[Ewan154]

How longs the warrenty on the Epson 3200?

[kbfern]

3yrs if purchased from a UK authorised retailer.

[Ewan154]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I purchased it from Tesco's

[funster4d]

hi can any one help me with advice on blue ray surround sound system i can get works well with 3200 epson and work good with this system that can give me some great sounds for the £350 mark

also has any one got any advice on best way play my films through this blue ray player of a storage device thanks.

[woppy101]

I know this is the 3200 thread I have the 2900 that has developed a dark line down the centre of thr screen it's only visible when the camera pans ie football but is is quite off putting,I have lens shifted the projector so I know it's not the screen.does any one know what this could be?I have had the projector a month and it only over the last week I hav noticed it.
Many thanks for any help

[upsetter]

Will the 3200 / 3600 cope with a 9m throw? What size is the max and minimum image size? I've attempted to use a couple of calculators but can't be sure from their results

Many thanks

[kbfern]

Well with an 8.5mtr throw (allowing for the length of pj) from lens to screen face you will have a minimum screen diagonal of 136". You will need a screen with some gain to get a bright enough image unless your room is a total batcave as you will only be getting 7 ft lamberts.

Max image size would be 287" diagonal but would be almost no image displayed as it would be that dim.

You really will need a screen gain of 2.0 min to get an acceptable image with these dimensions.You need to bring the throw down to 5-6mtrs really.

Epson Europe EH-TW3200 Projection Calculator - Throw Distance and Screen Size

If your room has light walls and daytime viewing even with curtains/ blinds closed the image will be quite dim.

[Vol666]

Epson Europe Projectors: Epson Europe EH-TW3200 3 LCD projector

Special: Anamorphic Ready
RS232 Port
Status: Shipping
First Ship: Sep 2010

what means Anamorphic ready? I did not see any option to switch 16:9 to 2:35.1 screen.

[Tastyzulu]

I hit 2000 hours a couple of days ago then my bulb went. I called Epson yesterday afternoon and the guy arrived at 9am this morning to replace it. Great service.

[phil5366]

Originally Posted by Tastyzulu

I hit 2000 hours a couple of days ago then my bulb went. I called Epson yesterday afternoon and the guy arrived at 9am this morning to replace it. Great service.

Great service, thats why I have always bought Epson Projectors. 2 Years ago my TW700 went on the blink, I called Epson within two days I had a brand new Projector with the warranty transfered to the new unit. Brilliant aftersales!

On another note, Just before Xmas I upgraded to the Epson EH TW4400 the big brother to the 3200. What can I say, wow!!

I had it Pro Calibrated from Canary Jules off these forums. The difference is night and day, picture much sharper, detail & colours miles better.

Really pleased with the upgrade, after calibration the picture is better than the Plasma TV's in our house.

Phil.

[Tastyzulu]

Hi Phil,

Did you own a TW3200 before buying the TW4400? If so is it a huge difference in PQ?

[phil5366]

Originally Posted by Tastyzulu

Hi Phil,

Did you own a TW3200 before buying the TW4400? If so is it a huge difference in PQ?

No I did not own one, but I had a demo and also a mate of mine owns one.
When we compared last week, my calibrated image left his 3200 standing. I have always been a great admirer of The Epson 3200 especially the price of them.

I got my EH TW 4400 for just under £1500.00 I had been following the costs of them for over a year.

Phil.

[wolvers]

Is your mate's 3200 calibrated? How much did the calibration cost you?

[phil5366]

Originally Posted by wolvers

Is your mate's 3200 calibrated? How much did the calibration cost you?

No his was'nt pro calibrated, but, he had done a DIY attempt.

The cost of calibration can be found here:
www.displaycalibration.co.uk

Well worth the money when you consider we pay thousands for our kit and quite often put up with out of the box settings, etc.

Phil

[wolvers]

At that price it's a HUGE luxury IMO.

