Can anyone put my mind at rest, or is the following a sign of impending trouble...

New AE700 received on Friday, used throughout Saturday evening and yesterday with no cause for concern... 13 hours on the lamp when I went to bed last night.

Used it for 2 hours tonight after work and noticed two things that hadn't come to my attention before:

1. the image flickering, not rapidly but like a blink once every few seconds even on a black screen.

2. The unmistakable smell of electronic equipment in trouble. Now with this one I really thought I was imagining it, until I left the room and came back and then there was no denying it. The only time I've smelt a similar aroma was when a stepdown converter failed on me and a Japanese PS2 blew up. This is not as overwhelming but it's the same smell, and it is definitely emanating from the exhaust port on the front of the AE700.

Yikes, 55 views and no replies? I must be doomed!

i had the windows open to clear the smell and help it cool down.. it's been on for another hour since and whatever it was, it's stopped now.

I'm struggling to think what it may have been, I'd be surprised if it was something harmless! Still I suppose I'd rather the thing explode when I've just bought it rather than a year later

[Oakleyspatz]

The flickering could be down to the input used. What is connected and by what means? I'm sure the smell was down to the fact that it is new and the lubrication/coating within has just been burnt off by the heat. So long as it doesn't return, I'd not worry about the smell!

You should be able to sort any mild flickering with the flicker adjustment. How's your unit for VB?

Hi james, I had already checked the flicker adjustment and every colour was solid.. bar the green which I could only get down to a very mild flicker. Also what I noticed while using it was a lot less rapid than anything I witnessed in this adjustment screen.

At first - no VB, since then it crept in and promptly got tweaked out. As of last night there was none whatsoever, and I switched it off at the mains. Will be interesting to check it tonight.

The only thing I have is the 525p problem with a PAL xbox.

I do actually wonder if fatbob1080 returned his unit and I got it, as I have all the same 'idiosyncrasies' as he did, lol. And mine was shipped before the new batch arrived in the UK.

[fhSpacey]

I got that smell for a while, just smelled like hot electronics
anyway its gone now and hasnt returned!

What puzzled me is that it didn't give off any smells at all for the first 13 hours, and then at 15 hours smelt like it was melting! Panic over for now, anyway!

Actually, mine gave off a funny smell for half an hour or so at the weekend - at around about 20 hours.

Darwock, you say you 'tweaked away' your VB. Could you provide further details?

[berserkgoose]

Check this thread out

Panasonic pt-ae500 brightness flicker

I hope this ain't the "flickering" you're seeing! If so this could be a problem with the AE700 also?

I'll need to check again tonight but I didn't perceive any more flickering after the strange aroma had gone away either??

As to my tweaks.. well I changed little bits all over the place. First was flicker adjust, then the gamma levels in the advanced picture menu.. I believe I changed some of the individual R,G,B contrast settings as well. No method to my approach I'm afraid.

[Nikumba]

Ive done the flicker tweak but only on a blue screen, how do i do it on the others?

Nikumba

Press up and down to scroll through them.

Press the other arrow buttons to move between Blue, Red and Green.

Heh-heh, help in stereo.

How is yours doing lately James? You were pretty ****** off with it at the weekend.

I've sort of slided towards a melancholic unhappiness...

The PJ is still affected by VB and no amount of 'tweaking' seems to have any impact whatsoever.

What sort of adjustments have you made, Darwock? What picture mode are you using and what adjustment levels have you applied to gamma, contrast, etc.?

[Nikumba]

Cheers for that, ill try that tonight

Picture mode is either natural or normal, can't remember which. If I remember tonight I'll go through my settings one by one. I should point out it is not completely eliminated on mine - can't see anything at all on a still frame but when the picture moves sideways it can be identified very faintly, rather like having a dusty TV screen I suppose. It's extremely fussy to dwell on it at that level though, but one could argue at these prices... it's our right to be fussy!

I'm interested to see if any of the new batch reveal VB once some hours are on the clock, as that seems to be the norm. If not, could the long delay in shipments indicate Panasonic rectified a problem with the early models? And, would you feel aggrieved enough to return it for a replacement?

