OK, here's my CRT PJ story thus far (pardon the noobness as this is my first CRT PJ)...
Picked up the VR last friday, installed on Saturday, built and mounted screen on Sunday, did a calibration on Wednesday. Interspersed in those days was building a riser, setting up 2 rows of seating, running all new speaker cable for 7.1 and rigging up all my components. But onto the most interesting piece in the puzzle...
**FYI, Chad B. spent a loooong day calibrating and teaching gobs about CRT front projection calibration. He is a fantastic ISF tech and good friend. Check out his site here... http://www.hdtvbychadb.com**
Based on the 1080p test patterns, the VR fully resolves 1080p with the 134 lenses! This made me very happy I could see all the 1 pixel vertical and horizontal lines. BUT as you probably know, CRTs make you work for their affection...
After 14 hours and several hurdles, my buddy and I had the VR looking pretty nice. We are getting around 12 foot lamberts which is decent for a darkened room. From what I can recall, the gamma is tracking anywhere from 1.98 on the high end to 2.3 on the low end. The Moome card will further refine that when it arrives. The grayscale tracked very well. The blacks are very deep, though not pitch black just yet. We compensated for the gamma issue by raising brightness a few clicks from the optimum setting. After the Moome card arrives, we will change that back. The geometry and convergence are very good now
As for the hurdles, there are some noticeable uniformity issues on the far left and right halves of the screen. This is probably more pronounced due to the smaller screen (84") and having to toe-in the Red and Blue CRTs. You really don't notice the uniformity issue with normal viewing material so I'm cool with it for now. Another issue was a slight misplacement of the projector. It is a few inches too close, so even with the raster maximized, the source material doesn't fill the screen completely from edge to edge. There is about a 2 inch gap on either side, but it's not really noticeable as the gap is dark and the geometry is good on those far edges. I'd rather not tear down and return the screen for a few inches. We did apply enough overscan to make the image fill from top to bottom, with some slight blanking on the left and right to keep the aspect ratio correct. So I'm more or less looking at an 80" diagonal image vs. an 84" diagonal image.
Here are my questions to the pros out there:
1) Are there any tips for improving uniformity on a G70 other than using the limited controls in the service menu?
2) There is a few pixel wide, pure green, glowing line to the far left edge of the image at all times. It's more pronounced with all black and is usually undetectable with bright scene material. Blanking would not remove it. Any ideas what is causing this??
3) Do you know how to set the projector to use a different default memory bank, i.e. No. 13 which has been calibrated for 1080p? When we hook up the Xbox 360 with a VGA cable and send 1080p, the projector defaults to No. 2 which is not the calibrated memory bank. I have to go into the service menu it seems to manually load in No. 13 everytime the projector is started up. This is rather annoying.
Any advice and assistance is greatly appreciated and I look forward to the feedback!
Thanks,
Rob
Last edited by Bitwize on Thu May 22, 2008 6:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 7135 Location: Fort Collins, CO
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 2:20 pm Post subject:
What kind of uniformity issues -- color? focus?
What kind of screen?
Green line -- no clue. Sony pj's have a line at the top, but I don't know what the one at the side is.
Memory: good luck. The G70 memory-management model is IMHO criminally brain-dead. I never managed to make it work.
Sounds like you had a very busy week!! (You must be single! ) Congrats on getting such a good result in your very first setup!
Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5201 Location: Osceola, Indiana
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 2:42 pm Post subject:
Bitwize wrote:
:p you know what i meant! the 1080p pattern which is 1 pixel lines on a digital display was fully resolved. any other feedback? thanks
Maybe I don't fully understand this statement but what you need to check to be sure your 1080p is resolving is a 1 on 1 off pattern perhaps thats what you mean and I just didn't understand. This is the best I could do on my XG.
BTW it sounds like your doing very well.
Mike _________________ Doing HD since the last century!
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 3:26 pm Post subject:
garyfritz wrote:
What kind of uniformity issues -- color? focus?
What kind of screen?
Green line -- no clue. Sony pj's have a line at the top, but I don't know what the one at the side is.
Memory: good luck. The G70 memory-management model is IMHO criminally brain-dead. I never managed to make it work.
Sounds like you had a very busy week!! (You must be single! ) Congrats on getting such a good result in your very first setup!
