Sanyo PLV-70. Pulled the BIG TRIGGER!! (2 Viewers)

[Manendra]

Great information Gordon. Thanks for sharing your progress with us. I'm curious to know which DVD player you'll be using with your PLV-70. Will you be using the Progressive Scan output of the DVD player?

Good Luck with your system startup.

 

[Gordon Groff]

Hi Menendra!
Yes, I will be using the progressive output from a Panasonic RP-82.

Tonight, I hope!

Gordon

 

[Gordon Groff]

(cross-posted with my friends at AV123 forum)

I've enjoyed chatting with you all and sharing my progress toward HT Heaven (latest updated photos here), but thought I would finally reveal the ugly truth behind my cool, collected Internet personna.

I'm an IDIOT!!!!


After a couple runs to Radio Shack, I hooked everything up last night. About 9:30 I pushed the GO button. The reciever powered up, my three amps powered up sequentially as planned (I have a dual time delay power box I made for the outboard power amps that are triggered by the receiver's power out), then.......
Bam! Shutdown.

Reset. Try again. Click, Bink, Bop, BAM! Down again.

Shoot! What the HECK??? Acting like an overload protection fault. My only speaker outputs from the reciever are to the surrounds that are all in-wall wiring . A sinking feeling started to settle in.

After not being able fix my flaky Fluke, I found an old analog cheapie meter and found my right rear was a DEAD SHORT! I checked the left rear. Another DEAD SHORT. Right side? Yep. DEAD Short. Left side, Uh Huh. Sinking deeper.

Checked one of the front mains (not in-wall wiring), good 8-10 ohms. Meter OK - if not really accurate.

Went to my aluminum plate patch panel on the wall where the speaker wires plug into to check the next leg of wiring. Just stared at it. Stared some more, then slapped myself upside the head.

Here'sa picture of it.

Any of you guys or gals see what I saw?

First one to post back with the correct answer wins the booby prize!

What an IDIOT!!!! :b

Gordon
Feeling pretty stoooopid

 

[Max Leung]

So, uh, you, uh, plugged the cables into the wrong jacks, such that, for example, the left rear "+" plug went into the left rear "+" jack, and the left rear "-" plug went into the right rear "+" jack? Either the labelling is wrong, or you ignored the labels.

So, did the projector turn on?

Your PLV-70 is the booby prize right?

 

[Gordon Groff]

So, uh, you, uh, plugged the cables into the wrong jacks, such that, for example, the left rear "+" plug went into the left rear "+" jack, and the left rear "-" plug went into the right rear "+" jack? Either the labelling is wrong, or you ignored the labels.

Sorry Max, you don't get the prize. I was very careful in my mounting and labelling of the patch panel so that particular breed of mistake would be avoided. My error was much more basic - and mind blowing - as I mounted all the speaker connectors (+ and -) (hint) to the (hint-hint) aluminum panel.

Oh - the projector was fine. I had it powered up, waiting on a signal. I had a DVD spinning in the player. All was ready for BLAST OFF when I powered up the receiver. Alas, didn't happen, but DID add to my feeling of foolishness when I realized what I had done.

This was so dumb, it's actually funny! (now that I've had 12 hours to digest it). It's the kind of thing you'd love to see some other poor schmuck do.

Gordon
:b

 

[JamesG]

That booby prize still available?

Since your metal connectors are installed directly into the metal panel, you've essentially wired all your surround speakers together. Very unfortunate, especially since you did such a nice job on the panel.

By the way, thanks for the progress update and pictures - I've been following this thread closely, since my friend is looking at the EXACT same setup.

 

[Gordon Groff]

You win the Booby prize, JamesG! Although with my hints in the prior post, it has been downgraded to the boob prize.



You're welcome for the updates. It's fun sharing the adventure with like-minded travelers.

Gordon

 

[Parker Clack]

Gordon:

So what did the 70 look like when you fired it up? What have you decided to do to replace your panel? Wood? Plexy?
Have you thought about isolating the connectors with an O Ring or similar?

Parker

 

[Gordon Groff]

Hi Parker!
All we've seen of the PLV-70 so far is the blue screen

Actually, a little more, I was able to step through the menu icons to get the opening "Sanyo" icon right-side-up and to set the image to EXACTLY fill my 106 diag screen. That was cool. That's ONE thing that has gone well. I am perfectly filling the screen with no lens shift or keystone. The mount went in pretty perfectly.

