Ok Folks! Show me your dots! - Page 3  

I think your problem still lies in the optics. It really looks like light scatter, not just focus.

Since you replaced the green c-element and it's clearly the color that has the least problems I put my money on that layer of white microscopic crud I spoke of before. On the tube face you will only see it when looking at an angle with it all dried off after the c-element is out. You will notice the tiniest layer of white like phosphor grain but smaller except it'll be on the wrong side of the glass to be phosphor. Remove the blue c-element and carefully inspect the backside for the same microscopic white stuff. Wash ut with soap and water and be sure not to scratch it at all. Then when it's dry inspect it out in sunlight. If it's anything other than crystal clear and perfectly scratch free it'll cause your symptoms.

If it's not that, and your Lc fluid is good quality clean stuff, then maybe swap the blue and green lenses and see if the light scatter is in the lens. Did you clean and inspect them as well?

Troy

Yep, that's my tube face imploded. I fell asleep watching a baseball game. When I woke up, the PJ was off. When I tried to re-start it, I got a "HIGH BEAM CURRENT" error message. Right now I have my3600HD set up below it on a table. That 3600 smokes but I miss my contrast ratio that you can only get with a LC.

Chip

What do you think caused that chip? LC fluid pressure/no air bubble? I can only imagine the pain and disgust you must have felt when you saw it was the tube.

Troy

Rajiv-

I'd be happy to post some screenshots for you, but I need to redo my set-up first. I've just gotten my Moome card working with my HD-A1 and I just received my 15' HDMI to DVI cable today. So perhaps this weekend I'll redo the set-up YET AGAIN and see how nice I can (or can't) make it. By the way, this is on my G70. A few weeks ago I redid my setup using Brian Hampton's modified Guy Kuo focus document. After that the G70 looked better than I had ever seen it. But now with the DVI input I had to redo the convergence. I did that rather quickly and it begs for a full set-up... again :)

Also worth noting, I definitely noticed increased sharpness when I switched to the Moome DVI input. The difference was not subtle.

Also worth noting, I haven't given up on my Ampro 4600. It's got near mint tubes in it now and I'm waiting for HD-10L lenses from Curt. At that point I will have to make time to give that projector a serious try. Then maybe I'll finally decide to sell one or the other. Oh, and I have the Moome external DVI box to use with the Ampro. I'm all set up now... twice :)

Good luck with your set-up tonight.

-Mark

Really sorry to hear about that Chip.

I always thought the rubber bladder under the fill plate would provide some protection. When I first got my 4200 about 5 years ago. I loosened the plates on all three tubes and there was zero fluid pressure at that time. About a year ago I decided to change the discolored fluid.

I was shocked about how much fluid squirted out from under the plates when I loosened the screws a second time 4 years later. There was definitely a lot of pressure there. Maybe I was lucky I did it when I did.

Ray

I really wish I had an answer. The fluid was changed in all three tubes just after I bought it as I wanted to install the colored c-elements that I had. That was about two and a half years ago. The projector has been set up with no changes since then. Rasters were set to 1/4 inch to the closest point of the tube edge. For the time being I will use my 3600 while I look for a decent used green. I want to make sure something didn't go haywire and shift the image onto the tube edge or something before I spring for a new replacement tube. I will fix this as I love my 4600HD. No one but jtnfoley believes me but I prefere my projector over a modded 9500LC. He has seen mine and came with me to look at a modded 9500LC. We both came to the conclusion that to buy one would not be a up-grade over what I have.

Chip

Some pics from my 2000. 7" ES focus/air coupled projector. Thing is, it has the same CRT cards and RGB board as the model 4200. The tubes don't have the resolution of the 9" mag focus set but it does 1024 x 768 @ 70 Hz pretty well. That is a pixel clock of about 100MHz. 1080i has a pixel clock about 80MHz and the pixel clock at 720p is about 72MHz. 1080p is about 160MHz.

The 4200 should give good performance at 720p and 1080i.

Screen shot of off air HDTV at 1080i. The actual image looks better than the camera pic. My wall isn't a perfect white screen, either. I ought to fix that.



Scott

Scott,
A lot of interest has been generated with Wilsonart Designer White. You can get a 5x10 piece for less than $100.

Ericglo

Turn down your contrast way low and see if the image sharpens up. Electronic focus becomes a moot point at miniscule contrasts. If you still cannot resolve alternating lines with very low contrast at 1080P, then you must have an optical problem.

You aren't getting scan lines at 720P, you are resolving alternate lines, and fairly poorly at that. I don't know how the 4200 performs, but my marquee 9000 resolves alternating lines fairly well at 1920x1440@60.

My dots:
6PG plus at 1920x1080i95.904

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/292...0060wz0.th.jpghttp://img63.imageshack.us/img63/680...0064zx7.th.jpghttp://img63.imageshack.us/img63/923...0066ua7.th.jpghttp://img63.imageshack.us/img63/472...0067sx6.th.jpg
http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/474...0069qw3.th.jpg

My camera sucks in low light conditions, but the dots were captured nicely.

