Ok, finally got my AE900 last night and went for the initial setup in my living room, thought you might be interested in how it went
Please bear with some of my descriptions/terminology. I'm still new to much of this but am trying to learn fast
Any glaring errors or ommisions feel free to point out
Existing (and only previous) PJ is a BENQ 5120 DLP so I'm going to use this as a comparison as its all I know
My setup
HTPC - Sweetspot/Xcard/Dscaler Combo, Radeon 9600 outputting
via VGA Panasonic TH42PW5 Plasma (1:1 856x480)
via DVI-D to BENQ 5120 PJ (1:1 856x480)
Connection to PJ is 7.5 m Lindy DVI/DVI cable (addtional DVI-HDMI Lindy adapter for the 900)
Pj is currently shelf mounted 12' from 7' screen. Seating is directly in front PJ 11' from screen.
room is completely light controlled, no ambient whatsover
Out of the box the first thing that impressed me was the obvious build quality in comparison with the BENQ. Quality casing and buttons, immediately the impression is that you have a serious piece of kit in your hands. Also no cable whatsoever included apart from power) - buy this pj and you are going to source quality cable yourself anyway. Manuals were clear and easy to follow.
Connected everything up and powered up for the first time, took me about a minute to hit the screen a correctly sized picture - my shelf is obviously horizontal, slight raise using the manual lens shift, lock it in place and all was perfectly square. no keystone required. Man, I LOVE lens shift !!
First thing I did was to set up the Powerstrip timings for the 900 on the Radeon. 1280x720@50hz, had to guess on the timings but used the dot clock from the manual to approximate. Then back to the PJ and fired up the Nokia test patterns to check 1:1, slight horizontal adjustment and got "snap in".
Then ran DVE and calibrated to best of my ability, "natural" settings seemed to be closest to what I wanted, just dropped the colour slightly and left auto iris ON
Sources are going to be SKY (rarely), SD DVD and HD (eventually) so decided to work up from the worst.
SKY (via Sweetspot/ Dscaler)
Have to say I was initially disappointed, not much improvement over the BENQ with moving video. Colors/Blacks were superb but was seeing a lot of artifacts , especially on motion, almost as if a faint grid (much larger than SDE size) was overlaying the image as the camera panned, the "grid" would then "catch up" as the pan slowed/stopped, very obvious watching footie. As soon as the motion stopped, its was fine again This did improve/worsen based on the source channel though. No SDE or
VB seen at all, in fact you can only see pixel structure from about a foot away. Huge improvement over the 5120 on solarisation on whites/greens and blue/white sky scenes, clear as a bell on the 900. Also text (sky menus etc) is exceptionally smooth, almost no jaggies on diagonal lines
DVD
Loaded up the Attack of the Clones with exactly the same settings
Now this was more like it !!
Beautiful saturated colours, bright as anything. looked absolutely stunning. I found myself watching almost the entire film mesmerised, I'd seen Goblet of Fire the night before at the cinema and the quality blew that away completely. Still saw the odd grid pattern on large sky scenes and fast moving scenes but almost negligible.
Then fired up Fellowship of the Ring as that has some dark scenes in it that the 5120 handled well, the 900 looked even better !! Scenes were there where lots of shadow were very detailed, very impressed !
HD Material
Downloaded some WMV 720p HD clips from the MS Site
WOW !!!! Is my only reaction, now I now what all the fuss is about. absolutely blew me away! I didnt know a PJ could look that good ! Roll on Sky HD
It was 10 times better than my SD Plasma on DVD !!
Noise levels are exceptionally quiet, esp on Bulb "Low". In fact I can hear my HTPC from 10 feet away when I cant hear the pj from 3 !!
Anyway, we are going to sit down tonight and watch a DVD from start to finish. I'm very impressed so far though !
If anyone could give some advice on the "grid" issue (unless its just SKY poor quality source) and Powerstrip timings etc I'd be grateful (im getting the very occasional judder on pans so I dont think I have it spot on)
Any other calibration advice also gratefully received
I'll post some screenshots as soon as I get a chance
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