CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Ridebreck]

I recall reading several posts where guys were reporting a big improvement in focus from the HD8's to the HD-144's & HD-145's.

[stefuel]

To this day, the best color reproduction I've seen from a CRT projector was from a pro calibrated PG 9Plus with color filtered lenses. It would not do much more than 720P (not the lenses fault) but to this day, unmatched in color. My 4600HD with red and green c-elements comes close. For some reason I felt the Marquees (same tubes) with red and green c-elements still looked pasty or a bit flat.

[Nashou66]

I agree with Gary, One thing i can say for sure is the factory Bulk head for the HD145,s is better than the adapters. It's just easier to dot he schleimphlug on these factory mounts. You need to use washers to get the lens closer with the mounts as the thickness of the mounting plate on the HD8 mounts are not as thick as these new mounts. The HD145/144's blow away the HD8's unless you have the very first versions that are all aluminum housings, or the ultra rare colored ones. But i did notice one strange thing and am wondering if you Gary noticed this , Usually the larger the screen the worse the focus on most lens's. But IIRC when i set up my very first marquee i had it on a smaller area of my 12' screen(8') and when i went larger it seamed i got better focus. It seams they focus better on larger screens. any one else notice this or could it be I just set it up better on the larger screen?

Now I plan to test the focus ability between the HD144 and HD145's. I think I'll put a clear HD144 on the green of one and keep the HD145 on the other and put up the same pattern and see what each look like. Now that I know how to optimize the Peaking Circuit on these longbows i can get better resolving power.
The one hting about this circuit if I understand TSE correctly is it is optimized for a certain frequency range. So now that I put in my resolution i am going to run the blend at I have to keep just this one out put. I will test others as well to see if there is a "range" that one setting can handle the same. with out readjusting it.

Athanasios

[stefuel]

What was the first Marquee and what lenses did it have?
If it was a 9500LC with straight HD10 lenses I would completely understand it if it was doing something under 100 inch screen. In my opinion the straight 10's work best at 120-140 inch screen.

[Nashou66]

[garyfritz]

Sorry, I don't know anything about different screen sizes. I've only used mine on a 96" diagonal screen.

[Nashou66]

Hi Guys, I played a bit with the calibration and got the One PJ to look good with the whites at the higher levels looking white(on the right PJ)
Now on the left its getting closer but I am still having issues with the grey's in the mids and the whites not looking right. This does have the older AD835 chip i scavenged from another board along with the OCTAL DAC I used since the one was bad. But i dont think those would cause the issue. I also calibrated the adjustable caps in the peaking circuit
to Scotts instructions . It is much better than before but I still need to nail it down. The only thing I can think of is my one Moome internal card's Gamma pot is not working correctly and its affecting the calibration.

Also i noticed this about the MUX-HD i am using as a splitter/HDCP solution, i posted in its appropriate forum as well.

When i put up the first test signal from the BD DVE the one with the 4 blocks of grey and the BTB bar and the other two brighter bars they do not show up at all no matter how High i raise the Brightness control. What's going on here and is that normal? In RGB mode I can get all three bars to be seen, in YCbCr i dont see any of them.

Any explanations?

Also I can not make the 2 bars disappear even with brightness all the way down.

I should try swaping the moome cards and see what happens. If it moves tot he other PJ then it might be the gamma control. I'll have to check the adjusting pot then on that one.

I should take a few pics, geometry is still off and i have banding, more work of course but i want to get the calibration closer first before nail the geometry.

Athanasios

[tse]

The gamma from the two moome cards will have to be exactly the same or it could cause grayscale differences between two projectors. Can you put the gamma adjustment before the signal is split up for the two projectors?

Scott

[Nashou66]

[MikeEby]

[Nashou66]

I had an issue the first time i tried to add the lumie to the C2-2250's. SO i think i will first try to pull off the actual gamma board from the moome card. I think it will still function.

The other thing , the Moome MUX-HD. I always here its best to keep the original Ycrbr signal to the Scaler and then let it do the conversion. So I set the MUX for YUV and set the C2-2250 to accept that, but now the three black bars used in the DVE pluge pattern are gone, not there at all. I don't think that is right, something else is going on. I may pull the MUX out and try the gefen splitter , and try to use the EDID manager that Tv-One developed. I have not loaded it to the unit yet,but it reads the available resolutions from the display and you can choose which one to use for the input from the source.

Athanasios

[KellenerSptM5]

That is something you should get the guys at TVOne working on: both global gamma correction and gamma correction for the blend zone. The better blend processors have that capability built in for CRT projectors.

[Nashou66]

they do have blend zone gamma and they are working on global gamma.

Getting a little closer. The overall calibration of both sets is not exactly the same.
And I am also learning the subtle nuances of adjusting the blend zone size and then the blend zone gamma.
You can also see how my geometry is off on the left PJ (circle all messed up)

The camera shows the differences much more than what I see Live. Its a good tool to see what your naked eye is missing.







I think I will start over from scratch when i have more time. I will make the values on each Tv-One unit the same
then initialize both PJ's and start all over.

