[cdysland]

I am in a bit of a quandry. Perhaps one you video gurus can help me. I have had a chance to view a few of the more popular projectors of late with the following results. A Da-lite high power screen was used with all of them.


InFocus lp350: runs too hot and therefore too noisy (fan) and I was not all that excited about the colors. But in truth I was not allowed to play with this one and probably was not seeing it at its best. As noisy as it was, I didn't care.


NEC vt540: very nice color (in eco mode) and it runs quiet. Running 480p into it from a progressive scan dvd or an iscan plus (with NTSC)was a very satisfying esperience. If I had one wish it was that there was a little more color saturation. The unit was calibrated with Avia.


NEC lt155: very nice color (in eco mode) and it runs quiet. The picture was a little more crisp (less soft) than the vt540. The screen door effect was much more noticeable at close range than the vt540, so I just backed up a little more. The equipment setup was identical to the vt540. The color saturation was about the same as the vt-540. All in all a slight improvement in picture quality over the vt540 (screen door effect aside), but both were nice machines.


As a side note, the green and blue color decoders for the two NEC boxes appeared to be on the money (according to the Avia dvd) while the red was about 5 percent over-saturated. All in all, very nice.


Sony 10ht: the color was very nice and all three color decoders measured right on the money. But as the scenes got darker the picture got muddier-looking. Not a good thing.


Sanyo xp18n: I have this product sitting in my living room right now. This is decidedly a better projector than any of the above (but then it is more expensive than all of the above). A short time ago on this forum there was a long thread on this projector, including digital photos. Well, what you saw in those photos and in the commentary that went with the photos was real. This was a very satisfying experience.


But there is one rather large problem here. I cannot get the right red out of this thing. I calibrated with the Avia dvd as I had with all the rest (except the InFocus), and had a good deal of trouble getting the Color setting right. The Sanyo also allows you to adjust each of the individual colors (red, green and blue) individually. After much tinkering, it still isn't right.


Anybody have any comments on the quality of red on the Sanyo xp18n? I realize a lot of folks may not have had a chance to see this projector, but I thought it was worth a shot. I would be happy to share the numeric settings from the calibration if that would be of any help. Or perhaps someone who has also used Avia with this product can share their Color and their Red setting with me.


Thanks.

 

[wintr]

How far off is the red and in what way? (is it too orange? too brown?)


I did notice from the previous thread (david vs goliath) that with the color bars, the red appeared a bit orange.. I am very interested to hear if you can get this right, because this is the number one contender for my soon-to-happen projector purchase.


paulb

 

[MrWigggles]

Wintr,


I think he is talking about white balance.


But to answer question, the camera and the wall added some yellow to the image. The best example of this was the first checkerboard where the LT155 was too warm looking. In person it wasn't very bad at all.


Now as far as the color bars were concerned, the XP18n was slightly more orange than the LT155, but the LT155 had some very nice reds. With three people watching we had no problems with the XP18n.


cdysland,


What is your input? If it is RGB then you have pretty much used all of the control that you have. However, if it is an component input, you should also have a saturation adjustment. If you are using an s-video input you should also have a hue adjustment. I didn't do any testing with the s-video on the XP18n. Sometimes the s-video isn't encoded/decoded correctly and strange color problems can arise. Try to use the component or RGB if necessary.


As far as adjusting color through Avia is concerned, I know more than a few people that this has done more harm than good for. The fact that Avia is telling you that all of these rather cool image projectors (UHP projector;s are almost always short in the red category) are in fact too red is rather strange.


I suggested putting in video essentials and looking at the video test patterns or Gladiator or another highly regarded DVD. Reset all of the controls back to normal and see if these images look. If they need a little tweaking go from there. Try and get the fleshtones correct with the saturation and R,G,B controls.


You could have a defective unit; you should be able to get a good image out of the guy.


-Mr. Wigggles


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The Mothership is now boarding.

 

[ghibliss]

The micro-lens array is to eliminate hot-spotting and improve the flat-field uniformity. This feature is found on several better projector manufacturers products including Sanyo. This lens in no way reduces screen door effect from taking place which is governed by the pitch (space between the pixels) of the pixels on the panel.

