Bought a beamer

After reviewing for almost 2 weeks beamers online, I finally decided to buy one, as I already wanted to do this longer time ago.

3D beamers are now on the market since some time, and the latest generation is very good, so I had a bit problems deciding which one to get.

I checked all the latest beamers from Panasonic, Sony, JVC, Epson, BenQ and Mitsubishi, where the Panasonic, Sony and the JVC made it in my last top 3.

I decided in the end to get the Panasonic, as it got almost everywhere great reviews. There was only one guy, here from Luxembourg, who has a high end Hifi shop who didn't like the Panasonic so much. So I called him, and he invited me to go to his place, where he could demonstrate me different beamers.

So last Friday I went there together with my girlfriend, and he made us a demonstration during 2 hours.

I now bought the JVC DLA-X30, because when I saw it running, it was just overwhelming :o Everything was truly perfect in my eyes. 2D, 3D, BluRay, games or even only DVD, everything looked just great. He even showed my an old, badly recorded DVD, which was still showing fine, not worse than some .avi files look on my actual plasma TV.

He showed my WipeOut HD 3D, and after 1 minute, I already felt dizzy, that was really amazing, but I guess that after 10 minutes of playing, you eventually will puke :lol: Gran Turismo also looked good, although feels less puky. He told me that still at the moment 3D games don't look very good yet, they are fine, but nothing groundbreaking. He said that the only real good one is Killzone 3. He also told me that once you played f.ex. Call of Duty or FIFA on a big screen, you never will want to return to normal sized screens again.

He showed my Avatar in 3D, and that was fantastic, but he mentioned that Avatar is at the moment one of the best 3D movies out. He then showed me something less good, but in my opinion, it was still great. He pointed me some minor ghosting in one scene, but I didn't even notice or see it.

2D is absolutely stunning, the JVC has by far the best luminosity, and you can clearly see that in dark scenes. The beamer ran the whole time in eco mode, but it was light enough to watch everything he showed me, absolutely perfect. When playing 3D material, the beamer of course switches to normal, because you lose almost 50% of the light because of using the shutter glasses. And it was still running very silent, louder than in eco mode, but still no PS3.

The big disadvantage of the Sony was that you have to put the 3D emitter in front of your projection screen, which forces you to pull another cable from the beamer through your room. Panasonic has that built in, which is obviously the best, and the JVC also has an external emitter, but you can just put it on top of the beamer.

The JVC has also a fixed iris (aperture), which gives you the same amount of black in the middle than at the edges of the screen, whereas Sony and Panasonic use dynamic iris, which first of all makes some noise when opening or closing, and the colors or black f.ex. fade towards the edge of the screen.

And the JVC is also the only one who uses an automatic lens shift, Sony has wheels on the beamer, and Panasonic has a stick, which, according to EVERY review I read, is really bad.

All of these beamers are in the same price category, between 2500€ and 3000€. That made it even more difficult to chose. I will get the JVC from the guy for 2500€, plus he will give me 2 3D glasses, which are around 100€ each. He will also come to my place to calibrate it, once it is installed, as it's already good in the default setting out of the box, but he explained me that with proper calibration you can get even better results.

As projection screen, I bought a motorized 16:9 Ultraluxx with a dimension of 240x135cm, which is around 110 inch, with a gain factor of 1.3 and it is also tensioned on the sides, which prevents waves in the canvas, which is not always the case with non-tensioned screens. The screen was 850€.

I will get the beamer on Friday, I have the screen already, and will start with the first preparations coming Monday. I cannot set it up yet, as I am also redoing the ceiling in my living room, where the beamer will be installed. Also the ceiling in the whole hallway will be redone. The wood I ordered will only get delivered on the 1st of June, so that coming week, 4th of June, I will install everything, quite big project.

Here are some reviews of the beamer:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/jvc-dl...ojector_review

http://www.projectorcentral.com/jvc_...tor_review.htm

http://www.avclubhouse.com/blog/2011...30-review.html

Originally Posted by :
Verdict (from one of the reviews)

Well, whaddya know: with the X30 JVC has yet again set the bar for projection quality in the £3,000 projector class. It might almost be boring if the projector wasn’t so darn brilliant.

The X30 is overall a bigger step forward from the X3 then we’d expected, which means pretty much by default that it’s the finest projector in its class.

;)

Cool. I had been tempted by home cinema projectors years ago, but never too seriously.

