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xymox1
Joined: 24 Oct 2021 Posts: 6 Location: Phoenix
TV/Projector: Marquee 9500LC Heaviely modded
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Link Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2021 12:43 am Post subject: Most modded 9500 on earth comes back to life |
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HOWDY !!!!!
I am new here. My name is Chris Stephens and I may have dropped more mods into a Marquee then anyone. It was a price no object project that led to my design used in a number of projectors and my own sales of the device as well. https://xymox1.com/Resumex/Press/Valin_Review.pdf
I do super insanity rooms. I do not take new clients as the ones I have keep me way busy.. I moved to digital for clients once it got good. The current Sony top Laser is a nice device. https://www.theaudiobeat.com/visits/paradise_valley_system.htm
Like 7 years ago I put the original prototype into storage. The prototype had zillions of mods I never released. It had hand selected tubes that were made by Panasonic. It had almost no hours on those tubes.
WELL.... ITS BAAAACKKKKKKK !!!! Hahahaah...
Amazingly, after 7 years in storage that was not temp controlled where I blew 1/8" of dust off it and blew bugs out of it. It was in prescott AZ where it normally gets well below freezing and in summer hits 100F. Storms are a daily occurrence and humidity varies from 100% to 10%., I plugged it in with out even checking it at all. It fired right up. I positioned it to land on its original distance with lined up conv.. SO ZERO adjustments since I left it 7 years prior. Stunningly, it was dead on in ALL adjustments. Conv was dead on. HOW ? It has only Wet Tantalum caps in it and they never drift or dry out. SO I have now answered the question, I stabilized the projector long term and can say clearly this projector with mods does not drift. Pretty cool.
SO... Of COURSE it had fungus.. WHich is fixable
So I tested it for about a week with all sorts of signals and stress testing. After I tested that everything was very happy. I started down the path of a very deep and complete restore..
That is what I will cover in this thread. I can also cover mods. Once I am done and the unit is fact new I will then start down the mod path again. I have a number of things I did not do. I want to put insane HV caps on each tube 2nd anode feed. I wanted to use a external HHV supply - PER TUBE. I also want to jump head long into the LVPS. I could not mod the LVPS because that would have broke UL/CSA and I could not sell it in US and elsewhere. I know a HUGE list of mods for that.
I am also going to revisit some mods as better parts are now available. I want to put some special film caps into the HVPS. I think there might be better choices for DACs for all the waveform generation for everything.
I also now have far better test equip. I have a $50k Agilent tracking spectrum analyzer. It has a noise floor of -130dbc. I will explore the projector with this. I will sweep the video channels to the tube and look at noise and frequency response. I can use it to find and correct any RF noise. I can sweep the deflection channels and address any weirdness there - like the super crappy wires to deflection/focus/conv/astig..
SO....
Some pics so far...
First disassembly.. Took me 20 mins. I could do this literally blindfolded. I made most of the units made and sold. So I have done this A LOT..
My intent is to take it COMPLETELY apart and clean EVERYTHING with a toothbrush and q-tips. I will deep clean EVERYTHING to the point of looking 100% factory fresh. Maybe better.
So I have done this to the base chassis. Took me 2 days. I took it apart to flat metal pieces. Used STabiant on all contacts. Put it back together.. Stabilant on these base connectors is critical for stability and pic quality. That big molex brings all the power to the board. That top board supplies everything to the card backplane board and all its signals come up to amps and defl via that board.. Super critical.
Cleaned, restored and ready base chassis.. Well I will order some new fans..
I cleaned and prepped the other projector parts.. The heatsink really sparkled..
Modded boards. All wet tant.. I will go over these later. Better chips too.
SO..... NOW I get to do something I have never done.. You guys/gals can help
Incredibly I have never changed fluid or the boots. The next step was clearly to address the fungus...
Incredibly you guys had bellows ! OMG !!!!! How COOL is that... So I get those this week and I am crazy to get them its so fun...
So I will do green first. Its been pretty funny. Its not often you put a 9" LC tube assembly in a sink and worry about poisons !! FUN !
What fun !... I was pushing the old bellows on each side milking the glycol out, hahahaha..
The pitting in the metal was interesting... I have been doing serious cleaning of all that and I am not done.
Can I get some black stuff that will protect the metal and be helpful for light ?
This is a pic not fully cleaned yet
SO now I wait for the new bellows and i will clean again and put all that together..
GAWD... I will need to be clean room clean. Not a speck of dust is the plan.. I need a class 10 clean room.
