JVC X3/X7/X9 Owners Thread - Part 2

Guys, make sure you get the gamma corrected in these old units, they all develope a heavy gamma drop, its a very time consuming job to manually correct, but its worth it, just be carefull it will easy look worse as the adjustment points dont adjust the point you expect/ measure.

Have a X3 here that got a new ballaster and lamp, good internal cleaning, and calibration, it looks quite nice, running low lamp mode fully open iris on a 110" neutral gain screen, getting 11fl 18000:1 on off contrast and around 130:1 ansi contrast.

The X7 measures around the same, but is drifting more, so overall the X3 performs better.
 
Guys, make sure you get the gamma corrected in these old units, they all develope a heavy gamma drop, its a very time consuming job to manually correct, but its worth it, just be carefull it will easy look worse as the adjustment points dont adjust the point you expect/ measure.

Have a X3 here that got a new ballaster and lamp, good internal cleaning, and calibration, it looks quite nice, running low lamp mode fully open iris on a 110" neutral gain screen, getting 11fl 18000:1 on off contrast and around 130:1 ansi contrast.

The X7 measures around the same, but is drifting more, so overall the X3 performs better.
Hi,
Is there a link or thread of how to do this on a X3 ?
My picture looks fine now at 1700 hrs , but maybe slipping slowly without me noticing.
 
Hi,
Is there a link or thread of how to do this on a X3 ?
My picture looks fine now at 1700 hrs , but maybe slipping slowly without me noticing.

You need a good probe and software to measure, and good calibration skils.
There is no way you can do it by eye.

Ill try make a ilustration of the gamma drop, wich makes the image look fairly washed out if not corrected.
 
You need a good probe and software to measure, and good calibration skils.
There is no way you can do it by eye.

Ill try make a ilustration of the gamma drop, wich makes the image look fairly washed out if not corrected.

Spyder5ELITE

Is that what you use to correct gamma
 
No, ill recommend a Xrite I1Display pro, and then download HCFR, its plug and play, however might take you a few years to be good at calibrating.

And the X3-7-9 firmware is somewhat broke, so the adjustments dont align with what they are intendet to adjust.

Ill recommend to start with offset at 0 on all 3 colors, measure 1-2-3-4-5% and see how it tracks out of black, if you measure 10-20%ire and adjust offset from that you will competly mess up your low level performance.
 
Hi All

recently replaced my bulb, which fixed a 3D issue I was having, and made the whole projector feel like new again. Until I switched it on having come back from holiday - its been about 6 weeks, to be honest - and the damn thing is broken.

Its opens the lens cap, and the standby light turns green for about 30 seconds, but nothing else happens, and eventually the light turns red, and the lamp light flashes amber, and the warning light comes on solid red as well. Tried turning it off, unplugging, switching the HDMI over, all to no avail.

I don't believe that I have ever updated the firmware, and I have read on some places that this can help. And it would seem to be worth a shot. Any other ideas as to what it might be, and any solutions - am looking for solutions that require pressing a button for 10 seconds, something like that, none of that sending it off to Sontec or whomever and spending £500 on a new ballast board!

Thanks in advance!

Cheers

Paul
 
How many hours is on the projector? Sounds verry much like the ballaster.
 
I had about 1200 before I recently replaced the bulb - haven't done more than 20-30 on the new bulb, so not a huge amount.
 
I had a similar sort of problem (don't remember the specifics but it failed soon after replacing a bulb) solved by reseating the bulb, perhaps give that a try
 
Thanks for the idea, but have already taken the bulb out and reseated it. Didn't work, unfortunately.
 
I have a x7 and 2 x3 where the ballaster failed around 1400 hours
 
Which isn't that encouraging to be honest! I'm going to try the firmware update, and see if that works - is there an easy way to test to see if its the Ballaster that has gone or would I need to send it off somewhere?

Irritating that this has happened just after putting a new bulb in, would have saved myself the money on a bulb!
 
I had the same problem quite a while ago. Unplug the power altogether and leave it off all night. Plug in and try again.

I had my ballast replaced last year.
 
Thanks for that. I did that yesterday, and its the same today, so I don't think that's it. However, have unplugged it again, will see what its like tomorrow. Wondering whether I should close the lens cover manually, or just leave it open.

How did you replace your ballast? And more importantly, how much did it cost?
 
You can find ballasters here.