I hadn't realised 3D home projectors even existed. Is the 3D image effect better than a LCD 3D HDTV?

And do these projectors work in bright rooms? Or do you still need to dim the lights for the best image?

Never saw an LCD 3D HDTV, I guess beamer is better, as bigger and more realistic.

You still need to dim the lights, otherwise it's too bright, but my room is quite dark already, and if I'm watching or playing, it's 90% in the evening, then it's dark anyway.

And it is safe to play games on it? In the past I know playing games on a projector could reduce the life of the projection bulbs, and those can cost a lot of money each time they need replacing.

Are these projectors LCD projection?

These projectors are all LCD projection.

As long as you can keep your projector in eco mode, the lamp can last 4-5 times longer, and for gaming, at least with the JVC, eco mode produces enough light to be able to play, not different than watching a BD.

Btw, the JVC X30 is a D-ILA projector.

I'm also buying a new A/V receiver, as the Pioneer (VSX-520) I have, doesn't support TrueHD and that stuff, and I have so many optical cables, splitters and switches, so that I decided to buy a good receiver, probably the Onkyo TX-NR609, which was product of the year 2011.

It comes with 5 HDMI inputs, that's exactly what I need, then I can get rid of all the stuff, and only plug my devices with HDMI only, instead of also having the optical cables.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/onkyo609.jpg

I just upgraded my AV receiver to a Sony STRDH820

Attachment 851

Brilliant receiver for a very affordable price. Like you I wanted to get rid of a lot of cable clutter. However I was researching receivers and discovered these Sony ones contain a very good Faroudia DCDi EDGE upscaler that upscales all low res inputs and outputs them via HDMI in 1080p. This is a great solution for me as I can feed all my old consoles through this and all connect to the TV through a single HDMI cable.

It also has a fairly simple onscreen menu system for changing settings. You can also rename the receivers inputs displayed on the receive itself, so very handy to rename to things like PS3.

It has a lot of inputs too. 2 optical in and one out (I do wish it had more of these but I do have a solution) 7 RCA audio and composite, 2 component (again I wish there were a couple more but have a solution), and 4 HDMI inputs. Sadly no S-Video which would have been useful for my N64 as that is PAL N64's best output method, but I have an S-Video to VGA converter that works well for that.

This receive also supports all the latest audio formats, and also supports 7.2

It even has an iPod dock on the front which once connected you can then navigate and place audio/video from directly on the TV screen. Nice little additional feature.

Before this I had a fairly old Sony STR DB930 which was over 10 years old. It still supports all 5.1 formats and was still going strong, but lacked HDMI support, as well as component or upscaling.

Sony also sell a higher up model, called the DN2010 I think. That adds a few more features, but not enough for me to spend the extra.

Now, for the solution to limited optical and component inputs... I managed to get a Joytech control center 245c from ebay, brand new for 99p!

Attachment 852

This is basically just a device switch. It has 7 source inputs, each with component, S-Video, Composite, RCA audio and optical, and then one output mirroring these. It is only a passthrough switch and not a converter, so if you connect something via say composite, it only outputs it from the composite out. It also has an ethernet hub built in for connecting consoles all directly through this one device.

So I'm using this with the Sony receiver, so I have the composite, optical and composites all connected from the 245c to the receiver, and I just need to switch sources on the 245c and the Sony receiver upscales them all and outputs them to HDMI 1080p.

For me this is a very nice solution.

The only thing I'm completely missing from this whole setup is SCART RGB. For that I currently don't have a solution, although I've been considering the XRGB3 for some time, but the newer XRGB-mini is about to get an English firmware release, and will be even better as that has HDMI out too, plus with its scanline generator will be great for retro systems.

I had the same Joytech switch, then gave it away and exchanged it against one from Auvisio, which is a HDMI, SCART and optical switch, 4-1. But that's also the one I want to get rid of.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...pe4215_2_2.jpg

I bought now the Onkyo NR616, it's their newest model, the NR609 does not get produced anymore. It is quite similar, it only has some stuff more, like 8 HDMI inputs, and 2 HDMI outputs or f.ex. supports MP3tunes.

Btw, here's the explanation for D-ILA (LCoS):

Originally Posted by :
Liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS or LCOS) is a "micro-projection" or "micro-display" technology typically applied in projection televisions. It is a reflective technology similar to DLP projectors; however, it uses liquid crystals instead of individual mirrors. By way of comparison, LCD projectors use transmissive LCD chips, allowing light to pass through the liquid crystal. In LCoS, liquid crystals are applied directly to the surface of a silicon chip coated with an aluminized layer, with some type of passivation layer, which is highly reflective.

