Joined
·
386 Posts
I recently had my Davis DL450 modified by Thumper. After watching movies for two days I wanted to let other DL450 owners know how happy I was with the whole process and more importantly the result.
After reading about Mike's success having his Davis 650 Thumperized, I contacted the man himself and inquired about having mods performed for my projector. Thumper was really great to deal with from the start, and seemed genuinely interested in helping me get the best out of my projector so I sent it off to him. Even before these mods I was quite happy with my Davis, but like all projectors that mere mortals can afford it has its flaws.
As those of you who have DL450s know, it is a great projector but it does have visible halos and the color saturation could definitely use some help. Also, I have noticed a problem with "hot whites" in certain movies, and although the black level is already good: you can never be too rich, too thin, or your black level too black.
The mods basically consisted of the following:
(Thumper please add or clarify anything I leave out)
Black out the clear section of the color wheel
Reduce the halo with masks around the DMD
Black out the DMD chamber to reduce internal reflections
Fine tune the internal optics
Thorough cleaning and dust removal in the light path
Thumper kept in constant contact with me while he was working on the projector, and I had it back just four days after he received it.
So how did it look?
In a word: outstanding! The first thing I noticed is that the color saturation is greatly improved. Even colors on the windows desktop leapt off the screen. Blues and reds seem particularly improved. Things were looking good: the improvement in color saturation was immediately obvious.
After a quick re-calabration with Avia I put in some favorite "torture test" movies.
I noticed the black level is noticably deeper and the "hot whites" problem is non-existent now. My best torture disk for hot whites and black level is "Pitch Black." Half the movie is shot in blinding sunlight and the other half is in ...well...Pitch Black. Before the mods the daylight part of this movie was incredibly washed out (I know, that is partly the director's intent) and had a quite noticable "hot whites" problem. Now it looks fantastic! Still very bright, but not washed out at all. I had hoped this would happen, but I was so happy to see the clear section was the source of this problem. Also the black level is visibly lower now, and it seems like I can see much more shadow detail.
My favorite test disk for color saturation is Austin Powers. The opening scenes in 1967 London have the most vibrant colors I have ever seen in a live action film. This movie looked good on the pre-Thumperized DL450, but it never captured the rich, deep colors I noticed on my 16x9 RCA direct view set. The improvement was evident right away, and Austin Powers now had the kind of deep saturation I thought was impossible on DLP. I knew the clear section was really desaturating my colors, but even now I am amazed at what a big improvement was achieved from blacking out the color wheel. To be fair, the DL450 still doesn't have the saturation of my direct view set(not surprising with 1-chip DLP), but now it is in the same ball park and I am extremely happy with this aspect of the projector's performance.
Thumper measured a 60% increase in contrast, and I will have to take his word for it. When I tried to measure the contrast with my Sper Scientific model#840020 lightmeter, I found the black level was below the sensitivity of the unit. This was definitely not the case BEFORE thumperization. So I can not tell you exactly how good the black level is, but it is now damn good!
Well, I could go on and on about the how happy I am with my Thumperized DL450, but I will stop here and gladly answer any questions fellow Davis projector owners have about the mods.
Let me finish by adding that Thumper is a great guy, and really a pleasure to interact with. He was very professional in all our dealings and kept in constant e-mail contact while working on my projector. Anyone who wants to squeeze the last bit of performance out of the DL450 should definitely consider getting these mods.
After reading about Mike's success having his Davis 650 Thumperized, I contacted the man himself and inquired about having mods performed for my projector. Thumper was really great to deal with from the start, and seemed genuinely interested in helping me get the best out of my projector so I sent it off to him. Even before these mods I was quite happy with my Davis, but like all projectors that mere mortals can afford it has its flaws.
As those of you who have DL450s know, it is a great projector but it does have visible halos and the color saturation could definitely use some help. Also, I have noticed a problem with "hot whites" in certain movies, and although the black level is already good: you can never be too rich, too thin, or your black level too black.
The mods basically consisted of the following:
(Thumper please add or clarify anything I leave out)
Black out the clear section of the color wheel
Reduce the halo with masks around the DMD
Black out the DMD chamber to reduce internal reflections
Fine tune the internal optics
Thorough cleaning and dust removal in the light path
Thumper kept in constant contact with me while he was working on the projector, and I had it back just four days after he received it.
So how did it look?
In a word: outstanding! The first thing I noticed is that the color saturation is greatly improved. Even colors on the windows desktop leapt off the screen. Blues and reds seem particularly improved. Things were looking good: the improvement in color saturation was immediately obvious.
After a quick re-calabration with Avia I put in some favorite "torture test" movies.
I noticed the black level is noticably deeper and the "hot whites" problem is non-existent now. My best torture disk for hot whites and black level is "Pitch Black." Half the movie is shot in blinding sunlight and the other half is in ...well...Pitch Black. Before the mods the daylight part of this movie was incredibly washed out (I know, that is partly the director's intent) and had a quite noticable "hot whites" problem. Now it looks fantastic! Still very bright, but not washed out at all. I had hoped this would happen, but I was so happy to see the clear section was the source of this problem. Also the black level is visibly lower now, and it seems like I can see much more shadow detail.
My favorite test disk for color saturation is Austin Powers. The opening scenes in 1967 London have the most vibrant colors I have ever seen in a live action film. This movie looked good on the pre-Thumperized DL450, but it never captured the rich, deep colors I noticed on my 16x9 RCA direct view set. The improvement was evident right away, and Austin Powers now had the kind of deep saturation I thought was impossible on DLP. I knew the clear section was really desaturating my colors, but even now I am amazed at what a big improvement was achieved from blacking out the color wheel. To be fair, the DL450 still doesn't have the saturation of my direct view set(not surprising with 1-chip DLP), but now it is in the same ball park and I am extremely happy with this aspect of the projector's performance.
Thumper measured a 60% increase in contrast, and I will have to take his word for it. When I tried to measure the contrast with my Sper Scientific model#840020 lightmeter, I found the black level was below the sensitivity of the unit. This was definitely not the case BEFORE thumperization. So I can not tell you exactly how good the black level is, but it is now damn good!
Well, I could go on and on about the how happy I am with my Thumperized DL450, but I will stop here and gladly answer any questions fellow Davis projector owners have about the mods.
Let me finish by adding that Thumper is a great guy, and really a pleasure to interact with. He was very professional in all our dealings and kept in constant e-mail contact while working on my projector. Anyone who wants to squeeze the last bit of performance out of the DL450 should definitely consider getting these mods.