Hi,

I pulled a PG extra in front of the screen to do a screenshot of the rez pattern with my HTPC, so this was not exactly a dedicated setup, but I use no HTPC anymore with my main pj so this is the most I was wiling to do.
Here is what I came up with, the Ampro on the right.

The camera always gave me a warning saying the picture was not properly focused, but it still looks better than the 4200, both pics taken at 1080p 60.

Oliver

OK,
here is another one comparing letters on the desktop when doing a right mouse click.

If your PC monitor is set anything like mine you will need to turn the brightness up to ~50% to see Kai's dots ;)

Rajiv, that looks HEAPS better.

And you should have no trouble finding someone to swap HD-10L's for HD-10's, most people want the opposite.

Mark

Rajiv,

117" form the screen is not a problem with the HD10 lenses I have used. I would not expect the HD10L to look much better at that distance, if at all.

For your sake I hope I am wrong, but don't expect miracles.

720p is definitely improved, good work ! And a very impressive and professional looking setup I might add. 1080p is where it is at though in the 9" class, you should work on that resolution and optimize your setup for it. In case this proves too difficult I would optimize for 1080i, you will get better results with HD movies when using that.

You have a cool looking RGBHV cable - are those Belden 1694 ?

Oliver

Yes I have 10L's on mine and have (had) no problems with those test patterns. This is what I want you to do. Put that test pattern back up that is soft on the screen and look through the lens and see if it's sharper on the tube face. Look through the lens at those two top boxes and see if you can see the lines.

I have a thread from about three years ago about a 4000G with focus problems. Everone insisted that I had soft tubes. I was trying to project onto a small screen (72" diag) with straight HD 10's and could not see scan lines on screen at 600X800. I could look through the lens and clearly see scan lines on the tube face. Being quite sure that I was correct and everyone else was not, I packed up the PJ and took it somewhere big enough that I could experiment with much larger screen size. I set the lens adjustments to exact mid point. With the PJ on a cart, I moved it till I had the best center focus (green only) without touching the lenses. Yo know what I ended up with? Big honkin, ultra sharp scan lines on a 140 inch screen. At that location I was able to pump up the rez to 960P and on a 4:3 screen was able to project scan lines (from a 4000G ES focus). You can chose to or not to take my word on it but I saw it with my own two eyes and that's good enough for me.
Later there was a thread about the ability of doing 1080P on a 8" EM focus set. This thread cought my interest and sent me out to the shop where I have a 3600HD. I set it up on a 100" 4:3 screen @1080P and spent about 3 hours messaging the green astig, electronc focus and mechanical focus. so that at 4:3 the scan lines were clearly visible. I then began to squeeze the image to the point where scan lines vanished which was exactly at the 16:9 ratio. Fully knowing that no one would believe it, I asked jtnfoley to come over and see it. I gave him the tape measure and asked him to make the call as I squeezed the image. We went back and forth at least six times till he was satisfied that we were at the point where the lines touched. He measured the screen to a 16:9 ratio. If he reads this, I'm sure he'll varify.

Get some 10L's and try again.

Chip

Rajiv,

I thought again about the lens issue and I remembered a Sony 1292 I had with all crappy HD10 lenses that got much better when I installed some HD10f for it.
So maybe you should really try and sort out the lens issue, maybe you even need the 10L, even at that quite long throw distance. Of course it still would be good to know if the current lenses are really better at longer throw distances - would you be able to check that ?
If they are you know what to shoot for in your current setup, if they aren't the lenses just might be no good at any distance but from what you say you got a better pic at a longer throw - right ?

Regarding looking on the tubes you could try that also but it seems that your Ampro is very sensitive to higher contrasts so you'd have to compare your screen with a very low contrast setting and look into the tube at the same setting, that would be a useful comparison.

And: Maybe a stupid question , but are you sure you got the Scheimpflug all dialed in ?

@Chip: 72" diagonal has to be about the smallest I ever heard from a 9" CRT setup, Rajiv has 76" across, which would come to about 92" diagonal I think. I agree that you have been had when nobody recommended the HD10L to you, this is the lens for the job.

Rajiv,

This camera setup looks pretty useful. I'll be doing the astig on my PJ sometime soon. How have u done this? USB camera connected to a laptop and adjusted the astig while viewing the image on the laptop?


Thanks!

Your projector looks like it's set-up alot better! You are right to suspect your video equipment for bandwidth, noise, and other undesirable stuff. Sometimes that is part of the problem.

Scott

It is probably not of any help to you, but even my 8" non-LC Barco Graphics 1208s/2 (with PT18-205 tubes) is much, much sharper at 1080i. You really should look for other lenses because I simply cannot believe (from the screenshots) that you have a 9" LC projector...