LCoS technology can typically produce higher resolution and higher contrast images than standard liquid crystal display and plasma display technologies, which makes it less expensive to implement in such devices as televisions.

I got the stuff today, now I'm waiting until the 4th of June to start setting everything up, really looking forward to it.

Nice. Are you going to take any pictures of the final setup once complete? Would love to see some.

Yeah, I will definitely do that, this afternoon, when coming home from work, I will already start with all the preparations, drilling holes for lights (spotlights), pulling all the needed cables, and looking for the best spot on the ceiling to put the screen. Hopefully everything goes fine.

Need also to find the best support for the beamer, think I'm gonna built something out of wood, official supports are quite expensive (300-400€), and most of the other ones don't fit or are not suited for that weight, the JVC X30 weighs 15kg.

Ok, here's some work I did this week. I want to put the new wooden ceiling against the old one, and to give the old one a bit more hold, I attached it with about 200 screws to the wooden joists that are underneath. It also has to hold the beamer (15kg) and the projection screen (22kg). Now it really holds perfectly.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050018.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050019.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050020.jpg

I removed a lot of cables, and had to clean, as it was quite dirty behind the TV. I also removed one DVD player, which I mainly bought to play DivX, but since long time it's not needed anymore. I also got rid of my HDMI control center, as the Onkyo has 8 HDMI inputs.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050007.jpg

This is what I removed.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050008.jpg

The old BOSE subwoofer, the Pioneer receiver and DVD player.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050010.jpg

The HDMI control center, and my Dyson :)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050011.jpg

The new Yamaha subwoofer.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050023.jpg

Onkyo plugged, and ready for setup.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050025.jpg

Less cables now behind the TV.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050016.jpg

Everything in place again.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050026.jpg

The devices.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050027.jpg

Whole setup.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050031.jpg

I only have no still to setup the Onkyo, as yesterday it got quite late when I finished, and I didn't have patience anymore to do it, so I will eventually do it this afternoon.

I probably want to change also my speakers now, but I don't know yet, perhaps I want to change for the same cubes I have, but the newer "doubled" model, because there are already the fixations on the walls. But I will look for some other, not too expensive small speakers, f.ex. Klipsch has some nice and good stuff.

Now waiting for the week of the 4th of June to come, to put the ceiling and also fix beamer and screen, and finally and hopefully enjoying the whole thing.

I called a friend of mine this morning, he works in a Hifi shop (in a speciality shop) since over 20 years, and has quite good experience with the stuff. So I told him that I exchanged the receiver, the subwoofer and would now use the BOSE speakers connected directly to the receiver.

He told me that I would get a bad sound like this, as the BOSE cube satellite speakers are meant to be together with that subwoofer (a passive one), because of the crossover audio and other stuff.

So I went to him to the shop, and he suggested me B&W speakers, the new M1 model. They look good, very good built quality, and also very good sound quality. They're not too big, like average PC desktop speakers. So I bought 5 of them. One black as center, will fit better under a black TV, and 4 white for the now white walls and soon white ceiling.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...teBlack_ON.jpghttp://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...teWhite_ON.jpg

Demon, are you going to left all stuff in top of those weels? From a purist way, that sould not be the best solution, as it will vibrate a bit. Best solution would be on spikes with bases for speakers, but you can also do it for the rest

http://www.audioholics.com/education...019s-the-point

I put spikes with bases to my Monitor Audio Speakers, and only spikes for Amp.

but you must pay a lot of attention to hear the difference... If speakers are not 100% flat base, or the floor is not regular the sound will not be the best, so the spykes with regulation should level it.

Originally Posted by Tiago:
Demon, are you going to left all stuff in top of those weels? From a purist way, that sould not be the best solution, as it will vibrate a bit.

? The speakers are not on the shelves with the wheels. The subwoofer stands on the ground, and the speakers are attached on the wall.

I finished now putting the new speakers.

Boxed.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050032.jpg

Attached to the wall.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050033.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050035.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050036.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050037.jpg

Front speaker is standing in front of the TV.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050039.jpg

Now I will set the receiver up, gonna probably also take some time.