[Canary_Jules]

Originally Posted by wolvers

At that price it's a HUGE luxury IMO.

Hi. I certainly wouldn't call calibration a luxury. Actually, it's an essential item. The fact is that you can't buy a TV/Projector and just plug it in and have an accurate picture. This is especially so with projectors where room conditions have a huge effect on the picture. It's a real shame that so many guys with great projectors aren't getting any where near their money's worth out of their significant investment.

[phil5366]

Originally Posted by wolvers

At that price it's a HUGE luxury IMO.

Sorry can't agree...

Like I said, you spend thousands on your kit, to me ita a must especially when you see the difference!

Canary Jules travelled from the Midlands and it was all inclusive. Other prices I was quoted was betweem £325.00 - £400.00.

In fact I am so happy with the Calibration, I will be getting my other Plasma's Calibrated.

Best bit of coin I have spent.

[wolvers]

Originally Posted by Canary_Jules

Hi. I certainly wouldn't call calibration a luxury. Actually, it's an essential item. The fact is that you can't buy a TV/Projector and just plug it in and have an accurate picture. This is especially so with projectors where room conditions have a huge effect on the picture. It's a real shame that so many guys with great projectors aren't getting any where near their money's worth out of their significant investment.

You would say that, it's your business!

The best reviews will show out of the box calibration, so that can help a lot with projector choice if it's a concern. Spending time setting it up myself with test patterns, and even going to the point of buying DIY calibration kit is about as far as I would be willing to go in the living room environment and way more than most people would anyway. You would, as a professional opinion, disagree but over £200 is a lot of money to calibrate a £1000 projector and a definite luxury I'm afraid.

[Canary_Jules]

Originally Posted by wolvers

You would say that, it's your business!

The best reviews will show out of the box calibration, so that can help a lot with projector choice if it's a concern. Spending time setting it up myself with test patterns, and even going to the point of buying DIY calibration kit is about as far as I would be willing to go in the living room environment and way more than most people would anyway. You would, as a professional opinion, disagree but over £200 is a lot of money to calibrate a £1000 projector and a definite luxury I'm afraid.

Yes, but reviews showing out of the box calibration can be of limited usefulness to you if your room is set up differently - which it most likely is. Front projectors are hugely affected by room conditions. Also, no projector is that accurate out of the box. Practically speaking, the closest you can really get to reference in a projector is a THX preset mode, but while good for an OOTB mode it is still some way off reference - especially if your room isn't a perfect black hole like the THX test facility. The fact is that even a £1000 projector - especially ones like the Epsons which actually possess a full suit of calibration controls - can benefit massively from a calibration. Of course the judgement as to whether it's worth £225 on calibrating a £1000 projector is a value judgement. As such £225 represents a higher proportion of the purchase price of a TW3200/3600 than a TW4400. It may be easier for a TW4400 owner to justify on this basis than a TW3200/3600 owner. But the performance increase is still the same. What's interesting here is that I get a lot of bookings from forum members who own Samsung D6900 and Panasonic GT30 TVs which are priced around £1000. Maybe there's a different thought process going on with plasma as opposed to projector owners around that price band. At the very least I heartilty recommend that projector owners buy a test disc like DVE or Spears and Munsil and run through some of the basic tests like setting brightness and contrast, color and tint. But that is merely scraping the surface in terms of optimising the projector's performance. Buying some software and a meter is the next step up - and it's how I began to learn about calibration with my own many projectors over the years. You can make some good improvements this way. But pros have gear that is considerably more accurate (and expensive) than a DIYer is likely to want to spend, plus the training and experience to do a top notch job. Can't tell you how many tears of frustration I shed in the early years of my learning how to calibrate from threads on forums like this! You can learn an awful lot from forums but not all of it is good/helpful information In any case the cost of a reasonable meter and software and test disc will probably get you near the cost of a pro calibration any way. Yes, you can 'calibrate' as and when you want with DIY gear, but it won't be as accurate. Also, the £225 price is only for a full initial calibration. Once a calibrator has performed that full initial calibration he will do a retune at a future date for almost half the price - plus provide technical support in the meantime. So, you see, in the end the cost of a pro calibration is a value proposition.