Its normal that the lens door stays open, it can be both a lamp fail, or ballast, normaly on these models. Ill bet its the ballast, firmware have for sure nothing to do with it, and i would not attempt to upload firmware to a defective projector.

The 3 ballasters i have changed all failed on the comunication board of the ballaster, so nothing to do with the lamp drive part.

Its a bit of a project to change the ballast as you will need to take out every other board in the projector to get to it, not impossible, but takes a steady hand and you need to keep track of it all.

If you cant change it yourself, i would scrap the projector and buy a used X35 or newer instead, they are much less likely to fail, and wont cost more than paying JVC to change the ballast.
 
Ah, ok. If it's not switching on after 24 hours being unplugged, I'd say it's the ballast.

I sent it away to Sontec to sort. They also did some board upgrade at the same time as the ballast.

£550
 
Ah, ok. If it's not switching on after 24 hours being unplugged, I'd say it's the ballast.

I sent it away to Sontec to sort. They also did some board upgrade at the same time as the ballast.

£550
Bet they changed the cap on the front ir board, wich was mounted wrong from factory, a known issue on that series wich JVC was kind enough not to call back well knowing that that it would become a issue on them all at some point.

Sometimes they will turn on again and wont turn off, wich seems to be what happens when the ballast is going bad. I would try another lamp, if its still the same its 99,9% sure the ballaster.
 
I changed the front IR myself.

They did an upgrade of some form or other.

Q9icZxA.png
 
thanks for the replies and advice, guys. Much appreciated.

I've been umming and ahhing about upgrading it for a while, but thought I would try a new bulb first, which seemed to have fixed all my problems, until this one. Which seems to have killed the poor thing.

Have been in touch with Sontec, and quoted the same £550 that they quoted you, Mr incredible, which suggests that this is a pretty common fault, and this is the common response to it. Not sure I am that keen to throw good money after bad, though, so maybe a new projector is in my future soon anyway.

over to the classifieds, then!
 
If you cant change it yourself, i would scrap the projector and buy a used X35 or newer instead, they are much less likely to fail, and wont cost more than paying JVC to change the ballast.

When you say the X35 or newer models, would you go down to an X30? Or are they subject to the same weaknesses around the ballast board as the X3?

I was in for an X500 on the bay, but got outbid - went for about £850, although I would have had to collect it from London, which isn't close. Is that, in your mind, about the right price for an x500, or is that cheap?

Thanks in advance for you advice

ps I did try upgrading the firmware, which seemed to work fine - at least the process did - so the projector is still working and responding to instructions - but the error is still there, unfortunately. So I guess it is definitely the ballast board.
 
The X3/X30 is basically the same projector, biggest difference will be software, the X35 is the next/ 2nd generation lamp engine, diferent lamp, different ballast, and i bet a better/ bigger lamp blower, the X500 is the same lamp engine as the X35, but should have better processor, wich shold be a nice step up in motion handeling, wich is not to good on the X3- X30 - X35.
After that came the X5000 wich is the 3rd and last X series lamp engine.

The lenses is the same on them all, i plan to do a experiment swapping a X3 and a X5900 lens see if it makes a difference.
 
thanks so much for all the info, its proving really useful. got an offer in on an x500, so I think thats the level I am going for, which should be a decent upgrade on the X3.

Out of interest, do you know whether the 3d emitter on the X3 will work with the X500, and the glasses for that matter? I've read that they should be compatible - I have 6 pairs of glasses, so it would be expensive to replace all of them I reckon, so it would be nice to continue using them.

Cheers,

Paul
 
The glases and emitter should work, however i guess you got the old IR emitter and glases, wich was replaced with the RF models, try it out, and take it from there, i never been much of a 3D guy so not to much experience with that.
 
Trying to work out what is wrong with my X3 , it`s been like it for some time now,
90% of the time it starts up fine but occasionally it flashes the x2 red lights one after another.

Only way to stop it, is pull the plug , reswitch on and all ok again.

Done about 1800 hrs and had a new ballast and front ir board cap at 800.
I bought it dead and fixed it.
It says in the manual " low power supply" ?
 
Hi all, I need help for my JVC
In the white screen 100% I can see on the right side/corner that the tint become yellow (see the picture make with my phone)
Which could be the problem? inside mirror alignment? or lens dirty?
Thanks
Bye
 

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