CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Satanier]

[MikeEby]

[Satanier]

[Mark_A_W]

Oh FARK ME.

After all this you haven't done Astig yet????

[Satanier]

[Mark_A_W]

That just means the magnets are screwed.

Electronic astig is a very small adjustment on top of a very coarse magnetic adjustment. If the magnets are out, the electronics won't help.

[Satanier]

[Satanier]

OK, I busted out the D-SLR and snapped two shots to show the problem, maybe that will help find a solution?



Center:





Upper left:: (Left side and right side similar)

[Mark_A_W]

Just do the magnets. Even changing the direction of the projector, or putting it on the ceiling is enough for us to adjust ours.

Until you have good magnetic astig, and decent optical focus, we cannot make any judgements on whether there is a fault.

[Satanier]

I'm not sure how to do the magnets, I really don't want to mess it up. Another thing that's interesting to note is in that upper left corner its hard to get the geometry right, It dips way down and I have to mess with pin balance and keystone to extreme levels to get it to fit the screen properly. I think this is related to whatever is making it so blurry there as well.

[Mr. Green]

Hey everybody!!! What's up? I can see why some people disappear for long periods of time. Their projectors are actually working! I've put about 150 hours on mine since xmas eve! "Little Big Planet" and "force Unleashed" for the PS3 rock by the way! I'm going to go play some "Force Unleashed" before dinner as soon as I post. I'll stay logged in and check back later.

Satinier, I'm 99% sure it's your astig magnets (unless it's a bad focus board). My green and red looked almost exactly like yours and it is an easy fix... IF you aren't dumb like me and get your a$$ shocked a couple times from the hanging system board (working on a PG+ while it was hanging upside down reaching around the system board to look into the tubes). I believe XG's are a lot less cluttered inside so you should have an easier time with it.

I was told many many times how hard the magnets are to adjust, but once you figure out how they work (moving the tabs back and forth to figure out which tab moves/ adjusts what area) it's actually pretty easy. I've played with my astig magnets several times and I'm pretty happy with how well they work. Sharp dots corner to corner and to answer Elaine, I am running a bigger raster than recommended. You can still make the corners reasonably sharp and text on mine is 100% readable anywhere on the image. My green tube is actually the sharpest of all 3 now. I'm thinking of turning off the defocus on the blue for the extra sharpness.

You aren't asking too much from it to want to read text. A lot of people here say you need a 9" LC or a digital. Poppycock I say! I wish I had a better camera and I'd show you. You should get a sharper image out of an XG than my PG+ and mine is pretty freaking sharp right now. After my comparison to that 1080p epson, I spent a few more hours tweaking and mine is now at a level where I doubt I'll tweak much more.

[jarseneau]

Hmmm.. looking at the pics.. I wouldn't jump into astig magnets adjustment right off. I don't see distortion in the edge pattern that looks like bad astig. If it were, your 'H''s in the focus pattern would have the horizontal more in focus than the vertical or vice-versa. The other typical astig distortion is a diagonal smear to the right or left. To me your left/right edge just looks to be less focused.

I know you have possible control issues with side focus. You should be able to make some progress anyway by working the focus pot vs. the menu based focus to balance the center vs. edge focus. If the edge focus isn't working, try these steps:

• Go to the SIZE adjustment, note your current Vertical value, then adjust to 100. This will spread the focus pattern to make it as useful as possible.
  
• Hit any adjustment button except for STATIC and enter PASSCODE 3151 to put you in EXPERT mode
  
• In the Setting menu verify Edge focus is set to EDGE SEPARATE
  
• Hit FOCUS in the remote and zero-out the left/right edge focus value, your CENTER focus value should be +/- 10 as well.
  
• Display the FOCUS test pattern.
  
• Using the FOCUS pot for the affected color, adjust for best edge focus.
  
• Use the remote FOCUS adjustment of CENTER focus to achieve center focus. You may need to iterate between the POT/FOCUS menu adjustment.
  
• Attempt to use the EDGE focus to refine.
  
• Restore SIZE to original value once finished.
  

Also, if you are trying to read desktop text at 1080p and this is your first CRT pj, I would recommend trying a resolution between 720p and 960p or 1080i first. 1080p is pushing the limits of the pj especially due to the 16x9 aspect ratio and the reduced font size the PC will put in use at that resolution.

[Satanier]

I got your message a bit too late and jumped into magnetic astig.
If anything it looks the same, perhaps a bit worse, I really had no idea what i was doing. I tried your focus steps you listed above, but the green tube just wont focus in certain regions. Nothing I did with the magnets would make the areas better.


Two interesting things to note:
During electronic astig the menus started shaking up and down, along with the test patterns, but that went away after restart. Also the strange ghosting I have looks way worse now.

[AnalogRocks]

Fungus?

[AnalogRocks]

Fungus?

[Satanier]

[AnalogRocks]

It happens. Does your glycol look clear?

[AnalogRocks]

It happens. Does your glycol look clear?

[jarseneau]

If you simply want to put your astig magnets back to where they were, sometimes you can see traces of the old silicone that held them in place and line them back up based on that. Otherwise, to give yourself an education in how to do astig, go to the FAQ, etc part of this website and checkout the 'Advanced Procedures' for an explanation of the Astig adjustment. Then do the following steps:

Be aware that the 2/4/6 poles are such that the 2 pole pair is nearest the neckboard, the 4-pole is in the middle, the 6 pole is nearest the CRT front. The way the magnets work is such that the STRENGTH of the adjustment is affected by the displacement between the pair of tabs while the DIRECTION is affected by rotating the pair (keeping TAB displacement constant) around the neck. You should start out with the STRENGTH nulled by overlapping the tabs. Since each ring has tabs 180 degrees apart, you could have the tabs aligned in the non-null position. If you see astig change as you rotate the pair around the neck with the tabs aligned, leave one tab in place and rotate the other tab 180 degrees.


• Adjust Contrast to at least 75
  
• Display the DOT-FINE pattern
  
• Adjust the FOCUS pot to end of rotation so that the dots appear expanded with a brighter core. This is called Under-focused.
  
• Direct your attention to the screen center dots only.
  
• Use the 2-pole magnets to center the bright core in the dot.
  
• Turn the focus pot to the opposite end of rotation for the 4-pole adjustment.
  
• Use the 4-pole magnets to make the outer blob circular.
  
• Since the 2 adjustments interact, iterate between the two until both are satisfied.
  
• Use the 6-pole magnets to eliminate triangular distortion of the outer blob shape.
  
• Now rotate the focus pot through its range. The dots should not move as they grow and shrink. If they do, retry the astig adjustments.
  
• As the final step, adjust the focus pot for best focus.
  
  
• Use the menu electronic astig adjustments to correct astig in L/R T/B and corner locations by adjusting dot shapes as round as possible. The HV adjustment stretches the shape horizontally and vertically. The SK adjustment corrects diagonal shape distortion.

[Satanier]

When messing with the magnets, I tried both displacing and rotating different pairs, pretty much at random, and nothing would even seem to change the upper left///left side///right side of the green tube. before I try again I want to be sure there isnt something else, the green is abnormally bad I think, it really seems like something else is wrong.

[Satanier]

[kschmit2]

You do have glycol. It's between the phosphor glass (the actual bell of the tube) and the front glass of the tube. An integrated liquid cooling chamber.