CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Satanier]

Hello again, I ended up purchasing my first CRT yesterday, an NEC XG-75, and I want to adjust the rasters. I noticed the wear pattern on the green is slightly up and to the left and a little bit small, but its very light so I want to adjust and go outside it, if I can see any difference I don't care. The image appears to be centered right now, so I'm not sure whats going on with that, must have been from the signal it had been sent or something. So I turned the brightness all the way up to see the raster, then went into operate and then adjust then image size and was able to change the size of the raster, I tried to make it take up almost all of the tube face without spilling over the edges.


My two questions:

1. How do I move the raster about vertically and horizontally on the tube faces?
2. This is the part thats confusing me the most, the whole image inside the raster stretches with the raster so how can I possibly maintain proper aspect ratio?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is really holding me back from beginning true setup and convergence.

[MikeEby]

[Satanier]

I have some sort of line to the right of the image running up at the edge of the raster on all 3 tubes, also the rasters are all shifted too far to the left and i cant change that? the raster centering seems to only change vertically, also when i try to toe in the lenses i cant get the center of the crosshair aligned vertically! Any help setting up my raster would be greatly appreciated, I'd like to start learning to converge.


Also when looking into the green tube I can see that theres some kind of afterimage sometimes of what is being displayed, and it slowly fades away, this seems intermittent and I cant see this on screen. And should I be setting all this up using a test pattern from computer at 1920x1080 resolution? Or using the internal patterns. This is my first CRT and I'm so confused right now, curts guide is nice but I'm still having problems even getting to page 2.

I'm sending a 1920x1080 signal to it, then pulling up its test patterns.


One last thing, I'm pretty sure when I change inputs and go back the raster size has changed....

In curts guide it says I can shift the raster on each tube using "Raster shift" in the ref adjust menu? Theres no such control

there that I can see.

Quite confused...


I just want to get my rasters right so I can begin the nightmare of convergence

[MikeEby]

I've seen that line sometimes. I think you may be able to hide it with blanking.

Just curious what are you using for a source?

I think if you don't use the 3151 passcode the references centering will only allow you to change vertical centering. I have to check on my projector to be sure.

Don't get discoraged we'll get this baby looking good, it just takes time.

MIke

[Satanier]

[dropzone7]

Factory defaults for brightness are 60 and contrast 75. I would keep things at this level or probably even a bit lower while you are learning and setting it up. MikeEby is the HTPC expert and also uses an XG. I see he has already gotten you started with some good information. The difference in the wear pattern and what your raster is now is probably due to the fact that the projector was previously mounted within NEC specifications for distance. Most NEC users will suggest running as large a raster as you can without going off the edges or creating an unstable image. Also, you usually should mount the projector slightly closer to your screen than what the NEC specification says. I would strongly suggest that you get the projector set up with a 1080i signal first. It's going to be the most stable resolution you can run on the XG and will allow you to utilize the full width of the raster. I think 1080i looks smooth and very filmlike and I have no desire to go 1080p. If you do decide to go with 1080p down the road then you will need that HTPC most likely to create custom porch settings. Otherwise you will get foldover on the rasters. Trust me on this, it's MUCH easier to get the machine converged and setup while feeding it a 1080i source. Use external test patterns rather than the internal ones. They will more accurately show what you end up viewing in the end. I would use an HDDVD, BluRay, or HD cable 1080i source. I like to use the Digital Video Essentials HD Basics disc for Blu Ray running at 1080i. Regarding tube wear, green will almost always show wear first and it does not take long to create wear if you are running at a high contrast setting. It's always best to try and project within the current wear pattern so that you don't see the burn in. However, if you are using a different screen size or changing mounting distances then this is not always possible. Don't get too frustrated yet. You have only had the projector a few days and these things take time. The more time you spend with it the better it will look. Mine gets a little better with each setup. Resist the temptation to jump into convergence before you get a proper mechanical setup and raster centering done. Don't forget about the thumb screws on the neck of the tubes. If you are having problems centering your crosshairs then you might need to loosen these and rotate the yokes left or right to get the lines to overlap. Be careful inside the projector with it running, don't touch any coil windings. Make sure all of your electronic controls are set to either "0" or midpoint before doing any mechanical adjustments.

