PRO1000HD in the house

Congratulations


OK- I'll bite: How does the image look?


Any dead pixels?


Fans thermostatically controlled?


I am anxiously awaiting notice that mine has arrived!

okay. it's up and running, but not yet calibrated. the boy's heading off to bed now - more time once he's in the land of nod.


1-10 is hard. it's WAY nicer than the sony RPTV (53XBR) it's replacing, that's for sure. and it can actually deal with ambient light, unlike the rptvs. i don't have a 5002 next to it, so i can't really say comparatively. it certainly does not suck.


right now i'm feeding it 9pin RGB out of a GeForce3 PC running WinDVD and PowerStrip running at native rate. i have not futzed with PowerStrip yet to force it out of NR to test the pc mode "lock". i have not yet fed it an S-Video in.


it sure as all get out looks like the "card" is identical to the "card" on the 503 that is depicted in the european 503 PDFs online. it is IDENTICAL except (a) it's black instead of silver or white or whatever the 503 is and (b) where the 503 card has a DVI socket, the PRO1000HD card is just blank. i am trying to get pioneer to formally admit they are the SAME THING so we can cut the drama.


all i've futzed with thus far is The Matrix. it looks really nice. the whole opening with Trinity almost getting taken out by the cops and the baddies looked great. lots of stellar detail i've never seen before (like the smoking sign "Guns & Ammo" on top of one of the building roofs they run across - i'm sure i've seen it, but it never registered - it's funny and i like those sorts of goofy things in movies, but i never caught it before on my RPTV).


i have NOT yet run a setup on it. AVIA is next now that i got the PC feed working.


the manual is functional but minimal. there is a table in the back about what widescreen modes work on what inputs and another table with all the refresh rate stuff as well. i can scan and post that if people are interested.


i'll post again around 21:00 ET or so. post any questions here and i'll be happy to try to figure them out for you.


finally, no evidence of any bad pixels. i will do a thorough check tonight, but absolutely nothing obvious thus far.


sorry about the radio silence. work, wife, kid, you know the drill!


doody.

Yes!


Let the sunshine in!


Don’t need a dark room,..


My plants are going to love it.


Nothing like a 50†digital picture.


Sounds like you have some work before you can give an apples to apples.


JUST ENJOY!


reboot

well, i did the avia setup. on the pc mode vga 15-pin D-sub input the factory settings of 0/0 on white level and black level are in fact spot-on correct. the r/g/b settings are a bit (5% to 10%) desaturated, but uniformly across all three, and you can't increase them, only decrease.


the room was 100% dark when i did the setup, so that may have skewed --- that's what i'm used to watching in - i'll have to readjust my perspective now that i can. up until now we just didn't watch the theater tv during daylight 'cuz it was washed out from the exterior light (tons of windows facing due south).


watched a bunch more of the matrix. very very very nice. fight scene b/w neo and the baddie in the subway tunnel was sweet.


i fine-tooth-combed for bad pixels using 0/0/0 255/255/255 255/0/0 0/255/0 and 0/0/255. plus poked through the C M and Y patterns in AVIA (though they're 4:3, so don't cover the whole monitor). everything looks totally kosher. if there are any bad pixels i'm apparently never going to see them. great news.


getting an s-video feed into it is unfortunately going to be some work. what i've tested thus far (DISH) in a convoluted s-video morass of cables looks like junk - not "bad" but "broken", so something is whacked. i have to pull my rack out to extract my dvd player so i can do some meaningful comparisons. that may or may not happen tonight --- the wife is insisting i should eat dinner .


sdf77 --- viewing distance on the movie was really short. this beast is still on the floor, i totally enjoyed the subway fight scene from probably 6' away. at that distance i could see pixellation, but it was minimal and easy to ignore. at 10' i think it looks great. my viewing distance is 14' to 16' or so. i have no concerns.


sdf77 --- no data yet on standard 4:3 stuff with internal scaler (c.f. above). i will work on it though! i will not be using the monitor that way though, so i might not be as critical as you need - i'll try.


markrubin --- yes, there are two fans (roughly at the top corners on the backside) that claim to be thermostatically controlled. the pc i've got sitting next to the monitor is a random desktop from the office - it's noisy as all get out, so i can't really talk to that issue meaningfully. i'll make a point of paying attention when looking at the s-video stuff. there's a separate piece of paper with the manual about the fans and that they'll turn on when they need to and they'll only turn on as fast as they need to to deal with the heat. so apparently it's a variable speed (i.e.: variable "noise") exercise. assuming the picture attachment thing works, you can see one of them, along with what i think are the structures that hold the face frame on.


doody.


CLARIFICATION: in my previous post i said i was feeding it 9 pin RGB. this is of course a typo: it's a VGA connection, so 15 pin. sorry.

Quote:


Hi Doody,


For sure you should be able to raise the color saturation through the Service Menu. Others here in the forum should be able to inform you of the Codes and procedures to activate it. However, from all reports one must be far more cautious in tweaking about in a Plasma display's service menu, it could wind up a junker if one messes things up. Apparently it is far more technical and delicate than a CRT display.


Thanks for the report and picture. Keep us posted about the noise - it "sounds" like the perfect plasma for winter use - might get darn noisy in the summer sun of Arizona.


Cheers,

my dealer talked to his pioneer sales rep and relayed the following. no clue if it's accurate or not. you know how sales guys can be ;-)


a) the sales rep said the 503 expansion card will not work in the PRO1000HD. this would surprise me, but, hey, i've been surprised before.


b) pioneer is planning a probably Q1'02 release of an expansion card that will have DVI.


c) this will be "DVI-CE", a new standard for Consumer Electronics that will have a smaller connector and be incompatible with current DVI stuffs. presumably it will include the copy protection silliness.


d) the hold-up is the still-in-flux definition of this new DVI-CE standard. i've NEVER heard of this before now. does anyone else have info on this "new standard"?


e) expect announcements at january CES re: cards.


sales stuff? hard data? probably some of both.


doody.