Overview
Well, as Alan said we had a lot of fun yesterday and the shootout certainly was interesting. Unfortunately, we found that 5 hours was not nearly enough to do some of the quantitative evaluations that I intended to do. We were lucky to get a look at each projector and scaler/HTPC within that time span. In the perfect world we would have the time to have each projector professionally calibrated and spend a full week with each one. The intent of this shootout was not to crown a king, but to see in very general terms how much progress has been made with DLPs and assess the viability of each of these for HT enthusiast new and old.
The good news to me was that, overall, XGA DLP has come a long way. I saw no dancing whites in any of the projectors and only one suffered from minor banding (HT250), which Seleco is working on a fix as we speak. Blacks were good on them all and I took very quick light meter samples of the checkerboard pattern and found that they were all very close on the blacks...something like 1.5 lux. I know this isn’t terribly scientific but I tossed the meter up there just to get a quick idea and flesh out any glaring differences. Frankly, there were none. Even D-ILA measured at 1.6 lux, so they were all pretty close IMO.
Background
First some details. We were using an 8’ wide 16:9 grayhawk throwing from roughly 10 foot in a pretty black room. Alan has black shades at his house, but there was some very faint ambient light leaking through the edges. The source for both interlaced & progressive DVD was an EAD Theatervision P being fed directly or through either the Vigatec GVC1280 or DWIN Transcanner2. We also had a Radeon driven HTPC using ATI 7.0 and tried the Extron 7SC for good measure. I brought a DVDO Pro, but we never got around to looking at it (the performance was very close to the EAD Progressive output so there wasn’t really a need). HDTV was fed from a Dish 6000 using YPrPb.
Most of the testing we used the following titles:
1. Color Rendition: Bringing It On – Chapter 1
2. Gray Scale: Avia – Gray Ramps Vertical 10 IRE Pattern
3. Black Level: Avia – Gray Ramps Vertical 10 IRE Pattern; Color Bar Pattern
4. Color Gradient (banding/contouring): (a) U571 – Face-to-Face With the Nazi Destroyer and Escape from the Destroyer; (b) Microsoft WHQL DVD Annex – 60fps Video Test Clip
5. Whites (dancing whites): Bone Collector – Chapter 2 Nightmare
6. HDTV – Dishnetwork Demo Loop
Pros & Cons
Having said all of that, here is a summary of the pros and cons of each projector we looked at yesterday in order of our collective rankings.
D-ILA – this was my G11 that was just calibrated by Cliff Plavin.
Pros – Smooth, no pixels. Good reds, fantastic gray scale, decent blacks, and plenty of contrast and punch. To me it was hands down the best picture, but then again I’m biased! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
Cons – Same ole' stuff. Noise, noise, and noise. The calibration makes a huge difference, so I can’t really pick on blacks or picture quality anymore. Also, the internal scaler stinks, but then we already knew that.
Seleco HT200
Pros – Great picture with very good reds and blacks. No banding. No dancing whites. Nice gray scale.
Cons – well it is only SVGA, so of course pixels are evident. The big one though is the HDTV support…this needs to be fixed ASAP.
DWIN Transvision
Pros - Great picture with very good blacks. No banding. No dancing whites. Good gray scale. Smoothest looking of the DLPs…pixels were literally undetectable.
Cons – Reds looked orange to me…I’m talking pumpkin orange here folks. Also, I’ll discuss in more detail later, but the Genesis de-interlacing on the Transcanner performed as bad as all Genesis chips do. Why DWIN didn’t pick the Si503 is just beyond belief to me, but it has been and will remain the primary reason I won’t buy this projector. But if 3:2 pulldown is all you need, have at it. The Transvision is a complete package.
Sony 10HT
Pros – great colors, easy to use, very quite. Blacks were OK for an LCD.
Cons – Gray scale needed work, but we didn’t have time to tweak it via the service menu. The projector had the LCD-bluish hue as well and I could see pixels from the 10-foot distance. Finally, blacks were the worst of the bunch but perhaps could be tweaked. I forgot to measure the blacks with the light meter…sorry!
