[cheez]

Hello every one. I have been reading the posts on this and another board for some time now. Finally, I decided to take the plunge and get the Sanyo PLV-60HT.


Overall, I am happy with the projector. The color and brightness are great, much better than my previous dlp. The increased panel resolution helped with clarity and screen door. I was afraid that screen door would be a problem but it's a bit less noticeable than the Infocus lp350 I had previously(had it for only a few weeks, could not live with its short comings).


The only problem that I have is with the black level. I realize that there is no such thing as pitch black with digital projectors, I learned this with the lp350. But, with the Sanyo, it seems to be way to high; it lights up the room.


The black level is much brighter than the lp350 on the same screen. Even on normally lit scenes, the 'black' portions don’t look convinceably black. On dark scenes, there is plenty of shadow detail but it looks too gray. My eyes can't convince themselves that the scene is dark. Is this normal? What can I do to make it more tolerable?


***HT setup***

Sanyo PLV-60HT(avia calibrated)

86" wide DIY gray screen.(completely light controlled room)

Panasonic RP56

Onkyo receiver

DA Speakers

 

[Huey]

Poor blacks is a weakness of LCD. You can switch to expensive Stewart Grayhawk (sample swatch can be ordered) to improve contrast and image. Back lighting and black masking around screen may help improve contrast further.


DLP will always give you better blacks. It's one of its strong point. I was surprised that it had more screendoor than PLV-60 as XGA DLP should be pretty good at screendoor. Weakness of LP350 DLP is expensive bulb (LP350 tend to blow at 500 h), noise, and poor colors (greenish cast).

 

[cheez]

I have the screen backlit.. and have masking around the screen... the black level still looks too high.


Maybe I should change the color of the masking to bright white. the black masking against the gray glow really shows how bad the black level is. What do you think?????


I was surprised by the screen door also.. but it makes sense... since the sanyo has a much higher resolution(1366x768) compared to the 1024x576 of the dlp... I imagine that the dlp would has less screendoor if i had a panamorph or isco...

 

[DaViD Boulet]

did you set the projector to "cinema" mode...which decreases overall brightness but deepens the absolute black-level at the same time (also extends on bulb life)?


-dave

 

[sitkom]

I don't believe there is a 'cinema' mode on the PLV-60. This is a feature of the Sony. Please check me on this...


I use 'real' mode with tweaked brightness/contrast/gamma/etc.


In addition, if you're adventurous, you can adjust the polarizing panels in the projector to increase the blacklevel. The adjustment is outlined in the service manual. Unknown if messing with the panel will yield any better results, however, I did adjust convergence in the unit I received (what a pain!)


If you want a copy of it, I can e-mail it to you. Send me a PM and I'll get it to you.


-Ted

 

[cheez]

I found the service manual. Some interesting stuff. I am not sure if I should open the case as I dont want to void the warantee. There are a bunch of items in the service menu that I have no clue to what they do.


Are any of the items to control the drive voltage to the LCD panels or the lamp brighness? Uping the panel voltage would increase the contrast by lowering the black level. If thats not possible maybe lower the lamp brightness would be a compromise...



What is 'real' mode? How is it different from any other modes?