Its goodbye Sanyo Z1, hello Panasonic 300.

Firstly, let me start by saying that I am in no way going to slag of the Sanyo Z1. It is fine unit. However, this week, I have had three units sent to me from Nexnix.

The first unit malfunctioned last Friday, continually crashing with the picture droppping off. The second one, altough 'trouble' free arrived with several dead pixels and a dust blob. Then today, I decided to go and rent 28 days later, kick back and enjoy the movie. However, in the space of one hour the third machine decided to switch itself off three times. OK, so I think that maybe its a power management thing?
Nope all set as before. The machine is simply powering itself down, reason unkown. Not really the best movie watching environ.

So, another call to Matt @ Nexnix. Who suggests that a refund may be my best option. I quickly point out that I am not after a refund, I just want a good working projector. So he suggests that I maybe think about a different model. X1, Panny, Sharp etc.

Wanting to stay away from 4:3 models, I ask him to 'sell' me the Panasonic, considering its another £300.00 out of my pocket. So he does. Of course, I am going to miss the lens shift facility which the guys at Nexnix think is causing lots of problems are they have more Z1's returned than any other budget machine.

So, again, I feel like a ****er on the phone again, apologising for being a 'fussy' consumer. But thats the latest. The 300 is due to arrive on Saturday.

However, I would like to point out that the Z1 is still my projector of choice. I think that I have just been unlucky but Nexnix mentioned that they do occasionally get a bad bunch in. Sorry to let down the other Z1 owners out there, but in this instance I think nexnix are right.
If you are having trouble free viewing on your Z1 think yourself lucky

Regards,

Captain Benefit

 

Boooo you've gone to the dark side
Hope you hate the panny
I don't blame you mate i would have done the same thing if that had happened to me.
Good luck with the panny hope you get a good un

 

The above statement is 100% true. I am gutted to loose the flexibility of the Z1 as I now have to rethink my room, i.e ceiling mounts etc.

As I said, in the right conditions the Z1 is a great projector and it the qualities that I saw on the demo I had convinced me it was the PJ for me.

I hope that the 300 does not have the problems that the 100 had. But hey, we will cross that bridge when we come to it, if we ever do.

cheers,

CB.

 

You have certainly been unlucky with your Z1,I think yours,mine and liverpools Pj's were all from the same batch out of nexnix and so far (touching wood as I type this) I have had no probs.

With the exception of three small dust blobs on the left side of screen.The dust blobs are feint and are not a real problem, but I am surprised to have them after only 2 weeks usage.Anyone know how to get rid of them (with compressed air I know but how do you do it)

I saw the matrix reloaded today at my local multiplex, had not seen a movie there since I had my pj.I can honestly say that my Z1 delivers nearly as good a picture, I am very pleased I took the plunge.

I hope that you soon get your panny 300 and that it's trouble free movies for you!

 

Would be very interested in your comparison of the two (seeing as no one in the NW seems to be able to demo one!)

 

Look on the bright side, you're getting a better projector...

 

Did they make you pay the extra for the Panny?

 

I did actually have to pay the extra for the Panasonic. Which I think totals about £250.00 - £300.00, also, by the time we had decided on the best course of action, I established that I had missed Fridays courier. So, Nexnix and I are going halves on Saturday delivery.

As for it being a better machine, well, that appears to be subjective. On paper its a better PJ, but the train of thought on AVS is that both machines are excellent.

Finally, whilst waiting for Match of the Day last night, I decided to have a couple of rounds on Tiger Woods on the X-box, sadly, the Sanyo decided to switch off THREE times in less than 40 minutes.

Cheers,

Captain Benefit.

 

Captain benefit,

did you buy your PJ with a barclaycard - if so they offer a price matching service. they will pay the difference if you find it cheaper within 60 days.

The cheapest the AE300 is going for that ive seen is 1350 which isnt much more then the Z1. The advantage of this is that you can buy from nexnix for their excellent service and then get the money back from barclaycard.

tony.