[Steve Withers]

In our reviews we measure both the out-of-the-box performance and the calibrated performance and I can honestly say that I have never seen a display that didn't benefit from a proper calibration, assuming of course it has the necessary controls. Interestingly, although the Epson projectors are at the lower end of the price scale, then do come with a fairly comprehensive set of calibration controls.

[wolvers]

I've owned projectors for long enough to know the ins, outs, whys and hows so I'm not questioning the benefits of calibration (or the quality of the work carried out) at all but it has to be quantified, and I'm afraid at those prices it's not something I consider to be value for money.

It may be within the means of those with lots of disposable income, but not for most and that's why I feel it's a luxury to have your display professionally calibrated.

Also, I totally get the argument about the Epson's having a comprehensive range of controls that lend itself well to the professional touch and that's why I've spent a fair amount of time into researching this. I'd like to, but not at that price.

[Canary_Jules]

We're obviously getting OT, so apologies for that, but what price might you consider as VFM?

[wolvers]

It's not totally OT. This is a projector forum and there's a good chance that there are 3200/3600 owners here considering this subject.

How long does it take to do a full calibration?

What happens if I simply don't like the image produced? Just because some test equipment says what is right, surely that doesn't mean it will look right to every set of eyes?

[Canary_Jules]

Many of my calibrations take around 8 hours or more. For example, I know that I arrived at Phil's house early in the morning but it wasn't until early evening that I left. Perhaps I'm just slow, or pedantic. Personally speaking I really want to get things as good as possible. I know that when you get errors under a DE of 3 our eyes can't really see any error but I still spend quite some time tweaking to get them as low as possible. A calibrator has more to do nowadays as a result of the need to calibrate for 3D as well. So that's often an additional calibration that's required and 3D can be a real pain . Afterwards there's the whole reporting side of things to think about as well. The calibration reports have to be printed from Chromapure and calibration settings reports written up along with a THX certificate. Also, in my case and other THX guys, the calibration reports have to be uploaded to the THX professional extranet (with all the settings being manually inputted) for approval. It all then has to be posted to the client. All of this adds about an extra hour in total. I should also add that the £225 includes a nice THX plaque too.

I'm sure you're aware that we calibrate to a set of industry standards to which the whole movie production process adheres. The purpose of calibrating to those industry standards is to ensure that this production chain doesn't fall down flat when it reaches your home, i.e. that the Navi which James Cameron must have spent millions developing are the precise shade of blue. The purpose is that the end user gets to see exactly what the director intended thus preserving artistic integrity. Folks have the definite right not to want to see this of course - if people prefer the Navi to be a different shade of blue that's their prerogative and calibration probably isn't for them. But I do hope that as enthusiasts we all want to see our movies as the director intended. I guess though, as you say, whether someone considers this service worth it in relation to the purchase price of their equipment is in the eye of the beholder and the cash that's left in their wallet.

[wolvers]

8 hours?! Fair enough, that explains the price.

I wonder though how necessary that is, if it wasn't for the need to satisfy the THX requirements? I'm also wondering if the reviewers that include calibrated results in their reviews spend 8 hours on it to THX specs.

Have you ever considered a service that isn't to THX specs, maybe something that takes much less time and doesn't look for errors as low as those you've mentioned? Maybe you'd find a new market open up for you.

I am someone that is keen to see a movie the way the director intended but there are always limitations that restrict how far one is willing/able to go.............SWMBO for example!

