I got my IN82 yesterday and spent most of yesterday evening installing it. My previous projector was the IN78 so any observations are in comparison to it and may be of interest to anyone considering a similar upgrade.
My room is quite small 11' 2" wide 14' long with an alcove at the back for the equipment, the ceiling is 8' high. My screen is white unity gain 16:9, 2.3 Metres wide (104" diag) and the bottom edge is 23" from the floor. The seating at the back wall gives a viewing distance of about 13'. I had my IN78 mounted inside the room but would have preferred to mount it at the far side of the wall shining through an aperture to reduce heat and noise. This was never possible because there is a stairwell there leading up to the bedrooms and with the low mounting position of the IN78 you would hit your head off it from the bottom step. Because of the increased offset of the IN82 I was able to mount it at the stairwell and because of the increased throw and size I had to move it back anyway. I had all the calculations done and the hole made in the wall before I got the IN82. I mounted the 82 on an aluminium plate 300mm x 500mm x 3mm and attached this with wing nuts to three threaded rods protruding from the ceiling. The wing nuts give me fine adjustment of pitch and roll and the whole assembly is pretty tight to the ceiling. Focusing is a two man job now but shouldn't need to be carried out too often. I use RS232 control for my equipment but the IN82 has a socket for a remote IR sensor. The IN82 is quieter than the IN78 but not as quiet as my cinema room now is. The reduction in heat build up means I will need to run the air conditioning less. There seems to be a third benefit to this installation method, a lot of stray light from the lens is reflected back in to the stairwell area instead of getting bounced around my cinema room. The cut out in the wall at the projector side is quite small and only lines up with the lower half of the lens, not the entire lens area. I will be able to fine tune this further when I get the hole framed properly.
What about the picture.
CONTRAST: The native contrast with the iris fully open is rated at 4000:1 compared to 3500:1 for the IN78 and the improvement is noticeable even with the very bright picture of the IN82. I was worried that closing the iris completely to achieve the rated 12,000:1 would result in an un-watchable picture but this is not the case. It is dim to the extent that your eyes take a few seconds to adjust after coming in from the lit hallway. I know some people like it that dim but I will probably be using a setting about mid way.
I have a basic lux meter and was going to do a comparison in brightness between the two projectors using the white screen of the inbuilt test patterns. My IN78 has about 870 hours clocked up and might be a bit dimmer than when new. Before I took it down I selected the white test screen and measured 13.5 fc at the centre of the screen. My plan was to put up the white test on the IN82 and find the iris setting that gave me the same level as the IN78 then observe the picture improvement at that setting. For some reason I only read 7.4 fc on the IN82 with the iris fully open so the white in the test pattern is far below the brightest white that the projector can produce. That was that plan out the window, I should probably have made up a white image in photo shop and displayed it from my HTPC. By the way I measured 2.2 fc with the iris fully closed.
RESOLUTION: I was not expecting a big improvement in this department with the 13 foot viewing distance but I have changed my mind now. There is a definite improvement in clarity of blue ray and HD material especially when your eyes get a chance to study detail in a fairly motionless image like a close up of someones face. Of course with the PC desktop and internet browsing the improvement is obvious.
COLOUR: There is a noticeable improvement here also the colours look much more realistic although the IN78 was very good. I have not played around with the settings yet but the out of the box colour settings do look much more accurate than the IN78.
REFRESH RATE: The EDID on the IN82 is great. For 1920 x1080 there is a whole list of refresh rates, 23Hz, 24Hz, 25Hz included. My HTPC is Vista based with Nvidia 8500GT, I have it connected in directly to the IN82 M1 input. When I went in to the Nvidia control panel I was able to select 24Hz and play Blue Ray without judder, this was not possible with the IN78. I find that the fast Zoom out from the Columbia statue is a great way to test for this.
PROBLEMS: The only problem so far is that I cant get the HDMI input to recognise the HDMI output from my Denon AVC-A11XV amp, this worked ok on the IN78. It might just be a setting somewhere, I will have another look at it.
