[Drew C]

Is anyone of the new ae300 owners going to do a review with pics etc. similar to the one Kramer did when he got his HS10?

[Dinghiy]

Hi, Ive got one and Im not happy with it to be honest, Ive got a dust spot and some vertical banding on it. Its not much better than the Z1 I upgraded from.

Im going to have to take it back so I dont want to say too much at the mo

[flapcats]

Was it from Nexnix? What have they said? Keep us posted? Can you provide screenshots of the problem? Can it be fixed with the flicker tweak???
!!!! agh !!!

[mwatson800]

I am a very happy with my new AE300 (UK version from www.nexnix.co.uk).

Unfortunately, I am short on time at the moment to do a full review but I will get round to it, but hey...Home Cinema Choice magazine (May 2003 issue) made this (AE300) their No.1 projector under £5000...I mean, hello!!!

I don't have a digital camera either, sorry!

Matt

[Dinghiy]

As I said until I get it sorted out I dont want to say too much.

I havent seen anything about a flicker tweak though? Anyone point me in the right direction?

[gothmog]

Xander's board has details of the flick tweak here.

Dust blob out of the box is a I got one after 100hrs but I kind of deserved it

Only time I've seen vertical banding is using near but not 1:1 mapping on HTPC.

-- Jon

[Insp.Gadget]

I've had my AE300 (from Nexnix) since Thursday, but this is my first PJ so a review by me wouldn't really be of much use I don't think.

I've got it set-up at the side of the room in a cabinet that I had made for it and all the other AV equipment, as I mistakenly thought that I could live with keystone correction. WRONG ! Admittedly it is set rather high (24 , and the maximum is 32), but it really does make the opposite side of the screen blocky. I expect this is because it is losing most of the pixels from this side to correct the image. It's also softer due to not being in focus properly.

Just to see the difference I put it in the centre of the room and set all correction to 0, and it makes a big difference (as expected). I also changed from interlaced via S-video to progressive via component (thru a Sony DAVS-880MR) and I think that's made quite a big difference too.

Now it means I've got to try and build a boxing around it so it's not an eye-sore when it goes on the ceiling, as now I've seen how nice the picture can be I can't face watching it mounted where is it !

I took a quick snap of Monsters Inc (link below, MonstersInc2 is the better of the two), but it's really just for people who've not got the chance to see a PJ in the flesh, as pics (especially this one) don't show it in its best light. It's only a 2 m.p. camera as well, hence the graininess. Word of warning though, it's 270k, but if you're not on broadband you should be !!

Overall I'm very impressed, can't wait to get it properly mounted on the ceiling, I feel like I'm wasting lamp hours watching it as it is !!

Any questions just ask, I've learnt a lot of this forum and it would be nice to give something back.



edit : Link didn't work, will re-attach when I've sorted it !!

[Dinghiy]

Thanks for that, I will give it a try.

Hope it sorts out the scanline completely though, as I didnt get this on a Z1 I tried.

if i am correct in thinking the ptae300's fan is located on the back of the unit, how have people gone around mounting it. When i get mine soon i hope to place it on a home made tv bracket on the wall. Is there a certain distance i must give between the fan and the wall.
ant help and thoughts much appreciated.

Mark.

[originalbadboy]

I too have the same concern regarding the rear fans on the AE300. There was a post on here regarding this , where someone had mounted an AE300 about 8 inches from the back wall ...

It didnt seem to make any difference to the operating temperature.

However in the Projector Central review of the 300 , it states there should be at least 18inches of clearance, which I dont think would be possible with a wall mount, and is possibly being a little too safe.

If you do a search im sure you will find the thread , there is also a picture of an AE300 wall mounted using a TV Bracket from B&Q .. costing about 25 squids

[jimbobuk]

where do you get the temperature ratings from... of the machine that is!?!?

I have mine on a tv mount and its about 12" from the wall.. its fans have come on louder than normal sometimes, this seems to be the norm when mounted upside down... the air is quite far away at 12" and it has free circulation from there.. to be pushed to the sides etc.. i can't imagine it affecting it at all..

[flapcats]

I will have to use keystone as the only layout my lounge will work in (small room) has the sofa along a wall so I'll have to have the pj about 25' to the right. Having read Inspector Gadget's post I am worried the pq will be rubbish. I should stop renting, then I could remove a wall, buy a smaller sofa and make my room a HT... agaghag.

[jimbobuk]

ceiling mounted or near ceiling mounted high on a wall... how can your room not allow this.. keystone correction is a no no on all projectors isn't it!??

If you have space for a screen and are able to have no obstructions between projector and screen in a place that requires keystone correction, surely there must also be a central place on or near the ceiling that will be suitable...!?!?!

Originally posted by Drew C
Is anyone of the new ae300 owners going to do a review with pics etc. similar to the one Kramer did when he got his HS10?

I'm willing to do an "indepth" review of the AE300 (with screenshots ) as I did with the HS10.

