CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Joemarzen]

If I had a transporter it would have taken every ounce of restraint in my being to not beam the engineers responsible for the Marquee 8110 to my home and then immediately bludgeon them to death in the fashion of a 2001: A Space Odyssey ape.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD why is the cord on the main control remote only three feet long? Are you the same people responsible for placing fuse boxes in cars in the most inconvenient possible positions? WHY!!??

So here's the situation, while I was watching the presidential debate I had the notion to mess around with the convergence on my projector. This would have been fine if I had been sitting to the right of the projector, which is where the wise men who created the 8110 intended one to sit while messing with the convergence. Anyway, I was sitting to the left and being that I am lazy, I didn't want to move. Big mistake. As punishment for my sloth I accidentally pulled too hard on the remote and caused the wires that connect the remote to the little white plug thing inside the battery compartment to come loose. Since that cord supplies power to the remote I could no longer control any aspect of the projector. The significance of this problem didn't become clear until a few hours later after I got batteries for my IR remote. To make a long story short my IR remote doesn't seem to work at all. I even pressed (proj *).

Now I am baffled as to what course of action I should take. The projector is in standby mode and I can't get it to turn on. Where is IR sensor on the 8110? I see neither hide nor hair of it. The lights on the IR remote blink and whatnot so I don't understand what the problem is. The manual says that I should just point the remote at the front of the projector.

My other option seems to be to reconnect the wires to the white plug thing. That seems to be easier said than done though. I think it may call for a trip to Radio Shack or something because I don't think I am going to be able to use the original plug thing. Of course I also don't see how having a new plug thing is going to help the situation since I don't understand what causes the wires to be affixed to it in the first place. Perhaps compression?

That's all beside the point because my main problem is getting the projector to turn on again. Is there any way to do it without a remote? Even some weird esoteric way? If not, I think it fair and just to kill the people responsible for not putting a physical power button somewhere on the projector.

I don't know what to do. My election day party depends on your sound advice.

[Nashou66]

I think there is a dip switch in the remote you need to set for wireless operation. I cant remember how to set it but its in the manual i believe.


Athanasios

[PJMoore]

The engineers you wish to beat intended the remote to be either a fixed set of buttons attached to the projector, or to be completely detached and configured as a wireless remote. They did not design it to be a "tethered" remote. The short cable is only the length required for the remote to be used as a fixed station while attached to the projector.

The manual, also written by the engineers, describes how the remote can be detached from the projector and the cable, a single DIP switch can be changed, batteries inserted, and then be used as a traditional wireless remote, and all at no additional cost to the user except a set of batteries.

I personally find the Marquee design a refreshing change from the more prevalent one I have experienced in my earlier (Sony) projectors: the seller does not include the remote and then sells it on eBay for ludicrous prices.

So I suggest you read the manual again, this time including the part about the remote DIP switches.

The IR sensor is a round metal unit, about the size of a quarter, with a screen grill across its face, that protrudes from the foam grill on the front of the projector. It is in the lower right corner looking into the front of the projector.

Now - step away from the bone and keep your hands in full view at all times sir......

PS - I'm not sure if adjusting the convergence during the debate would have made either candidate's positions any clearer. Not even an engineer could come up with that capability.

[kal]

As an engineer myself, that last post brought a tear to my eye...

Kal

[kal]

As an engineer myself, that last post brought a tear to my eye...

Kal

[PJMoore]

Kal -

As a retired I&C Engineer of 30 years, I have many times had to endure the "slings and arrows of discontent" directed at the engineer. Of course, some of these complaints are well founded, as too often ergonomics and "intuitive design" concepts are not adequately applied. In this particular case, however, it was not the design that failed. I think there are definite design deficiencies in the Marquee, but I very much appreciate the ability to convert the fixed keypad to a remote, and the fact that there is absolutely no difference in the button layout or functionality, unlike the majority of devices for which the local and remote functionality differs radically.

[Tim in Phoenix]

Hello

Inside the battery door of your remote you should see four movable jumpers, set them to down, down, down, up with needlenose pliers and add four AA batteries and you should be operational.


.

[ecrabb]

[MYoung]

What's more, the Sony remotes work with other Sony projectors. I have a remote from an unused 1271Q that I use with my 1292Q and D50. Neither my 1292Q or D50 came with a remote. I could complain that they didn't some with remotes or I could just be happy that I only paid around $500 for the 1292Q and around $350 for the D50, both with excellent tubes.

