MT-7 alongside PTA-100E

ROne

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Got my mates 100 down last night to do a comparison - both running the same HTCP.

XP+Cineplayer4+radeon, running 1280x720 - RGB - YUV for the MT7. £3800 500 hours 80" Wide Grey Painted screen

XP+CP4+radeon, running Wide 480 VGA on the 100. £950! 14 hours (recon unit from discount electrical.) 80" Wide Grey Painted screen.

Got to say the panasonic is really good out of the box, the colours are natural and not forced, naturally tweaking produced some worthwhile changes (although I've yet to put the man hours in on the that I've put in on the MT-7).

The major difference between the two units is screen door, the panasonic does a reasonable job with less pixels (better than other similar rez LCD projectors) but the image just doesn't look smooth enough - it looks a little harsh. However I am sat on top of the screen at about 1 x width because the MT-7 will allow you to do that. You would just have to sit a little further back and de-focusing helps.

Contrast looks like its in the panasonics favour by a nats. Image's look more 3D than the toshiba but can seem to be brash with a litle bleeding around the edges.

I can't run my own MT7 in VGA direct mode due to various tearing/juddering problems and I'm sure the MT-7 in RGB-VGA mode would produce even more pronounced results. So I have to settle with component which doesn't by-pass the scaler.

No tearing or juddering on the Panasonic though. I have tried various PS wide 480 settings and I don't believe the entire width of the screen is 1-1 even after extensive meddling of phase/clock and different PS figures I couldn't get a perfect 1-1 across the screen - some pixels seemed elongated - can anyone comment?

Fan on the Panasonic is louder than the MT-7 and makes more of a wushing sound, although it is still quiet. Had no real problems so far with reliabiltiy (it did come with a dust blob though).

I have to conclude that if you insist on sitting close and want a smooth film like picture the panasonic won't do the job. However on every other account it really excells.

Both projectors (especially the MT-7) look abysmal with DVD players (Y/C and YUV) - sorry to say this but its the truth, I would rather not have a projector that run them from a DVD player. I really do feel that you strangle the performance with anything less than HTPC although I can't speak about VGA out DVD players. The MT-7 de-interlacer is appalling, the PTA 100 marginally better because it hasn't got so scale up.

Do yourself a favour and see these machine on PC's if you can.

Final thought is my MT-7 cost nearly (ahem..) 4 x the price of the Panasonic and there is no way I could say the MT-7 is worth it in VFM terms.

I wouldn't change to a PTA-100 now though as that extra money has bought me something I couldn't live without and that's the smooth film-like picture even if the PTA 100 is giving you 85% of the picture quality.
 
Hi Tyrone,

I never did get around to visiting you for a look at the MT7, time was just too busy.

Anyway I have now ordered myself a TW100, should be here this week hopefully.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you on the poor performance of the AE100 when using DVD player as the source.

At the recent AE100 / TW100 shootout that was arranged by by Mark (Shockabuku), we used both a high spec HTPC and Philips / Toshiba DVD's as inputs. The HTPC won by a very slight margin overall but it did reveal some banding that wasn't apparent from the DVD players. Both DVD players were outputting progressive scan component and everyone was amazed at just how close in quality the image was compared to that from the HTPC. If they hadn't been seen back to back, I don't think you would easily be able to tell the difference.

What we should have done at the time, was to blind test people to see if they could identify which source was being used. My bet is that the result wouldn't have been far from 50/50 right and wrong.

I guess this indicates that if a good DVD player is used with progressive component out, both the AE100 and TW100 don't require an HTPC unless you really want to squeeze that last 1 or 2% performance out of the projector. To me eyes at least, the HTPC generally isn't worth the extra hassle except for the real keen enthusiast.

Any comments from the others that attended the shootout?
 
I have to say I agree with Nelson. The HTPC gave a remarkable picture but then so did the progressive out DVD players. I really don't think that I would have been able to tell the difference if I didn't know or see which bit of kit was the source.

I was gonna go down the HTPC route but when I saw how gr8 the DVD players were I'm just gonna get a PS player when I can find a good priced one that will do both NTSC and PAL progressive. Not sure I can justify £5-600 so will wait to see if they formalise 576p later this year and see the raft of new players that should hit the streets.

Just my opinions of course.

Nelson - it's like watching paint dry or waiting for the kettle to boil :rolleyes:
 
Tyrone,

Just in case you are wondering what sort of quality we were actually seeing, I should have also made it clear that the images we got from both the AE100 and TW100 were stunning. Not much to choose between the two units either, but the TW100 had the edge due to higher resolution panels.


Neil, I got all excited about an hour ago when a delivery van stopped outside the house.......it was just a new Argos catalogue, damn it!:(
 
Fair points - but when you have spent the time seeking out those final tweaks and spent a few hours looking for improvements in picture quality when you've owned the unit for a few months you won't consider it 1 or 2% improvement.

Only when you have been knee deep in messing and fiddling will you then get used to what picture you are seeing and improvements you might have considered 2% at the time will seem like massive improvements.

I suppose people who have owned this stuff for a while are guilty about shouting off with every little tweak as though its 50% improvement - which to somebody who as spent hours in front of the thing messing it may be.