The uniformity is color-related I believe. If the screen is divided into thirds, the center is nearly uniform while the outer thirds gradually get discolored. It's really only noticeable with a white field. I know uniformity is problematic for CRTs, but was just wondering if anything could be done to improve this.
The focus is exceptional across the entire screen, as is the geometry and convergence.
The Green line was on the top but after we disabled the auto brightness option in the user menu, it seemed to go to the left. That's the only explanation I can come up with. And like I said, there is no way to blank/mask it out I've seen something similar before and wonder if it's a byproduct of the input type, which is currently vga to bnc? Maybe the Moome HDMI card will resolve this.
Bummer on the memory issue. Do you know if there is a way to transfer settings to another bank? Seems the G70VR always defaults to the No. 2 memory, so if I can transfer the No. 13 settings to No. 2, that might work.
Yes, very busy week and the whole process has moved crazy fast! Believe it or not, I'm happily married and my wife can spot an ISF calibrated picture faster than most females in the universe. She's a real viewing critic I'm blessed to have a lady who puts up with my hobbies.
Thanks for the kinds words and the feedback thus far!
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 3:26 pm Post subject:
Wow, congrats. You've gotten more done in under a week than I did in a month. I've STILL only done one setup on my G70. Sounds like you're well on your way to getting it running top-notch.
I had the "line on the left" problem at first with 1080p/HD Fury at first, but then I did another setup with the internal test patterns well of the edge of the screen (in essence making the raster larger), then using RGB size/shift to make the active image smaller and was able to get rid of the bright line and tiny bit of wrapping I had. I still have some noticeable ringing though all down the left side of the screen. Not sure about that, other than that I'm thinking doing another setup to see if I can get it dialed back in. I also have a tiny bit of drift on the red and green that's annoying me. Just one or two clicks of zone 1 usually fixes them both.
I didn't have what I would consider fully-resolved 1080p. Probably very close, if not identical to what Mike's photo shows above.
As for the memory block issue, I don't have any access at all to the memory blocks - I think my G70 has the oldest firmware possible.
Do you have the option to turn off AKB/ABG in your service menu? I have the damn AKB line across the top of my screen and it's REALLY distracting. I have to find a way to turn it off - even if I have to buy another board to harvest newer firmware off of.
Sounds like you're doing REALLY well for being a newbie and just getting started. Let's do some info sharing when you get a little further along and keep the dialog open. Oh, and let's have some PICS!!!
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 3:30 pm Post subject:
MikeEby wrote:
Bitwize wrote:
:p you know what i meant! the 1080p pattern which is 1 pixel lines on a digital display was fully resolved. any other feedback? thanks
Maybe I don't fully understand this statement but what you need to check to be sure your 1080p is resolving is a 1 on 1 off pattern perhaps thats what you mean and I just didn't understand. This is the best I could do on my XG.
BTW it sounds like your doing very well.
Mike
So that's a screenshot from your XG? Looks like it's doing very well in the resolution department. Yes, I meant a 1 on 1 off pattern. Forgive my ignorance. The VR with 134 lenses does an excellent 1080p once calibrated. I'm quite happy with the result and can't wait to get my Moome HDMI card. Who knows when that thing will show up
Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 7135 Location: Fort Collins, CO
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:04 pm Post subject:
Bitwize wrote:
The uniformity is color-related I believe. If the screen is divided into thirds, the center is nearly uniform while the outer thirds gradually get discolored. It's really only noticeable with a white field.
Probably the most common reason for color uniformity problems is tube wear. If your tubes have any worn areas on them, they don't produce the same amount of light in the wear areas, and that means you don't have the same mix of light to produce D65 white as you do in the non-worn areas. That wouldn't generally be a "left-third, right-third" thing, though.
Is it reddish on one side, blue-ish on the other? Does it move if you move from left to right? If so, do you have a high-gain screen? That can cause it. Nothing much you can do about that.
It can also be caused by blue defocus. If you've read the calibration thread, you know about blue phosphors overdriving, and having to defocus blue to get uniform colors. If your blue focus is not consistent across the screen, that can throw off the colors at different areas of the screen. If I remember right, the G70 has zone focus that lets you tweak the focus at different areas of the screen.
Quote:
Bummer on the memory issue. Do you know if there is a way to transfer settings to another bank?
If you have the right firmware, and you get into the advanced service menu mode that lets you select memories, you can specify a "load" memory and a "store" memory. Specify 13 as your load, 2 as your store, then store the settings.