Very nice. B&W is one of the best speakers makes you can buy, so you should be really happy with those.

I've been considering changing my huge floor standing Eltax front speakers, plus the rest of the setup, for all satellites mounted in the corners of the room, as they take up so little space and are nearly invisible. However, there is no way I could afford B&W's these days. I've been looking at Tannoy which I've heard and sound really good.

Wanted to ask. What was wrong with your old Bose setup?

Also, I know you sold most of your retro gaming hardware, but have you now got rid of all your older consoles? Did you even sell your PS2? With so many RPGs on there still to play I thought you might have held on to that one.

The BOSE system was working really nice, but basically it was only a 5.0 system, as it had a passive subwoofer, which was not connected directly to the receiver. And as I bought now an active subwoofer, my friend told me that the BOSE satellites would then behave very strangely when connected directly to the receiver. They were just tweeters, and would give a bad sound. So I had to buy new ones, and as I know that the B&W are quite good, I decided to get them. But everything together now, speakers, subwooder, receiver, beamer and projection screen was quite expensive now, and I didn't plan to spend that much, but I thought myself, why not getting it now, it really will be a good home cinema, which I always wanted to have.

I sold all my retro stuff, but I kept PS1, PS2, DC, GC, and the old XBox.

Are you connected your remaining retro stuff to that setup? Or somewhere else? I've not located all my retro systems into my study/office instead of the living room, and have a 5.1 receiver and speaker setup in both rooms. Only console currently downstairs is the Wii as we need the extra space to use it. I'm currently considering what to use down there to stream media from upstairs. Might use a second Xbox.

Your cable clutter looked very similar to mine when I started moving everything a couple of months ago. Amazing the number of cables you can hide behind things. I definitely want to declutter more and am actually considering going more emulation like you have just to redice cable clutter even more. Maybe get some controllers converted to USB to use with emulators and ditch the real ones.

Originally Posted by :
? The speakers are not on the shelves with the wheels. The subwoofer stands on the ground, and the speakers are attached on the wall.

Ok then, and the player cd/dvd? where are you going to put it? I mean that with even small rotation of cd/dvd makes a litle vibration when not stable.
That is what's written on books, but i wounder if we can feel much difference...

The system looks good.
The front speaker that is standing in front of the TV, how high are your seats/sofa?
Looks like from the picture, that the front speaker is almost the same high that where the screens of TV starts. Is it high enough so that
the speaker don't stay in front of the image? Only if you are going to be seat down in a low sofa, otherwise it would not be a problem.

My DVD player is only used to watch sometimes, very rarely, some asian horror movies, so it's basically not running at all, most of my movies are stored on my NAS in another room, and played with my Mede8er mediaplayer.

The center speaker is basically at ear height, but you can adjust/rotate it up/down like you want. The height is fine, you only miss a tiny part of the bottom screen, but anyway, in 2 weeks or less, the beamer will be connected, and the TV almost won't be used anymore.

@Harrison
The retro stuff will not be connected to the beamer and this setup.

First day of work, put almost the half of the panels already, and redid also all of the electricity to put spots into the ceiling, was quite a lot of work. Panels are 4.10m long, so putting them being only 2 people (me and dad), is kinda pain in the butt. But so far we managed to do well. Tomorrow we will start the other half, and also will attach the projection screen, hopefully. The wooden strips will be put last of course, so the pictures are not yet final.

You can clearly now see the difference between the new, and "really" old ceiling. Behind the mirror is the HDMI cable for the beamer, and a plug for power.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050040.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050041.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050044.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050046.jpg

You have been busy. Look forward to the finished result.

This morning, I did some shopping, bought supports to fix the beamer to the ceiling, some plugs, and I had to buy new spots. Yesterday whilst watching TV, suddenly the lights went off after 30 minutes. I was scared at first, then tested straight away the temperature, and I can tell, they were VERY hot. So I waited until they cooled down, then tried to switch them on again, and they worked fine, so it definitely was due to the heat.

The problem is that these spots are 12V and use a transformer. That one should have some space above, which is not really possible, because over the panels on the ceiling, there's glass wool, and that's then lying on the transformer. Would have to push that away, perhaps then it would work. But I didn't want to try now over and over again, and just bought new spots, 220V ones.

Problem was, the hole for the old spots was 58mm, and the new one is 75mm. Because the panels are already attached to the ceiling, you cannot drill anymore, so we had to widen the 4 holes with a hand saw, which took quite some time.