[Satanier]

[Satanier]

Small update, following quick setup guide for XG on this site, I was able to use "Static Convergence" to get the crosshairs to line up on the horizontal line, but the raster seems to keep resetting? And is this an ok way to get them to line up?

Also, the image area may have been resetting because I've been resetting "amplitude" after trying to adjust.

Still quite lost here




Was playing around with some convergence and I can get 80ish % of the image to converge but for example, the bottom /// bottom left the red is off, and at the top///top right red is off, is it normal for convergence to be off in just certain regions of the screen? There is so much more I need to learn, going to go back to trying to setup raster properly tommorow, then I'll do all the convergence right, following curts full guide.


edit:


I've also got uneven focus on my blue tube, the left and ride sides are blurry and the center is focus, its best in the center, then worse and worse as it gets towards the edges, ive tried the two physical focus wingnuts and cant get it to sharpen up, I tried playing with the edge focus but I dont fully understand how it works and I dont think its "strong" enough to correct this, is there something I can do to fix that? Red and green tubes are focusing evenly throughout I beleive.

[dropzone7]

A few things need to be addressed before proceeding I think.

1. What size is your screen?
2. Is the projector floor mounted right now?
3. Have you normalized all electronic settings?
4. When you make a change to a setting are you storing it before exiting out of the menu or shutting the projector down?

*DO NOT touch the astig magnets on the tubes yet. If they have silicone on them then chances are they may not need to be adjusted just yet if at all.

*DO NOT touch any of the little white pot screws inside the card cage EXCEPT for the FOCUS pots. There should be a little white pot screw labeled for each tube. Set your electronic focus controls to "0" for center, edge and corner focus and then STORE that. Do a rough optical focus (by loosening the wingnuts on the lenses and turning them). After that, adjust focus using the pots inside the projector to achieve best focus at the center primarily. (you will get the corners and edges later) Best electronic focus should then be achieved at a setting of somewhere between "0" and "-10". Setting the focus through the pots allows you a better range of focus in the electronic settings. After you get this down, go back and recheck your optical focus.

*Also regarding the focus, you need to go into the options menu and turn blue defocus OFF while doing your optical and electronic focus work. This adjustment in the options menu is for helping you to achieve better color balance once everything else is done regarding geometry, convergence and focus. You WILL need to have the blue defocus set to ON after you get all of this done. Having it on right now is just going to fight your focus adjustments for blue.

[Satanier]

[dropzone7]

Yes, do get your rasters centered and maxed out to your liking first. You will run out of horizontal raster before vertical. There is an option in the settings menu for "AUTO STORE" as you say. Make sure that is turned on in case you make change and accidentally exit without storing first. Here is a post regarding the passcode that I borrowed from MarkAW. You need to make sure you have a user passcode setup before the service one will work.

"You have to be in service mode - you aren't.

To enter service mode enter passcode 3151.

BUT you have to have setup a user passcode first, otherwise service mode will NOT work.

So setup a user passcode (say 1111), then enter 3151 to get into service mode.

Then you will get separate raster centering controls."

[Satanier]

I setup a user pass code 1111 and then went to new pass code again and put in 3151, it didn't work, is there a different place I'm supposed to enter it? I already have the ref adjust menu, it just only allows me to adjust the size, not position.

Also, is it normal to have it look like this? I have no idea how I would get the bottom left and bottom and top part to line up right...




Additionally, my point convergence doesn't seem to work, I can't move the points. (even though I know i shouldn't be using it at this point, i wanted to see how it worked, and it doesnt seem to.


One problem seems solved, I manually stored some settings and they saved when I turned it off and on, but I didn't switch the switch on the front off this time, so I will see if they stay the next time after having turned that off.