It may be a case of better the devil you know.

Ah-ha! That dusty screen effect you refer to perfectly describes the level of VB on my projector. This leads me back to the conclusion I made in another thread that much of what we call 'tweaking' is somewhat self-delusional - chasing phantoms.

I purposely avoided tweaking during my projector's worst cases of VB (between ten and thirty hours) and now it has settled down to this dusty screen mode. I suspect that if I had began tinkering with settings I may have then leaped to the conclusion that I had 'tweaked' the VB away - when in fact I did nothing of the sort.

I now further suspect that this 'dusty screen' state is exactly how the machine performed out of the box. It's just that now, of course, I know what I am looking for. I have become a hypercritical VB obsessive peering into the edges of my screen for signs of VB rather than watching awestruck and amazed, as I had done those first days, by the clarity and colour of the huge image being projected onto the screen.

Perhaps, with this new pragmatic frame of mind, I will go home tonight and try to enjoy a film show.

I'll let you know....

[Aquila]

That "dusty screen" effect might just be fixed panel noise. I just received mine today and the picture is great!! No VB at all!
I do notice a bit of fixed panel noise when I'm really looking for it.
I expect that some VB might show up after about 10 hours or so, but I sure hope not! Maybe I got one from the new batch... I'll keep you posted.

Well, I tried to be positive but that mental attitude soon dissolved into disappointment with last night's movie.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a very dark and contrasty film which I probably subconsciously picked in the hope of minimising VB. It didn't. VB was clearly visible as horizontal bands of alternating tone.

I don't think that this is fixed panel noise. This is clear horizontal banding and, despite yesterdays ruminations on the nature of perception, I am pretty sure that the PJ never looked like this at first. I am (incredibly) fussy over things like this and, forearmed with information from the forums, I did spend the first couple of hours with my PJ looking for VB. I found none and yet noticed it immediately when it appeared a couple of days later.

Bugger!

Well, rather than be unhappy with your projector....why not sell it...take a little loss and pick up something else....a Z3? An HS50? You might be much happier in the long run. Also, unless the person buying your projector is a videophile then they will probably not notice.

[thfccambs]

Originally Posted by Tup

Well, rather than be unhappy with your projector....why not sell it...take a little loss and pick up something else.....

Or send it back to the retailer that you brought it from?See what they have to say about it?

[joffonon]

Originally Posted by jamesgrahamuk

VB was clearly visible as horizontal bands of alternating tone....This is clear horizontal banding

Surely vertical banding can't be horizontal?

Oops! Vertical, obviously. I was having one of those days...

Originally Posted by Tup

Well, rather than be unhappy with your projector....why not sell it...take a little loss and pick up something else....a Z3? An HS50?

Well, I'm not prepared to take a loss on £1300 for a brand new PJ which is barely two weeks old!

The Z3 - I'm definitely beginning to regret not going for that one. I had ruled out the Sony at an early stage. Not only does the HS50 cost considerably more but (and this is purely a matter of personal preference) I've never really been impressed by the Sony PJ's. Much like their TV sets they seem to render colour in a very false manner and produce strangely processed pictures - that's just me though. (Is it just me or is someone at Sony colour blind to blue?) Mind you, at least the HS20 I saw didn't suffer from VB.

Messing about with the 700 last night, I did notice that VB becomes more apparent when using the smoother, lower contrast picture modes such as Natural, Cinema, etc. and seems to be lessened when using the brighter/contrasty modes such as Normal or Dynamic. The higher lamp mode also seemed to have some effect in this respect.

I experimented with creating a more contrasty and noisy picture which, although I never got it quite right, did almost completely eliminate any visible VB. I think this is why pictures from my Freeview box, although more noisy and less detailed, actually suffer from less VB than from the Pioneer DVD player. I would venture that the noise in these images goes someway to disguising the inherent VB that shows up in a cleaner and more muted image.

Any ideas?