[cpete]

As reported by others and myself, this does not work out of the box. However I have read that people have 1080p working on the 800/1208/1209 with a HTPC. This suggests the problem is a sync issue - the Xbox produces a positive sync and Barco's like negative sync. However, I have tried this with port 3 and port 5. Port 3 supposedly will take positive or negative sync. So now I'm not so sure where the problem lies. I sure would love to see 1080p on my 1208.


Is there a box out there that might help? I see Extron sells a sync converter (SCS 300). I have no idea what the box costs, but knowing Extron, it's probably expensive. I'm now not even sure it would help. Any other ideas?


Right now I'm using a KeyDigital KD-CTCA3 to to go Component to VGA. That lets me watch HD-DVD's at 1080i. But of course, I want 1080p, which is only available on the Xbox via the VGA connection.


Chris

 

[Person99]

I'm not sure why you want 1080p on a 1208. It will be soft and not look nearly as good as a well tuned 1080i on that machine. I have a newer barco with sharper tubes and I don't run 1080p and neither do any of the guys I know that have my machine.


Be that as it may, sync is not your issue. port 3 will indeed accept positive and negative sync unless the force negative sync is set. But, you can try an extron if you want. The extron 109 series will output negative sync if connected RGBS. The 202 series will do negative sync on any connection type.


Dave

 

[cpete]

Thanks for reminding me of that. You're right that there isn't a point in trying to acheive 1080p on a Barco 1208. In fact, I need to experiment and see if 720p looks better than 1080i. In the past I concluded that line tripling looked better than line quadrupling on the 1208.


Back to the Xbox. It is interesting that I can't seem to get any of the high resolution stuff working through the VGA cable. It acts like a sync problem. I may revisit the issue if I have time.


Chris

 

[Person99]

Try optimizing for 1080i. When you do your astig, make your spot shape slightly elliptical top to bottom. This will increase your horizontal resolution and diminish the appearance of interlacing artifacts.


Dave

 

[EricL]

I just wish I could do 1080i over VGA. My XG110LC won't quite cope happily at 1080p as it comes out of the 360, but I like being able to scale standard dvds, and its a drag to change from VGA cable to component cable to switch to 1080i for games.


Lost planet rocks at 10' diagonal! My 10 year old had to stop playing and watching during the one mission in the caves clearing out Akrids (3rd mission maybe) as she said it was creeping her out.

 

[spotmatic]

Well, I think I got 1080p working on my BG1208s/2 (with the sharper and virtually new PT18 tubes), thanks to tweaking the P1 pot on the Sync + Vertical Deflection board. This makes the Barco go into high scanning mode. I still have the problem that the image is much larger than the raster, so I'm losing out on the sides. Anyone know how to solve this?


Even then, 1080p from my Xbox 360, playing King Kong, is still the sharpest material I have ever seen on my Barco. It is awesome! Maybe the scanlines do overlap, but 1080i or 720P are *not* an option IMHO, as the scan lines are hugely distracting. I guess this is due to the sharp PT18 tubes.

 

[cpete]

Right when I was about ready to give up on the project, you post this?

That's encouraging. I hope you can solve the sides getting cropped.


I've had my projector for a while and I jhaven't tweaked on it in some time. What was the difference between a 1208 and the 1208s/2? Wasn't it Sony tubes or something? Regardless, I'm pretty sure I have a stock 1208. Would it still be worth pursuing?


Chris

 

[spotmatic]

Well, if my information is right, you have the original 1208 with MEC 108DVB22 tubes. The MEC PT18-205 tubes that are in my 1208s/2 are said to be 15% - 20% sharper and that might just make the difference of being able to resolve 1080p properly.


The 1208s/2, together with the 1208s/E, are the last incarnations of the 1208 series (with the better and small 120MHz one-piece neckboards). I think you have the large black boxes at the end of the tubes?

 

[cpete]



Quote:
I think you have the large black boxes at the end of the tubes?

That's correct. Yes, I have the MEC tubes as I recall. That sounds familiar now.


Chris

 

[spotmatic]

Now if anyone knows how to make the image smaller WITHIN the raster

 

[Person99]



Quote:
Originally Posted by spotmatic /forum/post/0


Even then, 1080p from my Xbox 360, playing King Kong, is still the sharpest material I have ever seen on my Barco. It is awesome! Maybe the scanlines do overlap, but 1080i or 720P are *not* an option IMHO, as the scan lines are hugely distracting. I guess this is due to the sharp PT18 tubes.

They will be very distracting on a sharp PJ. That is why you actually need to optimize your spot shape for 1080i. If you can also change the refresh rate on film, that is a plus also. [email protected] (or 72 if you want to save bandwidth) with optimized spot shape is way better than [email protected] It will be sharper on an 8" PJ, and have not stutter due to 2:3 cadence.


Tim (Videograbber) turned me onto the spot shape thing and I have no reason whatsoever to do 1080p. At 1080i, my PJ looks as sharp as a new 1080p LCoS PJ.


Dave

 

[Person99]



Quote:
Originally Posted by cpete /forum/post/0


That's correct. Yes, I have the MEC tubes as I recall. That sounds familiar now.


