[Fsheehan]

Got mine delivered at 2:00pm but I wasn't in so I had to collect from DHL Leeds depot.

Couldn't wait to test it and see what the fuss is all about. Took it out the box and had visions of RMA. As I had taken it out and tipped it back I heard something inside which was loose or something. Tipped it back and forth again and out came a small shard of glass from where the rear fans were.

I thought, that's it, the bulb is gone (as the bulb is situated next to the rear fan), it'll have to go back. Tried it anyway to see if it was faulty, not hoping to see as much as the power light; but hey presto, a glorious 39"(h)x67"(w) picture came out! This picture size was being projected from about < 5 feet away from the screen (or red bedroom wall to be precise)!

Just plugged it in to a Pioneer DVD-414 through its s-video input and the picture is amazing! WOOOOOOOOOOOW! I was stood there open mouthed and drooling!! This is considering that I don't have a proper screen yet and the walls are a dark red!

Played about with the settings and made sure I had the fan on full to keep the baby as cool as can be. So far, I haven't seen the infamous "screendoor" effect, even on scenes were blue sky were present.

I've got it slightly tilted upward at the mo sitting on top of the bed and used the keystone settings to get the picture right(straight). Is it right that it only adjusts the 16:9 picture and not the whole projected image? It's just coz the projector onscreen menus and the left and right borders are still skewed which I'm assuming is because I've got it tilted upwards with the 2 front feet fully raised?

Is the best way to try and find if there are any dead pixels to switch it to the pure white service menu? I did this and saw no noticeable dead pixels and no discolouration. Nothing turned up on a black background either.

Tried playing about the low and high light mode and the high mode only makes the picture slightly brighter and gives slightly better contrast. There wasn't really any noticeable difference whether in high or low mode, is this normal? I've kept it in low mode as everyone suggests for a longer lamp life.

I'm just hoping that the small shard of glass that came out won't affect it's longevity and performance. What could this piece of glass be? Just a chip from the bulb? Anybody here know what the bulb looks like and could a shard just chip off it and still work fine through its expected life? Has anybody had this same occurence? Should I be worried? It's just got me paranoid and all.

Someone reassure me that it's nothing major.. :D

Also, tried to take out the lamp(bulb) initially to see if its chipped or anything before turning it on but I can't seem to pull it out from where it's sitting. Took 2 screws out to get the cover off and then another 2 longer screws and pulled where it says pull and as per instruction manual. I couldn't shift it, it comes up a bit but it seems to be stuck.

Is there a correct way of pulling it or do I need a tool to lever it out?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Anyway, I'm off to bed now to think about how I'm gonna build my DIY screen. And the sign outside the house - "UCI", tickets only £2. T3 now showing, rollup rollup!

[gingercat]

Congrats on the purchase fellow northerner (yes, I know it says Cambridge on my Location, but I'm from the north-west originally).

Don't know about your shard of glass - it's not a diamond is it? Perhaps someone has been smuggling them into the country inside AE100s

As for the digital keystone correction - I'd rather have a skewed image myself 'cos it makes a real mess of the picture, softening the image and aliasing everything. The correction only applies to the source video image i.e. your DVD player's output, and simply works by digitally distorting the image and not using some of your PJs pixels - yes, you loose resolution! The onscreen menus are just output raw to the pixels of your PJ irrespective of other settings so they don't get scaled.

Enjoy the PJ and let us know if you find any more diamonds

[Fsheehan]

Cheers gingercat! How I wish it was a diamond that I'd found, it would have helped pay for the PJ. I'm just crossing my fingers that the glass shard isn't off anything vital. Everything seems normal so far (touch wood).

Thanks for the advice on the keystone correction, I'll see if I can lay the PJ down flat somewhere and not have to use KS correction at all.

Been reading lots and lots of threads and theres so many things to learn! Will be building my screen tomorrow so that should be fun!

I do have another question tho. Do you ever use the zoom ring on the lens? Would it be better to leave the picture un-enlarged and just move the PJ back a bit more to get a bigger pic. I'm assuming that by using the zoom ring to enlarge the pic, it's making the image loose resolution?

It's just coz I'm trying to get a big a screen I can throwing from < 5 feet away from the wall. I'm intending to build at least a 77"-100" diagonal screen.

Thanks

[Bristol Pete]

Congrats on the purchase and welcome to the forum. Your movie watching/games playing will never be the same again.

