seleco 350p

Wull

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Hi there. Having owned my trusty Seleco 350p projector for over 12 years now I am hoping to continue its life, this is as long as I can hook it up to my computer via its VGA output, and using the seleco's BNC inputs. Does anyone know if Is this possible????? :lease:
 
I did this and confirm it is indeed possible. You will need a vga->5bnc cable to connect it up. As the 350 only has a scan rate of 15.5khz you will be restricted to the usual 576i/50hz for PAL and 480i/60hz for NTSC but with one important caveat that could not be achieved with a conventional DVD player. If, like me, you found 480i noticeably worse than 576i re. line structure then you'll love this. You can use powerstrip on the PC to define a custom resolution of 720x576i at 47.952hz.

This will allow you to view NTSC DVD's upscaled to 576i at a direct multiple of their native frame rate of 23.976fps which means that you do not suffer from juddery 3:2 pulldown. In fact, using reclock you can even slow down 25hz PAL DVD's to their original frame rate of 23.976/24hz avoiding PAL speed up and pitch changes. American folk would probably be sent into epileptic fits at the thought of 47.952hz but it's so close to 50hz us PAL users are immune.

The only downside to this when I had my 350 was that the onboard sound from my computer wasn't a patch on the pioneer 737 player I was using at the time but the picture was far better for 23.976hz movies.

Good luck and if you need any further advice, just say.

ATB

Rob
 
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Cheers Rob, your infomation is much appreciated. I've ordered up some BNC connectors today, so once they show up and I've made my cable I will give it a go. I'll let you know how I get on. Kind regards. Will
 
Hi Rob, Just a quick note to let you know where i'm up to.
I've finally got a vga to 5 bnc lead, and now it's connected up between my computer and seleco 350. I have just about got a picture, well its two halves of a picture, their side by side, its as if the screen is cut in half and shown twice. However, I am not computer friendly person, so I am waiting on a mate of mine to sort this out for me sometime so all is not lost, I guess its something of nothing??? I have my computer connected to my LCD TV via HDMI so I am using the default monitor display setting, I get a bit confused with all the adaptor list of modes given when setting up the display properties, so don't ask about the powerstrip program, again I've had a look, but none the wiser. Anyway, thats enough waffling for now. Cheers. Will
 
Hi Magic,

2nd time typing this as I forgot to save it the first time b4 shutting firefox so forgive me if I rattle through this.

I'm assuming you have a separate PCI/PCIe video card and not an IGP. I'm also assuming your card is not an NVIDEA 8xxx upwards series as you cannot use powerstrip on these. They do have their own utility to do the same thing with it but I'm not familiar with it.

Firstly you need powerstrip. Get it here :-
http://entechtaiwan.com/files/pstrip.exe

Install, restart comp. etc.

1) Have computer plugged into monitor and then plug 5bnc cable into second graphics card output. Do not switch on PJ yet.

2) go to settings tab on display properties and enable second screen (to be used for PJ). Just select a simple resolution like 1024x768 for now.

3) Go to Powerstrip and select Configure display. At top of screen, select 2nd screen(PJ) and then choose "Advanced Timing Options". Then select "Custom resolution". Create a resolution of 720x576. Set vertical frequency to 25, make sure the "interlace" box is ticked and also select your screen ratio.

Once that is done and saved, right click on the copy icon (two sheets of paper) and save a short cut for the 720x576i resolution to your desktop (make sure you can see it on the monitor screen) so you can quick select it if things go awry later.

4) Switch on PJ and select BNC input. All things going well then you should have your desktop on it. There will probably be a black box around it as you will need to configure the porches correctly.

5) You now want to make the picture larger by reducing the porches (Black border) around the picture. Go back to the advanced timing options screen for your PJ in powerstrip. Select "lock scan frequencies". You can now use the arrows on the left side of the screen to change the size and position of the picture on the PJ screen. Things could go tits up here and your PJ may not like some of the adjustments and give a corrupted picture (like it is now) or even no pic whatsoever. That's why we have the shortcut for a working picture on your desktop so you can exit PS, double-click the shortcut and get your PJ displaying a working picture again. Better to be safe than sorry.

6) When you have a picture with few to no borders, unclick lock scan frequencies and punch 25.00 into the Vertical geometry fresh rate box because it would have drifted a bit even though it was locked. If it won't accept exactly 25 then you will need to keep nudging some of the adjustments and retrying until it does. You should now have a 720x576i50 picture with good porches. Right click on the "copy" icon to save this new and improved shortcut to your desktop as "PAL".

7) Ok, that's PAL done with but for 23.9763fps NTSC material we can set up a custom resolution for that. Relax, most of the work has already been done. Change the Vertical geometry refresh rate box to "23.976". Once again, if it won't accept exactly that refresh rate then make minor changes to the picture size or position until it locks on. Save the new shortcut to your desktop as "NTSC".

8) Your projector has probably only used 480i60 for NTSC material before and not 576i47.952 so you will need to add this frequency to it's memory bank.