Quote:
Believe it or not, I'm happily married and my wife can spot an ISF calibrated picture faster than most females in the universe. She's a real viewing critic I'm blessed to have a lady who puts up with my hobbies.
Yes you are! Mine has never been a movie or TV watcher, and refuses to sit in a dark room for very long. So she just tolerates my HT. But she has other redeeming qualities.
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:21 pm Post subject:
ecrabb wrote:
Wow, congrats. You've gotten more done in under a week than I did in a month. I've STILL only done one setup on my G70. Sounds like you're well on your way to getting it running top-notch.
I had the "line on the left" problem at first with 1080p/HD Fury at first, but then I did another setup with the internal test patterns well of the edge of the screen (in essence making the raster larger), then using RGB size/shift to make the active image smaller and was able to get rid of the bright line and tiny bit of wrapping I had. I still have some noticeable ringing though all down the left side of the screen. Not sure about that, other than that I'm thinking doing another setup to see if I can get it dialed back in. I also have a tiny bit of drift on the red and green that's annoying me. Just one or two clicks of zone 1 usually fixes them both.
I didn't have what I would consider fully-resolved 1080p. Probably very close, if not identical to what Mike's photo shows above.
As for the memory block issue, I don't have any access at all to the memory blocks - I think my G70 has the oldest firmware possible.
Do you have the option to turn off AKB/ABG in your service menu? I have the damn AKB line across the top of my screen and it's REALLY distracting. I have to find a way to turn it off - even if I have to buy another board to harvest newer firmware off of.
Sounds like you're doing REALLY well for being a newbie and just getting started. Let's do some info sharing when you get a little further along and keep the dialog open. Oh, and let's have some PICS!!!
SC
Hey, thanks for the encouragement! I do feel like a lot of progress has been made in a short time. I could not have done it without the help of my friends, most notably Chad B. who has taught me everything I know about Home Theater setup and calibration! His calibrations are 12 out of 11 He spent 14 hours yesterday with me, showing me all the in's and out's while calibrating the G70VR. It's not completely calibrated yet, but the result thus far is quite satisfying. CRTs definitely bring the WOW factor to a new level.
Appreciate the suggestions on resolving the "line on the left" problem. Will see if that does the trick. It's quite distracting, especially in dark scenes.
Do you have the 134 lenses on your G70? Once the focus has been dialed in tight, the result is incredible! The EM focus in combination with the manual focus really did the trick.
Yes, the ABG is in the service menu and was easy to turn off as I think I have the latest firmware. This made a HUGE difference in the end result. The grayscale, light output, and gamma all improved by turning it off (as it was calibrated in the ABG = ON position initially by accident...doh!).
Definitely want to stay in touch and hope to have some pix soon!
Last edited by Bitwize on Thu May 22, 2008 7:00 pm; edited 1 time in total
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:31 pm Post subject:
garyfritz wrote:
Bitwize wrote:
The uniformity is color-related I believe. If the screen is divided into thirds, the center is nearly uniform while the outer thirds gradually get discolored. It's really only noticeable with a white field.
Probably the most common reason for color uniformity problems is tube wear. If your tubes have any worn areas on them, they don't produce the same amount of light in the wear areas, and that means you don't have the same mix of light to produce D65 white as you do in the non-worn areas. That wouldn't generally be a "left-third, right-third" thing, though.
Is it reddish on one side, blue-ish on the other? Does it move if you move from left to right? If so, do you have a high-gain screen? That can cause it. Nothing much you can do about that.
It can also be caused by blue defocus. If you've read the calibration thread, you know about blue phosphors overdriving, and having to defocus blue to get uniform colors. If your blue focus is not consistent across the screen, that can throw off the colors at different areas of the screen. If I remember right, the G70 has zone focus that lets you tweak the focus at different areas of the screen.
Quote:
Bummer on the memory issue. Do you know if there is a way to transfer settings to another bank?
If you have the right firmware, and you get into the advanced service menu mode that lets you select memories, you can specify a "load" memory and a "store" memory. Specify 13 as your load, 2 as your store, then store the settings.
Quote:
Believe it or not, I'm happily married and my wife can spot an ISF calibrated picture faster than most females in the universe. She's a real viewing critic I'm blessed to have a lady who puts up with my hobbies.
