[True-Blue]

I think I'm the first to have taken the plunge and have the machine in my possession so thought I'd start the owners thread.

Will be setting up tomorrow, so once I've done so I'll post my settings, viewing conditions and hopefully a few screenshots. Hopefully I'll be able to post something meaningful by tomorrow afternoon.

I've been asked for detailed comments on SD DVD performance so will try and focus on that first before switching to HD.

What's a quality blueray title that I can get easily tomorrow morning to show black performance, colour performance etc ?

[sdb123]

Black Hawk Down? 300?

You can pick these (and other Hi-def discs) up from most Asda stores.

[KelvinS1965]

300 has a very 'processed' look about it (when shown on my AE1000), I've only got 300 and SWAT in BluRay...but SWAT has bright daylight scenes and dark tunnel scenes (near the end). I used the dark scenes in SWAT to work out my best dark scene low gamma tweaks and discovered my preference for 'Cinema 1' mode. I got both these discs in Blockbusters, SWAT was part of a 3 for £20 deal as well.

I bet you can't wait to get home with that new toy? Still trying to do a deal with mine so I can upgrade to a '2000......

[ROne]

I got to see 300 last night on HD.

Not one to adjust for shadow detail, as both the highlights and shadow are clipped (intentionally) to hell!

[MIGHTYrog]

Come on Peeps Wheres the SCREENSHOTS........ The lucky ones should really show us how blessed they are with this fine PJ by giving us a barrage of super slick shots.

come on

[True-Blue]

Originally Posted by Gryzor

Come on Peeps Wheres the SCREENSHOTS........ The lucky ones should really show us how blessed they are with this fine PJ by giving us a barrage of super slick shots.

come on

Just been out to buy oceans13 on blueray (don't even own a blueray player at this point!) so that I can do just that with more than just Casino Royal. Mates PS3 going back this weekend

[True-Blue]

A fear that much of the image quality I'm seeing on my screen is being lost in the photography but here's the first non-professional screen shots from the new Panny

[Shockabuku]

Nice one, Blue, those look great. How does the shadow detail look in real life?

[True-Blue]

Oh they look rubbish, and give no reflection on just how brilliant this PJ is.

Whatever you do don't base your decision on these pic's.

The blacks look rubbish when they are in fact brilliant.

Skin tones also look excellent.

colours are superb too.

[True-Blue]

Originally Posted by Shockabuku

Nice one, Blue, those look great. How does the shadow detail look in real life?

They look awful on my screen ??

The shadow detail looks superb on the screen, where in these photo's the blacks look crushed.

[True-Blue]

In this one on my screen the water is inky black, the shadow detail is superb - it just looks fantastic.

Incidentally, this is out of the box in colour 1.

[Shockabuku]

Originally Posted by True-Blue

They look awful on my screen ??

The shadow detail looks superb on the screen, where in these photo's the blacks look crushed.

Yeah, that's why I asked . They look great in that the colours look good & there's obviously some dynamic range going on there, and I assumed the huge swathes of black were camera-induced. What settings/picture mode are you preferring so far?

[True-Blue]

It's literally out of the box with a minor contrast adjustment.

Need to play, but it's already looking pretty spectacular !

With any luck Chris from AVsales will post some base line settings if he happens accross this thread

[Shockabuku]

Some bloke has calibrated his 2000 on that AVS thread and has posted his settings. Might be a good starting point.

[dun_buyin]

Looks like you are having fun with the new toy.

Was wondering how you have installed the projector. Have you used any lens shift and do you know if extremities of lens shift show up any noticable problems on the AE2000. Are you finding it a quiet unit in use? I know the fan noise is supposed to be low but wondered if there was any noticeable mechanical iris noise.

[True-Blue]

Originally Posted by Shockabuku

Some bloke has calibrated his 2000 on that AVS thread and has posted his settings. Might be a good starting point.

Do you have a link, is AVS the american version of this site ?

[True-Blue]

Originally Posted by dun_buyin

Looks like you are having fun with the new toy.

Was wondering how you have installed the projector. Have you used any lens shift and do you know if extremities of lens shift show up any noticable problems on the AE2000. Are you finding it a quiet unit in use? I know the fan noise is supposed to be low but wondered if there was any noticeable mechanical iris noise.

I've got the sound very low at the moment and I can hear the PS3 like some kind of small electric fan heater, but the PJ is mounted on the ceiling above my head and is virtualy inaudible.

Using a little lens shift, but I think this has minimal impact on PQ, unlike keystone.

The only time I heard the Iris was during the initialisation. I haven't seen any visible iris issues in use either.

