theritz
Active Member
Well folks, Vexorg and I ventured as far as Comerville to have a look at his new HS60. I was interested to see what the HS60 was like in comparison to the Z3 and Vexorg is in the market for a new toy so this was a worthwhile outing.
What can I say ? Appalling VB, screendoor visible at 1.5 times seating distance, a high pitched whine from the fans, nice milky-grey "greys", couldn't have been more of a turkey if it had Bernard Matthews name on it'd back sitting in a tin tray on Christmas Eve.... ????
Well not really..........
It's very difficult to find fault with any of the picture performance - blacks were really well rendered in-scene, "grey bars" on 2.35:1 material were very dark grey, on full blackout screen you could make shadow animals, but then you can do that on any digital projector - if it's any worthwhile indication, an all black screen produced markedly less light off the screen than the Z3.
Comer's settings on the projector produce a bright (on a 78" wide 1.0 gain matt white screen) punchy image - super clean performance from Theatertek with ffdshow. the image is "contrasty" and 3D-like, with very natural skintones and super colour reproduction. We had the opportunity with Comer's assistance to do some tweaking with test-patterns, concentrating on brightness and contrast - we set up an alternative setting which had a little more shadow detail, but the effect was quite subtle - the real discovery here wasn't anything exposed by changing the settings, but rather that the range of adjustability on the projector leaves lots of scope for making subtle changes.
One thing to note - on out-of-the-box settings, the action of the auto-iris was quite noticeable on scenes with transitions from very bright to dark - one could see the iris closing down and opening up quite clearly as "stepping" changes in the overall brightness level. Comer has this well under control with a tweak to the auto-iris setting in the service menu - once this was applied I didn't notice the performance of the iris in an obtrusive manner again.
It's also worth noting that when adjusting the brightness and contrast it was clear to me that the auto-iris was having an unexpected effect - I suspect that the firmware is set up to make adjustments simultaneously with the iris' state of opening or closing - and accordingly I would be inclined to experiment carefully with the brightness and contrast settings to find an optimum tradeoff bweteen the regular setings and the performance of the auto iris.
We also had the chance to watch dvd through a progscan dvd player via component - it was clear that there was a softness introduced by the dvd player, but the performance of the projector with this material as well as interlaced from dvd, and from Sky digital was a real eye opener. For someone who prefers the ease of use of a dvd player, this projector will not underperform.
Other than black level performance (which on the HS60 I thought was well into DLP territory.........) one of the biggest bugbears with LCD is Fixed Pattern Noise or Vertical Banding. Some regard these to be the same artifact - I consider them to be associated but slightly different. FPN (to me) is like a scene appearing to be viewed through a dirt window in a panning scene, most particularly with uniform light coloured areas of the image. VB is simlar, but also has the apearance of uniformly spaced stripes of a slightly lighter colour than the immediately surrounding area.
The HS60 I saw showed the faintest trace of FPN, but I noticed it once or twice only in what I would consider "torture" material for this particular artifact (lots of opportunities in AOTC.....) in a 4 hour period of viewing, and I defintely did not see the hallmark "stripes" of VB. Screendoor is really a function of seating distance - with 1280x720 projectors I don't think SDE becomes an issue unless you're planning to sit 1x screen width away form the image. With Comer's setup (between 1.5 and 2x screenwidth ? - Comer can confirm...) I didn't notice any SDE.
To my eyes, this projector is a keeper, full stop.
Oooops, almost forgot..................
.......Custard Creams..........
Really.
Thanks Comer.
Sean.
What can I say ? Appalling VB, screendoor visible at 1.5 times seating distance, a high pitched whine from the fans, nice milky-grey "greys", couldn't have been more of a turkey if it had Bernard Matthews name on it'd back sitting in a tin tray on Christmas Eve.... ????
Well not really..........
It's very difficult to find fault with any of the picture performance - blacks were really well rendered in-scene, "grey bars" on 2.35:1 material were very dark grey, on full blackout screen you could make shadow animals, but then you can do that on any digital projector - if it's any worthwhile indication, an all black screen produced markedly less light off the screen than the Z3.Comer's settings on the projector produce a bright (on a 78" wide 1.0 gain matt white screen) punchy image - super clean performance from Theatertek with ffdshow. the image is "contrasty" and 3D-like, with very natural skintones and super colour reproduction. We had the opportunity with Comer's assistance to do some tweaking with test-patterns, concentrating on brightness and contrast - we set up an alternative setting which had a little more shadow detail, but the effect was quite subtle - the real discovery here wasn't anything exposed by changing the settings, but rather that the range of adjustability on the projector leaves lots of scope for making subtle changes.
One thing to note - on out-of-the-box settings, the action of the auto-iris was quite noticeable on scenes with transitions from very bright to dark - one could see the iris closing down and opening up quite clearly as "stepping" changes in the overall brightness level. Comer has this well under control with a tweak to the auto-iris setting in the service menu - once this was applied I didn't notice the performance of the iris in an obtrusive manner again.
It's also worth noting that when adjusting the brightness and contrast it was clear to me that the auto-iris was having an unexpected effect - I suspect that the firmware is set up to make adjustments simultaneously with the iris' state of opening or closing - and accordingly I would be inclined to experiment carefully with the brightness and contrast settings to find an optimum tradeoff bweteen the regular setings and the performance of the auto iris.
We also had the chance to watch dvd through a progscan dvd player via component - it was clear that there was a softness introduced by the dvd player, but the performance of the projector with this material as well as interlaced from dvd, and from Sky digital was a real eye opener. For someone who prefers the ease of use of a dvd player, this projector will not underperform.
Other than black level performance (which on the HS60 I thought was well into DLP territory.........) one of the biggest bugbears with LCD is Fixed Pattern Noise or Vertical Banding. Some regard these to be the same artifact - I consider them to be associated but slightly different. FPN (to me) is like a scene appearing to be viewed through a dirt window in a panning scene, most particularly with uniform light coloured areas of the image. VB is simlar, but also has the apearance of uniformly spaced stripes of a slightly lighter colour than the immediately surrounding area.
The HS60 I saw showed the faintest trace of FPN, but I noticed it once or twice only in what I would consider "torture" material for this particular artifact (lots of opportunities in AOTC.....) in a 4 hour period of viewing, and I defintely did not see the hallmark "stripes" of VB. Screendoor is really a function of seating distance - with 1280x720 projectors I don't think SDE becomes an issue unless you're planning to sit 1x screen width away form the image. With Comer's setup (between 1.5 and 2x screenwidth ? - Comer can confirm...) I didn't notice any SDE.
To my eyes, this projector is a keeper, full stop.
Oooops, almost forgot..................
.......Custard Creams..........
Really.
Thanks Comer.
Sean.
