[calibos]

Well it arrived today.

Dead Pixels?

NONE!! Woohoo!!

I'll post more latter on if I can pull myself away from it!

[Fjorko]

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!

YOU ARE MAKING ME JEALOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Drew C]

Congratulations Mate!!!
Glad to hear you've sorted things out after all that mess with the ae100
I for one would be very interested in hearing your opinions on your new toy!!

[vexorg]

Calibos,

Can I request that you make room on that couch of yours for a demo of your fine machine.... Im sure that Kramer and theRitz would also like to cast a critical eye or 2 over its abilities...

Is it too early to ask about pixel mapping or lack of?

Congrats anyways...


Sounds like it may have been worth the wait

Vex.

[Comer]

Well Done Keith

Like Kramer with his HS10, you are a credit to your country. Enjoy your new great toy.

Conor

[theritz]

You jammy git !!!!

Really delighted it all turned out for the best - Kramer is going to be paying out for some time in the "will he/won't he" stakes......

There's an interesting thread on avsforum on getting 1:1 pixel matching for the AE300, if you're leaning that way.

A movie fest in the offing, I expect, and hope you enjoy your new toy thoroughly. Please don't kill this one quite so quickly !!!!!! (Daddy has just left the building )

You have PM, BTW.

With fond regards and kindest wishes,

Your bestest friend ever (along with Vex),

(hint hint............)


Sean !!!!

[codling]

great stuff

congrats

Glad to hear the good news! Congrats!
Welcome to AE300 club !

[Messiah]

I feel lonely now But not for long. Getting my LPX tomorrow. hee hee. Work tomorrow. nah, playing with pjs.

[calibos]

Heres my inital review after 15 hours with my new PJ. Don't worry Ritz. There was a period of about 10 minutes in there when it was switched off!! Look, theres 4 of us in the house using it, what could I do, tell them all they couldn't play with the new(er) toy?? It won't happen again Sean, I promise and anyway who are you to talk. I bet there'll be no suggestions from you to give the PJ an hours break the day you and the rest of the Irish contingent come out to see it!! Only Joking!

Oh yeah, the mini review!

First can I say to the videophiles (or as they are called in the trade : nit-pickers!) that I probably wouldn't be counted among your number. In most areas I'm a perfectionist and a stickler for detail but obviously not in the area's if video and audio. The reason? Well when I had my AE100 I really did try to convince myself that my 1:1 pixel mapped HCPC was streets ahead of my other dvd sources......but it didn't work! TBH I couldn't see much of a difference between what is supposed to be the top of the source food chain ie. the HCPC and the source that is supposed to be at the bottom ie the PS2. As a result I was quite happy using my PS2 via S-video for several months until I happened to get a free Sony NS-305.

In otherwords, I obviously don't have a critical eye, so make of this mini review what you will!

The dvd player and PS2 were via S-video and the video, NTL Digital box and Gamecube were via composite for this mini review. i'm hoping to have them all routed via RGB to the PJ by next week.

First off Fan noise. As I'm sure everyone has heard the fan on low is very very quiet. I can confirm this. As I'd hoped, the fan on high only sounded like the AE100's fan on low, so I'll be keeping it on high as a preventative measure. Some have suggested that this will clog the filters quicker, so I think I'll clean it every 50hrs instead of 100. There is also a Fan Full mode in the menu. With this selected it sounds like a jet taking off!! I ran it on this setting for 2 or 3 minutes before I switched of after the PJ's 12hr stint!

Smoothscreen. I found that from 1.5 SW I could only see screendoor in text but not in area's of solid colour. I could however see some pixel structure in those area's of colour. While it does make the image much more viewable from this distance than my old AE100, I personally would still recommend sitting 1.8-2 X SW back. From this distance I find the image nigh on perfect. The great benefit for me is not that smoothscreen allows me to sit closer but that it dramatically improves apparent PQ for my seating position 1.8 back. With my AE100 it was pixel structure and screendoor city from 1.5 and from 1.8 it was reasonably smooth with only bright area's and sky showing up screendoor. With the smooth screen at 1.8, to my eye there is no pixel structure or screendoor in bright area's or the sky/ 'dirty sky'. As I've heard other people say and IMHO the image is so good that any 'noise' that very occasionally is visible in bright area's or sky seems to be dvd artifacts rather than PJ ones and may be apparent in one scene but not the next, which seems to indicate that it is source related.

The image just looks so much more vibrant than on my old AE100 and the colours look fantastic, I haven't even tweaked yet. Whether this is because of the increased contrast over the AE100, I don't know. The better contrast level was quite noticable to me though still a shade of gray, albeit darker shade. I suppose the great colours may be because my AE100 was on its way out for a good while and the bulb was probably nackered, but I'm sure a respectable portion of the apparent colour vibrancy/improvement over my AE100 was down to the new higher contrast ratio of the AE300.

As I said at the beginning, I probably don't have as critical an eye as a lot of you but I have to say that I think the image I am now getting with my new AE300 is superb. Even Digital cable looks fantastic on it. Any quibles I'd have about PQ in this regard would be down to bitrates of the cable channels rather than the PJ.

Even given my reasonably uncritical eye I would say for me, I would think it was worth paying the extra in any circumstances for an AE300 @ £1400 over an AE100 @ £700-800. But then again I've got the PJ bug and have had it for over a year now. It really is a tough question as to whether the AE300 is worth 2x an AE100 at current prices. I suppose if you think you'll be holding on to the PJ for a few years then the AE300 is definately worth the extra £££'s for that extra performance, but if you reckon you'll be upgrading in a year or so then you may be better off saving the money and getting the Ae100 which delivers about 70% of the performance until you upgrade to the latest and greatest.

Nice one Calibos,

It's a dam fine pj isn't it. I think I too have managed to get one with no dead pixels cos when testing it on blank coloured back grounds see no issues.

As for the screenDoor effect, I can agree that you do get a fine picture and only credits are noticable (Whether this might be down to the source as I was watching ConAir on laserDisc which is not as hot as DVD anymore - boohoo!!!)

But overall, it's a great machine for the price.

Enjoy the show!!!

Chris.

[celtic13]

Congrats Calibos....another one for the Irish contingent...mine is winging its way back for a replacement due to one green pixel and one duff blue one. Its hard to do without my baby!