something else Again, probably not the PJ. "panning" in the computer games like UT2004 and THPS4 was NOT an issue

I was pleasantly surprised at how well it scaled a 1280x1024 input on the VGA - text was quite legible (though I only plan on this for games which did not provide for a 1280x720/60 display of course, not for desktop work).

I haven't calibrated it yet (I did get the AVIA disc - I better not end up like those guys with their 90s sweaters and smooth jazz)

It's truly great for a life-size tony hawk experience Can't wait to see what happens with a screen

Thanks again Tom for your thorough and professional review. I also think they should let you keep your test units. Perhaps we should keep track of who buys this "because of Tom's review".

I'd say its great, especially if you can't fit a DLP into your room or are rainbow sensitive. And it better not come down TOO fast in price though honestly I'm happy with it and happy to have it.

Got to go - Vincent Vega has just brought one f'd up poopah to his dealer's house

On the crosses on the right, it would appear some red on the left, and perhaps some blue on the right. I would say maybe twice as much blue than red, but I'm not sure.

On the crosses on the left, the red is the same, but instead of noticing blue I see the black looks "yellow" on the right. Same ratios. I would guess perhaps I have 1 pixel red and 2 pixels blue misalignment, horizontally? Vertically the crosses look a little yellow/greenish on the edges too.

From about 5 feet this is hard to see, even on the test image.

Anyone knows about the cinema-filter??
So in which image modes does it kick in?
I assume that it is used only in cinema modes to achieve better contrast and color plus black level (of course losing some brighness).
Can someone check if there is some noise, when the filter slides in to determine in what image modes it is used?

If the filter is good chosen, the panels are fully driven (all the range and dynamic is in use) in cinema modes and no further filters are necessary. I'm using now ae900 with reddish filter and economode with gray 70" screen (.84 gain). I can watch with very little ambient light, but there is no enough lumens for comfortable viewing. So I have to use very good light control.

I'm interested in getting ax100 and if there are some ae900 to ax100 upgraders, please tell some details aobut fan noise (economode in both) and brightness. I think that the ax100 will put more lumens in economode than ae900 in economode, but what about when using the cinemamode in both? Then ax100 will propably use the filter and it will cut the lumens.

So the situation is this:
ae900: economode lamp, 'video' imagemode, using color filter in front of the lens
ax100: economode lamp, 'cinema' imagemode, using propably the internal filter

The result is, I guess, that the ax100 wins in lumens, because in both projectors the panels are somewhat fully driven and both are using filters and ax100 has more power in lamp. So the final thing is how is the actual 'more lumen' situation compared to ae900, is it a big difference?

First of all, I saw the add that you are referring too and found it laughable. You cannot compare a brick and mortar store with on-line retailers...they are not even close to being in the same league in terms of pricing.

To use your not-real-pricing (but you get the idea) system, if you guessed that you could find the AE900 at a Canadian retailer with a Canadian warranty (not Japanese) for around $2,200 CAN, you'd be guessing too high. I would also note that similar projectors such as the Sanyo Z4 could probably be found at numerous on-line retailers in Canada (with Canadian warranties) for less than $1,900 CAN (hypothetically speaking).

All in all, I don't find the Canadian on-line retailers to be out of line with what you can get from U.S. on-line retailers. If you can do significantly better than the hypothetical prices listed above in the U.S., PLEASE PM me and tell me where before I take the projector plunge!

I had vertical banding on my old mitsubishi, but on the new ax100, there's no banding, no lcd patterns, no nuthin'. Just a nice smooth image. A couple of days into having it, I'm still in awe.

Is this projector capable of extracting the 1080/24p out of the 1080/60i output of the Toshiba HD DVD player? I think it's called inverse telecine.

And how does it handle 24p, can it do 48Hz or 72Hz?

How much heat does this thing kick out in the different modes? My room is 15'x24' and I'm trying to determine if I need to run an in-line fan to suck the air from the projector to outside or another room. The room is insulated and has two layers of drywall (green glue between).

Thanks in advance!

These are the listed modes from their website.