Just need some nice new AE300 owner to "submit" one for testing

Of course I'd pay for return insured delivery

Unlikely though

[flapcats]

jimbobuk:

I'm renting, so can't really drill holes in ceiling - or anywhere
I've been thinking that maybe 15' minimum might be okay. We'll see. If not I may have to chop an inch off the sofa (then I'd be able to get a 100" picture too).

PS: Happy 999th post Kramer.

[tonytigerrr]

Well guys I havent got time to write an indepth review like Kramer's HS10 scribe but I'll give you some brief thoughts on this generally excellent PJ.

My Setup:
------------
80" by 45" DIY screen (blackout blind material)
Sony 200 disc changer DVD player connected via 5m RGB scart.
2ghz Athlon, Radeon 8500 graphics card, Pioneer 105s DVD player.
Pace Sky digital box.
Dreamcast, N64 (not got around to next-gen, yet......)


The old addage Garbage-In-Garbage-Out really does come into its own here as good source material looks superb while poor quality is amplified to a sometimes unwatchable level. This is particularly true of poor Sky pictures, often the not so premier channels which obviously receive less bit-rate.

I seen a review of this PJ (What Video I think) whcih criticises the PTAE-300 for occasional smudging around detail, particularly on motion and pans. I have only noticed this on poor quality DVDs, the aforementioned sky channels and (disappointingly for me) on football coverage. On long shots of the pitch individual players can look like a fuzzy mess with lots of tizzing and smudging on movement - very disracting!!

With the bad stuff out of the way, I have to say that DVD PQ can look superb. Colour is uniform with bright vibrant & smooth pictures, black levels are a lot better than I was expecting from an LCD projector - contrast is generally excellent, though detail is inevitably lost in very dark scenes. You hardly ever get the grey muddy mess that is the usual bugbear of LCD though.

Screendoor is not apparent, you have to go really close to see the pixel structure. I can detect an occasional grainy look, particularly on large areas of uniform colour such as sky scenes. This may be the much mentioned vertical banding effect, I did initially think it was the grain on my screen material but I'm not really convinced of that. Slight defocusing reduces the effect and hopefully some tweaking and calibrating will do some more (not had much time for this yet).

I tried connecting with an s-video lead from my DVD to compare against the scart - to be honset, there wasnt much between them video-wise but the menus on sky and dvd player did look a lot sharper, vibrant from the RGB scart. Unfortunately my player does not have component outputs.

I connected my PC to the 300 to see if DVD pictures looked any different via VGA. I played the "Band of Brothers" first disc in both the PC and standalone DVD player. It looked great in both, but I thought the PC gave a cleaner, sharper image as you might expect. You also get the "natural" option for RGB colours when using VGA which actually does make the picture look more
natural, particularly fleshtones.

As has been mentioned elsewhere on the forum, there isnt a way currently of achieving 1:1 resolution mapping with this PJ. However, you can get near to this and achieve a crisp looking desktop image so I wouldnt rule this PJ out for web-surfing and especially not for games - Medal of Honour:Allied assault looks amazing at 1024X768.

I have some pictures, though I'm not sure how to include theml - looks like the only way is through a link to a website (anyone feel free to tell me how). I'll post them when I have time.

[Monster]

I pretty much concur with your thoughts, although I am a PJ newbie.

I was pleasently surprised by the quality of terrestrial TV pictures routed from my VCR as compositet through the scart. I have to use a signal booster and I was expecting a lot of grainy interference but the PJ seems to cope very well.

I was a little disappointed by the black levels, but I have only seed a couple of PJ's on demo and they were poorly set up and ambient light levels were high. Detail in the black is good though and no problems setting contrast and brightness with video essentials.

I also find occasionally the image is hard for your eyes to follow when there is a picture with lots of detail and there is a camera pan. A good example is the prologue to Fellowship of the Ring. In the main battle scenes there are some sweeping pans and the detail just gets lost. I guess this is a characteristic of LCD displays. After a while I got used to it and it is a minor issue.

The main problem for me was the appearance of horizontal lines. Again these were mainly evident with darker scenes where the camera pans. They look like the scan lines I can see with non-anamorphic NTSC signals zoomed to fill a 36" CRT TV screen. I tried the 'Flicker tweak' and changing the values along with a slight defocus (Approx 2 minute clockwise rotation as facing the lens) it has improved. It was getting late last night when I did this so there may be further improvements to be made.

I would also like to point out that at the moment the PJ is on a sideboard to the left of the viewing position with LOTS of keystone (about 20 horizontal 2 vertical) so some of the problems I can see may reduce when I've finished the ceiling mount. I have not mentioned any of the obvious problems associated with keystone.

I too have some pictures and if someone could give me a pointer on how to publish them I'll glady (try and) do it at the weekend.

Overall I am a very very impressed Newbie.

If you email the photo's to me I'll put them up for you!