We put also 6 other panels, and one with the other 3 spots in it. Of course we had also to do the whole electricity for these, and that always takes some time.

I also bought LED bulbs for the 4 spots that are switched on quite often, plus I connected them to a dimmer with a remote control, so you can dim or switch them on/off from the couch, quite pratical when you want to watch a movie and don't have to get up to press the switch ;)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050048.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050050.jpg

LED light bulbs, only hanging there at the moment.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050051.jpg

Same but dimmed

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...P1050052-1.jpg

Dimmer remote

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050053.jpg

As that remote was 80€, which is too expensive in my opinion, and I'm only using 3 buttons, I will perhaps try if I could do the same with just another, adaptive remote. I think that should be possible.

Tomorrow morning first thing will be probably the projection screen, as it will be attached to the next panel. Hopefully tomorrow we can finish with the living room.

I've been tempted to get a remove dimmer for our living room. However when I looked the available options were a bit confusing and not very well explained online. Will have to do some more research later on that. Would also need to change the light in there as we have energy saving light bulbs (EU regulation as regular bulbs are now banned here) and the type we have states it can't be used with dimmers. Annoying!

Interesting about your spot lights as we had a similar issue. So with 12V spotlights that have a transformer they need space above them for the heat their produce? But if replaced with 220V spotlights they can be within an enclosed roof space? Don't 220V spots produce as much heat? Or is it just the transformer that is the issue?

With our problem when the house was new (6 years ago I think), after about 6 months the trip switch tripped the upstairs lighting. I reset it, but when turning the bathroom lights on a huge bang and spark, followed by a burning smell happened. I went into the loft and the loft insulation was charred black around the spotlight fitting. Could have easily caused a fire. We called out the builders because the house was new and under warranty. They replaced the blown light fitting and removed the insulation around all of the spot lights around both the bathroom and En-Suite. They said it was due to me boarding in the loft, but thought that was stupid as we have the same spotlights fitted in the downstairs toilet and kitchen and they have another floor above them, so don't need to be open above. Also all these spotlights were completely covered over in the loft by the builders with 18 inch thick loft insulation, so boards above them instead wasn't going to do anything worse was it?

Originally Posted by Harrison:
Interesting about your spot lights as we had a similar issue. So with 12V spotlights that have a transformer they need space above them for the heat their produce? But if replaced with 220V spotlights they can be within an enclosed roof space? Don't 220V spots produce as much heat? Or is it just the transformer that is the issue?

The spots I have now, only produce heat below them, the lightbulb itself has some protection that the heat doesn't go up, this was not the case with the other ones. And probably the transformer had some kind of overheat detection built in, so when it got hot, it just switched off, which of course is a good thing. But with all that wool above the ceiling, I would have had to build some construction, so that the transformer would have had some space.

Projection screen is hanging now, strange I didn't get a good picture of it, I took 10, but all of them are blurry.

The ceiling is also now finished, only have to put the wooden strips around tomorrow.

There it's hanging

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050054.jpg

Plug is again attached to the ceiling, so you don't have cables hanging down to the floor

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050061.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050056.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050055.jpg

Attachement was quite difficult, because I had to fix it to the joists. But the screen only has 2 hooks to hang, so I couldn't fix it directly to the ceiling. So we made some kind of construction, with hooks, and it was also easy not to get it into the right angle/level.

Funny thing is, that the metal bar it is attached to, is an older bar for curtains I had in my appartement. My father still had it lying on the roof, so that was the best solution. And the bar was very expensive, as it's one from Liang Li, some designer.

Here's a bad picture of the screen down, screen is 108"

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050069.jpg

Tomorrow we will also finally put the beamer, and Friday afternoon a guy comes to calibrate it.

Now that is impressive. I bet you can't wait to have everything finished and running. Should be great.

Pic is blurry because it is just a white background with nothing to focus on. One of the dismays of Digital Cameras I guess, but the non-reflective surface of the screen also adds to the blur.

Having said that, I'm looking forward to seeing your results. What you have done there is very good.

A close friend of mine just bought a BenQ w1200 affair & I am also really looking forward to seeing his set up once finished.

We finished today, finally. Everything is in place and ready to be fired on.

