CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:29 am Post subject: Gamma vs processors vs projectors

OK, here's one that I don't quite understand, since I'm not a big setup guy, and certainly don't follow the latest in processors, etc.

I installed one of my low hour minty 909s today, in fact it's the first 'careful' setup that I've done on a 909. I did some pretweaking before I took it to site, and spent about 4 hours on site dialing it in.

Man, this is one kickass set, to be blunt. Customer had a Lumagen Radiance, I'd never even seen one of those before, and before the 909, he was running a Runco 1100 (Barco 1209s) that I retubed 2 years or so ago. A very nice home theater overall.

The room also had a Sony BR player, one of the older ones, and of course an HD box. Once everything was dialed in, the customer sure noticed the difference between his 1100 and the 909, both in focusing, better astig thanks to the many zones of astig and focus, and overall better shadow details.

Which leads me to my question: He put in the 5th Element, and at the beginning, where that guy in the shroud comes in to poison the archeologist, I've found that you usually can't see all the details of the face in the shroud. I use that scene all the time to check gamma, and while setting the projector up, I did notice that the 20IRE via the Radiance was a nice deep gray, where on a bunch of projectors, it's usually black.

Since I didn't install the Lumagen, I'd assumed that the customer had set the gamma adjustment, but he hadn't, and the limited gamma menu in the 909 was not used either.

So the question is, why, with no gamma correction, is this 909/Radiance combination so perfect? I'm sure it could be even better with a colorimeter, but it sure looked great by eye.

Was this a result of the Radiance, the 909, or both? (or the older SOny BR player)

Just curious.

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

Who did the original calibration? If the one had the Radiance in the video stream I would imagine it would have been included in the final calibration--otherwise something would have been noticed before. I would also think a simple calibration such that it included the Radiance would correct the problem and leave everything 'as to why' in the smoke and mirrors.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:49 pm Post subject:

Originally I think the customer installed it. As I said though, the gamma adjustments were not used anywhere in the chain, thus the question.

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

I noticed this on My radiance's . Jim told me they are set flat but I dont think so. I had trouble getting the proper blacks. You need a test disk curt as there is Low level detail in that scene.

What is he using for HDCP removal? External Moome or HD fury? It might be one of those as well.

Also it could be the color space setting, it might be set for PC and not Video or Vice versa depending on how he has the output from the
BD player set.

There are a few variables that need to be looked at.

Athanasios

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:16 pm Post subject:

It's a Fury3. Don't get me wrong, the blacks were excellent. Brightness at about 54, contrast at 63. It looks great, but yes, no calibration disc with me..

dvh99 · Joined: 25 Dec 2009 Posts: 2158 Location: nederland

if color space is set wrong curt would have noticed.

maybe it`s the 909 that gives a little blue boost or has some other cleverer trickery going on.

also the fact that the 909 doesn`t attenuate the signal as much as the 1209 would, will give you more detail.