480i (525i): fH 15.75 kHz, fV 60 Hz
480p (525p): fH 31.5 kHz, fV 60 Hz
576i (625i): fH 15.63 kHz, fV 50 Hz
576p (625p): fH 31.25 kHz, fV 50 Hz
720/50p (750/50p): fH 45 kHz, fV 60 Hz
720/60p (750/60p): fH 37.5 kHz, fV 50 Hz
1080/24p (1125/24p): fH 27.0 kHz, fV 24 Hz
1080/50i (1125/50i): fH 28.125 kHz, fV50 Hz
1080/50p (1125/50p): fH 56.3 kHz, fV 50 Hz
1080/60i (1125/60i): fH 33.75 kHz, fV 60 Hz
1080/60p (1125/60p): fH 67.5 kHz, fV 60 Hz

I used to have to run the air conditioner in my upstairs furnished attic with my old one, but I don't anymore with this. There's definitely heat coming out of the front vent, but it's hardly super heated like my old one. It's more just warm.

I replaced a Sanyo PLV-60 that was pretty bright (1300 lumens), blooming (to a fault) bright. I have a 120 diagonal Dalite High Power Model C pull down screen I got from Jason at AVS (shameless plug) a few years ago. I can lift it up one stop and I go from 1:85 to 2:35.

I have been waiting for a couple of years to upgrade my projector. I needed a bright projector since I watch a good bit of football during the day and my theater area is open to the bar area in my basement with a couple of large windows. I do have pull down shades that do a good job of blocking light.

Before the I can't believe you paid full price for this projector bashers begin. I wanted a new projector now. It has nothing to do with being the first out of the gate to own this new projector. We don't entertain in our theater a whole lot so it's for US not anyone else. I have waited through the Z3-Z4/Panny 700-900 projectors and decided it was time to get off the fence. I realized I could spend forever waiting on the best projector out there. The wife has been pressing me for over a year to just buy what you want.

I will not give a technical review of this projector because a.)I don't possess calibration equipment b.) if I had it, I wouldn't know what to do with it and c.) it has already been done by the professional reviewers listed in this thread.. I will give you my observations.

I have not made any adjustments to any setting. I want to put a few hours on the bulb first. I am running via component. We are currently viewing in eco-mode lamp setting in NORMAL video mode. Normal mode seemed to us to have the truest colors out of the box. Unit is on a shelf behind viewing area. I will be mounting to ceiling when mount arrives later this week.

Our first viewing Friday night was Open Range in HD from our HDdvr. We have seen this movie over a dozen times. However, we have never seen it like this before. The opening of OR was jaw dropping. The vistas with blue sky detail and green meadows were spectacular. The most impressive thing to me was the contrast and shadow detail that we were missing previously. The blacks were very, very good to us. The shadow detail was there! Nothing muddy at all. My wife and I just kept looking at each other and saying can you believe this? It was beyond Plasma for us.

Wife retired for the evening so I popped in Moulin Rouge. Panny dvd player (old) via component, no up scaling here. The picture looked very pleasing, tremendous colors, nothing like HD but pleasing accurate colors.

Next day I watched football. My viewing day began with afternoon sun through windows with shades up. I wanted to see what this baby could do. The HD image via Adelphia cable was very good with blacks challenged as anticipated. Light comes in from the side. The PT-AX100 still threw a very good colorful image. The late game viewing was an entirely different story. Nice blacks, eye popping colors immersive image. Wowwowwow.

I have a total of 20 hours on this unit since installation last Friday. No VB or misaligned panels that I can see. The PLV- 60's fan sounded like a jet engine compared to the AX100. I have to get within a couple of feet to hear it. This unit does put out some heat in the front. It is almost seems like the fan velocity could be better, but remember I am used to a jet engine.

Overall, we are extremely pleased with this unit. No regrets.

Fantastic real-world reivew.

Thanks.

Congrats Randy,

Thanks for your impressions.
Sound like you're very pleased with your purchase and that's what matters.
Enjoy the ax100 !

Thanks for the information. This helps.

OK, I went and bought one of these, too...

Haven't finished calibrating, but here's a mini-review (from someone nowhere near as technical as you guys...)

I upgraded from a Sony HS10 (900 lumens)

I have a 121" Stewart Firehawk screen, and the PJ is approx 18' from the screen.

The brightness knocked me out!! compared to the HS10, wow!! even my wife loved it!

I've been watching in dynamic mode, and messing with the output from my tivo to find the best combo...

DVD's look great, lo-def Simpsons, not so good...but I got it for HD, right?

Football looked spectacular...
I notice som slight screendoor during scene changes, but when I try to look at it, it's gone...still need to calibrate better...