 

I'm on my second Z1 from Nexnix as the first one won't power up with the Lamp light just flashing. They haven't collected it yet...

The second one seems fine but hasn't had a dead pixel check as the hours were at 0 when I got it. So I'll have to have a look myself.

Cheers,
Cal.

 

I read on another thread that projectors are excluded from the barclay card deal.

Chhers,
Cal.

 

Nexninx have just called me, stating that

'Every Panasonic 300 in the building has a fault of some kind.'

And as I have had loads of trouble with my other units, they are loath to send or indeed sell me a Panasonic.

So, a refund is on the way, and I am currrently in discussion with a local dealer who is offering the sharp Z90 at around £2 k.

I am pretty sure that this is a 4:3 panel so not really that interested. I am going to demo it tomorrow morning however, so it should be interesting. They have sold thier last Panny 300 but are looking at getting some more in.

I may just have to wait.....

Regards,

Captain Benefit.

 

I feel for you. Good luck with the demos and I hope you find another soon.

 

The annoying thing is that I have just had the last five weeks away from work due to a leg op and now, when everything decides to go tits up, I have to go back to work as leg is well on the way to being better.
So, now, with my AV room finished, the screen hung, the speaker wire chased and hidden and the sofa about to arrive I find myself projector less.

I have to remain assertive here and not buy the first thing that I see

I simply cannot believe that every 300 unit at nexnix is faulty. To be honest, in the last week, the service they offered went down hill. Take for instance the second and third unit, both of which were supposed to be pixel tested. Well they had a combined dead pixel count of about 11.....surely someone who is employed to test these kind of things would have spotted that, after all, I did, as did my builder and we know very little about PJ technology. saying that, it was good of them to point out the 300 situation....

Rant over.

Finally, can anyone point me towards good online retailers...?

Regards,

Captain Benefit.

 

Why do they all have faults ????

Does this mean that ALL AE300 has these "Faults" or is it a faulty batch of some sort ??

This doesn't sound good to me !!! I was going to order from them when the time was right for me ( money wise )


Captain ?

 

Fault = a dead or more than one dead or blown pixel.

 

So it's a pixel issue .....


Do the panny's in general have a clean record when it comes to the dead pixels ?? Or do you get 1 out of about 3 that has the issue ??

 

Always seems to me that if a company is offering a dead pixel check then sooner or later they will have a high % of stock that are not dead pixel free.

And what if you didn't pay extra for that check - do you therefore receive a unit that has dead pixels but within manufacturing tolerances.

I believe that you said cap'n that both your replacement Z1s came with dead pixels.

Sparky

 

www.av-sales.co.uk
Great service and prices.
Speak to Liam if you have seen something cheaper elsewhere etc.

 

My Z1 arrived from Nexnix last week, and so far no problems at all.

The lens offset is really, really good, and the picture seems excellent to my eyes anyway. Composite is ****e of course but the RGB and S-video is O.K.

(I'm an editor, and fuss over pictures/pixels all day)

I wasn't fussed about getting a 300, as it uses the same panels as the Z1, and I've read that the anti-screendoor thingy is not so good either.

Captain Benefit, if you've still got a Z1 at home at the mo, try covering over the Infra red port on the unit and see if it still turns itself off, could be spurious IR in your room (I've had it before - weird stuff)

 

I'm on my second Z1 and I've now found it has a stuck green pixel a third of the way in from the edge. Now I've noticed it, I find it very distracting as it's quite bright especially when not defocused - I can see why there is zero tolerance on green pixels.

Now the question is should I await a third Z1 or get a refund and buy an AE300?

Go2Camcorder avertise them in What Hifi at £1250 + £35 delivery.
If I do go that route are they any good?

What's the deinterlacer like on the AE300?

Cheers,
Callum.

 

As I went for the Sony HS2 which has a better de-interlacer than the Z1.
In the short space of time that I have had it I have noticed that movies are far more ' film like' .

I use the 2:3 pulldown option, and it seems to remove the jagged edges that occasionally plagued the Z1, epsecially when using the X-box.