[MikeEby]

Looks like your getting close. But that is too far off to correct with point convergence. I would press Tilt/Skew then CTRL/R to select red only, use the arrow buttons to bring it in, Also if you press Keystone or Pin then CRTL/UP,DOWN,LEFT or RIGHT for Top, bottom, left & right then go back and forth between Keystone and Pin move in small increments, you should be able to get it closer yet. I would normalize the course, medium and fine points before doing this. Your not ready to adjust point correction yet, they don't have the range to correct for that much error and it will drift like crazy if you do use a lot of point correction.


Mike

[macgyver655]

If when attempting to store you get an error or your passcode will not store its because your not locked to a signal entry. You guys need to explain to him how to do an entry and make sure its locked, first. After that the next first thing he needs to do is phase. Then continue from there.

[dropzone7]

Ron is correct. You don't want to build upon a potentially bad signal entry so you need to create a new one.

1. Push "Adjust" on the remote.
2. Choose "Signal Entry". Press Enter.
3. Choose an empty line as close to the top as possible. For instance, if line #1 is taken but #2 is empty then cursor to line #2 and press Enter.
4. A new, small menu will pop up in the middle of the screen. Choose "New Entry". Press Enter.
5. Choose "Input A". Press Enter.
6. Choose "RGB". Press Enter.
7. Name your entry something you will remember like "Test" or "1080i". Press Enter.
8. Choose "Temporary". Press Enter.
9. The projector stores your entry and you will see an information screen pop up with the information you just entered. Now you have something to begin working with.

By the way, the passcode I have always used is 315151.

[Satanier]

Still trying to figure out how to move the rasters around on screen, i used "image size" in the ref adjust menu to size them to about 1/2 " from the edges, I don't know if they are adjusted right.


Problems i'm having:::


1. Left and ride sides of blue arent focused, electronic and physical focus not seeming to help
2. Cant change raster location
3.Having trouble getting bottom left of tubes to converge, as seen in above screenshot. Not sure which is issue, suspect maybe red, because I noticed the yokes(plastic tabs near back of tube?) have been moved on red tube.


Also, one more question, do I need to use the projectors warm up thing that shows all white for 5 minutes? And should I leave AKB on or off?


I'm going to post a screenshot of my rasters to see if they even need adjustment.

[Satanier]

Ok heres a picture of what it looks like right now, I'm sending it a 1920x1080 signal from my computer, I dont even know if its interlaced and I'm not sure how to find out. These are the internal test patterns on the XG: I scaled it to this size using the "image adjust" I think its called, its someone in the ref adjust menu







Are there any physical adjustments I need to make to the PJ? I want these tubes to last as long as possible and I cant even get past the raster part of the guide, Stumped @_@





Problems i'm having:::


1. Left and ride sides of blue arent focused, electronic and physical focus not seeming to help
2. Cant change raster location /// dont know how to adjust raster(do I need to?)
3. Having trouble getting bottom left of tubes to converge, as seen in above screenshot a few posts up, top left is issue too.. Not sure which is issue, suspect maybe red, because I noticed the yokes(plastic tabs near back of tube?) have been moved on red tube.

[dropzone7]

Well, "image size" is like "amplitude". It's going to stretch the image horizontally or vertically as you adjust it. You don't want to do this until you have the raster centered on the tube face. Then you can expand the size of the raster to fill the face with a safe margin of maybe 1/4" or so.

You don't have to do an all white warmup until you have the projector fully converged and your white balance and grayscale set correctly. The all white warmup will help with that down the road. Until then, you SHOULD be letting the projector warmup for about 20 to 30 minutes before even starting electronic adjustments. This lets the projector get up to proper operating temperatures and your adjustments will be more accurate from that point on. Also, give the projector and yourself a break every half hour or so and let it run some video even if it looks like crap right now.

You can turn AKB off as this also relates to white balance and since you are not at that point yet it's probably best to have it turned off. Otherwise you will probably see the white horizontal line at the top of your image which is the AKB line.

[dropzone7]

What positions do you have the lens flapping rings in? You should see two plastic tabs above each lens and a sticker above each lens with the letter "A" and "B". Then you have numbers beside those letters. You need to make sure those rings are correctly set for your screen size as this will effect your corner and edge focus a good bit if not set correctly.

[Satanier]