Totally worth the upgrade in my mind, though, so far...

Just curious what existing AX100 owners have set their Brightness to.
I found that the Brightness had to be turned all the way down to -20 to achive a decent black level on HDMI input, otherwise it was entirely washed out. Other than a little red push, I've found the 'Normal' Living room setting to be a good match for my screen. (132" wide 2.35:1 Firehawk).

And for those interested in the comparison between the AE900 and AX100, the difference is considerable. The light output is one element obviously, but the increase in sharpness is dramatic. Previously I found the quality difference between an HTPC for DVD and a Toshiba HD-DVD player to be disappointing. (Maybe a testament to the quality of the HTPC ). However, now HD-DVD images literally pop off the screen with significant increased detail. I put much of this down to the improved optics/sharpness/focus on the AX100.

And just to put this into perspective, I have considerable hands-on experience with Sony Ruby, Sony G90 CRT, JVC G15 and AE900. For the price, the AX100 is a phenominal deal, given its versatility with light output and placement.

You talk about the sharpness being dramaticly sharper than the AE900. Are you using the dynamic sharpness control? If not I was wondering if you can enable this feature and give your opinion. This is from panasonics website about the dynamic sharpness control.

"Conventional projectors emphasize sharpness without regard for brightness differences. This can cause a halo or ring effect around object edges, reducing their three-dimensionality. Dynamic Sharpness Control sharpens only the pixels in the image areas where there is a small change in brightness level.
This greatly reduces noise amplification and delivers clear, natural-looking images"

CHivs,
Something in you chain is set to "PC" mode, i.e. 0-255 as opposed to "Video" 16-235..
Make sure your input devices output at Video mode. I'm using the 100 via HDMI and the Brightness control is just fine at -1 for Black level.

WOW all great reviews so far.I will not be able to use my ax100 intill thurdays.I can't wait.I just sold my ae900 and look forward to this new one.I will be using the Tosh HD-A1 thru HDMI.Will post my thoughts thursday night after playing with it for a while.BUDDA

I also have a plv-60...actually it's labeled as Studio Exp. 13hd but it's a direct clone of the 60. I'm looking to replace in the next few weeks...I was almost sure I was going with a 1080 pj...but the AX-100 with it's brightness is sounding good.

Specific questons...
How much better are the blacks and contrast/shadow detail with ax-100 over the plv-60?
As far as screen door effect...is it much improved over the plv-60?
In lower power modes...is the panny comparable in brightness to the plv-60?

Thanks,
Ken

Ken,

This is my humble opinion, take it as such, my friend;

1. Increase five fold. My PLV-60 was a wash in grey in comparison. I liken it to the PLV-60 in the dark and the AX-100 with normal ambient light (what is normal, Randy?... blinds open indirect light). Remember, there have been many improvements between the 60/13 clones and the current projectors.

2. For me, the SDE on the PLV-60 was there. I learned to live with it, not objectionable in the greater scheme of things. Perhaps after several years I learned to accept it. On the AX-100 I have to move within a foot of the screen to see it. It seems really compressed and much tighter. Whereas the PLV-60 was larger and greater in space between the pixels...hope that makes sense. However, one adjustment you will need to make between the PLV-60 (your 13HD clone) and AX-100 is the lack of power; focus, lens shift and zoom...how I miss them

3. IN HD; My PLV-60 bloomed when the sky was bright (you know what I'm taking about ....too much bright which washed out the colors on the other parts of the picture. On the AX-100 it's a more balanced picture because of the better contrast. In comparison, the blacks are amazing (to me and my wife) and you see shadow detail that was missing before. Perhaps it is the Iris on the AX-100 that makes the difference here, but the brightness is reduced and the contrast is improved on my AX-100. I can watch a football game and see the iris on the AX-100 subtly step up and down based on the playing field conditions and brightness. Neat to see the projector working on my behalf The PLV-60 would put a message on the screen to put your sunglasses on...J/K


Please understand this is MY opinion. I loved the brightness of the PLV-60 when watching sports. Although it lacked contrast, it provided punch. The AX-100 increases the brightness and BOOSTS the contrast considerably. ( 6000:1 vs. 700:1)

There are so many tremendous projectors out there. Isn't this fun? I waited long enough. Sometimes you have to base your decision on manufacture's reputation and your own patience. This is a good time for FP buyers.

Sorry if this response was too long....