CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Yes CTRL and Normal together will clear it.

The only problems from too much point is that it will run abit warmer and be less stable, ive never ever seen it cause banding, not to say it wont, but ive certainly never seen it.

It does nothing at all to the signal sent to the tubes, its what is sent to the magnetics on the tube necks that it affects.

You should NEVER need to use POINT in the middle.

Converging with POINT disabled is pointless, leave it on, and null all the POINT settings. Otherwise, when you do turn it back on, it will revert to where it all was last time.

Gjaky, where you do or dont need to use POINT depends alot on what surface youre projecting onto and how flat it is. If its onto a wall made of plasterboard, its not going to be perfectly flat, and you will likely need POINT to get it perfect.

Fuchs, what i think you should do is zero everything, press adjust on the the remote then press CTRL and Normal together on the ALIGNMENT heading, and same again on the CONVERGENCE setting. This way, youre starting from full on zero.

First thing is to make sure your rasters are all centered on your tubes, then go and set the phase, this has to be done to get the cross in the middle and the edges straight. Do all this with your source connected and running.

Then i would go into alignment and do the keystone, followed by the amplitude while you look at the green image ( blue and red off ) til the image is about the right size on the tube face ( or til its perfectly in the exsisting wear pattern, whatever is first.... ). If its too big on your wall, move it closer, too small, move it back. The image should be dead center of the tube face.

Go through and do all the ALIGNMENT and get it as perfect as you can, then check again that the image is spot on center of the tube face. Now that youve done that, you want to display CROSS COARSE and use the green point to correct any lines that are not perfect or very close to it. It should only be outer areas unless you have a bump in the wall.

Then once youve got the green looking good, go back to cross hair and set the tilt/skew and bow for both red and green, followed by linearity and amplitude, then keystone and pin-cusion, also using the key balance and pin balance settings, and it should be so damn close to perfect you should only need very small POINT adjustments.

Before you do any of this you should have allready done the astig rings, and focus each lens starting with the center and then the outer, recheck the center, then recheck the outer. Adjusting any of that will affect the convergence to the point that it needs to be redone.

[fuchs]

Okay, well as I'm still busy ( ) waiting for my screen to dry ...
i thought some more about NVidia interlacing.
So here's a Windows-related post today.

Powerstrip didn't really do the job, as for some reason my height is doubled in overlay.
Besides, it doesn't start until I'm logged on to my home network.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Brilliant work There is lots of people that will be happy to read that!! Which version of the driver are you using??

I use 285.62 on mine here at the moment, was having issues with blurays on 296.10 which i cured or seem to have cured, however i reverted because i lost 1080i @60Hz from the list and instead of dicking around with it, it was easier to just revert to 285.62 and its done, just like that.

[fuchs]

I have it working on versions 197.x and 280.x
That's both the workhorse and the HTPC, both have a GF6200.

While we're talking about sync, is there a "best" or "industry standard" ?
My PG doesn't seem to mind if I'm feeding it negative or positive syncs.
I'd say the MultiSync name has something to do with it.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Dont think it matters when youre using a projector that can take both, some projectors only take it one way though.

[fuchs]

My screen is finished

I started out by cutting out the wallpaper and making the surface flat with diluted wall hole filler paste.

Then I painted that, with multiple layers of pure white concrete paint that was on sale.
It covered the wall okay, but it was too reflective.
I couldn't try to sand it either, as it has a 'rubbery' surface.

Then I got an idea: I mixed the wallfiller with the concrete paint in 2:3 ratio, and lots of water.
So now I have a pretty bright area that doesn't reflect, sanded with a fine grain.
It's about 65" diagonal and it's good enough for me.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Only 65 inch?? Do the lenses focus perfectly at that? How much tube face are you using?? Make sure youre using enough, cause they will wear faster if you go too small.

Being that you have the screen up so high, is there any chance you can get the projector up about the screen center height? Would it be possible to hang it?

[fuchs]

Yes, you are right. 65" isn't very large, but I'm restricted because I can't really move the PJ further back without hanging it.
At this point, I'm not comfortable with the idea of sitting right under a PJ. I know it can be done and I'm sure that a proper installation can handle 10 times the weight, but I'm not yet ready for it

Here's some pictures of tube usage and lens settings. Do you think it's about right ?
As far a tube face usage goes, I've understood that the 9PG is not designed to use the full tube face.

[fuchs]

Now something else: How should I set "PHASE" ?
The menu entry isn't listed or described in the service manual at all, so I think I've got a service manual from an early model that did not (yet) feature digital Phase adjustment.