Although I am far from an expert, I tend to find that I get best picture quality with minimum zoom, which stands to reason.
The smaller the zoom, the less the picture has to expand. Of course, the bigger the zoom the bigger the gap between the pixels, and probably more screen door, which could be minimized with a slight defocus.

Something like that anyway.

Calibos and the ritz are the in house AE100 experts, maybe they can advise?

Hope this helps.

Cap.

[Fsheehan]

Cheers Captain Benefit! I've actually got it on maximum zoom at the mo and am surprised at the still excellent quality of the images and can't see any screen door effects either even on sky scenes. I'm sure that when I get it settled in its permanent spot that I'll be using the zoom a lot less.

I actually joined last year and posted a couple of things in the for sale forums which doesn't seem to have increased my post counts.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back and I'm glad to be part of the PJ owners club. I've read most of the posts and gathered that Ritz and Calibos seemed to be the AE100 in house experts.

I'm sure they'll grace this post with their prescence anytime soon!

Thanks

[cyberheater]

I've had my Panny AE100 for a couple of months now and couldn't be more delighted. I'm always impressed at the image this puts out especially as I only paid 600 quid for it

I'm glad you like your new toy. It's addictive stuff I can tell you.

How are you making your screen?

[Splice]

well done on your purchase, brilliant projector for the money, just sold mine and moved up to a sony hs10, regard to the lamp, i found it difficult to get out as well when i first bought mine, what you have to do is first make sure you have both the screws Fully loose, and then pull quite firmly to get it out, it will be tight though, DO NOT LEVER IT OUT, you may well do more damage than good. also you might want to consider running the fan at the higher speed, you have to access this setting in the service menu.........do a search on this forum for "heat soak" or ae100+fan imo this will preserve your investment, if you read calibos "debacle" thread, i think that will explain to you why, incidently i dont mean run the projector in high mode, it is just the fan you will turn up, and you do get used to the extra db's that are generated, again imo of course.
good luck and enjoy and drooooolllll to your hearts content.

All the best........Splice

[theritz]

Hi,

very enthusiastic post, hope you have lots of fun with your new toy !!

Best result comes from minimum zoom, no keystone - if you can manage it.

Sounds like you don't have any dead/stuck pixels - no worries there so.

As far as the "tinkling" sound - I haven't a clue what this might be, I haven't taken the lamp out of mine so I can't advise there either. If the PJ is working as expected, I wouldn't be too fussed about it tbh.

I think that the Tosh has Component out - this is your best bet. a search will throw up lots of threads about component leads, you could try this from Farnell.

There isn't a huge difference in light output in Low Lamp mode, and it's a better image imo.

All the best,

Sean G.

[Fsheehan]

Originally posted by cyberheater
I've had my Panny AE100 for a couple of months now and couldn't be more delighted. I'm always impressed at the image this puts out especially as I only paid 600 quid for it

I'm glad you like your new toy. It's addictive stuff I can tell you.

How are you making your screen?

Yup, its the best £600 I spent in years, although I don;'t tend to spend that much too often!

I'm gonna try to find the best option. Was thinking of the easier route today and getting a blackout blind from Homebase, Ikea(if they still do it) or B&Q. Although I want it to be quite sturdy so I'm thinking of going the DIY make a frame out of skirting, wrap felt or velvet material around the frame and stretch(tack or staple) or velcro blackout material that I found in the local market at £4.99 per metre and go with the 50-50 Icestorm 5 and 6 method that I've read in the forums here.

Is the 50-50 method more effective than purely either the 6 or the 5?

I'll let you know how I get on.

[Fsheehan]

Originally posted by Splice
well done on your purchase, brilliant projector for the money, just sold mine and moved up to a sony hs10, regard to the lamp, i found it difficult to get out as well when i first bought mine, what you have to do is first make sure you have both the screws Fully loose, and then pull quite firmly to get it out, it will be tight though, DO NOT LEVER IT OUT, you may well do more damage than good. also you might want to consider running the fan at the higher speed, you have to access this setting in the service menu.........do a search on this forum for "heat soak" or ae100+fan imo this will preserve your investment, if you read calibos "debacle" thread, i think that will explain to you why, incidently i dont mean run the projector in high mode, it is just the fan you will turn up, and you do get used to the extra db's that are generated, again imo of course.
good luck and enjoy and drooooolllll to your hearts content.