But tell me can you answer this?

If my DVD deck is interlaced only, am I right to assume that the projector is making the image progressive or do I need a progressive DVD player?

Thanks.

Captain Benefit.

 

Your pj will indeed be turning the interlaced signal into a progressive one. All fixed pixel devices are only capable of outputting a progressive signal so this has to be either a progressive input that is scaled (if necessary) and output or an interlaced one that is scaled and turned into a progressive signal internally before being output.

In short, fixed pixel devices such as front projectors and plasma and LCD TVs are not capable of displaying a non-progressive signal.

 

Messiah,

All projectors will technically be putting out a progressive signal, but how good that signal is totally dependent on the deinterlacer.

For example, the most simple deinterlacer will be a line doubler which will take each frame and fill in the missing interlaced lines with a copy of the line above,

Eg if the frame is for the odd numbered lines 1,3, 5 etc then line 1 will be copied to line 2, and line 3 to line 4 etc.

This requires minimal processing and very little buffer memory.

A slightly more advanced (but still poor) deinterlacer will average lines 1 and 3 to give line 2.

However the picture will have all the same problems as an interlaced signal:

line twitter - where horizontal lines will appear one frame and then disappear on the next. Say there is a line one pixel wide on line 2 then it will only appear every second frame and so will flash on and off giving a flickered image.

jaggies - where diagonal lines are like steps due to being half the vertical resolution.

increased moire patterns - curved lines from interference of fix patterns such as seats in a stadium.

and basically lower resolution - as the vertical resolution is halved for each frame.

In fact this is pretty much how my Z1 looks.

This type of deinterlacing is called "bob".

Another type of deinterlacing is when the odd and even field from a frame are taken and put back together.

This works well for films when 3:2 and 2:2 pulldown cadence is well detected by the deinterlacer. To do this it needs to compare about 4 consecutive frames which requires complex processing and a large buffer memory (read expensive).

For video sources it does not work so well for moving scenes as the two fields are not caputured at the same moment in time and you therefore get what's called "feathering", "combing" or "mice teeth".

Therefore for video weave is used for still images and bob is used for moving images as the movement makes it hard to see the bob artifacts.

This is called "motion adaptive" deinterlacing. For films, when the 3:2 and 2:2 cadence cannot be detected, an interlacer will resort to this method.

The question is how much do you break your picture into smaller parts to decide which part is moving and which is not ?

Obviously the optimal way is to do it pixel by pixel but this is expensive in processing and memory and so cheaper deinterlacer break the screen into much bigger sections. And then you have to decide how many frames to analyse.

The iScan pro does pixel by pixel motion adaptive deinterlacing over about 4 frames and is supposed to be pretty damn good (although I've never seen it). It was originally about 800 quid but you can now get it for about £370.

So to expect a £1500 projector to be as good could be considered naive.

As you can see, it's easier for deinterlacers to process film sources rather than video sources as long as the 3:2 and 2:2 pulldown can be accurately detected. And the results will always be better as the two fields are filmed at the same time.

That's why DVD films will always have much fewer artifacts than TV with a basic deinterlacer making TV look pretty bad.

Now the fields on DVD's should be flagged telling the player which field is which and so if the deinterlacing is done in the DVD player, it should be much easier if the DVD is done properly and is converted from film.

In this case a simple weave deinterlacer is all that would be needed inside the DVD with little processing or memory required.

However a good DVD player will have to use the tricks above for when the flags are wrong, bad breaks between scenes, or when there is video material on the disc.

As most discs in future should be well flagged and cut, a mediocre deinterlacer in the DVD player should please most of the time and so will be cheaper than an off board one.

Cheers,
Cal.

 

But he only asked "am I right to assume that the projector is making the image progressive or do I need a progressive DVD player" not how good/bad etc.

Geez, some people don't half complicate things (for a simple soul like me)

 

Cal, thanks very much for that informative post! I'd always wondered about the terminology for deinterlacing but it always seemd too scary for me to bother looking into it - now I am enlightened thanks to you!

Dunc