Wooden strips are placed, only have to repaint the wall a bit when I get some time

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050073.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050074.jpg

And here's the baby, it's huge, you don't see it on the picture (almost 50x50x20 and 15kg)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050070.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050071.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...r/P1050072.jpg

I think I'm gonna fire it up now, but I really want to wait for the bigger setup until tomorrow, when the pro comes, and makes the calibration and all that stuff.

Gonna keep you updated guys.

Wicked! :yesyes:

At the moment I'm watching some stuff, and I have to tell, this is AWESOME, trying to d/l some 3D stuff to test. But the beamer is already great out of the box, wonder what's happening if it's calibrated? I didn't change f.ex. anything yet to colour, brightness, contrast, gamma... and it's already looking great. Keeping you updated.......................

That's looking really good now you have the edging strips in place. Nice work.

You didn't try and do a hidden tray for the projector then? rising up into the roof to hide when not in use? ;)

Originally Posted by Demon Cleaner:
At the moment I'm watching some stuff, and I have to tell, this is AWESOME, trying to d/l some 3D stuff to test. But the beamer is already great out of the box, wonder what's happening if it's calibrated? I didn't change f.ex. anything yet to colour, brightness, contrast, gamma... and it's already looking great. Keeping you updated.......................

Yes, the Calibration thing appears a bit "flim flam like" to me. Calibration is something done at factory level before they are shipped. Surely all the end user has to do is adjust the focus and up/down/left/right position on the shelf it sits on & perhaps tweak the colours/brightness/etc to suit their own preference. Then again, if your supplier offers you these services & you are happy to pay for them, I guess you're paying for what you're getting.

I did see a D/L'd 3D version of Avatar running from a Western Digital Media box on the latest Panasonic £1500 52" Plasma. Aside from the 3-D glasses pi$$ing me off, it was very good indeed.

/....Kin walks off waiting for 3-D technology to appear without the need for retard glasses.....

Great project :thumbs: would be nice to see a youtube vid once is all setup and running fully calibrated ;) at least with you having someone come out to calibrate it you can see how its all done for future reference:)

I did hear awhile back about them trying out 3d tv's without the need for "retard glasses" based on the nintendo 3ds technology and how we should see the first tv's by the end of 2012? But to get a good quality may not be that simple!

@kin I see you've got yourself a nice speedtest there :)

I don't know, there are often many settings of things like Luminance on projectors, so if the guy calibrating it has some gear like a lux light meter he might be able to optimise it for the specific room.

Regarding 3D TVs, they do already exist without the need for glasses, and were shown at the recent German expo. However they only have a limited "sweet spot" position where you have to sit to see the 3D properly, so a bit restrictive still. At the moment it has to be like that so your eyes intercept the 2 different "stereo" images to create the 3D. Similar in a way to a surround sound setup where you have to sit in the spot where you have positioned and directed the speakers, and the information given to the AV receiver for the distances.

If topic, but regarding AV receivers... my Sony AV receiver has a cook feature of setting up the speakers. It comes with its own special microphone you plug into a dedicated port and position where you will be sitting. The Receiver's setup then uses the microphone to calibrate itself and adjust for the best possible sound. Quite cool. Easier than having to get out the measuring tape and feed the speaker distances in manually, as I have to with my older Receiver. The distances allow the receiver to set speaker delays to optimise exactly when you will receive all sounds from every direction at the same time. So rears being closer would have a slightly longer delay so the longer distance fronts sound reaches at the same time.

The real next generation for TV though is holographic TV if they can ever get it fully working and with a wide field of view. At the moment holographic TV will only work if you are sitting in a very specific spot and looking directly at the projection. Recently on the BBC program "Click" they showed the early prototypes of this technology and they said it did work, but was not yet full colour. The company stated it would be within a year, and in high definition. I wait to see how real these claims are though. And one huge negative at the moment is that the technology currently uses industrial medical technology to create and project the image so is big... so if we thought we had got rid of the huge CRTs for good, we might end up with something even larger! :lol:

@ DonAmiga

Yes, Great download speeds of 6.5Mb/sec when it's at full chat. Despite the speed, I still can't play tennis, ride a bike, swim or play online games. Maybe I need a Tampon up my backside eh?
....or better still, ALL the Downstream SNR my wires are actually capable of, to deliver a service that actually works as it is inteded to. The saga continues......


