SP4805 v. SP5700 questions over 5700...

[guido]

Spent an hour demoing Infocus Screenplay 5700 v 4805 to see if I could warrent the extra ~£900.. and also have a close watch for rainbows and other DLP headache effects reported here.

Watched Pirate of the Carribean on both... this is not a good quality disk and on first watch on the 5700 it showed ghosting on the edges of objects. To start with thought this might be the projector... the picture in the dark areas of the 5700 was also very "muddy"... too dark.. with very little definition. Tried on low power/power save and also full power.. but it made little difference. This was in one demo room on a 93" screen.

So then went to second demo room to have a look at the 4805. This was on a 120" screen from quite a distance.. i.e. pushing the 4805. And Wow! the brightness was such a marked difference. We picked a scene near the start where the picture was half in dark and half in the light. On the 4805 could see a picture hanging on the wall when with the 5700 couldnt see it at all. The slight ghosting was also visible with POTC DVD but not on Seabiscuit which we tried just to clear that up!

This wasnt right.. and the salesperson agreed... so to have more of a comparison, he fetched the 5700 and set it up on the same 120" screen. We checked the defaults and put it back to factory (in case someone had been fiddling with all the settings) and it was definately too dark in the dark areas with no definition and not what he expected.

He phoned a colleague at another branch and said that had seen this problem before, get the odd one in a batch with the "new lens" that doesnt perform. Has anyone else seen this? and also heard about a recent lens change in the 5700?

The salesperson is going to do some looking into this and get another 5700 out and call me back.

Apart from the brightness issue, I would say that the 5700 is slightly sharper and definatelty quieter on full power mode. I am intending to use an 83" diagonal screen so the 4805 should look better on this than 120" as in the demo. The demo definatley brought home that having too big a screen is not good as the first demo room with the 93" screen I felt we were sitting too close. Fast pans left me feeling a bit queasy.

Anyway... approeciate any comments on the 5700 brightness question and if anyone else has heard of lens change recently, whether the 900 difference is worth it?

thanks

[Gary Lightfoot]

Did he get a test disk and set the white (contrast) and black (brightness) levels before he started?

All DVD players are different, and you need to set these levels (and for each source) if you want to be able to see the dark (i.e shadow) detail and bright (i.e. sky) detail correctly. No lens will improve that if those two basic settings aren't correct. You need Avia (for NTSC) or Video Essentials (for PAL). as tehs contain the necessary test images to allow you to set the pj up. The THX Optimode does a similar thing, but is only accurate for the disk it's on, so canot be used as a blanket calibration, but it will get you closer than no calibration at all.

Seating distnce, as you have found, is quite important. A rule of thumb is to sit approximately 2 x screen width away (i.e 6ft wide screen = sit 12ft away), though the higher the resolution, the closer you can sit before seeing the pixel structure. This does differ for LCD (big gaps) and DLP (small gaps) though.

Gary.

[guido]

Cheers for reply Gary... no he didnt use a test disk to calibrate. They had the PJs set up with Arcam Diva Amp and DVD using component leads. I wouldnt have thought that swapping between the 4805 and 5700 both on factory settings would have had so much difference. Did try changing some settings on the 5700... the preset modes, gamma, brightness, colour temp, but to no avail. The definition that could be seen in the dark areas on the 4805 was just so much better. The fact that a colleague at another branch had seen this before is a bit worrying if I was to go for a 5700. Anyway... I'm going to wait for their call to see if they have turned anything up over the poor performance.

...and am going to see a work colleagues AE700 in a couple of weeks and want to check out an HS50 before being sure I want to go DLP (which I am pretty sure I want at the mo!).

[Gary Lightfoot]

Sometimes you have to adjust the settings on the DVD player (if it allows it) before setting black levels, because sometimes no matter what you do with the projector, if the correct signal isn't being sent to it, you won't reveal the shadow detail for instance.

Not many places know how to set-up a projector, so it's a bit hit an miss for getting a good demo.

Which part of the UK are you situated in?

Gary.

[guido]

Originally Posted by Gary Lightfoot

Sometimes you have to adjust the settings on the DVD player (if it allows it) before setting black levels, because sometimes no matter what you do with the projector, if the correct signal isn't being sent to it, you won't reveal the shadow detail for instance.

Not many places know how to set-up a projector, so it's a bit hit an miss for getting a good demo.

