Got my ex demo Panny AE100

[bonzobanana]

I bought one of the ex demo panasonics from robertwhyte. £599.99 plus £30 postage plus 1.5% credtit card surcharge. About £640 all in. No way was I not going to buy by credit card. I realise reliability is a hot potato but really with my budget its this or nothing and it carries the full 1 year guarantee plus I can see now problems extending this 2 years through the courts if necessary for psu problems as so many have been documented now.

Although described as ex demo its obviously one of the returned faulty models repaired I would imagine as its actually got on the box refurbished. The projector is immaculate and has had only 7 hours on the lamp used. Although to be honest it may be that when the projector was repaired this might have been reset as I don't know how this information is stored. Hopefully its had the psu uprated and will be problem free.

On switching on and using a poor vertical angle and only a naff dreamcast s-video connection as a source I was I have to say impressed with the image. I've just tried a vga connection to the dreamcast and I'm pretty much amazed. So far I've not spotted any duff pixels and hopefully I'll be free of them. Everything looks spot on even though its an early december 2001 manufactured model. About 15 months old. I'm using low power mode and have no plans to change this. I'm only projecting onto a naff brown wall with chip paper on it (not fish and chip paper I might add). I kept thinking reflections off the chip paper were duff pixels but on putting a blank a4 in front the duff pixel disappears as its just a bright reflection from the chip paper itself. I presume duff pixels are actually the wrong colour or dark or something.

What can I say £640 and no doubt it will help my sonycard points a bit towards a dvd or something.

I'm pretty amazed by the projector. The only disapointment I can think of is the lack of a pc cable with it which I would have thought was standard. I've had to nick the cable from a monitor to test the projector.

I've ordered myself a HDTV advanced pack for my xbox from dvdbox office in canada which is about £21 all in.

I have a load of old pc bits about and hope to make a crap but usable dvd/pc player. Does anyone know which older cards support custom resolutions. I've got a voodoo 3500 any good? The processor will be in the region of 500mhz celeron. Good enough for the job while also providing a digital optical output via the sound card to my samsung htm150 home cinema?

[bonzobanana]

Doh! I forgot to ask. If I make up a female scart to pc vga lead will the panasonic sync to it? I know the scart sync is quite low and is a single sync plus it has the chroma/luminance part of the signal with it too where as pc sync is possibly both horizontal and vertical on seperate connections. Not forgetting obviously the low tv type frequencies anyway. Anyone know if the Panny is compatible with such a cable? Or could I make up some sort of circuit just to clean up the syncs?

[Kramer]

Originally posted by bonzobanana
If I make up a female scart to pc vga lead will the panasonic sync to it?......... Anyone know if the Panny is compatible with such a cable?

No, the AE100 isn't compatible with scart RGB - as you say, sync issues.

Best bet is either an RGB/component convertoror an RGB/S-video convertor.

Glad your happy with it though - only £640 Gees, there'll be free AE100s in cornflake packets soon

[bonzobanana]

Originally posted by Kramer
No, the AE100 isn't compatible with scart RGB - as you say, sync issues.

Best bet is either an RGB/component convertoror an RGB/S-video convertor.

Glad your happy with it though - only £640 Gees, there'll be free AE100s in cornflake packets soon

I noticed in what video there is an ad for a scart adaptor which sorts out sync voltage etc. Does that work with the panasonic or does the panasonic not sync that low for tv type resolutions via the pc socket? The ad does say most projectors but obviously this means not all.

bonzobanana

Using a scart to RGB cable, you will get a much improved picture over S-video but every 25 minutes or so the screen will black out for about a second. I had a home made cable to hand and was happy to live with this for a while (for the improved picture quality) but got fed up eventually and bought a dvd player with component outputs instead.

And when they say 'most projectors' that does exclude the Panasonic. The same cable works fine on my father-in-law's Sony.

Hope this helps

Regards

Richard