What do those AE300 'service screen' options do?

T

tehn

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Hi. Having recently bought a 2nd hand Panasonic AE300, and gone through this forum looking for information about it, I haven't found anything describing what the various options in the hidden 'service screen' menu do, apart from the 'Flicker' option.

FREEZE MSG OFF/ON
PIC SHIFT OFF/ON
RUNTIME PRT OFF/ON
FAN FULLMODE OFF/ON
AUTO SETUP NORMAL/SPECIAL
SERVICE CHECK
SERVICE MODE
FLICKER ADJ

Some I've sussed, but other's I'm not brave enough to try for fear of breaking something. Anyone been through them all and worked out what they do?

Also (just out of interest), on the SERVICE CHECK screen, there are various lamp hour readings - anyone worked out their meanings? On mine they are:

Total 232H Reset 0
231H50 135 205H50
0H00 0 0H00
0H00 0 0H00

The Total (232H) is what also appears on the standard Options screen. Reset will be the number of times the counter has been reset when you change the lamp. The rest, I'm not sure - perhaps something to work out the total based on number of hours in low and high, and is used for the 1800hr and 2000hr limits?

Cheers, Niall.
 
FREEZE MSG OFF/ON- whether or not 'Freeze' is displayed when you pause the image with the PJ's freeze button.

PIC SHIFT OFF/ON-not sure, will check later

RUNTIME PRT OFF/ON-not sure, will check later

FAN FULLMODE OFF/ON-On the normal options menu, you can run the fan on normal or high, on the service menu is the full speed fan option. Normally the fan runs on normal when you have the lamp set to low, the fan runs in high if you have the lamp set to high and the lamp runs in full mode for a minute or 2 after you switch off to cool the PJ and bulb. You can run the fan at any speed in any lamp mode though running the fan on normal when you have the bulb set to high is a bad idea. I myself run lamp low and fan high to enhance cooling because my PJ is on for extended periods though in general the option of running lamp low fan high is used by people who live at higher altitudes where the air is thinner and thus they need to run fan high to increase the efficiency of the cooling. In your case I would recommend running lamp low seeing as running lamp high makes f all differance to brightness but halves the lamp life. If you only watch a film a night for example run lamp low fan normal, if you will have the PJ on for 6 or 7 hour a time like me, then run lamp low fan high :D

AUTO SETUP NORMAL/SPECIAL-not sure, will check later

SERVICE CHECK- Hour readings etc. 231H50 is the realtime hours usage.

135 is the number of on/off cycles which in this case seems excessively high given the low hours on the PJ. Extended running heat stresses the lcd panels and optics while excessive on/off cycles stress the bulb which reduce its life time. There is a happy medium. Its something like if you are going to be back to the PJ within an hour and a half or two hours, you're better off leaving the PJ on rather than switching it off. Its like you think wasting 2 hours of bulb life is bad, but thats 2 hours out of 5000, whereas if you switch the thing on/off 10 times a day, you're not 'wasting' hours per se but you'll probably reduce the life expectancy of the lamp by thousands hours. A comman thread I found over at avsforums was people whose bulbs blew at 800-1000 hours who had massive on/off cycle (eg 500) figures given only 800 hours of use.

The 205H50 is the adjusted hours figure. The bulb will defo need to be relaced and hours reset when this reaches 2000. When in low lamp this runs slower than real time (ie bulb life in low lamp=5000hrs, bulb life in high lamp=2000hrs ) so if you run permanently in low lamp this figure will be smaller than the realtime hours by a ratio of 5:2. If you run the lamp in high, this hours figure runs in realtime. Thus because your adjusted figure is not smaller by a ratio of 5:2 and is actually quite close to the realtime figure then I reckon the previous owner has run primarily in high lamp mode. TBH there is no need, run it on low m8!

SERVICE MODE- Various TGB Test screens, use the cursor keys on the remote to check these out

FLICKER ADJ-When the PJ is warmed up after a few minutes you adjust the three colour screens H&V to get the minimum amount of visible flicker. This supposadly reduces the scanline artifact but I found a mild defocus worked. If you dont know what the scanline artifact is and you don't see it, don't look for it m8!
 
Thanks for the helpful info calibos, and the good point that you make about lamp life being reduced by on/off cycles.

If some lamps go after about 500 cycles, I'm going to have to watch that - I'll have to change my viewing habits to watching a couple of movies at a time :D
 

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