How did it look? Well, Nancy was surprised by how bright the blue screen was. Thought she might have to wear sunglasses

Hey - quick progress report. Since getting home from work, I got the receiver up on my front channels and sub (after correcting a very nasty ground-loop hum that I was able to track down to my sub amp - simply by lifting the ground to the sub amp's power cord). Anyway, it's real cool sound with the discman still as the only source so far. The SVS Ultra sub is KICKING on Flim and the BB's!! I am pleasently surpised that the sub is still in the mix even in "pure direct" mode (which sounds crystal-clear). I had thought that when all DSP is disabled, the crossover would go away too. I was wrong!

Going down now to dismantle the patch panel and let the wires dangle w/some electrical tape around the banana jacks. That *should* get my sides and rears into the act. THEN I'm going to fire up the PJ and a disc! Wa-hoo!!

The solution is to cut out the existing single-jack holes and install a two-bay low voltage box and use the plastic inserts that are made for the bannana jacks like in my side/rear connector boxes as shown on shots of them on my update photos. Here's a decent shot of what I'm talking about.

Gordon

 

[Gordon Groff]

(Cross-posted w/my friends at AV123 forum)

Hey guys!

I got it all running last night!!! Yea!!!

I simply pulled the patch panel I had made and bugged the speaker wires together with the banana plug jacks from the panel. Left them dangling out of the wall, seperated by the stiff Romex wire. As long as no one disturbs them, it's okay for now. Looks a fright, though! :b

First impressions -
The Rocket system with SVS Ultra sub and Denon 3803 is INCREDIBLE!!
Two BIG thumbs up and shivering with pleasure!!!

Have not done any calibration check yet, but it sounds GREAT just fired up as is!!! I'm going to do a lot more experimenting and setup this weekend.

Sanyo PLV-70 PJ-
I was not quite as overawed OTB as I had hoped to be. I need to spend some time with it and do some Avia tweeking to get the colors and picture to POP the way I remembered the Z1 looking. My memory could be faulty or perceptions skewed by lack of sleep. :frowning:

I hope my friend with the Z1 can bring it over again this weekend so we can compare the same signal feed side-by-side between the PJ's to see if I'm just nuts. I'm also curious about the difference the lumen output makes. As has been reported elsewhere, if you are in a light controlled area, brighness is not as big a deal as one may think. As I increased the brighness level on the PJ, the color saturation and contrast suffered. This is my first experience with a PJ, so I have a HUGE learning curve so don't take anything I say too seriously at this point. I might play with the cabling too in case I did not do such a great job with the in-wall component wiring (used RG-6 Quad Shield) The PLV-70 cost $3500 MORE than the Z1, so I EXPECT a $3500 better image!!

Don't take any of this to the bank yet. Just first impressions after a long, difficult, process. More to come!!

Gordon
High Expectations

 

[Neil Joseph]

Keep us posted. When you do the AVIA adjustments, don't be afraid to go back & forth to other adjustments to tweak them a few times, especially when you get to the red filter stage. Do it in the normal viewing (light level) that you would use to watch movies at.

 

[Max Leung]

Ambient light could be killing your colors, making them washed out on the PLV-70. Although, at 2000 lumens, you'd figure that it would be overpowering.

A 2x neutral density filter or FL-D filter might help here...lower your black levels, and give you the illusion of more contrast. An FL-D filter will desaturate the green and blue colors, allowing you to increase the green and blue gains for better color tracking and remove greenish casts (neon greens!) from the image. Or so I've been told.

Did you friend heavily tweak his Z1? I know that you can enter the service menus and adjust vertical banding problems, gamma curves (a big plus!), etc. What is probably happening with your PLV-70 is that your gamma is all shot...if it is too low (below 2.2) your colors will look washed out. You may want to check your DVD player settings as well. I hope you got progressive scan on, and gamma set to defaults.

 

[Gordon Groff]

Thanks for the suggestions Neil and Max. I've got a large learning curve on this stuff.

Yes, I've got my DVD player on progressive. Don't know about anything else. The colors didn't look washed out until I started jacking the brightness.

My friend's Z1 is Out Of The Box. He didn't tweak anything. That is what I was hoping for with this one. I really don't want to climb this curve too

Like I said, it may be okay. I made the mistake of putting a poor quality DVD in for my first experience - The Matrix (when the family was not home) that was a very cheap version - cardboard box, etc. It had a very poor quality image. I was tweaking the top menu stuff - had to take Red down to 0 to get decent flesh tones. Saw faint horizontal lines across the screen. Just before I went to bed, I popped in Monsters, Inc. and it looked good again! At this point, I'm not really sure what I've got. Will do more on it tonight.

