Ok, tried my dvd player and my xbox.
My setup: XBOX component adapter, several games.
Samsung DVD P241... kinda dissapointed, I cannot get a progressive image to display correctly. It has output options of svideo, 525i, and 525p. 525i is reported as 480i. Still looks good, no jitter on paused images, no 'field lines'.
Dell 2300MP projecting about 13 ft or so (don't quote me on this...) for a (roughly) 80" horizontal size (works out to 90" 16:9 and 100" 4:3... sorry these are just in my head, so again accuracy is not necessarily high). The image is prijected onto a textured tan/ off-white wall (seems more tan than your average off-white wall). No screen yet (although will purchase some BO cloth and drape it over a ping pong table for testing). Viewing from 10 ft just right oc center of image.
Xbox: Looks great through component adapter. have nor tried composite or svideo yet. Great colors especially in srgb mode. Very bright, yet still will not work well in indirect sunlight (works fine during sunset-night though... some light is ok). Project Gotham Racing 2 does look good, very good gameplay (although not as good as my mitsubishi 42" CRT monitor).
Problems... when playing very fast bright game (such as burnout3... great game other than the music choice) rainbows do appear, although not nevessarily as rainbows, but more as some light green road stripes instead of being white. Distracting, yet gameplay is mostly unaffected. Halo looks fine.
DVD: Originally hooked up, video out was set to svideo, so component out was some compatability mode or something. Purple cast on all colors. Tried to put into 525p mode, image would split, then would lose sync and not function. 525i mode finally worked, yielding a beautiful 480i image.
First question (to all you vets.): Isn't there a better image acquired by putting both the projector and dvd player into 16:9 mode (which this projector does have)? This is what I used for my two test movies, but I was wondering if this is a better image. My though process on this is simple. The dvd player is going to output a 480i signal no matter what the aspect ratio is. Isn't it better for the dvd player to use the entire signal (all 720x480 of it) to send out a 16x9 image with no black bars, rather than using part of the resolution for black bars? I understand that this does not increase the resolution of the projector at all, and it's benefits at 720p would be even less, however I would think that using both the source and the destination in 16:9 mode would yield the best results.
First movie: Matrix Revolutions. I have only seen it once, and I understand that the sepia-ish tone of the movie is not the best to determine color accuracy, but I just had to see this movie big again (alot of great 'movie-only' scenes. Overall, very few rainbows, to the point at which I am not seeing them hardly ever. I could be just adjusting, or it could be that it just doesn't occur much in this movie. Moving on...
Second Movie: Van Helsing. Never seen this movie, yet I think I read somewhere on this board that this movie is a good test, because it shows rainbows easily (maybe not... can't remember). Anyways, again very few rainbows. Colors are not very vibrant (I don't think they are supposed to be, however I had not seen this movie in theaters, or on a normal tv/my 42" mitsubishi so I cannot comment on it), yet detail (both in the intro black and white scene, and the rest of the color movie) is excellent. Very smooth image (not as pixelated as I was thinking it was going to be. Also, showed fewer compression artifacts that I was expecting (as I can see those on the mitsubishi, but not so much on this projector). So perhaps the image processor onboard is fairly decent afterall (again remember that this is a 480i signal). I had heard that there is a problem displaying detail in dark regions with projectors. This seemed to handle it just fine, didn't feel like I was missing anything, and seemed to have more detail overall (although not in the shadows). One other thing to point out... when on either our normal 32"JVC tv, or on our 42" mitsubishi monitor, typically I can see the gradient in the shadows, yet it seems smoother on this projector. Most likely there was a loss in detail, yet I am happy to see the problems with compression gone, even if that means a slight lack of detail in the shadows.
Let me know if there is anything else you would like for me to test.