 

[cdysland]

Well, this has been very helpful for a novice like me. Let me try to address some of the comments in this thread (hoping to advance the discussion rather than bog it down).


to Wintr: I am going to follow the advice of Senor Wigggles (did I get enough g's in there???) and return to default values and start again. It seems like very prudent advice. Hope to have new information on RED tomorrow.


to Wigggles: I am using component input. One of the troubles I was having in setting saturation during the Avia calibration was that I could not get the desired result on the saturation bars (with the blue filter) no matter what value was set. I tried to get as close as I could and then started tweaking the RGB controls (especially the R). At this point I have had no success. As the red decoder was checked I went back to adjusting the saturation level and could not get anything that looked even close to right. No such problems occurred with the Sony or either of the NEC boxes. The good news is that if I try to be less fancy and just take all the default values, the overall picture is still better than anything I have seen for less than $6k. Thanks for your help.


to Oakham: The information from Ghibliss is a big help here. One thing I can say is that the screen door effect is overpowering at close range on the lt155. I may screw up the Avia saturation and RGB settings, but there is no mistaking the screen door effect. Please don't take that as a knock on the lt155. It's a very nice little projector and I would own one in a minute. You just back up from the screen and the screen door is not an issue (sometimes the simple solutions are the best).


to Ghibliss: Great input, thanks.



[This message has been edited by cdysland (edited 03-07-2001).]

 

[MrWigggles]

Cliff,


I heard just the opposite.


For what it is worth, the LT155 had less screen door than my Sony and so did the XP18n. However, I don't know if the XP18n has any MLA feature.


-Mr. Wigggles


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The Mothership is now boarding.

 

[kelliot]

Try a gray screen.


A gray screen will improve color saturation.


------------------

Ken Elliott

 

[ghibliss]

Please excuse my error on the previous reply where I stated that the micro lens array was for flat field uniformity. For an accurate description please see the Sanyo site where a diagram accurately depicts how the lens works http://www.sanyolcd.com/techtips/tip4cont.html


MICRO LENS: "Each individual pixel on the polysilicon TFT LCD panels has a

Micro Lens integrated into it to increase overall light concentrating

efficiency. This lets more light through to the LCD panel from the lamp,

resulting in significantly brighter images".

 

[Steve Dodds]

From my experience, the colour setup on AVIA is fine if you simply have a normal CRT monitor that has colour and hue controls. When you start trying match R, G, B and white balance controls you can go mad. I have.


I do brightness and contrast and a basic color test and the rest by eye.


Or am I doing something wrong?



Steve

 

[primco]

I have the xp21n and I tried to set the color with Avia the other night and after 2 hours with the thing I just set it to the defaults. Damn frustrating. When I used their saturation and hue "look through the blue filter" thing I got 5.0 and 2.7 for sat and hue. This blew the reds out of course. They said this was possible that the reds would oversaturation but it was so severe. How could their tests be worthless for this projector? Makes me want to send the disk back.

 

[Thumper]

cdysland,


Your problem is not that dissimilar to a color balance problem on the Sanyo PLV-60. In the case of the PLV-60 I have been working thru the service menu, checking polarizer and panel alignments, etc. to correct a "purple" tinting problem and purple/yellow/green edging problem. All were solvable after 6 hours or so of adjustments. In your case the "PC R bright" or "AV R bright" setting in the service menu may be off one or two "clicks" (the first for RGB inputs, the second for all other inputs). Also service items labelled "PC true red" & "AV red" and "R drive" may need a little tweaking. Whatever you do be sure to write down the settings before changing them so a factory default may be re-established.


BTW, for those wondering most of the problems with the PLV-60 can be adjusted out. I am still tinkering with the scaler settings to determine if the progressive DVD "dropout" problem can be rectified.


Thumper

 

[MrWigggles]

The white balance controls work great for my friend's xp18n.


We pushed green up 2 clicks and blue down one click and we wound up with a great image.


In general, try not to use the tint control if at all possible. For component inputs tint is technically an invalid adjustment. It is only designed for s-video.


-Mr. Wigggles


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The Mothership is now boarding.

 

[kmartin]

thumper - That is great news to hear about the PLV-60. I called Sanyo and spoke with Dan from tech support and he thought it might be an alignment issue. How are you able to fix these via the service menu? He was especially concerned about the drop out issue as he was getting several calls relating to that problem. I am sending mine out to be serviced so I'll keep you posted as to what they are able to find, but it sounds like you may have already solved it. So, what do you charge to fix PLV-60's?


kmartin