I might do some kicking around on the AVS forum about this too.

Gordon
So many curves, so little time.

 

[Max Leung]

Ouch! The Matrix is the absolute WORST DVD for adjusting colors! In the "real world", everything is bluish. In the Matrix, everything is green! You might as well be wearing rose-color glasses.

I suggest a romantic comedy or "costume drama" movie. Pleasantville, Barry Lyndon, LA Confidential, Fifth Element (great for testing color saturation too), Sense and Sensibility, Casablanca (for grayscale) blah blah blah are great movies to check flesh tones. Also, Video Essentials has a great video montage.

DO NOT USE THESE MOVIES: Fellowship of the Ring, The Matrix, Mission Impossible 2, The Ring (why is everything so green?), PowerPuff Girls, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, etc. The Matrix and FOTR are the worst for checking skin tones...there is an intentional tint in every single scene in those movies. Animated movies are bad for checking color accuracy as well. AVOID!

 

[Gordon Groff]

Addendum to post of this morning.

"Caution, do not take anything this guy says too seriously. He suffers the Idiot at work-newbie syndrome :b

I found the main problem - one of my component video cables was not plugged into the Denon properly. :b

Things are a lot better now. Going to do Avia tonight.

Gordon

 

[Dennis XYZ]

The colors didn't look washed out until I started jacking the brightness.

You probably already know this but there was I time when I didn't - so just in case. The brightness control adjusts the black level and the contrast control adjusts the white level. So, jacking up the brightness control turns your blacks gray and washes out the colors. Contrast is the one that makes the picture brighter.

As I recall, from discussions over on AVS, the Sanyo needs adjusting with Avia before it starts looking its best. Just follow the instructions on the disk and you'll get a good looking picture.

 

[Parker Clack]

Gordon:

Definitely set it up with the Avia disc for getting your brightness and contrast levels set right. This will set your pluge pattern for blacker than black and your white level. Then you go to the color bars and adjust then get skin tones, etc. down. I doubt very seriously that the Z1 is going to compete with your PVL 70 in the slightest.

Flim and the BBs. Nice! I still use Big Notes as a reference disc. I have always said if your speakers can handle the likes of Funhouse at reference levels then you have some great speakers. If you have it you should listen to the low end performance of the SV sub with Emerson Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery. Emerson could really hit the low notes with his synth.

Parker

 

[Gordon Groff]

As I recall, from discussions over on AVS, the Sanyo needs adjusting with Avia before it starts looking its best. Just follow the instructions on the disk and you'll get a good looking picture.

Actually, I was very late coming to the party at AVS on the PLV-70. I had committed to the Sony HS-10 early-on in my design phase of the room, so I was following a lot of threads on that one. I even have one of those red filter thingies for the lens of an HS10 that is supposed to increase it's contrast and PQ. :b I was starting to get dismayed over the extreme lengths folks were going to to get a good picture.

Then I saw my friend's Z1 and was amazed by it's OTB PQ. Very cool! I jumped on the PLV-70 on the last day before I pulled the Big Trigger and ordered ALL the gear at the same time.

Since plugging in all my component cables, the picture is sooo good, I can't imagine Avia doing a lot. I will do Avia, though. That is another "accessory" I bought early-on for my HS-10. I'm having trouble prying myself from enjoying the system to get to tweaking it! I've got 3 days to play this weekend, so I should get to it soon. Thanks for the advice.


Gordon

 

[Gordon Groff]

Definitely set it up with the Avia disc for getting your brightness and contrast levels set right. This will set your pluge pattern for blacker than black and your white level. Then you go to the color bars and adjust then get skin tones, etc. down. I doubt very seriously that the Z1 is going to compete with your PVL 70 in the slightest.

Thanks for the advice and proceedure outline, Parker! I appreciate it. Despite getting some cool gear, this is my first forray into HT, so any tips are appreciated.

Yeah, Flim and the BB's Tricyle is the only "Jazz" album that Nancy and I actually like. It is a great sub-check disk! When I first hooked up the front-end of the system, the SVS Ultra was making some funny "farting" noises on it. After a while they stopped. I think it needed broke in. Think I did that

Last night, I was watching a DVD and ticked off Sweet Nancy a little. The closet doors in our bedroom (as far away from my HT as you can get in our house) were rattling.

 

[Neil Joseph]

At what distance do you start seeing the pixel structure in your setup?