Jim.
My room is quite small 11' 2" wide 14' long with an alcove at the back for the equipment, the ceiling is 8' high. My screen is white unity gain 16:9, 2.3 Metres wide (104" diag) and the bottom edge is 23" from the floor. The seating at the back wall gives a viewing distance of about 13'. I had my IN78 mounted inside the room but would have preferred to mount it at the far side of the wall shining through an aperture to reduce heat and noise. This was never possible because there is a stairwell there leading up to the bedrooms and with the low mounting position of the IN78 you would hit your head off it from the bottom step. Because of the increased offset of the IN82 I was able to mount it at the stairwell and because of the increased throw and size I had to move it back anyway. I had all the calculations done and the hole made in the wall before I got the IN82. I mounted the 82 on an aluminium plate 300mm x 500mm x 3mm and attached this with wing nuts to three threaded rods protruding from the ceiling. The wing nuts give me fine adjustment of pitch and roll and the whole assembly is pretty tight to the ceiling. Focusing is a two man job now but shouldn't need to be carried out too often. I use RS232 control for my equipment but the IN82 has a socket for a remote IR sensor. The IN82 is quieter than the IN78 but not as quiet as my cinema room now is. The reduction in heat build up means I will need to run the air conditioning less. There seems to be a third benefit to this installation method, a lot of stray light from the lens is reflected back in to the stairwell area instead of getting bounced around my cinema room. The cut out in the wall at the projector side is quite small and only lines up with the lower half of the lens, not the entire lens area. I will be able to fine tune this further when I get the hole framed properly.
What about the picture.
CONTRAST: The native contrast with the iris fully open is rated at 4000:1 compared to 3500:1 for the IN78 and the improvement is noticeable even with the very bright picture of the IN82. I was worried that closing the iris completely to achieve the rated 12,000:1 would result in an un-watchable picture but this is not the case. It is dim to the extent that your eyes take a few seconds to adjust after coming in from the lit hallway. I know some people like it that dim but I will probably be using a setting about mid way.
I have a basic lux meter and was going to do a comparison in brightness between the two projectors using the white screen of the inbuilt test patterns. My IN78 has about 870 hours clocked up and might be a bit dimmer than when new. Before I took it down I selected the white test screen and measured 13.5 fc at the centre of the screen. My plan was to put up the white test on the IN82 and find the iris setting that gave me the same level as the IN78 then observe the picture improvement at that setting. For some reason I only read 7.4 fc on the IN82 with the iris fully open so the white in the test pattern is far below the brightest white that the projector can produce. That was that plan out the window, I should probably have made up a white image in photo shop and displayed it from my HTPC. By the way I measured 2.2 fc with the iris fully closed.
RESOLUTION: I was not expecting a big improvement in this department with the 13 foot viewing distance but I have changed my mind now. There is a definite improvement in clarity of blue ray and HD material especially when your eyes get a chance to study detail in a fairly motionless image like a close up of someones face. Of course with the PC desktop and internet browsing the improvement is obvious.
COLOUR: There is a noticeable improvement here also the colours look much more realistic although the IN78 was very good. I have not played around with the settings yet but the out of the box colour settings do look much more accurate than the IN78.
REFRESH RATE: The EDID on the IN82 is great. For 1920 x1080 there is a whole list of refresh rates, 23Hz, 24Hz, 25Hz included. My HTPC is Vista based with Nvidia 8500GT, I have it connected in directly to the IN82 M1 input. When I went in to the Nvidia control panel I was able to select 24Hz and play Blue Ray without judder, this was not possible with the IN78. I find that the fast Zoom out from the Columbia statue is a great way to test for this.
PROBLEMS: The only problem so far is that I cant get the HDMI input to recognise the HDMI output from my Denon AVC-A11XV amp, this worked ok on the IN78. It might just be a setting somewhere, I will have another look at it.
Jim.