Some screens from LOTR from my BenQ 7700

[spikerules]

Hi guy's!


I thought I might as well show off my new PJ with some screen caps, but I didn't take into consideration that I lent my still camera to someone a while back and haven't got it back yet



To cut a long story short I decided to use my XL-1 camcorder and thus made the following pics for you all.


Arg! Who let one go!


I wish I could fly!


Let battle commence!


Which way to Coronation steet?


Can't be bothered to think of anything anymore...


Still cant be bothered....

These were taken after Gary used his genius to set-up a perfect picture for me (thanks Gary Lightfoot!) and I think he'd be happy to know that I've deiced to keep Sharpness set to 0

Anyways I hope you guys like these images, but please bare in mind that they were taken with an XL-1 camcorder, and therefore I think what you're seeing in these pictures are 2 fields of a still frame. I think I'll try single fields next time so we can't see the field structure in the pics

[spikerules]

Here's a single field version of the last pic



Half the vertical detail, but gets rid of those annoying visible lines in the original

[Gary Lightfoot]

If we'd had time, I'd have adjusted the colours to D65 for even further improvements. For those that are wondering, it looked a lot better in the flesh - the DVDs and Hi Def from the HTPC gave a very impressive image for the money.

Gary.

[nigelbb]

Originally Posted by Gary Lightfoot

For those that are wondering, it looked a lot better in the flesh

I certainly hope so because to be frank the pictures that have been posted look crap.

[Hippo04]

Is it just me but the aspect ratio looks wrong in the pictures?

[Battlestar]

I think you could do well and change the asoect raion from 1:85 to 2:351. The picture looks a little streched and not how it is supposed to be

[spikerules]

Yeah sorry guys, as I said in my original post, these pictures were taken with a camcorder. When I get my still cam back I'll take some half decent ones trust me though... it does look a heck of a lot better in the flesh!

edit - btw the DVD & PJ were set to 2.35... I think you're seeing my wierd angle shooting along with my crappy editing skills

[MacReady]

Originally Posted by spikerules

btw the DVD & PJ were set to 2.35... I think you're seeing my wierd angle shooting along with my crappy editing skills

It is odd as they really do look like they are in the wrong aspect ratio...is the camcorder set to 'squeeze' the image or something?

[inzaman]

Hi Gary, so now you have seen one in the flesh so to speak how did you find it in the performance stakes?

[Gary Lightfoot]

Not too bad to be honest.

Setting the white and black levels correctly gave a contrast ratio of 1800:1, Calibrating to D65 would have reduced that further of course, and the colours were a bit off in places which could be seen in the PLUGE pattern as well. The lack of contrast was noticeable with larger areas of black where shadow detail should exist, but overall the machine is fantastic value for money and can produce a very watchable image given the right souce and set-up. I think a colour correcting filter would allow more contrast to be eaked out and then maybe 2000:1 woud be possible after recalibrating to D65.

The scaler didn't seem too good coming from the DVD player at times with a lot of jaggies on edges etc, but from the HTPC it was as it should be, so it either needs an external scaler or an HTPC for best results. It may have been a set-up issue but I wasn't there long enough to be able to find out what setting options were in the DVD player or pj, and even then I don't know if that would have improved the de-interlacing. Interestingly, the most filmlike image from the DVD player came by using 1080i rather than 720p.

The image wasn't overly noisy like some HD2+ pjs can be, but was very bright on a 5ft wide screen, so we tried a polarising filter I happenned to have handy - it's very similar to an ND filter and it dimmed the image down nicely giving a better image still, so setting for closer to cinema levels of reflectance would be beneficial IMHO.

We did see some panning break up in a DVD menu but not during normal viewing, so we don't know if that was the normal DVD panning issue that some models have or just a peculiarity, but it was an isolated instance during the time I was there.

Gary.

[spikerules]

Here you go

After some exporting option changes in edit software!



I had it set to 4:3 instead of non-square in the options of the edit software I use

I got my 7700 last Monday and I've been trying out the first two LotR movies too. I've got the DVDs of all three movies but I managed to find hi-def versions of the first two. I'm using VLC from the PC, and using the VGA-to-BNC lead that came with the pj. The quality's fantastic, although there's probably still some tweaking I could do, and using DVI to HDMI may improve the quality even further.

[spikerules]

Hi Bugblatter,

Nice to see you're getting a nice pic out of your BenQ and not having the initial problems that I had Just a few questions if thats ok?

1) Where did you get the HD versions of the first two LOTR's?

2) Do you get slight ghosting on VGA?

Thanks
Spike

[Messiah]

The 3 LOTR movies have been posted (in varying formats) to a.b.hdtv in the past. Along with plenty of other material of course I only wish my HD server had more than 3TB

[spikerules]

WOW 3TB!! Thats way too much storage for any one man

I was hoping that a legal way might've been found....