Should I set H-Phase to something that "looks good"? Or should I set it to have e.g. the straightest crosshatch?
And should I set the V-Phase to 'hit' the blip? or get it as far out as possible?

I couldn't (yet) find a post on the forum that discusses this, maybe because it probably appeared in later versions of the Service Manual anyway

[gjaky]

Your tube usage seems just about right to me.

The two adjustments in the phase menu affects the test generator, and the whole convergence system for your input signal.
You should set tilt to as straight as you can, and with cursor set the cross hatch to the center of your screen

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Yes the tube usage is good, you dont want to go any bigger than that.

And yes again on the PHASE description above.

Set the BOW and TILT/SKEW first, then go to PHASE, get that cross hair as close to the dead center of your screen as you can. The little hump is the center of the convergence system in relation to the displayed test pattern, so you want that hump to be as close to the center of the screen as you can. When you adjust POINT, youll notice that the distance from the dead center of the cross hair to the center of the hump is the same amount as the POINT box will be from the actual point of adjustment. Its not a big deal, and youll quite likely figure that out pretty quickly, and youll know what i am talking about.

The other setting is the one that you set using cross coarse, and just get the line distortion out of the test pattern as best you can. On the later NECs there is a setting for line distortion separately, but on your PG Plain it is done in the PHASE menu. The way i do it is i set the phase til both sides are pretty much distortion free, then i exit that menu and look again with cross hair to see that the line is as flat as it can be. Again youll figure it all out.

When i have PHASE set, what i have done in the past on the PG Plain is put BOW and TILT/SKEW back to 0 again, then i get the green cross hair perfect as possible mechanically, then i start on electronic alignment.

Make sure the green cross hair is in the dead center of the tube face when it is on the dead center of your screen, and that your projector is dead square to the screen. If not, doesnt matter that you have the rasters perfectly centered, cause its the image that MUST be.

When you set the mechanical tube swing for red and blue, you MUST be sure you put the image back into the center of those 2 tubes after convergence, youll see exactly what i mean if you watch the red or blue tube and adjust the LINEARITY on either one. You will see that on red and blue, the center of the image is NOT the center of the tube face, and this is cause these 2 tubes shoot on an angle, so the picture doesnt have perfect linearity on them. Another thing youll figure out along the way

Be sure STATIC is set to zero on all 3 tubes!!

[fuchs]

I set everything quite okay now
I'm very pleased with the picture.

Now tonight, after about 10 minutes of power-on, I heard a (most likely high-voltage) pop.
The image wasn't influenced, but I jumped forward and shut down the projector anyway.
I guess it's a leaky HV lead or something. We're having some very humid and warm weather right now.

Oh well... there goes my movie night. I guess I'll have to seal or replace the leads.
I've already seen quite a few topics discussing it.

[gjaky]

The NEC projectors are famous for their rock solid high voltage section, however there could be a problem. I would suggest to clean the high voltage hardwares with an alcoholic towel. Some time ago I pulled out the tubes from my pg xtra, since I put them back I got some intermittent HV leak, but since I reconnected the cables at the splitter -again- I haven't heard the spark yet.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Ive never had an issue or even heard of an issue with an NEC having an arcing problem!!

[fuchs]

oh. thanks! I'll see where I can get cleaning alcohol.
The lid was closed when it happened, so I've started taking the wires out at the splitter side.
In the process of hanging them 'elsewhere', i've touched the CPC magnets (I think they are CPC) on the blue tube.
They are so loose that a mere touch will rotate them. Oh well, I'll have something to do when I get the PJ to power on without sparks.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

The blue astig isnt hard to get right, its the green i had touble with!! Its hard to move the rings round the neck with all the sh*t they have near them.

[fuchs]

indeed it wasn't. I can see why the other tubes are harder to adjust.
I cleaned the cables yesterday and ...... no explosions so far !
I've also put a few folded pieces of cardboard between the HV leads and the gounded metal parts, where they come out of the splitter and have to bend to get to the tubes. Maybe that extra millimeter of distance helps a little...
many thanks again, the NEC lives to project another day

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Id probably not use cardboard... Its quite combustable... Maybe use plastic if you like...

[fuchs]

Good thinking. The fire hazard didn't even cross my mind.

I'm glad you're here

[CasetheCorvetteman]

So am i!! Id hate to see a thread here later in the week saying "My NEC caught on fire!!"