CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[perisoft]

So, in 'The devil made me do it', a gauntlet of kinds was thrown down to issue forth screenshots from a decade-old digital.

I comply. These are from a Pioneer XG10, manufactured April 1998. The colors were a bitch to set up, and for some reason my Nikon defecated masonry when asked to take an accurate picture of what was on the screen. Suffice to say white looked an awful lot whiter in real life than it does in these shots; I have no idea what's up with that. It might have something to do with the camera being in shutter priority rather than full manual, but I'm not sure. In other news, the kit lens' pin and barrel distortion is really starting to get on my nerves. At this rate I might as well use the fisheye...


Anyway, since the point was that a digital that old shouldn't work at all - well, behold:

[Fujifrontier]

awwww!

[ecrabb]

I don't know if it's a camera white balance issue or not, but it looks like the LCD panel or polarizing filter is going to hell. Look at the nasty green cast in the right 1/3-1/2 of the images. Very obvious in the first image, but still quite noticeable in the second and third.

What Nikon camera and lens are you using?!??!

SC

[Curt Palme]

Pioneer RVD-XG10 Projector Specifications
(show metric units)
MSRP (USD) : $11,999
Brightness (Lumens) : 800 ANSI
Contrast (Full On/Off) : 150:1
Variable Iris: No
Audible Noise: 40.0 dB
Weight: 18.3 lbs
Size (inches) (HxWxD) : 5.1 x 13.0 x 16.3
Std. Lens: Focus:
Power
Zoom: Power
Throw Dist (feet) : 5.9 - 36.7
Image Size (inches) : 38.0 - 300.0
Optional Lenses: No
Digital Zoom: No
Digital Keystone: No
Lens Shift: No
Networking: Wired:
No
Wireless: No
Warranty: **
Performance:
H-Sync Range: 24.5 - 90.0kHz
V-Sync Range: 45 - 90Hz
Compatibility:
HDTV: No
EDTV/480p: No
SDTV/480i: No
Component Video: No
Video: Yes
Digital Input: No
Computers: Yes
Display: Type:
0.9" DRI (3)
Native: 1024x768 Pixels
Maximum: 1600x1200 Pixels
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 (XGA)
Lamp: Type:
150W Metal Halide
Life: 2000 hours
Quantity: 1
Speakers: 2.0W+ 2.0W
Max Power: 280W
Voltage: 100V - 240V


** this item is either not applicable, unpublished, or unknown
The Pioneer RVD-XG10 was manufactured by Pioneer. It was also marketed as:
Chisholm Sonoma X800

I'm not sure if the contention specifically was that a 10 year old digital shouldn't work, you're missing the chassis hour count and how many bulbs it's gone through. I'll bet it's on it's first or second bulb. Run that baby on a regular basis, and I'll bet it won't last until the end of the year. (I'm wide open for putting my foot in my mouth here..)

[Curt Palme]

Pioneer RVD-XG10 Projector Specifications
(show metric units)
MSRP (USD) : $11,999
Brightness (Lumens) : 800 ANSI
Contrast (Full On/Off) : 150:1
Variable Iris: No
Audible Noise: 40.0 dB
Weight: 18.3 lbs
Size (inches) (HxWxD) : 5.1 x 13.0 x 16.3
Std. Lens: Focus:
Power
Zoom: Power
Throw Dist (feet) : 5.9 - 36.7
Image Size (inches) : 38.0 - 300.0
Optional Lenses: No
Digital Zoom: No
Digital Keystone: No
Lens Shift: No
Networking: Wired:
No
Wireless: No
Warranty: **
Performance:
H-Sync Range: 24.5 - 90.0kHz
V-Sync Range: 45 - 90Hz
Compatibility:
HDTV: No
EDTV/480p: No
SDTV/480i: No
Component Video: No
Video: Yes
Digital Input: No
Computers: Yes
Display: Type:
0.9" DRI (3)
Native: 1024x768 Pixels
Maximum: 1600x1200 Pixels
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 (XGA)
Lamp: Type:
150W Metal Halide
Life: 2000 hours
Quantity: 1
Speakers: 2.0W+ 2.0W
Max Power: 280W
Voltage: 100V - 240V