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xymox1
Joined: 24 Oct 2021 Posts: 6 Location: Phoenix
TV/Projector: Marquee 9500LC Heaviely modded
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Link Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2021 3:25 am Post subject: |
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Why I did not release other mods is because I was planning to have a second round of upgrade of existing clients. I also wanted to find out which ones were most important, or not important. So I just modded the crap out of everything I could think of and had time to do at the time.
The one that really stood out that I saved for later, was a surprizing one. C89, C59, C28 ( i think ) on the horiz deflection brd. Swapping these out for the super low ESR wet tant caps produced a impressive improvement in pic. These caps stabilize a DC voltage for image shifting. There was noise on there so the picture was shifting slightly from moment to moment in the few pixel range. BUT a loosing a few horiz pixels in a blur frame to frame also decreases horiz rez by half, if your dithering around 2 pixels. Putting very stable caps with low ESR at these high scanning frequencies was WAY better performance then electrolytics. Increasing these caps in value 4 fold further stabilized everything.. I also vastly increased C50. These mods made the picture far more stable frame by frame. You gotta land a pixel in exactly the same spot frame to frame or its loss of resolution as you eye smears them together.
The beam has all the noise from all the deflection/astif/focus/conv electronics on it induced thru the yokes. So any noise in any section of any of those will end up jittering the beam around and loss of resolution as you eye smears it together. You dont see frames, you see frames mixed together.
I will document these better later. The Horiz board has a lot of mods. That is one intense board too. I know of a LOT I can do to that board yet. I can't want to look at the spectrum of noise coming from that board going to the yoke. That will be very interesting.
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17850 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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gjaky
Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2789 Location: Budapest, Hungary
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Link Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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This could be an interesting thread!
I came to modifying CRT projectors when I found that my (then new to me) NEC XG 135LC projector had piss poor bandwidth, much-much worse than the small-brother NEC 6 PG xtra which I had before. With countles hours spent with troubleshooting I had to come to the conclusion that the original neckboard design (while made from very high bandwidth parts and good intention) was hopelessly messed up. I then decided to use Marquee VNBs in the NEC with an adapter board to make it functionally compatible to what the NEC expects from a neckboard. The adapter board not only contained rerouted signals, but the VNB lacked the capability of contrast setting, so I taylored the complete AD834 multiplier section of a 03p VIM too.
It took me more than a year to make it, and of course I've learned a lot along the line, but the result was speaking for itself.
Later on I thought since I put so much effort in that project, I should make it compatible with the Marquee itself for good. A long story short: there were more technical difficulties for this than I thought.
Interestingly while the VNB+daughterboard concept pretty well in the NEC projector right from start, it did not work in the Marquee because the daughterboard picked up so much noise from the Marquee's noisy interenal signals that it could be seen on the screen.
The noise I have observed was tracked down to come from two sources: LVPS and HDM.
LVPS: It was already known that the filament voltage is not very clean. But replacing the filament voltage with something clean was still not enough! In fact I found that the whole standby supply part (which gives the filament voltage too) is very misstreated in the LVPS. With meticulous testing I found several points to make it less noisy. The modification includes more and better filtering on the output, but also snubbing the switching MOSFET's RF ringing.
HDM: Again the switching MOSFET that generates the DC voltage for the deflection was poorly treated in the original design. Apparently this was obvious for VDC as well, and from 2008 onwards they applied modification to that circuit to reduce RF emission, These modifications were reverse engineered by forum member Barclay66. In fact in the later HDMs, VDC completely redesigned the DC-DC converter part of the HDM.
HDM+: Not related to my neckboard mods, but many-many years ago here in the forums dvh99, Draganm, et al. members experimented with SiC MOSFETS with the hope of less dissipation. I think they achieved something, but at that time SiC MOSFETs were rather exotic components and needed quirky driver stages. I've revisited this topic a few years ago and found a specific model SiC MOSFET which is basically a drop in replacement for the original MOSFETS, but only two FET is needed not three, and the loss on the FETs is more than halved, which makes the HDM run cool even at high scan rates (required by eg. 1920x1080 72Hz). Today probably GaN MOSFETS would worth a look, but honsetly the SiC is pretty cool too, literally.
Back to my daughterboard experiments I've done several versions both with the already known AD834 and AD835 multipliers, and with the latest version I've tried a completely new aproach (that time with a VIM daughterboard) with an "unknown" new multiplier the VCA824.