You are done and done, my friend. Enjoy NTSC movies without the venetian blind effect of 480i line structure and with smooth panning due to a fresh rate that is an exact multiple of the 23.976 source material with no juddery 3:2 pulldown effects.

When you fancy some more, do a search for "reclock" and install that. As well as getting you buttery smooth movement from your source PC, you can also use it to slow 25fps PAL DVD's down to 24fps and avoid PAL speed-up and pitch changes using your fancy new 576i47.952 rez on the PJ.

Phew, I hope I don't have to type that lot again!:D Good luck, have fun, gimme a shout if I've skimmed too quickly and you want some finer details.

Cheers,
Rob
 
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I couldn't get into the 'Advanced timing options' in the powerstrip program BobbyBlaze, not sure if its compatible with my computer, so now looking into a differen't root i.e a convertor. I don't want to spend to much money as I'm thinking about buying a HD PJ, something like the new Panasonic AE4000, but wanted to see how the old Seleco would of compaired in the picture stakes?? Oh well, thanks again for all your help, Its was really decent of you. I'll keep you posted if I do manage to crack this.....Kind regards. Magicj1
 
Hi Magic,
sorry you had no luck. Just a quick problem shoot for you.

1) Do you have a separate video card in your computer or is it an integrated one?

2) If it's a separate card, is it an and Nvidea 8xxx upwards?

3) Did you set up a custom resolution b4 trying to change the advanced timing options?

Let me know the answers to the above and I can advise how to proceed.

As for the Panny, yup it will blow your 350 out of the water but it would be worth seeing how the 350 does with a full resolution SD image just to compare. I had spent all night (up to about 8 in the morning) doing a full set up on my 320 and was cream crackered. Out of curiosity I tried the above to see if it would work and played an HDTV rip of "Gladiator" I had on the computer (this was b4 bluray) and was completely floored by how good it looked compared to normal DVD. I was glued to the entire 2.5 hour movie even though b4 I put it on I could barely keep my bloodshot eyes open. Yup, it was still "SD" but it was a full resolution SD that wasn't far off what I saw on the computer when playing the movie in HD and goes to show that pixel count is not the same thing as image resolution.

I sold the 320 not long afterwards, but I'll always remember how it looked at it's best when the source material was up to scratch. Needless to say when I did hawk it, this was what I demo'ed to the buyer showing what it's potential was like with HD material even though it wasn't an HD projector.
 
Hi Bobby.

The Motherboard is a GA-E7AUM-DS2H with intergrated Nvidia 9400.
And yes, we did alter the custom resolution before trying to change the advanced timing options but with no luck.

I can't belive you got back to me, I had thought you may of given up on this as a dead loss, cheers again for your help:thumbsup:
 
No worries Will. I promise you the picture's worth the effort or I wouldn't try and drag you through this, I swear!! Best way to describe HD on a seleco 350 is to connect up an Xbox 360 or PS3 through RGB scart and view some photos on it. The multi-megapixel picture scaled down to 720x576 is much more detailed than a DVD, right? Well, if you can imagine that moving that's pretty much what you'll get.

OK, you've got an Nvidea 9 series IGP.

I'm assuming you have a separate PCI/PCIe video card and not an IGP. I'm also assuming your card is not an NVIDEA 8xxx upwards series as you cannot use powerstrip on these.

What do they say about assumptions being the mother of all fudge ups?:suicide:

Ok, scrap powerstrip, uninstall it and throw it away. You're gonna use Nvidea's built in utility that does pretty much the same thing as PS but I cannot help you with it because I haven't owned an Nvidia GPU in a long while.

Best bet if you're still interested is to either do a search or create a new topic in the US avsforum.com which has a CRT PJ section too. Let the peeps there know what you want to do, reference this post if it will help and someone will show you how to do the same thing with the Nvidia utility. It's craziness over there, like an entire forum full of MadMrH's:eek:.

They probably won't know much about Seleco PJ's (which is fine because you want help with the computer) but they are OCD fine tuning good folk who are used to eeking out the most from their PJ's and this is right up their alley.

Good luck and don't forget to let us know how you get on!:smashin:
 
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Cheers Bobby, I'll give it a go and let you know how I get on. Thanks again for all your help. :smashin:
 
No worries mate. At the end of the day all you're trying to do is create a custom resolution on the PC and a memory bank on your projector to accommodate it. It might look worse than it really is because I was trying to give you a blow by blow description of what you'd need to do.

Can somebody here chip in and help Will with setting up a custom resolution on an Nvidea 9 series IGP??

Ta,

Rob
 
Hi Rob. We may of cracked it. I got some advice from the AV forums USA, so i'm just about their. Still a bit of tweaking to do, hopefully this week if I get time and my mate pops round.
Saying that, I had a PJ demo at the weekend, saw the Panasonics AE4000 @ AE3000, also the JVC 550, they all looked superb, the JVC edged it in terms of sharpness and more detail, but at twice the price should do. Having said that its time for an upgrade me thinks. Just wanted one last look at the Seleco before I found it a new home... Thanks again for all your help. I'll keep you posted :thumbsup:

Kind regrads Will
 

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