CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Kiev Savoie]

Well, i finally got the motivation to defy my girlfriend and park the G70 under the coffee table using a white shower curtain taped across my 73" RPTV as a screen. I've played mostly with Sony's so my first rough setup of a G70 was fairly intuitive and hassle free.
I pulled up the hour counter and to my great satisfaction read 889 hours on the tubes! The guy told me it was close to a thousand hours so i was thinking like 990 . After that i focused the tubes and was really impressed with the clarity even just looking at the cross-hair pattern! Blue seemed slightly less sharp as always, especially on the corners, but still it was the sharpest blue I had ever seen.
Then it was time to toe the lenses in. The manual was not very specific about this procedure. It simply said to adjust the red and blue so that the horizontal centerlines were converged and the vertical lines were spaced at equal distances on either side of the green centerline. No mention of an exact measurement was made at all. it's funny too because this part of the setup for older Barcos asks you to converge the centers both horizontally and vertically. I figured that since the lenses were 7.5 inches apart center to center, this would be a good spacing to use, neither tube would go that far though. the red would go about 6 or so inches and the blue would only go about 3. I don't know why but every time I setup a projector no matter what the model, the blue always gives me trouble at this step! From the position of the adjustment screws it looked like the tube still had a lot of range left but it just would not budge past three inches! Finally, I got fed up and just left them both spaced about an inch or two so i could move on. Does anyone have a suggestion about this?
I went on to do a rough registration which was pretty straight forward as it is so similar to my old 1272's and D50. the only difference was it was a LOT easier and the convergence was almost spot on before i even got to the Zone Convergence (ie. point convergence). I guess this is why EM focus is all the rage, huh?
Next, I hooked up my XBOX 360 via VGA through my RTC220 out to the projector. I backed off all the turnpots till it synced and got a great 480p image after tweaking the convergence. I really had a fire under me, i did all this in about 3 hours and was almost all set to watch a couple of ripped episodes of "the office" on my laptop. I plugged the breakout cable into my laptop, set the external monitor resolution to 720p and nothing! I tried different resolutions, reboots, direct connection bypassing the RTC2200 but it just would not sync!
Do any of you G70 guys know of any weird problems that these units have with computer signals? once upon a time i used this laptop with a 1272 as well as an 801, so i know it should work, but then again it has been a little flaky lately. I was just hoping there might be something I could try with the projector before i reinstall the OS on my laptop.

[Elaine Benes]

Did you check the laptop is actually putting out a signal with a known working external monitor ? Until I got a signal on an external monitor I wouldn't even bother looking at the projector...

[Kiev Savoie]

Well I know the unit works with the VGA output from the Xbox and i'm no expert but shouldn't that be the exact same kind of signal you would expect to get from a laptop? I would hit the toggle key to switch the external monitor output on and off and the the unit would go from trying to sync to displaying a "No Input" message. So i know it is detecting SOME kind of signal. but that is all I can tell you. I don't have a compatible external monitor besides the projector itself. I might have to ring up a friend... if i can think of one that still owns a desktop...

[AFryia]

K,

Before performing a mechanical setup (toe) have your worked on centering the test patterns/rasters on the tube face?

Then perform a rough mechanical followed by focus, scheimpflug then re-focus.

As far as new signals first perform an initial registration using the internal oscillators P2, P3, P4. After that the PJ should sync to any signal you throw at it.

Occasionally switching between interlaced and progressive has given me sync issues on input A (component). I have no sync issues on input B (DVI-RGB) all the way up to 1920x1080@ 72, not that I run that high but I know it will sync.

[Kiev Savoie]

I did a factory reset of the registration settings to get everything back to midpoint and the rasters looked pretty good, but I didn't spend much time eyeballing them. I'll definitely make sure they are dead center the 2nd time around. Where in the menu structure are these internal oscillators? do i just check them off to select them or is it a little less intuitive than that? I'm trying to run on Input A with RGBHV. Isn't Input B an expansion slot?
Thanks Man!

[AFryia]

[Kiev Savoie]

Also AFryia, when you did the mechanical setup (toe) how far apart did you space the crosshairs from one another? I have the front of my PJ 84 inches from the screen for an 80" inch screen as per the table in the manual.