Have to say, if I was going to use a PS3 permanently I'd have to get me a quiet one

[Shockabuku]

Originally Posted by True-Blue

Do you have a link, is AVS the american version of this site ?

Linky. AVS is pretty much the American version of this site, although be careful out there, those crazy Americans can be a bit "keen" at times. Personally, I much prefer the atmosphere over here.

[True-Blue]

Thanks for that,

These are the settings stated for Colour 1 but based on what appears to be a high gain screen ?

Contrast : +3
Brightness : +13
Color: -5
Contrast R:+3
Contrast G:-7
Contarst B :+4
Brightneess R :+1
Gamma low : -2

Thought I'd dial them in anway, my screen is 1.2 gain, and this combination does work very nicely.

It's probably not optimum for my screen, but it looks awesome all the same

[True-Blue]

Here's some settings for Cinema 1

Contrast : +14
Brightness : +2
Color: -10
Contrast G:-3
Contarst B :+2
Brightneess R :+1
Brightneess B :+1

...which I'll try in a minute

[Shockabuku]

Yep, it does appear he's using a 2.5 gain screen...and of course the room environment will be different, so all things to keep in mind. Glad it's looking pretty good so far though.

[True-Blue]

I'm guessing though that his ambient light control must be pretty poor, or he must be projecting a huge image, to justify a 2.5 gain screen ?

Either way, just dialed in his cinema 1 settings and they look bloody good too

Brilliant link there, thanks very much

[Shockabuku]

No worries, glad it's useful. I've seen reported before that the "accurate" modes on the AE2000 reduce the lumens to about 500 ish. How does the brightness look with these settings on yours (at what throw distance & screen size too please)?

[Shockabuku]

Oh, and by the way, thanks for being the forum guinea pig for the 2000 .

[True-Blue]

Originally Posted by Shockabuku

No worries, glad it's useful. I've seen reported before that the "accurate" modes on the AE2000 reduce the lumens to about 500 ish. How does the brightness look with these settings on yours (at what throw distance & screen size too please)?

Brightness looks excellent, throw distance is about 10 to 11 feet, screen size is 83" diagonal

[Dr Force]

Thankyou for your efforts.

The photo's still show us how impressive this PJ is even though the pics (as good as they are fo an amateur) soften it all up.

83" screen is a nice size.Why not go any bigger to say 90-100"??

In pitch black is the image overly bright and thus becomes tiring??

Thanks

dave

[KelvinS1965]

There was a thread on AVS for the AE1000 calibration, but to be honest I found most of the settings weren't much use for my sources. They crushed blacks or overset the contrast so the whites were crushed so sky shots hardly had any clouds...or both. What was useful though, was understanding what the different settings did, so you could work out how best to use them. Plus, you can't beat playing around with the settings to see what you like for yourself: I found I prefered 'Cinema 1' rather than the AVS favourite 'Colour 1' and I like to turn up 'Low Gamma' (in the advanced menu) to +2 or +3 to bring up shadow details...it's a bit like tweaking up the bass or treble on your amp, just see what you like.

The best method I found was to use the waveform monitor at least to set contrast and brightness with either DVE or the THX setup from (say) Star Wars. If you get really adventurous and have DVE, you can use the monitor to tweak the colour settings too. If you translate cine4home's review of the AE1000 it explains how to use the monitor (Babelfish worked for me and much better than my German).

I found I needed much different settings for my HTPC to my DVD player and again to my BluRay player, so that suggests to me that unless we all have the same player, screen and room, then using other's settings could be some way off.

Glad to see that you've finally got to play with your new Toy, True-Blue.

[sdb123]

KelvinS1965 - if you go for the AE2000, I assume you'll be looking to apply a filter to the lens again?

[KelvinS1965]

Originally Posted by sdb123

KelvinS1965 - if you go for the AE2000, I assume you'll be looking to apply a filter to the lens again?

Yeah, I reckon I'll probably be able to go back to an ND4 filter at first as the '2K is supposed to be that much brighter. That on it's own would give better blacsk than my '1K with an ND2, but then the '2K is supposed to have better blacks anyway, so it should be awesome. With my room tweaks to improve blacks making the 1K look pretty damn good, the 2K can only be better ( and I like the split screen setting and the naming of presets too).

Haven't got the go ahead for the sale of my 1K, so it might be on hold. If my mate doesn't buy it I'll have to put it up on these forums, but then everyone here knows how much the 2K costs, so mine will have to be cheap to sell.

Sorry about the '1K' '2K', just gets a bit tedious typing out the full model name!

[NWhiteley]

What do these filters do?