The Sony remotes also look pretty cool. They look like they came out of a Star Trek movie. I'm thinking circa Voyage Home to Final Frontier. It would be neat if they could toast marshmallows too, or at least dispense them!

http://deepsouthmark.blogspot.com/2008/04/star-trek-v-final-marshmellow.html

Alright, so if Sony still made CRT projectors they would have DRM and would only work with the specific projector you bought them with. The projectors would also have self-destruct circuitry to ensure a new projector sales revenue stream, just like digital projectors have right now.

[PJMoore]

I enjoyed all my Sony 12xx's. I think Sony did some things better than Marquee from an ergonomic perspective. Granted, Sony included the full feature remote with the unit when new, but since none of the 12xx's on the market today are new, this is a moot point.

I bought 6 different Sonys. Of these only one was sold with the full remote, so from my experience, the likelihood of getting the full remote in the deal is (pardon my pun) .... remote. Of the two Marquee's I have, one had a single keypad, set as an attached device. The second had a fixed device keypad, as well as an IR remote. OK - a 50/50 shot, and not enough data to form a trend.

It is possible, al-la Radio Shack and a soldering iron, to convert the fixed pad in the Sony to an IR remote, it is at best a "make-do" solution, whereas the Marquee was intentionally designed to be easily converted from one form to the other and back if desired. Does that make the Sony a bad design? No. the design is entirely adequate for a fixed keypad. I contend it was a marketting decision that excluded the very few parts from the Sony fixed keypad that would have made it readilly convertible to an IR remote similar to the Marquee concept. It might have cost Sony ten cents per unit in profit margin to include those parts up front. Heaven forbid!

Be it Marquee or Sony, the fixed keypad in each utilizes an easily broken interconnecting cable that was never intended to be used as a "wired remote", but only as a connection between two fixed components inside the projector. The OP was using the fixed keypad as a wired remote improperly, resulting in user induced damage, attributing the damage to a failure in engineering design, while failing to observe the manual's instructions on how to convert the fixed keypad to an IR remote. Similar damage would have resulted had the unit been a Sony or a Marquee, by the way ( personal experience here). In my case, however, I knowingly used the Sony fixed keypad outside its intended design (as a wired remote) , and assumed full responsibility for doing so. When I broke the connector, I felt no desire to apply mammalian femur to engineering cranium, however.

This is not about which manufacturer is good, better, or best (oops - my Sears catalog wishbook days are showing). The issue is whether or not the Marquee engineers erred in the design of the fixed/remote keypad. I merely contend that they did a good job with a design that is convenient and appreciated. And yes, I like the ergonomics of the Sony remote very much better, by the way. The Marquee remote, by comparison, is like holding a brick and I prefer dedicated buttons to having to wade through menus.

Let me toss my rant in here. Does anyone see any need whatsoever for having to endlessly re-enter the "password" in the Marquee? If you had the password the first time, does having to re-enter it numerous times thereafter in the same session somehow prevent Curious George from hosing up his or her projector? I wonder if Homeland Security designed this feature for Electrohome? OK - rant over.

As for which system is more or less intuitive to any given user, regardless of whether the manual was adequately consulted, I offer no particular opinion beyond the obvious.

And with that, my friends, I am getting the heck off this computer and going downstairs to watch a movie!

Joe - check out page 2-8 of the Marquee 8110 User Guide for instructions and diagrams of the jumper settings for the Marquee remote. The manual is available free on Curt's site (thanks, Curt).

Do you think that if Jimmy H were alive today he might be singing " Hey Joe, where you going with that bone in your hand...."

[Joemarzen]

The IR sensor was tucked up inside the projector. So now I can get it to turn on.

Thank you everyone, I'd lost with out you guys.

[PJMoore]

Glad to hear you are up and running, Joe.

A tidbit for you. After six Sonys and two Marquees, I felt I had a handle on setting up my projector. I bought a Spyder and the CalMan software and started doing my own greyscale calibration. Each time the image seemed to be just a bit better than the last time.

Recently, a friend I had helped out in the past called a pro calibrator (Terry Ferentinos, Atlanta) to come up and calibrate his Marquee 8500. Terry spent 10 hours on his set, which already looked pretty good. As a present for my efforts, my friend sent Terry over to my house to calibrate my 8500. Terry spent about 6 hours on mine, the difference being that I had my greyscale pretty much spot on already.

My friend and I completely agree that neither of our projectors ever looked as good as they did after professional calibration. No - I am not a "calibrator", but I am an experienced Electrical Engineer that knows his way around instrumentation and has done many calibrations on vastly more complex systems than any projector.

There is no substitute for experience in the black art of CRT calibration, it seems. Next time you are feeling like tossing a few hundred at your system, call a pro. I was very pleasantly surprised at the outcome. My wife immediately noticed the difference, particularly in the "depth" of the image. The image seemed to have far greater dimensionality than before. For the life of me I cannot figure out why, but the image speaks for itself.