** this item is either not applicable, unpublished, or unknown
The Pioneer RVD-XG10 was manufactured by Pioneer. It was also marketed as:
Chisholm Sonoma X800

I'm not sure if the contention specifically was that a 10 year old digital shouldn't work, you're missing the chassis hour count and how many bulbs it's gone through. I'll bet it's on it's first or second bulb. Run that baby on a regular basis, and I'll bet it won't last until the end of the year. (I'm wide open for putting my foot in my mouth here..)

[perisoft]

ecrabb, it's interesting, because it's not noticeable on-screen but quite obvious in the shots. I'm using a D80 with the kit lens; it takes great pictures of the CRT projectors so I don't think it's the camera - unless I accidentally had it set to try to auto-white-balance, in which case it might have been horribly confused.

That wouldn't explain the color shift visible in the shots, though. It's definitely odd. I'm sure that's not there in the camera itself. It could be that it's one of those things where your eye automatically compensates as you watch it in real life, but an image displayed in another medium makes the flaws really obvious.

Anyway, I'm not about to keep playing with the setup on the thing; god knows I have enough to do without tweaking the hell out of a ten-year-old LCD projector. The point was more to show that the thing actually works, although I will cop to a certain amount of color tweaking to try to get it to look good (which included a bunch of messing with bright/contrast per-channel in the projector, gamma adjustment in ffdshow, and a tint on the output to pull it away from the heavy green that the PJ is skewed to. If you set everything up default in the projector the green is about 3x as bright as the R and B, so something's odd there).

I should have grabbed a picture of the fill rate, though; it's actually *perfect*. Odd for way back then and even now.

Edit: God help me; I was rereading the post and when I hit, "enough to do without tweaking the hell out of..." I immediately thought, "Hmm, I could fix the green cast by applying a graduated filter in avisynth..."

Oy.

[Person99]

It looks to be pretty soft. ALL LCD PJs have to have SDE (they have to run the control wires between the pixels). My guess is the optics on this are so bad it can't be focused sharp enought to see the SDE. That is probably why the fill rate looks good.

[perisoft]

[draganm]

[perisoft]

OK, I found it. Hard as hell to take a picture of. I had to put a sheet of paper (from my future son's bouncy seat thing, heh) to even be able to get a shot; the texture of the screen goo made it impossible to see.

So, it's there, but the fill rate is still pretty impressive for that vintage machine.

[perisoft]

[Dave Lister]

[perisoft]

It's got about 1100 hours on it, and the bulb's rated for 1500. No idea if it's been through any before the current one.

And yeah, I'm guessing it's been idle at least for the last few years. In all likelihood it came from a local university, which probably means it was used a few hours a week for classes or presentations or such, and if you assume 5 hours per week average that would have had it running for six years or so, which kind of makes sense - 2002 was about when new XGA projectors were cheap enough to make a compelling case to replace an existing but working machine.

If I run it 5 hours a week now, based on bulb life alone, I should expect another couple of years out of it. Unfortunately I don't have any plans to run it regularly at the moment, although it may yet get set up as the gaming PJ to run alongside the Barco. But I have a BenQ which is substantially brighter and has far, far better contrast... and vastly better black level... and is smaller... and doesn't sound like an NEC XG... so...

I'd love to have a few small, bright, basically-infinitely-lamped digitals around that I could just run 24/7. I'd probably have every wall of my office covered with images if I could do that...

[AnalogRocks]

[quote="perisoft"]It's got about 1100 hours on it, and the bulb's rated for 1500. No idea if it's been through any before the current one.

And yeah, I'm guessing it's been idle at least for the last few years. In all likelihood it came from a local university, which probably means it was used a few hours a week for classes or presentations or such, and if you assume 5 hours per week average that would have had it running for six years or so, which kind of makes sense - 2002 was about when new XGA projectors were cheap enough to make a compelling case to replace an existing but working machine.