@ Harrison

Yes, Luminance is different in every room & quite important to set up correctly of a fashion, but where do you draw the line? You'd be for ever changing the settings on Rainy days, sunny days, cloudy days & what about night time? - Oh crap, I just blew a spotlight, wheres the Luminance meter? :lol:

The newer AV recievers are very lucky with this Mic set up facility. I have a stunning Yamaha AX2 (£1500 in it's day) & it's all manual. It's quite painstaking & a complete pain in the ass tbh.

CRT displays are very old now & the newer technologies of display devices still have a long long way to go yet. One gripe for me RE: Flat panels, especially PC ones, is the total lack of Colour Gamut to choose from, resulting in banding & blocky visuals. Sure, Pro monitors have bigger Gamuts to select from, but then the price goes through the roof along with the refresh times, making gaming utter crap. I have to digress at PC gamers saying their 60Hz flat panel rocks when gaming. :nogood:


@ Deamon Cleaner

I'm guessing the Calibration guy came round last Friday from what you said earlier, so how is it for you now?

Originally Posted by Kin Hell:
@ Harrison

One gripe for me RE: Flat panels, especially PC ones, is the total lack of Colour Gamut to choose from, resulting in banding & blocky visuals. Sure, Pro monitors have bigger Gamuts to select from, but then the price goes through the roof along with the refresh times, making gaming utter crap. I have to digress at PC gamers saying their 60Hz flat panel rocks when gaming. :nogood:

The danger these days is that there are a lot of really low cost 16:9 1080p resolution computer monitors on the market with quite bad image quality. Some of the ones less that £100 are quite bad, and have really bad viewing angles, which is the biggest issue with a flat panel because the screen brightness, colour, contrast etc all changes with the slightest og head movement.

Pro monitors are definitely worth the investment if you can. My Dell U2711 is really nice and I've not noticed any refresh rate issues in games with it. It's also amazing running games in 2560x1440 resolution. And, yes at reasonable frame rates too. Star Wars: The Old Republic ticks along nicely at 75-130fps, which is good enough for me. ;)

The guy came indeed on Friday, and needed about 90 minutes to calibrate everything.

He set up a camera in front of the screen, and then sends different colored pictures over the beamer to the screen via laptop. The camera is then taking pictures, and evaluating them, giving you a diagram with the RGB colors. Mine was a bit too blueish, so he changed that. You can set the gain and offset for every single color, so that they come close and overlap each other. He repeated that test after every change, until he had what he wanted. Took him about 7-8 times.

Then he also calibrated the lens and created me a custom profile, which I should now use for everything, is it movies, series, normal TV, HD, gaming... Only for the 3D I have now to press one button, because that's a different setting.

This is what he was using to calibrate the colors

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...mma_175732.png

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...0cie_80672.jpg

He also entered the service menu of the beamer over some key combination on the remote, and changed some of the stuff there, don't know what exactly, he was too fast for me :)

After he finished, I asked him how much I would have to pay, and he said that it's fine, he did it for free. That was great, as I know the prices for this, and it's quite expensive.

Originally Posted by Harrison:
If topic, but regarding AV receivers... my Sony AV receiver has a cook feature of setting up the speakers. It comes with its own special microphone you plug into a dedicated port and position where you will be sitting.

Almost every new receiver has that, the Onkyo too, that's called Audyssey. I did that with mine too, but on Friday the guy also quickly checked these settings, and changed them a bit, as he prefers to do it without the Audyssey, said that you would get better results without. But the Audyssey thing is already good.

I was playing a bit Killzone 3 during the weekend, and it's just amazing, I was blown away. Yesterday I watched some series with my girlfriend and then the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and she was also blown away. The screen together now with the Onkyo and the B&W speakers gives you the perfect home cinema feeling, I'm absolutely happy with the stuff.

I also watched 2 games of the football, and that's also awesome, there's nothing so far that isn't gorgeous.

I will try to make some photos when there's something running, but I doubt that the photos will give you a true picture how it looks in reality.

Hi All
Demon Cleaner what's your address again i forgot !! :lol: :rolleyes:
Many Thanks
Andrew

I also now bought a BluRay player, as there seems to be problems with my PS3 playing 3D stuff.

First of all, the old PS3 model only plays 3D when connected straight away to the source, in my case the beamer, and not looped through an A/V receiver. And the sound only works over toslink, and not HDMI. Second, 3D games are only supported from firmware 3.70 and higher, but I'm stuck at 3.55, further CFW will perhaps give me the opportunity to play 3D games.

I bought the Oppo 93 BD player, which is absolutely great, go only best reviews, and is the best player in the upper mid class ranged players.

