Andy.T
Prominent Member
Hiya,
Well, my AE500 turned up on Friday and I am a little underwhelmed.
I knew that Smoothscreen would mean a "softer" image but surely that shouldn't mean less-detailed? Certainly when compared to my old AE100, which had nearly half as many pixels? Atm I'm missing my old AE100 and that can't be right!
I'm sure it's not just that the picture is softer, and takes some getting used to, I'm seeing less detail in DVDs that I know really well, stuff like Monsters Inc etc. look a bit of a mess.
The image is certainly very "film like", but I'm sure something is wrong. It probably isnt helping that I'm having to keep the "sharpness" setting turned down to avoid picture noise in Avia.
I'm currently driving it with an Arcam DV88+ via Component (progressive naturally) over about a 15m run of Van Damme.
I might try and re-calibrate with a shorter run of cable and see if that helps, allows me to increase sharpness.
A couple of questions though...
a) Does it sound like a fault with the pj?
b) How exactly does Smoothscreen work? I thought I'd heard that it's an optical thing and not a processing thing, how then does the menu look so much sharper than a video signal?
c) Would a 720p DVI DVD player (like the Samsung 935 or el-cheapo Momitso/Yamakawa) or a HCPC sort this out? I.e. 1:1 pixel mapping? The resolution should certainly be there but I'm wondering if the smoothscreen is interacting with bad scaling to cause this?
d) What are other 500 user's experiences?
e) Does anyone with a DVD player/HCPC that could do 1:1 pixel mapping want to come see me in south West Sussex, perhaps you were considering an AE500 and wondered how it would look?
If I can't find a way to improve this I may end up selling this at a hideous loss to fund a Z2 purchase.
Well, my AE500 turned up on Friday and I am a little underwhelmed.
I knew that Smoothscreen would mean a "softer" image but surely that shouldn't mean less-detailed? Certainly when compared to my old AE100, which had nearly half as many pixels? Atm I'm missing my old AE100 and that can't be right!
I'm sure it's not just that the picture is softer, and takes some getting used to, I'm seeing less detail in DVDs that I know really well, stuff like Monsters Inc etc. look a bit of a mess.
The image is certainly very "film like", but I'm sure something is wrong. It probably isnt helping that I'm having to keep the "sharpness" setting turned down to avoid picture noise in Avia.
I'm currently driving it with an Arcam DV88+ via Component (progressive naturally) over about a 15m run of Van Damme.
I might try and re-calibrate with a shorter run of cable and see if that helps, allows me to increase sharpness.
A couple of questions though...
a) Does it sound like a fault with the pj?
b) How exactly does Smoothscreen work? I thought I'd heard that it's an optical thing and not a processing thing, how then does the menu look so much sharper than a video signal?
c) Would a 720p DVI DVD player (like the Samsung 935 or el-cheapo Momitso/Yamakawa) or a HCPC sort this out? I.e. 1:1 pixel mapping? The resolution should certainly be there but I'm wondering if the smoothscreen is interacting with bad scaling to cause this?
d) What are other 500 user's experiences?
e) Does anyone with a DVD player/HCPC that could do 1:1 pixel mapping want to come see me in south West Sussex, perhaps you were considering an AE500 and wondered how it would look?
If I can't find a way to improve this I may end up selling this at a hideous loss to fund a Z2 purchase.