CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[jeffslife]

I spent the last couple days setting up my G70 again (from scratch). My main goal was to stay away from ZONE correction
as much as possible. As I have been told from very credible sources that it will make my boards run even hotter
than they already do. I spent hour after hour tweaking linearity and bow and skew, you all know the drill. Only to end up
STILL using ZONE to get the PQ I dream of. Following the manual it tells you to use zone and it seems like I have no
choice because without it the PQ is good but using it the PQ is VERY much improved. In most areas the adjustment is
very slight but in a couple areas it is very big. I dont know how to get it any better (initially) to stay out of zone. Am I
going to burn out my boards if I run my PJ for more than a few hours at a time? What can I do ? how much damage am I
doing to my pj ? I set it up step by step from the manual and then go back to the beginning and tweak it all over again
I did that four times and still had to use zone more than I feel comfortable with. Any advice will be appreciated.

[Zebu Fellenz]

I would doubt if you are doing any real damage by using excessive zone, I have a few spots with my G70 that I couldn't (read: didn't want to take the time to set it up right...) get perfect without zone so I used it, in some areas I even had the zone setting at min or max and ran it like that for over 6k hours without any problems.

Recently I started again from scratch as I switched to a 2.40:1 screen running 1920x800p and decided it was a good point to start over with the setup. I found that I spent the most time using the pin and key functions and the pin and key balance and I was able to get it setup where I'm only using zone in a few areas versus all over the screen before.

Just keep messing with it, it sounds like you're getting closer each time! I wouldn't worry at all about damaging boards because you're using lots of zone adjustment, my G70 has over 12k hours on the clock and has been rock solid regardless of what I throw at it or how I have it setup.

[perisoft]

I have yet to see anyone present a sane explanation for electronic adjustments taking out hardware - particularly given that there's nothing, as far as I can tell, written in any manual saying, "You see these adjustments that are fundamental to image quality, that we told you how to use? Never use them, they'll blow the living sh*t out of your projector." It makes no sense at all.

I also don't see how setting zone one way or another is going to affect heat, even if altering settings in ANY way would. The signals needed to adjust pin/lin/size/etc are doing at least as much 'work', and adjusting the image far more - so how is it that if you change three zone adjustments to make the image smaller it's bad, but if you make the image smaller using size, it's not?

Hell, the Barco 808 *ONLY* has zone. It's flat out impossible to set it up without using zone, since it's only got geometry for green!

It all seems too easily explained by a purist work ethic of, "Oh, you have to suffer and do it RIGHT". Every time I see someone talking about it it seems like more of a moral issue or a badge of honor to not use zone than anything real.

[Zebu Fellenz]

[Elaine Benes]

And actually, I recall there is a line in the Barco installation manual that says you should always try to keep ALL of your settings within a certain range that is NOT 100%...

Barco's and Marquee's use one type of convergence which is pretty much all "zone" but NEC's and Sony's use a different convergence scheme AND zone. It is the application of one convergence scheme in opposition to the other that causes issues IMHO.

As for the purist work ethic criticism, when an NEC or Sony is set up using the correct sequence, and uses the correct adjustments for the correct results, it is very easy to set up, and much less tedious than a zone only machine. I can do a typical NEC in about 20 minutes from rasters centered and center mechanical convergence done. There will typically be about 3 very small areas that demand a click or two of point to be perfect.

[jeffslife]

Must be nice.

[AnalogRocks]

[AnalogRocks]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

First time i set up an NEC was not mine, we didnt know at the time but the system board had an issue so we couldnt set phase, took me about 4 hours to get it close enough, which was miles off with no control over phase, had to finish it with point.

A few nights ago i was watching a movie on DVD and decided to look into the tubes, i noticed that the red and blue images were not in the center of the tube faces like i had put them, the CENTER of the blue and red images were in the center, but the linearity caused the total image to be off center on both. I figured it would be a good idea to correct that, so i filled the fridge up with beer expecting it to take most of the day to set all resolutions to be perfect, and id acctually got 3 ddone fro all complete null in under 1 hour, doing the 1080i required different aounts of time for 2 different frequencies, one went real easy and the other simply didnt.

Once you know what setting has what effect, its very quick to get the basic geometry correct, the most complicated bit i found to master was the key balance and pin balance, til i figured out what was going on there, i couldnt get it 100 % without point, where as knowing what i do now, i can get it close enough that from the lounge you cant tell its not perfect across the whole screen, and with a few taps of point usually for the red, its done in 30 minutes.

The Sony i have with analog convergence takes about 10 minutes to get it spot on, including lenses focused and then full convergence from scratch. Ofcourse 3 days later when you turn it on after a break itll need to have the red moved as much as 10 clicks on the basic single point digital menu, then another 3 days later itll be back the other way.... Stays dead on while its running, doesnt move at all til it gets turned off and cools down!!

I know all these people say not to use the zone, but Sony didnt put it there for you to ignore so if you want to use it use it i reckon. If your screen aint dead flat you will need to use it anyway, cause you wont converge perfectly without it.

[cinema mad]

In the G70 Service manual Section-3
Adjustments procedure for New Tube installation It clearly states To:

use Zone as less as possible..
Use the Key,Key Balance, Pin, Pin Balance as much as possible

See Attatched Open in MS Word Pad not Word:
look at (14)

Hope this helps,
Cheers...

[perisoft]

Well, there's a big difference between recommending it for PQ - which makes perfect sense - and recommending it because using too much adjustment will blow the living hell out of your projector. The manual there doesn't say why.

If you put a big-ass skew in with the skew control, and then unskew it all with zone, it's going to be a bit wobbly even though it's 'straight' because of the way the zone works. That's going to make lousy PQ but it doesn't make sense that it would hurt the electronics. These things are made specifically to fire off-axis, at weird angles, and in other strange situations that will require a lot of corrections. Designing them to only work safely in a perfectly set up orientation would defeat the purpose.

Also - a word document containing a screenshot of a PDF open on the desktop?! Talk about recursion... next time it'd be a lot easier for us - and for you! - to just post the PDF - or, if it's huge, just put the screenshot up so we can see it right there...

[cinema mad]

By using less Zone offers more Stability less Drift So better pic and seems to work well for me..
I was shown to do it this way as well as A few other little tricks by Aaron Rigg (AZZARD) Avical years ago

Ray the head electronic's engineer of Sony Australia at the time, Also mentioned about doing it this way some years back ,as well as try and keep zone as close as possible to mid point 128 by spending more time using Key, Key Balance
Pin,Pin Balance, Which the Service manual also makes mention..

I believe doing it this way puts less stress on the electronics providing more Stability....

Yes the Service manual is way to large and Im to lazy to attach it any other way than what I did..
Sorry Perisoft

Hope this Helps,
Cheers..