All the best........Splice

Thanks for the tip on the extraction of the lamp, I won't try it again until it needs replacing as it seems to be working fine.

Yup, read about the fan bit on some of the posts here and as soon as I turned it on last night I made sure that lamp was low and fan is set to full. Little noisier but I can live with it if it means longer life for the optics.

And yes, I am indeed drooling everytime I turn it on. :D I'll be slowly watching through my DVD collection once again, and maybe again many times!

[Fsheehan]

Originally posted by theritz
Hi,

very enthusiastic post, hope you have lots of fun with your new toy !!

Best result comes from minimum zoom, no keystone - if you can manage it.

Sounds like you don't have any dead/stuck pixels - no worries there so.

As far as the "tinkling" sound - I haven't a clue what this might be, I haven't taken the lamp out of mine so I can't advise there either. If the PJ is working as expected, I wouldn't be too fussed about it tbh.

I think that the Tosh has Component out - this is your best bet. a search will throw up lots of threads about component leads, you could try this from Farnell.

There isn't a huge difference in light output in Low Lamp mode, and it's a better image imo.

All the best,

Sean G.

Ah MrRitz its good to finally have you on my thread. Thanks very much for the tips about Keystone and Zoom settings, I'll bear them in mind during my placing of the screen.

Thanks for the link from Farnell, those will do nicely, not sure to whether to get the 5m or the 10m for a few pounds more as they both quite cheap anyhow. If I wanted to move the projector(I think I'm gonna be sitting it on a small desk) I want to be able to play about with the distance and so 10m would probably be ideal.

Does the signal degrade the longer the component cable? Will it degrade much on a 10m length?

Thanks again.

[theritz]

Hi again,

I don't use component - I'm a pc guy - but lots of folk use 10m component cables - as long as they're decent quality you should be ok. I haven't seen any posts complaining of pic quality degradation on that account.


All the best,

Sean G.

[Fsheehan]

Originally posted by theritz
Hi again,

I don't use component - I'm a pc guy - but lots of folk use 10m component cables - as long as they're decent quality you should be ok. I haven't seen any posts complaining of pic quality degradation on that account.


All the best,

Sean G.

Hmmn seriously thinking about using a PC to turn into a HTPC. Especially as I don't want to disturb my setup in the living room which I'm using a 32" telly with. This way I can run Dolby DD/DTS? through a SBlive 5.1 soundcard and output to a set of 5.1 Videologic ZXR-500's. My current PC would be ideal as it's quite high spec but I guess I don't need that much power for a HTPC?

I've probably got enough bits from my last upgrade to build a HTPC. e.g. Radeon 8500LE 128mb graphics. Would this graphics card be ok for it and how powerful does it need to be, Intel and AMD CPU wise? Would 256Mb DDR ram be enough or will I need more?

Thanks for all your help so far which is much appreciated.

[theritz]

If you're just going to use the pc for dvd playing duties and you've got that Radeon to put in it you'd be fine with anything from a P3 500 upwards - I run a Duron with a very mild overclock and it's fine. The AE100 with 1:1 pixel matching is a very sweet combination - really gives superb results image wise.

If you were going to use Dscaler and a capture card, then something more meaty in the 2Ghz range would suit better - Dscaler is quite processor intensive. My advice here is to walk before you try to run - give the pc a shot for dvd playing - you'll find details here for powerstrip settings etc by using search - and think about expanding to other uses later. The soundcard you mention will do you fine for passing DD 5.1 by SPDIF.

Check out the hcpc forum for lots of info - trawl through the threads and search about a bit - a wealth of info there.


All the best,

Sean G.

Hi Fsheehan

Enjoyed this thread - you sound a very happy chap with your new projector!

I also have a AE100 and would recommend going for the HTPC route - with powerdvd 5, powerstrip to get a 1:1 pixel match, and VGA input - you will have a picture considerably better than by any other route. I'd also recommend getting a filter (called a hoya filter) to get better blacks. There's lots of info in this forum.

Enjoy!