Seleco HT250
Pros - Great picture with very good reds and blacks. No dancing whites. Nice gray scale.
Cons – Minor, but noticeable, banding problem. No HDTV support at all from the Dish 6000!!! Occasional tearing and color wheel rainbowing make this projector most in need of new firmware ASAP. Seleco is working on all of these issues though and the projector should be a winner once they have it fixed.
Conclusion
If you are looking for an XGA DLP king right now I’d say the DWIN was a Prince bucking for a promotion. It had the most potential, although I can’t stop complaining about the Genesis chip in the Transcanner and the inseparable-bundled approach they are taking with the projector and Transcanner.
The HT250 should be and could also be King once they get the software straightened out. It had fantastic reds and permits you to use whatever scaler you want. In fact, the EAD Progressive feed directly into the HT250 was an exceptionally nice picture IMO.
If you don’t watch much HDTV and throw onto a smaller sized screen, I think you’d be very happy with the HT200. And the Sony 10HT offers a lot in one package for the money. The native 16:9 panel was too cool and tossing an ISCO II in front of it for true 2:35 movies was awesome.
And if we must, the heavyweight champion for the day was the D-ILA projector. HDTV through the GVC1280 (scaling HDTV to 1024P) and through the ISCO II is simply breathtaking. Honest to god I can’t believe how good the Vigatec handles HDTV…it is worth the price of admission just for this feature alone!
One last plug, I banged on the ISCO I several months ago and feel I must go on record regarding the ISCO II. Folks this anamorphic lens is just sensational and between the Panamorph and this we now have two really good anamorphic lens, depending upon your throw requirements. In fact, having used the ISCO II for about a week now I’m can tell already that I may not be able to use the Panamorph in my room as my throw is too far and I’m not getting the width I need. Because the ISCO stretches versus compresses, it works perfect for my installation.
OK, I have my flak jacket on and ready. Fire way with the questions! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
Tom
[This message has been edited by tommyboy2 (edited 03-26-2001).]
Well, as Alan said we had a lot of fun yesterday and the shootout certainly was interesting. Unfortunately, we found that 5 hours was not nearly enough to do some of the quantitative evaluations that I intended to do. We were lucky to get a look at each projector and scaler/HTPC within that time span. In the perfect world we would have the time to have each projector professionally calibrated and spend a full week with each one. The intent of this shootout was not to crown a king, but to see in very general terms how much progress has been made with DLPs and assess the viability of each of these for HT enthusiast new and old.
The good news to me was that, overall, XGA DLP has come a long way. I saw no dancing whites in any of the projectors and only one suffered from minor banding (HT250), which Seleco is working on a fix as we speak. Blacks were good on them all and I took very quick light meter samples of the checkerboard pattern and found that they were all very close on the blacks...something like 1.5 lux. I know this isn’t terribly scientific but I tossed the meter up there just to get a quick idea and flesh out any glaring differences. Frankly, there were none. Even D-ILA measured at 1.6 lux, so they were all pretty close IMO.
Background
First some details. We were using an 8’ wide 16:9 grayhawk throwing from roughly 10 foot in a pretty black room. Alan has black shades at his house, but there was some very faint ambient light leaking through the edges. The source for both interlaced & progressive DVD was an EAD Theatervision P being fed directly or through either the Vigatec GVC1280 or DWIN Transcanner2. We also had a Radeon driven HTPC using ATI 7.0 and tried the Extron 7SC for good measure. I brought a DVDO Pro, but we never got around to looking at it (the performance was very close to the EAD Progressive output so there wasn’t really a need). HDTV was fed from a Dish 6000 using YPrPb.
