Help with AVIA please

Pulsar

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Hello.

Today I recieved my AVIA DVD. WOW this is one in-depth home theater setup tool:eek:

I tried to go through a video setup routine for my HS10, but found I couldn't adjust some of the settings that they were suggesting. The main two I couldn't find were colour and Hue. I also couldn't find the sharpness control. Are these settings available on the HS10?

The problems that I wanted AVIA to help me with are the colour balance and black detail. What test patterns should I use to adjust these, and what settings should I use in the HS10 menu?

In other posts I have found on here and AVS, people are adjusting Red, Green and Blue, gain and bias settings, but I can't find these even in the factory and service menu. Can someone please help.:confused: PLEASE

I have a CC40R filter on order, which should be here in a week, so I would like to able to set the projector with this in use.

Finaly is it worth paying for a pro to come to my house and setup everything for me, or should I be able to get a decent picture by using my own eye and AVIA?

Cheers

Rob

P.S It may be an idea to start a thread where people can post there settings for their own projectors. I know that it would help novice's such as myself. I do understand that people will have different settings that suit their screen etc, but I think it would still be a good start point for beginners.
 
Hi,

Much of the discussion which relates to 'gain' could be related to the individual tubes on crt projectors.
While I'm sure you can also go into the service menu on your HS10 and adjust the individual levels for red , green and blue... I'm not sure I'd want to do that on a new projector. There is a good forum for other Sony lcd projectors over at thebigpicture.com...have a look there and learn about making adjustments to the gain. At the moment, just set the brightness and contrast using Avia. If you have a ntsc source, you can 'tweek' the colour and tint for the composite and s-video inputs (you can get green and purple faces if the tint isn't right...hence the "never twice the same color" name). If you use component then you might want to tweek the colour balance a little to suit your personal taste..... or to compensate for inbalances in your source.

brian.
 
My source is a HTPC and I have it connected to the HS10 by a DVI cable. I have seen in HS10 specific threads people mentioning how they adjusted the R Gain, G gain.......... etc to balance the colours. Mybe only people with a HS10 will be able to help me.

Kramer, Klippie, Webloader, John_N, John Spicer, anbjornk, graham.myers, TT9 and anyone I have missed, I think we could all benefit from sharing info on our HS10's. What do you think?

Cheers

Rob
 
I have an 11HT which had a resonable picture out of the box.

However once I had adjusted it with Smart the picture is outstanding especially on the dark areas.

Its the same with all projectors if you want to get the very best out of them you have to adjust them to give optimum performance. When you spend this level of money on a projector it would be a crime not to get the best out of it.

The process takes about 3- 4 hours but well worth the time investment. And its this reason why Sony don't do it to every projector before they send them out.
 
Like Chris has said about certain controls, you'll find that via RGB or DVI, the sharpness is also disabled.

That was my one complaint for HTPC with my pj - no sharpness. I find the HTPC a little harsh (image wise) now, so I started to look into the fddshow filter which apparently will allow this function (on the HTPC, not the pj).

With that function enabled, I think I'll be able to get a picture that I'll be happier with. Currently, the pjs onboard scaler is so good, I'll stick with s-video.

Gary.
 
Hi

I've been looking at my HS10 calibration.

I have the HS10 firing onto a matte white screen using the CC40R filter.

With no changes to the HS10, the CC40R filter looks very red.

To rectify this I entered the factory menu and (after writing down the original values) I changed the values for the 'medium' colour balance only. I've left the other two colour balances unchanged.

This allows you to change R.G.B gain and bias.

What I did (in a very primitive manner) was to use a set of AVIA greyscale ramps and my eyes to reduce the red colouration in the steps by reducing red and increasing green and blue.

This is very primitive and not very accurate. I emailed Gordon @ convergent av and asked for prices to do it properly (using test gear) since it is basically impossible to get it right using just your eyes.

I think sony include the 'cinema filter' - which I think is a CC20M - because it allows you to use the projector with and without the filter and without any change to the 'factory' settings. You can not use the CC40R without changing the factory settings, and, conversely, you can not use your projector WITHOUT the CC40R once you have turned up the green and blue in the bias/gain screens.

I have noticed an improvement in the picture. However I am now tormented by the thought that actually the picture is completely hopelessly calibrated and could be a lot better.

The adjustment on the HS10 had to be done twice for me - once for component and all other inputs, and once for the digital DVI input which seemed to have it's own little memory for gain/bias etc.

I would expect a professional calibration to give good results. I'm trying to find out at the moment whether I can get any equipment reasonably cheaply that will allow me to do it and get reasonable results (such as SMART or ColorFacts or whatever).

I had noticed that 'sharpness' was disabled on DVI. I got a new slider though called "RGB enhance" or something. What do people have this set to? I have mine set to 'minimum' at the moment.... Come to think of it - what does the 'sharpness' slider do? I have mine set to '30' at the moment but I haven't really noticed it doing anything... What's the best setting for it?

Cheers
John
 
Pulsar,

There is no easy fix, you really have to spend the time with Avia to learn about what you have to adjust and how it effects the picture and then practice.

When connected from a HTPC you really need to be adjusting the overlay settings of the Radeon itself, if your using Theatretek then you press V on your keyboard and that gives you an onscreen display of contrast, brightness, hue, saturation and gamma. When you adjust these you need to save them as the default setting "ctrl + C" for all disks otherwise it will revert to stock when you put the next disk in.

You need to learn the above before starting to meddle with gain and bias in the service menu.

So far I've tweaked the low bias and gain which I believe corresponds to the cinema setting that I use using Dave Boswells persentage change from default, (all my defaults were different). Then did Avia again.

The picture with the CC40R via dvi is stunning, at least as good as my Tosh 56 was and now the image is twice as big (112" diagonal).

John_N

I considered the Smart approach and may ultimatly go that route but I think I'm pretty close to what is acheivable already, so I'm finding it hard to justify the extra outlay.
 
Cheers John.

I will try altering the Theater Tek controls as you say. I will report back if I need some more of you your wisdom;)

Many thanks

Rob
 
Pulsar,

Hi, I completely missed this thread (doh!). Only seen it now as I have just mailed Pedo re. getting a copy of the AVIA disk and did a search on AVIA.

Have you had a chance to get on top of it all now and what has it done to the picture of the HS10 ? I was more than happy to leave mine as is but if there is a better picture to be had then I might as well find it.

I am still on the supplied Cinema filter so would be especially interested on you thoughts re. CC40R, and anyone else's thoughts for that matter.

Best Wishes.
Steve.
 
TT9

its well worth the £20 for a cc40r filter if you,ve already got avia on the way.
 
John,

I've not committed to either, but in your humblest of opinions do you recommend purchasing both said filter and AVIA disk ?

[yes/no]

(Careful - there's some hard grafted pennies as stake here ! :) )
 
Have no doubt, you can improve things by a massive amount with time patience practice and both avia and cc40r:D
 
Ok, John I've PM'd piero, and I'll give the filter suppliers a ring first thing tomorrow (their name escapes me). I'll let you know how I get on.

(and probably come scrounging for base settings !! :blush: )

Best Wishes.
Steve.
 

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