[Splice]

regarding the fan speed, i found in my experience that the "high fan setting" was as far as you needed to have it, although what i used to do was every 2 to 3 hours i may pop it up to full for a few mins, also i started turning the fan on full for about 5 mins before shutting it off. my projector panels were just starting to yellow at the 500 hours mark, it was then that i started the regime described above.... that, along with a regular..(internal cleaning) of the projector with an Air duster, i believe is the reason that when i sold my ae100, with 2000 hours on the clock it was in brilliant condition and the yellowing had got no worse than when it was at 500 hours, bear in mind i tend to have my projector on for long stints, anything between 4 hours to 12. with regard to dismantling the projector to clean, it really is easy, i used to dismantle, clean, and re-assemble in 15 mins. Dust is the enemy, and although the ae100 has a filter it does not stop all dust getting into the projector. dust on the panels, combined with the heat that is generated by these things, imo Will without a doubt cause premature failure or serious optic problems.
"hey calibos"

all the best........Splice

[Fsheehan]

Originally posted by theritz
If you're just going to use the pc for dvd playing duties and you've got that Radeon to put in it you'd be fine with anything from a P3 500 upwards - I run a Duron with a very mild overclock and it's fine. The AE100 with 1:1 pixel matching is a very sweet combination - really gives superb results image wise.

If you were going to use Dscaler and a capture card, then something more meaty in the 2Ghz range would suit better - Dscaler is quite processor intensive. My advice here is to walk before you try to run - give the pc a shot for dvd playing - you'll find details here for powerstrip settings etc by using search - and think about expanding to other uses later. The soundcard you mention will do you fine for passing DD 5.1 by SPDIF.

Check out the hcpc forum for lots of info - trawl through the threads and search about a bit - a wealth of info there.


All the best,

Sean G.

Hi Sean,

Thanks for all the info, will try to go the PC route and see how I go.

BTW what is descaler and what does it do? Does it improve the pic wualtiy even better?

Off to read more on HTPC's.. :D

Thanks!

[Fsheehan]

Originally posted by am1001aauk
Hi Fsheehan

Enjoyed this thread - you sound a very happy chap with your new projector!

I also have a AE100 and would recommend going for the HTPC route - with powerdvd 5, powerstrip to get a 1:1 pixel match, and VGA input - you will have a picture considerably better than by any other route. I'd also recommend getting a filter (called a hoya filter) to get better blacks. There's lots of info in this forum.

Enjoy!

Yup, extremely happy; so happy that I can't wipe the grin off my face when I turn it on!

Do you specifically need Power DVD 5 or will using Power DVD XP work?

Also, with the hoya filter, do I have to get the 55mm one or will what Jessops sell (52mm) do just as well?

Cheers,

Fred

[Fsheehan]

Originally posted by Splice
regarding the fan speed, i found in my experience that the "high fan setting" was as far as you needed to have it, although what i used to do was every 2 to 3 hours i may pop it up to full for a few mins, also i started turning the fan on full for about 5 mins before shutting it off. my projector panels were just starting to yellow at the 500 hours mark, it was then that i started the regime described above.... that, along with a regular..(internal cleaning) of the projector with an Air duster, i believe is the reason that when i sold my ae100, with 2000 hours on the clock it was in brilliant condition and the yellowing had got no worse than when it was at 500 hours, bear in mind i tend to have my projector on for long stints, anything between 4 hours to 12. with regard to dismantling the projector to clean, it really is easy, i used to dismantle, clean, and re-assemble in 15 mins. Dust is the enemy, and although the ae100 has a filter it does not stop all dust getting into the projector. dust on the panels, combined with the heat that is generated by these things, imo Will without a doubt cause premature failure or serious optic problems.
"hey calibos"

all the best........Splice

Thanks for the tips Splice, I've got my fan on Full all the time now. The slight fan noise doesn't really bother me when watching films so its fine.

With regards to cleaning the innards of the projector, do you use and sort of special cleaner or simply use a dry paint brush? I ask coz I normally just use a dry paintbrush to clean my PC's motherboard which works a treat!

Cheers

[theritz]

Fred,

If you've been browsing in the hcpc forum you'll have read plenty about Dscaler - it's a program that you use with a capture card which takes an incoming signal (Svideo or Composite) and de-interlces and scales it for output - very useful for TV, SKY etc. Some use this route to capture the output of their dvd player, and have the benefit of the PC deinterlacing and scaling, whiule retaining the functionality of a normal dvd player. Quite processor intensive, as said before.

In normal pc mode Powerdvd XP would do fine - version 5 has just been released...

As far as cleaning your Projector - I reckon a paintbrush is probably not the best - you prob wouldn't be able to reach to where you ned to clean - you should use compressed air to blow the dust away - do a search here for details before you try tho - if the propellant rather than the compressed air should get in to the PJ you'll be stuffed.

All the best,

Sean G.