While all mods delivered the bandwidth needed for 1080P 72Hz, but there was difference in complexity and ease of installation. I think the latest iteration with the new multiplier hit the sweetspot, and I finished my pursuit for higher bandwidth
If you are interested in more details you can check the links in my signature.
_________________ projectors in the past : NEC 6-9PG xtra, Electrohome Marquee 6-7500, NEC XG 1351 LC ( with super modified Electrohome VNB neckboard !!!)
current: VDC Marquee 9500LC
The MOD: VNB-DB, VIM-DB
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xymox1
Joined: 24 Oct 2021 Posts: 6 Location: Phoenix
TV/Projector: Marquee 9500LC Heaviely modded
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Link Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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WOW !!!!
That is just AWESOME !
I have not been in the LPS and done mods yet However I have planned for a long. I don"t suppose you have a LVPS schematic or, the holy grail, the HVPS schematic
Wow all of that is awesome. GaN MOSFETS ! hehehe.. wow..
Isn't it a fun platform ! Easy to follow, simple.. No jungle chips. Well, almost none.
WELL THEN.. I might not have the most modded Marquee after all !
RF noise.. OMFG horrendous. Before I pulled it apart I played with my Agilent E4402B with TG and every option. I was just probing looking at how much RF was around.. OMG.. Its just SOAKED with RF EVERYWHERE... I fed the green channel various waveforms and also used waveform generator to create horiz and vert.. That was kinda fun turning a vert freq knob and a horis freq knob and feed unlocked 3rd signal to a channel. So the EMI, cuz its to low to really be called RF, was just horrendous.. ZERO doubt all that crap gets back into the various gain stages. I saw crap all the way to 5Mhz on the horiz deflection.
I did not get to doing a full tracking gen sweep of the vid channel yet. I will measure from a pin on the tube. I want to see exactly what all is going to the tube. I can easily measure noise and just tons of parameters. Then the hunt and mods will begin. Right off I am going to use a lot of 3M copper foil and RF suppression materials. Copper is way better then aluminum.
SOme spots I saw in a very quick pass that were horrendous. The bottom mother board, the one the HDM plugs into.. That had tons of crap emmitting from it. Plus all those traces on that board emitting junk or revieveing junk.. I am not sure yet how I will address that yet.
NO doubt I will spend a bunch of time just getting all the RF/EM under control.
OooOO... Yes this will be fun... Good having someone who know the device.
I have been playing with Levinson 40 and modded some of that. Its REALLY paid off.
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/levinson-no-40.3213466/
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12024 Location: Fort Collins, CO
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Link Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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Holy %#!! gjaky, sounds like you were doing some hardcore mods. Marquee VNBs in an XG135LC, what a frankenstein!
xymox1, I don't have the holy grail, but I do have some schematics. Welcome to them if you don't have any of these.
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ronaldus
Joined: 25 Dec 2010 Posts: 183 Location: france
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Link Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2021 3:04 pm Post subject: |
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Hi everybody,
Great to follow this thread!`
I have installed the daughter board mods on the neck-boards from Gjaki and i must say that they work very good (except from some video gain level issues) I also have the done the mods on the HDM and the LVPS
The image is super clean. allthough the bandwith is improved it is not the same as i saw on other projectors with the same mods but this could also be related to the HDMI card i'm using.
I have also here the latest mods from Gjaki with a daughterboard on the VIM that I still have to install. As soon as i have done that i come back here.
In the mean time I will follow this thread with great interest!
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nidi
Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 299 Location: Switzerland
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Link Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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ronaldus wrote: | Hi everybody,
Great to follow this thread!`
I have installed the daughter board mods on the neck-boards from Gjaki and i must say that they work very good (except from some video gain level issues) I also have the done the mods on the HDM and the LVPS
The image is super clean. allthough the bandwith is improved it is not the same as i saw on other projectors with the same mods but this could also be related to the HDMI card i'm using.
I have also here the latest mods from Gjaki with a daughterboard on the VIM that I still have to install. As soon as i have done that i come back here.
In the mean time I will follow this thread with great interest! |
Yes, change the HDMI card. the last version is so much better than all the older versions.
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gjaky
Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2789 Location: Budapest, Hungary
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Link Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2021 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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xymox1 wrote: |
I have not been in the LPS and done mods yet However I have planned for a long. I don"t suppose you have a LVPS schematic or, the holy grail, the HVPS schematic |
Actually I do have both, I have to emphasize that it was not my merit to hunt these but I think former forum member macgyver655's. The HVPS schematic is incomplete though..