I think when messing around so much in the service menus you alter things that dont change as they should later.
a nice fresh memory block will help and I want to not have any banding as that too alters the blend zone.

Athanasios

[Nashou66]

Did the geometry a bit more on the one PJ, it helped in the blend zone. The pics show the blend zone more than in person. Also For some reason I cant get the calman and the Eye one Display 2 to track correctly. This was done by EYE and when i use the Probe its way off now on Both PJ's I think I have a faulty probe or i am an Idiot.
Anyone else who has used Calman what setting have you used, I am doing it under the intermediate options, it gives you more control I should just try basic.

Well here are some pics from Prince Caspian.





Blend Zone visible here







This is fun and frustrating at the same time.

I wish I knew why my use of the probe is soooo far off. If i read these settings they have blue way up in the
160% range. for all IRE's. I have now Idea whats going on but here you can see it looks fairly ok doing it by eye.

Athanasios

[schmoe]

[Nashou66]

I think it is fine in the way it flows , but for some reason I think the probe is bad. I did one PJ a few nights ago and it came out fine, seamed where it should be. then last night the same PJ showed different readings, and not slight changes visually. Something is amiss. Has anyone ever had a Probe show intermittent problems?

I should try it on my Rear PJ Mitsu that was calibrated by Craig Rounds. Run it through a grey scale reading and see what it shows. if it says this TV is pushing Blue then I know it is the Probe.

Athanasios

[cmjohnson]

The only thing I want to contribute at this point is that you'll eventually be turning your attention to the geometry adjustments, particularly the linearity adjustments.

For optimal linearity adjustments, since few test pattern generators include them, you will probably want to draw up some simple
patterns which consist of full-screen diagonal lines and a full-screen X.

Diagonal lines and X'es are the best tool for evaluating linearity as any deviation from ideal linearity and geometry will result in lines that
bend. If they are viewed from very close to the screen, sighting down the lines, you REALLY seen any variances.

If you put up a full screen diagonal crosshatch pattern and every line is dead straight, your geometry and linearity settings are perfect.

This is the "magic trick" to ensuring that objects moving across the screen appear to move perfectly, smoothly, and without strange
changes in shape or speed.

From what I've seen so far, MOST setups are not even close to ideally set up in this regard. The regular suite of test patterns doesn't
lend itself to that sort of adjustment and it's not covered in most guides.



CJ

[Nashou66]

Thanks Chris. I did use the Align software program from Tim's site. it helped out a lot.
I need to add circles tot he pattern to help in that regard.

Now back to the Eye one Display 2 probe, I don't think it is the probe as it tracked my
CRT RPTV very well, and By visual confirmation i agree with the probes reading as far
as my eye's can tell. It was nothing like the large and obvious variances on my theater PJ's.
So It must be me and how I have the probe set up. I am wondering if I have the probe too
close tot he screen and it might be seeing one of the colored shadows or the over spray
from the shadow on the screen. I think had the probe about 5-6 inches away. I will move
the probe back to about 12 inches and this way the angle will also be reduced. It may be
the angle also. Remembering back though with my old probe and HCFR I had the probe
much closer. Although it was doing the PJ ceiling mounted and the probe was angled upward
and dead center, to get the proper reflective angle to the lens's, since these are floor
mounted I can not repeat the same method unless I some how hang the probe from the
ceiling to get it dead center, I now have it off to one side, this may bias one of the colors
more depending on which side I set the probe to. it is a 1.2 gain screen as well if that
makes any difference.

I should post this on the AV calibration forum.

Athanasios

[Nashou66]

All right, I am getting very very very very Frustrated here with calibrating this thing!! I did not have this much trouble with my 8500 i used to test my mods on with the other Eye One probe I sold. This new probe has to be faulty or I am a complete IDIOT!!

I thought the probe might not like being off to one side, so I fabricated an extension to move the tripod totally out from the 10% Window and put the probe in the center and allow it to angle down a bit to catch the reflective angle of the light path from the CRT's. Got the highest initial reading using the Calman program i have ever had. So i am thinking cool this must be it! I know from the eye calibration that my whites where a but blue. So I did the 30% and 80% windows and once aging everything very has a yellowish tint!!!! I always try adjusting just the red and blue after I set the internal green darkest bars
to the Etech instructions for greyscale, 90 drive and G2 to 60, also i go and reset all other colors to per Tim"s instructions.
Nothing same thing. greenish tint to the high end and brownish/greenish on the low end, only raising blue G2 and or Drive helps thing's out but then shows an off scale Blue bar and line graph WTF!!!!!!!!!!!

I added the nut to the probe as well so not sure if Spectral will replace it.

Now looking back on the CRT RPTV i found Craigs printouts and compared and mine shows the blue higher above the 100% line and Craigs was bit lower for an overall difference of about 10-13% in the middle and more variation closer to the ends.

Any one else here using Calman for a floor mounted CRT? What are you using for the setting parameters, and how do you have your probe aimed?

Athanasios

[MikeEby]

Athanasios,

Are your Ultras color filtered? If not could that be an issue with getting the grayscale correct?

Mike