Yes you are! Mine has never been a movie or TV watcher, and refuses to sit in a dark room for very long. So she just tolerates my HT. But she has other redeeming qualities.
Now that you mention it, it does look reddish on the right third and a little bluish on the left third. But it's more pronounced on the right. My tubes are pristine and show no wear. The blue was indeed being driven too hard, and backing it off resulted in incredible focus of the R, G, and B. I'm thinking the toe-in is the main cause of the non-uniformity, as well as the 1.4 gain screen. Also, the raster has been maximized. Sure that has an effect as well.
Thanks for the tip on the memory info!! Sounds like that will do the trick
Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 7135 Location: Fort Collins, CO
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:51 pm Post subject:
Bitwize wrote:
Now that you mention it, it does look reddish on the right third and a little bluish on the left third. But it's more pronounced on the right. My tubes are pristine and show no wear. The blue was indeed being driven too hard, and backing it off resulted in incredible focus of the R, G, and B. I'm thinking the toe-in is the main cause of the non-uniformity, as well as the 1.4 gain screen. Also, the raster has been maximized. Sure that has an effect as well.
The 1.4 gain probably has a lot to do with it. High-gain screens tend to "hotspot," meaning they have a bright area that reflects more than the rest of the screen. CRTs have 3 light sources so you actually get 3 hotspots. The red is on one side and the blue is on the other....
I have a friend with a floor-mounted G70 and a High Power (retro-reflective) screen. Retro screens don't really hotspot, but their gain is highest when your eye is closeest to the light source. The screen color is uniform across the screen, but it definitely changes if you sit on the left side of the CRT vs the right, because then you're closer to the blue tube so it has more gain than the red. You probably have an angular-reflective screen so you tend to see color changes across the screen.
I doubt the toe-in or maxing the rasters affected it much.
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 6:05 pm Post subject:
SC,
Quote "Do you have the option to turn off AKB/ABG in your service menu? I have the damn AKB line across the top of my screen and it's REALLY distracting. I have to find a way to turn it off - even if I have to buy another board to harvest newer firmware off of. "
You have the ability to turn this off. Look under set settings. You should have Status On/Off; Pic Muting; Input A;Input B; Language; and right there... ABG.
Have you even looked??? ABG off function is built into every G70.
Let me know if it's really not there.
by the way... I also remembered how to turn off that RSS feed on the PS3 in case you haven't done that yet. It's in the menus under information feed then you hit the triangle button and choose do not show.
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:12 pm Post subject:
Brian,
I'll look again, but I've gone through the damn menus 20 times looking for an ABG function. If it's there, it's F'ing invisible. I know ABG is built into every G70, but is the ability to TURN IT OFF in all machines? I thought I read somewhere that older versions of the firmware didn't have the ability to disable it. I'll check it out again and if I can't find it, I'll post a video of my menu so you'll believe me. I'm convinced that's what's causing my brightness fluctuation on certain Blu-ray's running 1080p.
Thanks for the tip on the RSS feed. I'll turn it off - if I can find the menu option.
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:20 pm Post subject:
ecrabb wrote:
Brian,
I'll look again, but I've gone through the damn menus 20 times looking for an ABG function. If it's there, it's F'ing invisible. I know ABG is built into every G70, but is the ability to TURN IT OFF in all machines? I thought I read somewhere that older versions of the firmware didn't have the ability to disable it. I'll check it out again and if I can't find it, I'll post a video of my menu so you'll believe me. I'm convinced that's what's causing my brightness fluctuation on certain Blu-ray's running 1080p.
Thanks for the tip on the RSS feed. I'll turn it off - if I can find the menu option.
SC
That is most definitely causing the brightness fluctuations! I saw this with my Xbox 360 via VGA when playing HD-DVDs. Turning it off fixed it straightaway. Trouble was the grayscale had to be recalibrated
Link Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:24 pm Post subject:
Hey,
Just for another data point... I had brightness fluctuations with the ABG stuff on too.
Couldn't live with variable brightness. I don't really like AKB anyway I don't think the greyscale has to be maintained and adjusted each and every second.
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Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Link
I could see all the 1 pixel vertical and horizontal lines. BUT as you probably know, CRTs make you work for their affection...
I've seen something similar before and wonder if it's a byproduct of the input type, which is currently vga to bnc? Maybe the Moome HDMI card will resolve this.