I can't upload the LVPS schematics here because the file size limit is only 500kB, while it is 830kB, send me a PM for this...
The LVPS has an "interesting" concept, as the circuit is split into two boards and the primary side driver MOSFETs are on a different board than the actual switching transformers, so the primary windings have very long leads interconnecting the boards But at least they put active power factor correction in it.
BTW I have an ex-simulator 2010 made VDC 9500 ultra (in a black Madrigal case), It is not very much modded otherwise. The new style VDC neckboards had to be discarded as they are not suitable for serious bandwidth use, Of course I roll my own LVPS-HDM-VIM-VNB mods, but apart from that it is pretty much stock. This 2010 chassis is also appears to be very stable, I guess mostly because of its relatively young age.
I also did some Focus board modification, but I would say this is rather subtle.
Normally the current needed for keeping the focus tight is proportional to the scanrate. Competing projector manufacturers did this with brute force and put insane focus yoke amplifiers with >50V supply voltages, but this would result in too much dissipation so the focus supply voltage was also regulated along with the scanrate (complex). Electrohome did this differently, they relied on the L-C resonance, where L is the focus coil, C is on its tail (on the FCM/FGM) and is changed along with the scan frequency (there are three bands). This is a clever idea but has some drawbacks too, for one is that the LC-resonance is optimal only at one certain frequency (mid band), so it is not a bad idea to change the C so it peaks best on the resolution one use the most in our case 1080P 60 or 72Hz, this reduces dissipation again somewhat.
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_________________ projectors in the past : NEC 6-9PG xtra, Electrohome Marquee 6-7500, NEC XG 1351 LC ( with super modified Electrohome VNB neckboard !!!)
current: VDC Marquee 9500LC
The MOD: VNB-DB, VIM-DB
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xymox1
Joined: 24 Oct 2021 Posts: 6 Location: Phoenix
TV/Projector: Marquee 9500LC Heaviely modded
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Link Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:30 am Post subject: |
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OMG..... OMG... WELL, That HVPS schematic explains a lot. That is AWEOMSE..
A LVPS schematic,, OMFG.... I fear it.. That will unleash me for sure on something I have always wanted to attack... Ohhhhh, gawd.. Mouser here I come !... Yes I will PM...
I will respond more fully this weekend to the above posts. I am super busy this second but wanted to say
OMG.... AWESOME.... THANKS YOU !!!
How are you guys getting around that pesky legal issue with HDMI and analog out ? Who makes that chip ? hahahah
QUick side note.. This may be controversial. The slower your scan, the better the picture I find running the Teranex at 1080sf23.98 produces the best pic. notice the SF.. So you suck in some source on the Teranex and output 1080sf23.98 I never finished looking into that. I know the beam spot gets bigger as scan rate increases. Plus phosphor heating changes the picture too. So more frames per second and a beam that is partially overlapping the beam it just left above it is bad.
SLOWER IS BETTER..
More this weekend.
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xymox1
Joined: 24 Oct 2021 Posts: 6 Location: Phoenix
TV/Projector: Marquee 9500LC Heaviely modded
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ronaldus
Joined: 25 Dec 2010 Posts: 183 Location: france
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Link Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:31 am Post subject: |
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@ nidi
I have the latest HDMI card (i bought it here on this site)
regards,
Ron.
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gjaky
Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2789 Location: Budapest, Hungary
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Link Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2021 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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xymox1 wrote: |
QUick side note.. This may be controversial. The slower your scan, the better the picture I find running the Teranex at 1080sf23.98 produces the best pic. notice the SF.. So you suck in some source on the Teranex and output 1080sf23.98 I never finished looking into that. I know the beam spot gets bigger as scan rate increases. Plus phosphor heating changes the picture too. So more frames per second and a beam that is partially overlapping the beam it just left above it is bad.
SLOWER IS BETTER..
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OK, but a stock Marquee's video signal path can't even resolve 1080P 60Hz in bandwidth, because of the poor performance of the used switchers (SD5401) on the VIM. Did you do anything to the signal path that effectively unleashes bandwidth on it? If not, this would partially explain your observation.
You can check this too: Hotrodding ancient Marquee VIM
secret information: since I gave away my last piece of my latest mod board that ancient VIM resides in my Marquee... The kids did not complained to it when we watched Pocahontas on it last time LOL...
Initially I was hooked up by 1080P 72Hz, but soon I realized that I am still distracted by the flickering of the 72Hz.
