I received my PJ Monday and toyed with various settings last night and watched some scenes from various dvds and finally an entire movie.
First I used Avia to properly set brightness, contrast, color and hue. I then used some picture settings suggested by another owner who seems to have a good eye for things like this.
I have the PJ situated on the bottom shelf of a small table that sits between the two main chairs in my HT. I have a 52 x 92" Da-Lite 1 gain screen, so the PJ is set up for 16:9, which gives a 4:3 picture in the center of the screen. Color temp is set at 6500k for color movies and 5000k for black and white films. Bill Cushman in his review (WSR Mag) said the 6500k setting was close but had a tad too much green. When I put up a greyscale I really didn't notice a green shift so I did not alter the White Balance by changing RGB brightness and contrast. In fact, after all the time I spent struggling to get a good greyscale with my old Zenith crt and Sony VPL400 lcd, it was a real treat to not have to do anything with the HT1000's greyscale. This PJ has a great picture out of the box, and even adjustments for brightness, contrast, etc., were minimal.
The PJ is connected via component via the Sony 7700 dvd player. Since I do not own a progressive scan player, I have no way of knowing if I can get a better picture with one. I hardly think so as the Faroudja de-interlacing of the HT1000 is excellent. I saw no jaggies or artifacts whatever.
My first FP was a video grade Zenith crt. When laserdisc came out with widescreen I had to have a pj capable of displaying such and went with lcd's true widescreen, the Sony VPL400 lcd. I knew I was trading off contrast and blacklevel by going this route, but after some tweaking i did manage to increase the contrast somewhat on the 400 and learned to live with the difference from crt. Now, with the HT1000, it is like watching crt again, only with a more filmlike image. The contrast and black levels on the projector are really as good, if not better than the Zenith. Now this would probably not hold true for a more expensive data grade crt projector, but I don't have one of those to compare with the HT1000.
Rainbows and headaches ?
I know this is a big concern for many and has gotten a lot of attention over at AVS. And though I had seen a demo of the Infocus 7200 dlp PJ and didn't see rainbows or got headaches, I was a bit concerned with the NEC because the NEC is a 4x color wheel and the Infocus a 5x. But this wasn't a problem. I tried evereything they say to do in order to see rainbows, like waving your hands in front of your face, moving your head, blinking eyes, etc., but I did not see one rainbow. Not on the test discs, not on several dvds with a lot of bright and dark areas, and not while watching an entire film ( Jurassic Park). Nor did my wife. So I guess we are among the many that do not have a problem viewing dlp.
Now, when I decided on the HT1000 I did so knowing full well it was an XGA native 4:3 PJ with less than high definition capability. But after seeing the InFocus, which was a WXGA, to be honest I could not see that much of a difference . In fact the NEC seemed to have better contrast. And there is a few thousand dollars difference in the price between the two ( with the NEC the lower). The Infocus was displaying a dvd signal, so I'm sure it would have looked better with HD material, but 99% of my viewing will be dvds, and when HI DEF DVDS come out, I will still have better resolution than my 480i line doubled Sony lcd PJ. So I am happy and have no regrets. As for 4:3, well when you set up the HT1000 for a 16:9 screen and use the blanking feature to shut off mirrors in the unused area, you'd swear you are looking at a native 16:9 PJ.
The rest of the good news: No dead pixels, no dust blobs inside the sealed light path, no discolorations in a whitefield ( white is white and black is black) and best of all, in eco mode, I can't hear the fan even though the PJ is beside my chair.
And speaking of black and white, I have a lot of these in my dvd, laserdic and tape collection. I watched a bit of Casablanca with the color temp set at 5000k and recalled that this is how it looked in the theater the first time I ever saw the film.
This is one beautiful projector. NEC is to be congratulated for developing a projector especially for the home theater user. They sure make plug and play the best it can be.
My Homepage!
First I used Avia to properly set brightness, contrast, color and hue. I then used some picture settings suggested by another owner who seems to have a good eye for things like this.
I have the PJ situated on the bottom shelf of a small table that sits between the two main chairs in my HT. I have a 52 x 92" Da-Lite 1 gain screen, so the PJ is set up for 16:9, which gives a 4:3 picture in the center of the screen. Color temp is set at 6500k for color movies and 5000k for black and white films. Bill Cushman in his review (WSR Mag) said the 6500k setting was close but had a tad too much green. When I put up a greyscale I really didn't notice a green shift so I did not alter the White Balance by changing RGB brightness and contrast. In fact, after all the time I spent struggling to get a good greyscale with my old Zenith crt and Sony VPL400 lcd, it was a real treat to not have to do anything with the HT1000's greyscale. This PJ has a great picture out of the box, and even adjustments for brightness, contrast, etc., were minimal.
The PJ is connected via component via the Sony 7700 dvd player. Since I do not own a progressive scan player, I have no way of knowing if I can get a better picture with one. I hardly think so as the Faroudja de-interlacing of the HT1000 is excellent. I saw no jaggies or artifacts whatever.
My first FP was a video grade Zenith crt. When laserdisc came out with widescreen I had to have a pj capable of displaying such and went with lcd's true widescreen, the Sony VPL400 lcd. I knew I was trading off contrast and blacklevel by going this route, but after some tweaking i did manage to increase the contrast somewhat on the 400 and learned to live with the difference from crt. Now, with the HT1000, it is like watching crt again, only with a more filmlike image. The contrast and black levels on the projector are really as good, if not better than the Zenith. Now this would probably not hold true for a more expensive data grade crt projector, but I don't have one of those to compare with the HT1000.
Rainbows and headaches ?
I know this is a big concern for many and has gotten a lot of attention over at AVS. And though I had seen a demo of the Infocus 7200 dlp PJ and didn't see rainbows or got headaches, I was a bit concerned with the NEC because the NEC is a 4x color wheel and the Infocus a 5x. But this wasn't a problem. I tried evereything they say to do in order to see rainbows, like waving your hands in front of your face, moving your head, blinking eyes, etc., but I did not see one rainbow. Not on the test discs, not on several dvds with a lot of bright and dark areas, and not while watching an entire film ( Jurassic Park). Nor did my wife. So I guess we are among the many that do not have a problem viewing dlp.
Now, when I decided on the HT1000 I did so knowing full well it was an XGA native 4:3 PJ with less than high definition capability. But after seeing the InFocus, which was a WXGA, to be honest I could not see that much of a difference . In fact the NEC seemed to have better contrast. And there is a few thousand dollars difference in the price between the two ( with the NEC the lower). The Infocus was displaying a dvd signal, so I'm sure it would have looked better with HD material, but 99% of my viewing will be dvds, and when HI DEF DVDS come out, I will still have better resolution than my 480i line doubled Sony lcd PJ. So I am happy and have no regrets. As for 4:3, well when you set up the HT1000 for a 16:9 screen and use the blanking feature to shut off mirrors in the unused area, you'd swear you are looking at a native 16:9 PJ.
The rest of the good news: No dead pixels, no dust blobs inside the sealed light path, no discolorations in a whitefield ( white is white and black is black) and best of all, in eco mode, I can't hear the fan even though the PJ is beside my chair.
And speaking of black and white, I have a lot of these in my dvd, laserdic and tape collection. I watched a bit of Casablanca with the color temp set at 5000k and recalled that this is how it looked in the theater the first time I ever saw the film.
This is one beautiful projector. NEC is to be congratulated for developing a projector especially for the home theater user. They sure make plug and play the best it can be.
My Homepage!
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