bad color on Dell 3200 MP (1 Viewer)

[Scott Kilbourne]

We bought a Dell 3200MP DLP projector for our conference room and it is wonderful EXCEPT:

the color is crappy when using VGA as a feed. Svideo looks fine, but the skin tones are dark and undersaturated when using the VGA (RGBHV) input. There are some general overall picture quality controls on the menus, but the don't correct the issue.

Windows looks fine for the routine stuff, but Photohop, etc. with skin tones is undersaturated, over-gamma'd and generally poor. Skin tones and color on svideo input is fine.

We already traded the projector to Dell who willingly shipped us another, but it does the same thing.

Anybody got any ideas?

-Scott

 

[Max Leung]

Have you turned off the white peak? The white peak enables the white segment of the wheel. It makes the image brighter, but will undersaturate colors.

Also, try changing the color temperature to 6500K, and play with the gamma settings, if you have any. I hope you have the Avia DVD...you can use that to adjust the projector's brightness...it may be too high. Play with contrast too...it could be too high, washing out all your bright colors.

Most projectors have presets called Video, Standard, Film, etc. Try the Film or Movie preset and see if that helps.

When you say over-gamma'd, you mean that everything looks "washed out", right?

I am assuming you can find the menus that let you do these fine-tuning adjustments. It had better have them...check the manual! If not, you may have to do a search on www.avsforums.com.

 

[Gabriel_Lam]

Have you tried something like Colorific on your VGA out? What kind of video card?

 

[Max Leung]

Oh, see if it gets better with a different cable. Could be interference or too much signal loss.

 

[Scott Kilbourne]

Haven't done much with the white peak. I'll try it and reducing cable length. Colors all appear dark and undersaturated. Thanks for the ideas.

-Scott

 

[Scott Kilbourne]

Max, you win! It was the white peaking. Turning it off (default was on full)enabled the contrast, brightness and color controls to get a reasonably good color image from VGA. White peaking is not a control I'm used to looking for, and it's use is counterintuitive.

I let Dell's third level tech guys know about it (they were equally suprised) and they'll write a knowledgebase article about it.

Thanks, I had just about given up.

-Scott

 

[Max Leung]

Cool! Now if only someone could help me fix the color uniformity problem on my Sanyo PLV-Z1.