In older times when I had the 8" NECs, I was using 1920x1080 96Hz interlaced resolution as they were very efficient in scanrate and so on, while the small tubes could not properly resolve all the pixels of 1920x1080 anyway, but there was no need for digital scaling (artifacts) and framerate was accurate too.
So I revisited the interlaced resolutions on the 9500, and while the half frames show up the scanlines in close proximity, but I hardly can see them from my seating position. Now I use 1920x1080 120Hz interlaced (source is PC), which equals to 60Hz progressive as far as video bandwidth (148MHz pixel clock) and scanrate (~67kHz) is concerned,
This way I can conveniently run the Marquee in long retrace mode, so I don't even have to bother with raster ringing either, while there is zero flicekering on screen!
_________________ projectors in the past : NEC 6-9PG xtra, Electrohome Marquee 6-7500, NEC XG 1351 LC ( with super modified Electrohome VNB neckboard !!!)
current: VDC Marquee 9500LC
The MOD: VNB-DB, VIM-DB
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walteritaly
Joined: 21 Mar 2020 Posts: 83 Location: Italy
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Link Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2021 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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xymox1 wrote: | OMG..... OMG... WELL, That HVPS schematic explains a lot. That is AWEOMSE..
A LVPS schematic,, OMFG.... I fear it.. That will unleash me for sure on something I have always wanted to attack... Ohhhhh, gawd.. Mouser here I come !... Yes I will PM...
I will respond more fully this weekend to the above posts. I am super busy this second but wanted to say
OMG.... AWESOME.... THANKS YOU !!!
How are you guys getting around that pesky legal issue with HDMI and analog out ? Who makes that chip ? hahahah
QUick side note.. This may be controversial. The slower your scan, the better the picture I find running the Teranex at 1080sf23.98 produces the best pic. notice the SF.. So you suck in some source on the Teranex and output 1080sf23.98 I never finished looking into that. I know the beam spot gets bigger as scan rate increases. Plus phosphor heating changes the picture too. So more frames per second and a beam that is partially overlapping the beam it just left above it is bad.
SLOWER IS BETTER..
More this weekend. | I did a lot of tests on the scanning speed and I must say that the absolute best is 72i, the first thing I noticed is that the image is more compact and in focus compared to 60p or 48p I also tried 72p but I immediately abandoned, probably the electronics of my 9500 suffer too much ...
as you say probably also the phosphors still have to go out while there is already another beam of electrons of the next line that crosses it, this can produce blurring and loss of definition because the frames the previous one and the next one overlap.
I am not an engineer nor a technician of these things .. I can only make small arguments based on what I see on my screen.
rather than definition I'd like to have less video noise and less interference from the onboard electronics.
I would like to work on the power supplies and on the various onboard cards to minimize interference and video noises, for the rest I am quite happy with what I see.
_________________ CRT's the best!! 1 "VDC Marquee 9500lc full model and franke yokes hfq 900 lenses"- Marquee 9500lc HD10 GT17 moome v2 - DVDO vp50 pro- Lumagen radiance mini.
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jbmeyer13
Joined: 03 Dec 2010 Posts: 1135
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Link Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2021 8:12 pm Post subject: Look what the cat dragged in.. |
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Hmmm....I see a custom Audioquest Audio Video Pro cable for the VNB/VIM leads What did you sleeve the lead from the HVPS with?
A couple of thoughts/suggestions being that you finally pulled this beast from storage:
1) The Teranex was quite a machine 20+ yrs ago but pales in comparison to a modern Lumagen Radiance. Would agree that outputting 23.98fps from a BD player makes the most sense but to really drive the best result requires a Radiance for color correction and (IMO) conversion to 72hz. I believe the Radiance 2143 delivers 300mhz which is more than enough headroom to adjust porch timings and get rid of the damn raster ringing.
2) Regarding the HDM, your original mod schematic for HDM had C29, 32, 43 & 50 as "under development". What did you put on there 560uf/30v?
3) While you placed those wet slugs on everything the VIM is still essentially in stock form and that's where you have the most potential for performance gains. Mike Parker's final mini board VIM (assuming no shorts on it..lol) and now Gabor's even more refined version allow for consistent performance coming out of black from 0-100 IRE. Until you see what this looks like you don't know what you're missing.
Nice to see you back at it with that PJ. Glad you finally stopped screwing around with your Pioneer CLD-99
Regards,
Justin
_________________ Projector: Modded 9501LC ULtra- MP VIM, Vold VNB, ETECH LVPS, Silver VIM Cables, HD10F's & a V1 case!
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17850 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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