[AFryia]

[Kiev Savoie]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I'm following you. are you saying I should just ignore the manual illustration and put the cross hairs on top of each horizontally and vertically?

[AFryia]

That is what I've been doing.

Page 21(EN) of the manual has always confused me. I jump to Page 85(EN).

I have my rasters maximized so I don't think I could line up the cross hatch at intervals and project an image without touching a tube edge.

But now you got me thinking? I believe some installers will purposely offset the raster on a tube so the trace has a chance to settle before drawing the image. Perhaps this explains Page21(EN).

Maybe someone else will chime in with the answer.

[Kiev Savoie]

either way, it seems like a waste of valuable tube face real estate. I'm gonna center mine

[ecrabb]

Yes, definitely center them. I admit it's a little confusing, but they definitely want you to center (converge) them the cross hatches. The introductory sentence on that page 21 should give you the clue: "Adjust the CRT conversion angle so that the three CRT images converge exactly."

What they're talking about when they tell you to make sure the verticals align at even intervals, is just to stop long enough to verify good physical install. For instance, if you zeroed the electronic controls, and the red and blue were not equidistant from the green, then you're projector probably isn't square to the screen, hence step 5, which talks about making sure the green is in the center of the screen, and that the other two are equidistant from the green.

Anyway, once you verify the projector is square (by verifying the verticals are equidistant), then you move onto actually converging the center of the crosshatch - in our case, specifically step 8 on the next page).

Generally, we don't do things exactly like that, but that's what the manual is getting at.

SC

[Kiev Savoie]

OK, I got ya. thanks ecrabb. Are there other parts in the manual that are confusing like this or does the rest of it come across pretty well?

[Kiev Savoie]

Update,
I fired up the unit again today and was able to get XGA through the S-video out from my laptop and 480p from my tuner, but still no luck with RGBHV on Input-A. I tried both my laptop and a Samsung SIR-TS360 HD tuner as sources with the same result. It tries to sync and scramples the the on screen display and then cuts out, the on screen display comes back and the sequence repeats itself until I turn off the source.
I have not had much luck trying to follow the tips you guys mentioned. I can't reconcile them with what i am seeing in the service menu. I have however, toggled almost every setting in that menu and several combinations there of until i couldn't think of anything else... no difference at all.
This monkey is out of buttons to push.
Anyone?
On a more positive note, I was once again, blown over by the sharpness this PJ has. A 5 minute tweak on the convergence and I could read perfectly converged 96 DPI text on my desktop running at 1024x768, the letters were only five or six scan lines high yet still perfectly readable from across the room! I have never been able to get any of my lesser ES units to display a good computer image even after hours of twiddling with them. The first thing i did when the desktop image came on was to look for the tell-tale blue and red ghosting around the text under the icons, but it was all solid white!... After only one trip to the convergence menu! I still haven't messed with the zone convergence either, i'm not sure i really need to.
So, It was a mixed bag today but i'm excited. It was nice to hear that old familiar hum of the cooling fans too, Believe it or not, I kinda miss that.

[AnalogRocks]

Do you have a second RGBHV input card you can try in the other slot? Maybe your input card that's built in isn't working right.

[AnalogRocks]

Do you have a second RGBHV input card you can try in the other slot? Maybe your input card that's built in isn't working right.

[draganm]

[Kiev Savoie]

That's funny, the display settings on the laptop showed xga going out, but i suppose it could have been reporting incorrectly. thanks for the tip about the component video. I'm not looking to display through component but if it works that way, would that be a sure indicator of a bad B-board? I'm glad I have spare parts. I'll bet this explains why the hours are so low. I thought i read somewhere that if a sony fails it is most likely to do so before it hits a thousand hours. This was an HT unit and i'll bet if it failed the owner got fed up and had it replaced with something different instead of having it repaired.
Analog just mentioned the possibility of a bad input card. What do you think? either way, I have spares for everything.
Maybe i should start off just by reseating the boards.

[draganm]

[Kiev Savoie]

[Kiev Savoie]

I finally found the problem. After switching b-boards with no change I decided to try a different cable. I bought come cheap RGBHV cables on fleabay a while back and the vertical and horizontal breakouts on some of them were mislabeled/out of order so I had them crossed all this time!
The picture looks great now! Thanks to everyone who offered advice though, much appreciated.