If I run it 5 hours a week now, based on bulb life alone, I should expect another couple of years out of it. Unfortunately I don't have any plans to run it regularly at the moment, although it may yet get set up as the gaming PJ to run alongside the Barco. But I have a BenQ which is substantially brighter and has far, far better contrast... and vastly better black level... and is smaller... and doesn't sound like an NEC XG... so...

I'd love to have a few small, bright, basically-infinitely-lamped digitals around that I could just run 24/7. I'd probably have every wall of my office covered with images if I could do that...[/quote]

Hey what can I say. You porved that a 10 year old digital can still function. Come back in 5 more year's then it'll be at the same age many of our projector's are today.

BTW that color shift, I remember seeing that on a $6000 sharp digital from 1998. It was terible. Funny you can't see it with the naked eye though.

Cover all the wall's? What a cool art project. Hmmm I bet I could do that with CRT and slide projector's.

[AnalogRocks]

[quote="perisoft"]It's got about 1100 hours on it, and the bulb's rated for 1500. No idea if it's been through any before the current one.

And yeah, I'm guessing it's been idle at least for the last few years. In all likelihood it came from a local university, which probably means it was used a few hours a week for classes or presentations or such, and if you assume 5 hours per week average that would have had it running for six years or so, which kind of makes sense - 2002 was about when new XGA projectors were cheap enough to make a compelling case to replace an existing but working machine.

If I run it 5 hours a week now, based on bulb life alone, I should expect another couple of years out of it. Unfortunately I don't have any plans to run it regularly at the moment, although it may yet get set up as the gaming PJ to run alongside the Barco. But I have a BenQ which is substantially brighter and has far, far better contrast... and vastly better black level... and is smaller... and doesn't sound like an NEC XG... so...

I'd love to have a few small, bright, basically-infinitely-lamped digitals around that I could just run 24/7. I'd probably have every wall of my office covered with images if I could do that...[/quote]

Hey what can I say. You porved that a 10 year old digital can still function. Come back in 5 more year's then it'll be at the same age many of our projector's are today.

BTW that color shift, I remember seeing that on a $6000 sharp digital from 1998. It was terible. Funny you can't see it with the naked eye though.

Cover all the wall's? What a cool art project. Hmmm I bet I could do that with CRT and slide projector's.

[perisoft]

If I ever watched movies on that that the color shift and other issues would GET noticeable in a real hurry! Still, in 1998 having one of these would have been about the coolest thing ever. And at that point, I think that even a 1271 would have run you more money than the 10k Pioneer (?). It'd be interesting to see price charts for various CRT PJs. I think that my 808s was somewhere around 30k in 1997 when it was manufactured. Devaluation of 99% in ten years... whereas the Pioneer went from $10000 to $35, for a devaluation of 99.9965%!

[Person99]

[perisoft]

I wonder how much of CRT PJ pricing was due to the complexity and material costs of the PJs, and how much was due to the "They're AV people with cash to burn; bend 'em over and give it to 'em hard" mentality? Any market that can withstand a $4000 SD DVD player in 2008 probably isn't a good one to test the sanity of pricing with.

On the other hand, Barcos tended to be used in flight simulation and for the military, where... hmm, yeah. Pretty much the same deal. So how much did the things actually cost to make? And in what kind of volumes? Certainly the chassis, lenses, and mounting hardware had a relatively fixed manufacturing cost, but by 2000 the electronics should have been effectively free compared to the sale price. The same basic stuff was in $150 VGA monitors at that point, and while CRT projectors are certainly more complex, I don't think they're a thousand times more complex! So where'd the prices come from?

[garyfritz]

Don't forget to include the costs of R&D &etc. Those $150 monitors were high-volume commodity products. High-end video projectors were still very much a niche luxury market, with small sales (very few to cover the development costs) and high-price components.

[perisoft]

[Elaine Benes]

[perisoft]