Truth is its impossible to attribute a percentage (I'm guilty) to quality but its only a way of expressing your thoughts.

To me the difference between a DVD and HTPC is night and day, and for a short while I though I might go back to prog DVD (which is a step up from interlaced DVD) but having owned and ISCAN PRO and a DENON 2800 I can safely say I won't be going back.

I bet you now if you are still happy in six months with your set up and haven't touched it to eek out that final increase in quality (which may include HTPC or grey screens) then you are different breed to all the nuts out here !
 
Tyrone,

I am not suggesting that it isn't worth the effort to get that little extra performance by whatever method, but to suggest that the DVD players gave an abysmal result is unfair to those people who use the opinions of others to guide them into starting out with a home cinema setup.

I appreciate that we all have our own 'opinions' and that they should be treated as such. People need to experience the 'vision' for themselves to make up their own minds.

At least two of the people who attend our shootout were very experienced and knowledgeable about the use of HTPC's and they also owned AE100's and had spent a lot of time optimising their setups.

After the shootout, they both said that they would continue using their HTPC's as primary signal sources to gain the extra, but that they were shocked how little there was between the HTPC and DVD player image.

There is no way that the difference could be described as 'night and day'.

From what we saw on that day, I stick by my earlier comment that in a blind test, I honestly think people would have a hard time guessing which signal source was being used.

There was no 'wow' factor that made it immediately obvious that we had switched to the HTPC, the difference was indeed subtle.
 
For me Nelson it is night and day and would take the pepsi challenge on that with my projector.

Maybe you should have come over that time and I could have shown you.

Having owned an Iscan and denon for about 6 months and running it along side my HTPC I would defy anyone to watch my set up and call it subtle, even my girlfriend was impressed by the increase in quality.

Did the guys who were using HTPC use CINEPLAYER 4?

Maybe to be fair on the panasonic its not that bigger leap but if you go back through my posts you will see I was talking about a standard DVD player INTERLACED rez YUV, not progressive scan which was mentioned in your set-up.

And I don't honestly believe you can compare a standard DVD player to a HTPC. Because if you are talking about interlaced DVD to HTPC, even on the PTA100 the difference is night and day. But maybe not on progressive, I don't know I didn't comment about that.
 
Tyrone,

Fair comment, you did state that you were using an interlaced signal, but that's not a fair comparison to what you would get from the HTPC setup.

Your statement: "sorry to say this but its the truth, I would rather not have a projector than run them from a DVD player", could be misleading to some people.

The point I was trying to make, was that a good progressive component signal from a DVD player gives an image that is VERY close to that from an HTPC, at least it can be with the AE100 and TW100 projectors.
 
I don't understand why my comment about "sorry to say this but its the truth, I would ....." would be misleading? That is my personal opinion and does exactly what is says on the tin. I don't want to mislead anybody if they're happy watching any projector with any DVD combo then I am pleased for them.

I also don't understand why comparing any sources isn't a fair comparison, whether DVD interlaced, PROG DVD, or HTPC. They are all sources and can only be judged against each other to establish whether one is better than the other which doesn't make it a un-fair comparison.

The thing is all signals to a LCD projector are de-interlaced in the chain even when fed with a standard DVD signal. Most LCD's projector de-interlacers are awful (esp MT7).

Its not so much of an issue with projectors of lesser rez though - as artifacts are minimised because of minimal scaling to fit the panel.

With the Panasonic there is minimal scaling (in fact the rez has to be lowered from PAL to fit the 480 Vertical) which results in information be down-sampled, this doesn't produce the same problems as up-scaling to a high rez panel. Scaling + De-interlacing produces problems which high rez projector have problems with in the shape of artifacts etc.

A prog scan video won't scale the picture and therefore will leave the projector to do the work, again invariabley the scalers in projectors are 3rd rate compared to computer based systems.

How you measure this though is a combination of science, art and visual experience which is why people constanlty debate the merits of picture quality.
 
Originally posted by ROne
Fan on the Panasonic is louder than the MT-7 and makes more of a wushing sound, although it is still quiet. Had no real problems so far with reliabiltiy (it did come with a dust blob though).

ROne, re: the fan noise on the AE100, were you running it in the high or low power mode?

just wondered.


also, re: all the HTPC stuff, I will be posting my results with the AE100 and a laptop later tonight. Argueably, but based on my first few hours, I think it has the best of both solutions - the picture from a HTPC, with the convenience in size/ noise levels of a standard DVD player.
 
Like the idea of the laptop, particularly as I have a spare one lying about. Could be good. Interested to read your results and also the spec of the laptop. Thanks.
 
its coming Messiah... just writing up the info now, but there is a lot of it so trying to structure it into chunks.

a big post otherwise.

very good results so far though.
 
The lamp was in low power mode, and the fan was very quiet. Not as quiet as the MT-7 but not far off.

Its more the type of sound rather than the level that's different.

Keep us informed with the laptop situation, be very interested to no about the custom resolution possibilities.
 
ROne - it sounds as though the MT7 gives as good an image as the TW100 (if not better). I am still waiting for my TW100 so during this period am still considering other models. Would you have any idea what size image it would produce at a 14.5ft throw distance. (or maybe a site with image sizes) This is one of my biggest criteria alongside image quality and fan noise.

Thanks.
 

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