CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[[Frankie]]

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Hi! I've finally bought the NEC 9 PG Xtra, and i must say, as you already know, that it's really excellent projector, very high contrast, beautiful coloursa and sharp images. I've receveid it just 2 days ago, the owner of the projector came to my home with the projector and we tried it to estabilish that everything works, the input, the convergence, the tubes ecc. ( i also had a little trouble with the passcode, but, to my luck, after a tentative we have found it). I read the definitive procedure to calibrate a projector on the site, the official setup manual and the installation manual of the NEC,and i have l a some doubts.

Here's my doubts:

- I've positioneted the projector at a distance of 3 meters from the wall, and after theraster centering, and the convergence and alignment stuff, it came out an image of approximately 115 inches. It came out big like that because i have expanded the image as much as possible with the amplitude settings of the alignement menu to obtain a raster that occupate almost all the tubes faces. The problem is that on the manual says that the ideal projected image of the projector is 100 inches, and i've read somewhere on the site that if the projector it's too far from the wall, the tubes wears faster. But the manual also says that the the maximum projected image can be large 300 inches. So is it positionated correctly to you?
- I project the image on the wall, is it better to project it on a screen, right?
- To centering the raster, it's necessessary to remove the lenses? I guess so because the lenses concentrate the light so it's bad for the eye to look inside them.

For the moment i have this three doubts, if you some advices, they are appriecieted
Thank you and have a good day!

[hansilili]

Frankie,

sounds like you're doing really fine. No need to worry.

Don't rely on the sreen size notations in the NEC manual. If you follow the instructions for mechanical alignment you will end up with a significantly shorter distance.

[[Frankie]]

Ok, thank you hansilii for your advices, they're really appreciated. I've got another doubt, maybe it's a bit out of topic: i was thinking of using Powerstrip, a software used to set custom resolutions like 1700x1100 or every resolution you want, but i don't know if it can damage the projector (or also the PC) setting it to a higher resolution than reccomended or simply if it will say "out of range". From what i read on the site it will display the image because it has a bandwidth of 100 KHz so theoricallt it can handle a resoultion of 1920x1080p but basically it will not display all the dots. I wanted to try a resolution a bit more higher than 1600x900, like at least at 1700x1100 or 1800x1100 (the declared resolution of the projector is 1600x1200 but when i set it to that resolution it says "horizontal frequency reached its limit" and i cannot even adjust the convergence or the alignement). For the PC theorically there shouldn't be any problem because the display of my laptop is 1080p, so it can display a resolution a bit lower. So anyone of you ever used Powestrip to do so? Is there the possibility that setting the projector to like 1800x1100 will damage the projector of like the graphic card of the PC?

[hansilili]

If powerstrip supports your grafic card you can use Powerstrip to create custom resolutions, it not then you use CRU Custom Resolution Utility.

If you feed a resolution with too high bandwitdh the NEC won't syncronize and stay black - no permanet damage. Neither to the PC. It is handy to create a remote desktop connection to your PC or any other PlanB or you will loose control if the NEC goes out of sync. Then you can play around and test what's best for you.

The optimum resolution is determined by the vertical reolution of your content and the aspect ratio of your screen. If you don't mind the flicker (I don't) then a good resolution is 1920 x 819 48 p, play around with the frequency and see if you like 72 Hz interlaced better. Also you should create a 720p and/or 1080p resolution, try to stay as low as possible with the frequeny. The projector probably won't sync to 1080p60 (some do some don't).

[gjaky]

I think the PG xtras all were able to lock on 1080p (if they are healthy), at least the four I saw all did.
Not sure why would you use any resolution with x1100 vertical lines, if you watch movies. For movies I've tried several resolutions with my PG xtra, used 720P 72Hz, (1600x)900P 72Hz, 1080i 96Hz, It seems I am more sensitive to flicker then most of the people here, I found the 1080i 96Hz to be the smoothest, plus it is "full HD" so all detail you lose is lost at the projector only, and not with scaling. It only needs 54kHz scanrate and it isn't stressing the projector much at all.

I've also used powerstrip, yes you need a vga chip which is supported by the software, if you still have trouble with that, try to force maximum resolution to the projector (for example by installing the driver of the sony fw900), some VGA cards locks resolutions above 1600x1200 if they are not getting back EDID information from the monitor.

[[Frankie]]

Ok, thank you for you're advices, i tried the program (CRU) and works perfectly and it's really easy to use. I tried different resolutions, like 1920x1080i, 1700x1080, 1800x1080, but i can't get a thing: on the manual of the NEC it says that the video bandwidth of the projector is 100 MHz, but when i use CRU, near the name of the resolution appear the bandwidth of the signal at that resolution and there are numbers that goes fra beyond 100 MHz.

I have got that the bandwidth increases and decreases respect to the refresh rate, the orizontal pixels and the vertical lines, but how can the projector display a 1600x1200p or 1600x900p signal if the bandwidth of the signal at that resolution is more than 100 MHz? Becuase to CRU, the bandwidth of 1600x1200p is 153 MHz at 60 Hz of refresh rate.

[gjaky]

You don't have to care with the bandwidth number of the projector, it is rarely a true value, think of it rather a pointer how good the projector is. Actually the PG xtra is specificated very conservatively in this regard, it outperforms many (if not all) Barco projectors in bandwidth which have higher BW numbers...
What you see in the CRU is not the actual bandwidth of the signal it is the pixel clock (which is a higher number) of course there is a relation between the two.
If you send a far higher bandwidth signal to the projector than it could resolve well, the projector will still display it, but you may notice loss in the fine details.

[redfox001]

You are still jumping to conclusions as nobody has yet put a signal generator unfiltered input on a barco cine 9 as far as I know and the Moome/mp modded input is not yet available for Barco. So we really don't know this for sure and you don't have any evidence to back up this clame. You only don't have the evidence to back up the opposite clame. If I am wrong please give us the evidence or a link to it.

But apart form that the Nec must have an incredible bandwidth and that has been proven indead. Probable better than anything else stock. To get the most out of it buy a moome/mp internal hdmi.

[gjaky]

[redfox001]

Here this is an example of a HD video dac. There is at most 40/50 MHz coming out this one in HD mode 2x oversampling. Don't see how you could test bandwidth with such a video dac as a 1080p one on one needs something like 210MHz three harmonics on half the pixel clock (145MHz).

http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/data_sheets/ADV7330.pdf

[redfox001]

[gjaky]

[redfox001]

[redfox001]

[redfox001]

[gjaky]

[redfox001]

[redfox001]

Do these things really have analogue outputs at these resolutions?

Max Analog: 2048x1536

[redfox001]

Ok I am thinking this has been tried enough with a good htpc and the cine 9 so yes you are right the cine 9 can not resolve 1080p so has a bandwidth below 75 MHz probable close to 30 MHz. Or one could say the -3db is at 75MHz.

That is kind of a bummer lol

[gjaky]