Most of the testing we used the following titles:
1. Color Rendition: Bringing It On – Chapter 1
2. Gray Scale: Avia – Gray Ramps Vertical 10 IRE Pattern
3. Black Level: Avia – Gray Ramps Vertical 10 IRE Pattern; Color Bar Pattern
4. Color Gradient (banding/contouring): (a) U571 – Face-to-Face With the Nazi Destroyer and Escape from the Destroyer; (b) Microsoft WHQL DVD Annex – 60fps Video Test Clip
5. Whites (dancing whites): Bone Collector – Chapter 2 Nightmare
6. HDTV – Dishnetwork Demo Loop
Pros & Cons
Having said all of that, here is a summary of the pros and cons of each projector we looked at yesterday in order of our collective rankings.
D-ILA – this was my G11 that was just calibrated by Cliff Plavin.
Pros – Smooth, no pixels. Good reds, fantastic gray scale, decent blacks, and plenty of contrast and punch. To me it was hands down the best picture, but then again I’m biased! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
Cons – Same ole' stuff. Noise, noise, and noise. The calibration makes a huge difference, so I can’t really pick on blacks or picture quality anymore. Also, the internal scaler stinks, but then we already knew that.
Seleco HT200
Pros – Great picture with very good reds and blacks. No banding. No dancing whites. Nice gray scale.
Cons – well it is only SVGA, so of course pixels are evident. The big one though is the HDTV support…this needs to be fixed ASAP.
DWIN Transvision
Pros - Great picture with very good blacks. No banding. No dancing whites. Good gray scale. Smoothest looking of the DLPs…pixels were literally undetectable.
Cons – Reds looked orange to me…I’m talking pumpkin orange here folks. Also, I’ll discuss in more detail later, but the Genesis de-interlacing on the Transcanner performed as bad as all Genesis chips do. Why DWIN didn’t pick the Si503 is just beyond belief to me, but it has been and will remain the primary reason I won’t buy this projector. But if 3:2 pulldown is all you need, have at it. The Transvision is a complete package.
Sony 10HT
Pros – great colors, easy to use, very quite. Blacks were OK for an LCD.
Cons – Gray scale needed work, but we didn’t have time to tweak it via the service menu. The projector had the LCD-bluish hue as well and I could see pixels from the 10-foot distance. Finally, blacks were the worst of the bunch but perhaps could be tweaked. I forgot to measure the blacks with the light meter…sorry!
Seleco HT250
Pros - Great picture with very good reds and blacks. No dancing whites. Nice gray scale.
Cons – Minor, but noticeable, banding problem. No HDTV support at all from the Dish 6000!!! Occasional tearing and color wheel rainbowing make this projector most in need of new firmware ASAP. Seleco is working on all of these issues though and the projector should be a winner once they have it fixed.
Conclusion
If you are looking for an XGA DLP king right now I’d say the DWIN was a Prince bucking for a promotion. It had the most potential, although I can’t stop complaining about the Genesis chip in the Transcanner and the inseparable-bundled approach they are taking with the projector and Transcanner.
The HT250 should be and could also be King once they get the software straightened out. It had fantastic reds and permits you to use whatever scaler you want. In fact, the EAD Progressive feed directly into the HT250 was an exceptionally nice picture IMO.
If you don’t watch much HDTV and throw onto a smaller sized screen, I think you’d be very happy with the HT200. And the Sony 10HT offers a lot in one package for the money. The native 16:9 panel was too cool and tossing an ISCO II in front of it for true 2:35 movies was awesome.
And if we must, the heavyweight champion for the day was the D-ILA projector. HDTV through the GVC1280 (scaling HDTV to 1024P) and through the ISCO II is simply breathtaking. Honest to god I can’t believe how good the Vigatec handles HDTV…it is worth the price of admission just for this feature alone!
One last plug, I banged on the ISCO I several months ago and feel I must go on record regarding the ISCO II. Folks this anamorphic lens is just sensational and between the Panamorph and this we now have two really good anamorphic lens, depending upon your throw requirements. In fact, having used the ISCO II for about a week now I’m can tell already that I may not be able to use the Panamorph in my room as my throw is too far and I’m not getting the width I need. Because the ISCO stretches versus compresses, it works perfect for my installation.
OK, I have my flak jacket on and ready. Fire way with the questions! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
Tom
[This message has been edited by tommyboy2 (edited 03-26-2001).]