Chris

You most likely have a 1208/2 (1208 was only made for 8 months). In either case, you have the older video path and 180 tubes, so it cannot get as sharp an an "s" with P16 or PT18 tubes. It will do a fantastic looking 1080i if set up correctly and not have you wanting/needing 1080p.


Dave

 

[cpete]



Quote:
[email protected] (or 72 if you want to save bandwidth) with optimized spot shape is way better than [email protected]

I've seen no options for changing the refresh rate on the Xbox 360, so until they provide a way to do that, it's academic. Also, don't forget about 48Khz refresh rate. When I was playing around with HTPC's a few years ago, there was talk that 48 was better than 72

and 96. I got it to work scaling DVD's and it looked good - maybe better than 72.


Chris

 

[Person99]



Quote:
Originally Posted by cpete /forum/post/0


I've seen no options for changing the refresh rate on the Xbox 360, so until they provide a way to do that, it's academic. Also, don't forget about 48Khz refresh rate. When I was playing around with HTPC's a few years ago, there was talk that 48 was better than 72

and 96. I got it to work scaling DVD's and it looked good - maybe better than 72.


Chris

XBox can't. YOu can only do that pretty much with a scaler or from an HTPC.


48 is only better than 72 because of the bandwith. with 1080i, you have the bandwidth for 96. The problem with 48 is too many people see flicker. If 48 looked better than 72, it is because of bandwidth in the PJ.


Dave

 

[cpete]

Person99,


I'm not sure I saw you mention it. Do you have an Xbox 360 w/ the HD DVD option? If so, are you using a component to RGB transcoder? What other 1080i sources do you have - especially sources that have adjustable refresh rates?


Thanks, Chris

 

[Person99]



Quote:
Originally Posted by cpete /forum/post/0


Person99,


I'm not sure I saw you mention it. Do you have an Xbox 360 w/ the HD DVD option? If so, are you using a component to RGB transcoder? What other 1080i sources do you have - especially sources that have adjustable refresh rates?


Thanks, Chris

No xbox. I have a stand alone HD DVD player. As I said in the post yesterday at 4:25, you can only alter the refresh rate with a scaler or an HTPC. My point is, your PJ will look great at 1080i/60. If you want optimum movie performance, they you can get a scaler to alter the refresh rate and tweak some other parameters.


Dave

 

[cpete]

Ok, I've had 1080i/60 working with this projector for years - and it looks good. I also use a scaler (QuadScan) and a HTPC, although I got tired of dinking around with my HTPC and just use my scaler for NTSC material. I'm not really inclined to spend any more money on scaler's, or HTPC's right now. Your suggestion on "optimized spot shape" is great. I'll have to see how my projector is setup in that regard.

Quote:
That is why you actually need to optimize your spot shape for 1080i. If you can also change the refresh rate on film, that is a plus also. [email protected] (or 72 if you want to save bandwidth) with optimized spot shape is way better than [email protected] It will be sharper on an 8" PJ, and have not stutter due to 2:3 cadence.

Sorry, I guess I read more into your post than you said. I thought you were implying that you had a source device that could do 1080i at other than 60hz. I was wondering what that was? I understand that some scalers and HTPC's can do that.


Also, I'm curious what your connection path is from your HD DVD player to the projector.


Thanks, Chris

 

[cpete]

To recap the old thread, I've been running my Xbox-360 HD-DVD for a year now with my 1208 and it looks great. I was never able to get 1080p working with the Xbox. Instead I use the component out on the Xbox into a Key Digital component to RGB transcoder. I'm quite satisfied with the result at 1080i.


Now onto new stuff. It seems that I am now able to drive 1080p to my 1208 on computer sources. Right now I'm playing around with x.264 sources (encoded at 720p). My computer has a dual DVI card, quad-core cpu (etc). After some research on a VGA solution, I decided to buy an external box to transcode DVI into VGA. I wound up getting the Extron DVI-RGB 150 .


It's a pretty sweet setup. I run dual 24" LCD's for work on this computer. My office also turns out to be in my Home Theater room

The Extron DVI-RGB 150 is nice because it has a DVI passthrough. I loop through the DVI connection on my second 24" LCD into the box and then it transcodes into an RGB signal that feeds my 1208. So if I'm playing a movie, I will see it sumultaneously on my second LCD monitor and the projector.


What I'm surprised about is that the 1208 did sync on the 1080p signal coming out of the Extron box. I did have to use PowerStrip to force negative sync. I admit that the picture was hard to converge. The left side is problematic. None-the-less, I was able to converge and now watch 1080p on my projector. It exactly matches the 1080p signal to my second LCD monitor, which is native 1080p. It looks pretty good, but not as good as my 1080i sources, especially in terms of brightness and color quality. Still it's cool that I was able to get this to work on this old projector.


Chris

 

[Ile]



Quote:
Originally Posted by cpete /forum/post/12335826


What I'm surprised about is that the 1208 did sync on the 1080p signal coming out of the Extron box.

These boxes convert sync polarity to negative.


Are you running 48 or 72 Hz?


My older BG1200 use same boards and even 1080p 72Hz looks pretty good,
http://img295.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ennen1fn5.jpg

but I'm getting it even better.

 

[cpete]

No, this box does not convert the polarity. It follows the input.


I'm running 60hz. The Extron box will only deliver 1080p at 60hz.


Chris