[funster4d]

can some one send link to page that has calibration settings that i can use, i am using out of the box set up i just want help on improving the standard setting thanks

[Steve Withers]

Wolvers, regardless of whether it's THX or ISF there is only one set of industry standards - Rec.709 for the colour gamut and D65 for white. As Jules has mentioned, all HDTV, PAL TV and DVDs and Blu-rays are mastered using these standards and that is what a calibrator is trying to get the display to replicate. If your display is not calibrated to those standards then you are not seeing what the content creators intended you to see, end of story.

I can't speak for other media outlets but here at AVForums all our reviewers are THX and ISF certified and I can tell you from experience, we will spend hours calibrating displays during the review process. Whilst there is a point a which the level of accuracy becomes difficult for the human eye to perceive - generally a DeltaE (error) measurement of less than 3 - we do try and get the errors as low as possible in reviews just to show the level of accuracy that a display is capable of.

A Jules has also pointed out, when performing a professional calibration the calibrator is usually creating Day and Night modes for 2D, an accurate 3D mode, doing this for each input and checking the entire video chain to ensure the whole system is performing optimally. Of course, I agree that depending on the original cost of your display it might seem like an extravagance but personally I think there is a comfort in knowing that your system is performing to the best of its ability and delivering an accurate and enjoyable image.

[Canary_Jules]

Originally Posted by wolvers

8 hours?! Fair enough, that explains the price.

I wonder though how necessary that is, if it wasn't for the need to satisfy the THX requirements? I'm also wondering if the reviewers that include calibrated results in their reviews spend 8 hours on it to THX specs.

Have you ever considered a service that isn't to THX specs, maybe something that takes much less time and doesn't look for errors as low as those you've mentioned? Maybe you'd find a new market open up for you.

I am someone that is keen to see a movie the way the director intended but there are always limitations that restrict how far one is willing/able to go.............SWMBO for example!

I understand SWMBO! I bought a pair of THX Ultra 2 dipoles off Ebay the other day and fixed them up. They're really big things so I was sure she'd notice, but I think I got away with it! I was having kittens for a while though. Of course, I hope she never reads this! So yes, I understand, everyone is working to a budget and other constraints.

Not everyone has a couple of hundred just lying around, so from that perspective it's not cheap, but I do think it's an essential, worthwhile investment and should be factored in over the long term when building a home cinema set up.

Steve will have to confirm this but I don't think the reviewers calibrate anything other than a night mode on the TVs that they review. When doing a TV calibration I perform a day mode, night mode and 3D mode calibration in 8 hours. For projectors I will often calibrate a mode with low and high lamp power settings depending on the life and brightness of the bulb, or a mode with a different gamma, e.g 2.2/2.4, just to give the client some options when there's ambient light around. I could cut down the time of a calibration considerably just by calibrating, but the THX programme also requires me to spend much of the time educating the client. This way the client not only gets his TV/projector calibrated but he also comes away with a pretty good knowledge of how to and why we calibrate to certain standards. Actually, I enjoy this part the most.

The cost of a calibration not only reflects the time spent with a client actually calibrating, but the investment in training (THX courses are +$2000), equipment (runs to several thousand), and other regular operating costs like petrol, commission and advertising. All of this has to be factored into the business model. The costs are comparable for ISF guys as well. While it's possible to do one off promotions (I did a £199 from Sept-Oct) I don't think that's sustainable in the long term unless, perhaps, the volume of trade goes up.

[phil5366]

8 Hours!...

And the rest,

Travel, fuel, etc.

Also, add in half of the original owners of AV forums who Jules had to call on during the day due to the Greyscale being inpossible to set correctly.
Not having time to even eat lunch. During the whole day Julian had one cup of coffee and then one glass of filtered water.
Travelling back in darkness to the Midlands in bad weather, etc.

Now that is what I call VFM.

Phil.

ps I nearly forgot, that nice THX plaque that I have glued to my front door.

[phil5366]

Wolvers,

Value for money & SWMBO...

My Mrs also thinks it is great value for money! especially when Jules drove all the way from the Midlands for £25.00

Phil.