Which part of the UK are you situated in?

Gary.

Near M25/J13.. demo's were at Sevenoaks HiFi, Staines. They seemed pretty knowledgeable and have some nice listening rooms. When swapping from 4805 to 5700 just pulled swapped over the component leads. If the DVD player needed setting up, then I would have thought that the black level detail would have been lacking on the 4805 as well...? but it wasn't. To start with will be using my Toshiba SD-330 DVD player which has component out.

Are there other dealers in Berks/Surrey you recommend?
Thx.
Guido

[Gary Lightfoot]

Hi Guido,

Sometimes you can find that one player will output black differently to another, so you have to calibrate the pj to the player, and every time you connect a different player, and everytime you connect a different projector. Just swapping over leads can be taking a chance to be honest - each projector should have been set-up individualy for the player. It could well be that the 5700 wasn't as detailed as the 4805, but without setting the white and black level correctly, you'll never know for sure.

RTFM (Jeff) has a good demo room and various projectors set-up. He is in Horsham Surrey, so not too far from you. He has mostly Sim2 products, but occasionaly has other models too (he had an Infocus and a Sharp IIRC), and he does set-up the pj to the player so that you get a good idea of what the black level is really like. Drop him a PM or an email and see if he has anything within your price range that is suitable for you. Do a search for him on the forum and you should find him - he posts frequently in the Sim2 forum.

Gary.

[guido]

Thx for that Gary... have found his web site.. and he has an ex-demo 4805. Was going to go down to Nexnix in Horsham to look at some screens in next couple of weeks, so may pop in there too.

Will post up any anwsers I get from Sevenoaks re 5700 too.
Cheers,
Guido

[Gary Lightfoot]

Good luck, and I hope get something you're happy with.

Gary.

[guido]

Well back for demos today.
Didn't look at the 5700 again, but had more demos on 4805.
The chap in the shop had tried a different 5700, one of last years before the lens change, and said it was much better than the one I saw last week.

If you look on the Infocus site in the throw calculator it does list two 5700 models, and the lens change does make a difference. The serials listed end in 237 and before, and those that end in 238 and greater. The diagonals at 3.5m are as follows:
old lens: 60" to 83"
new lens: 60" to 76"

This put the 5700 out of the running as cant mount 5700 further away and wanted 83" screen. Also couldnt justify the extra £1000 when 5700 still not HD res and dont want to start forking out for new DVD players etc just yet with HDMI, so will be quite happy with the 4805 at least for couple of years until HD sorted out and the new TI 1080 DLP chips are out for a while.

So it was back to the 4805. Watched the scene in Matrix Revolutions where the machines are attacking the dock. Loads of very fast moving objects, dark areas and flashing lights of the guns. Was excellent.

Asked about the new prices Infocus have issued and if they were dropping theirs. "Yes, they had the email" and would do me SP4805 for £999, even though it was still down as £1300 on their system. In stock, so walked out the shop with projector under my arm

Big thanks to Sam in Sevenoaks (Staines) for being very knowledgeable and helpful.

Now have to sort out a screen, cabling, mount etc etc etc In the mean time have borrowed my Dads 5' slide projector screen and am about to get its out of its box

[digisocialist]

Guido - You won't be dissapointed Mines been up less than 24hrs and it blows me away...and that's out of the box. I'm projecting onto a green wall and it looks brilliant. I've just picked up 1lt of Icetorm 6 for painting...to see how that changes things..

Out of interest, does anyone know if there are any calibration settings to make? I know these can differ depending on source. Currently the key thing I have to sort out is that there seems to be a frame all around the image...any ideas?

[Gary Lightfoot]

Ideally you'll need Video Esentials and/or Avia to set the white and black levels (contrast and brightness) as that can make a lot of difference to shadow and sky detail. Having them set wring means you will be missing detail or enhancing image artefacts and reducing your contrast ratio.

Avia is NTSC specific, and VE can be for PAl or NTSC. The main difference is black level - unless you use HTPC, the black level will be different for each system. If you can get your DVD player to output NTSC black as 0ire (it may be called something else), then you only really need one disk.

The THX optomide found on disks like Star Wars do a similar thing, but they only really work best for the disk they are on, but they will get you close.

Can't help you with the border - does it do it on all inputs and sources?

Gary.