Originally Posted by PC Mag:
The Oppo BDP-93 is one of the most expensive Blu-ray players we've ever reviewed, and it's easily the largest, but it's also the best. With a wide array of features both casual users and high-end enthusiasts can enjoy, and the best speed and video processing performance we've seen yet, the Oppo BDP-93 easily earns our Editors' Choice.

AVForums review: http://www.avforums.com/review/Oppo-...sc-Player.html

Home Theater review: http://hometheaterreview.com/oppo-di...ayer-reviewed/

SoundStage review: http://soundstagex.com/index.php?opt...cles&Itemid=50

Audioholics review: http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/t...ts/oppo-bdp-93

BluRayPlayers.net review: http://bluray-players.net/oppo/oppo-bdp-93-review/

Prillaman review: http://www.prillaman.net/oppobdp93_review.html

And I could go on...

But I think that now I spent enough money :)

All together for my little home cinema:

- Beamer JVC DLA-X30: 3000€
- A/V Receiver Onkyo TX-NR616: 550€
- Projection Screen Ultraluxx TS Tension 108": 850€
- Speakers Bowers & Wilkins M1: 1100€
- Subwoofer Yamaha NS SW 210: 150€
- BD Player Oppo 93 (multiregion): 700€
- Panels for ceiling plus lights and dimmer: 1000€

You now have a very good system.
only one thing missing, a mini-fridge very close to you, so during the movie, you don't need to move much. :-)

I usually don't drink during movies, but it could be interesting for watching sports ;)

I got 3D now working.

I still had a HDMI 1-2 splitter from Koenig at home (1 input, 2 outputs), which I bought to be able to use the beamer or the TV without switching cables all the time. As the Onkyo has 2 HDMI outputs, I didn't need it anymore.

So I plugged it in, put the PS3 to its input, and the beamer to its output, like this, the PS3 was connected directly to the beamer, without passing over the receiver. The cables are very easily accessible, and the whole setup is done in less than one minute.

Then when trying Killzone 3 in 3D, the PS3 also recognized that my screen can do 3D, and I could switch to 3D. Works perfectly, even on 3.55!

The only thing I still have to do, is to connect an optical cable from the PS3 to my receiver, so that I will also have sound.

But I only want to use this method when playing 3D games, otherwise I will pass through the receiver, as I also want to have TrueHD sound. And like I mentioned, it's changed in less than one minute.

I'm still using the Oppo as BD player, as first of all my PS3 is VERY noisy, fan almost never stops running on full power, and the sound and picture coming from the Oppo are far superior.

@ dc

WOW! :blink:

Looks like you had some luck there with the charges. Guessing the guy that came round was the guy you bought from. ;)

I have to laugh @ your comments RE: that's enough now. It's a bit like Alice in Wonderland looking down the deep deep rabit hole isn't it. :lol: - ....you just have to draw the line somewhere, though I'm sure you are gong to have many years of pleasure with that setup. :yesyes:


I mentioned earlier about a close friend setting up a BenQ W1200 beamer. He was round mine with his iMac last night for a Dual Boot setup installing. I'm booked in to pop over this weekend to see his 3.5m Wide set up.....

Bhf @ 3.5m of Beamer in your front room!! :o

Originally Posted by Kin Hell:
Guessing the guy that came round was the guy you bought from. ;)

Indeed :)

I managed to get the PS3 working now without having to use the splitter.

The receiver mode for the PS3 was set to "Through", which sounds logical to me, that it lets the signal pass through. But in that mode, the receiver makes a conversion of the resolution, meaning that he signal is not passed straight away to the beamer. So I set it now to "Direct", which lets the signal through without doing anything, thus passing the video signal directly to the beamer, and playing the audio signal just fine. No need for a splitter and toslink cable anymore.

The guy came again for almost 2 hours yesterday to do the final calibration. He said that the lamp needs to have at least 50h+ to calibrate the 3D. Mine has now 80h, so that was Ok. He also recalibrated the 2D, as that also changed again due to the lamp having more hours, but that was really not much, a slight adjustement fixed it again.

I have to say that watching a true 3D movie over the Oppo player is just gorgeous!! And gaming is so much more fun, played some NFS: Hot Pursuit, with high volume, and it just blows you away.

Also new speakers need time to wear in. They become warmer and have a much nicer sound after a few hundred hours.