How do you improve PQ for budget projector (1 Viewer)

[ericLee]

I've had my projector panasonic 200u for almost a year now and i'm starting to relly notice how 'digital' the picture is. I have no complaints on black level, but i'm relly noticing how "dirty" the picture is. My source is a pioneer 563a, which is feed through the componet ins. I go to the movie theater very rarly now but i was there yesterday and my picture seems so bad in comparison now. Now i can't ignore the bad PQ. could it be dust blobs? Would upgrading the dvd player help? I was looking at the lite-on/clones that upconverter to 720p, would that benifit me? Since the 200u is only slightly higher than standard edtv? it's compatible with the hdtv formats though. Has ayone used a HTPC/scaler for an edtv projector, and noticed benifits?

 

[Jim Gloeb]

Eric, we have the L200 also, and I have noticed a degradation in the PQ lately. I think mainly for me it that I am very critical and want a better PJ, but for now this is great. Our screen is 96 diag and distance of about 12 feet. However, I noticed after looking in the lense from an angle it has become quite dirty. So I am going to give lense and filter a good cleaning. As far as the "digital" look a slight defocus helped at the beginning. I think the dvd pq is ogod but we watch alot of digital cable (COX), and many channels look very grainy but some look pretty good.

Hope this helps, Jim

PS I was thinking of getting the 563 as well due to our JVC biting the dust. Do you play any DVD-/+ R, R/W with your player? I picked up a $50 Cyberhome at Target for temporary use.

 

[ericLee]

There is a lot of dust in the theater being that it's used to be part of the garage and i have to dust every week. I'll clean but i don't think that willl do. I'm going to remount the projecor closer to the screen to reduce picture size to around 65 inches. that would make a much more solid picture. The room is very small and I'm only 8-9 feet from the 80" screen now. I havn't tried dvdr's on the 563. But the video quality was much better than that of my harman kardon dvd25 and my cheap philips 727. Much smoother picture, than with the cheap philips. I think that it pciture had a slight flicker to it on fast scenes on the cheaper player.

 

[Aaron Gilbert]

Eric,

So is this bad picture quality something that you are just now noticing, as a result of visiting your local cinema after not doing so in some time? Or, was the image from your projector actually much better at one point and has actually gotten worse over time?

In either case, a good cleaning is a good idea, although frankly I'd be curious as to how dust would make the picture look more 'digital'. Blobs and out of focus, perhaps, but screen door, pixelation, vertical bands, etc, these are what I could attribute to digital, and shouldn't be affected over time.

For what it's worth, I have a Panasonic PTL711XU (XGA LCD) and I just upgraded my DVD player from a low end Panasonic DVDS35S to a Kenwood DV-5700. I also have an 80" (wide) screen and sit about 9' away. I noticed a pretty significant improvement to the picture quality, which I was expecting, given the huge jump in price and the Faroudja processing. I wanted to mention a feature I wasn't expecting though, also by Faroudja, called their digital video enhancer. First off, I found that setting sharpness on my projector to anything other than 0 added more noise and artifacts than I liked. The enhancer on the DV-5700 however, is nothing short of amazing. It greatly sharpens the picture while not adding any noise, grain, or other artifacts. According to the manual, it doubles horizontal resolution, and it actually does bring out small details in the image very well. I popped in Fellowship of the Ring last night, intending to only watch the first half, and it looked so darned good I ended up watching the whole four hours. I thought the picture quality was good before, now it's phenominal, both smooth and sharp at the same time.

I can't speak to the players that upconvert to higher resolutions, sorry.


Aaron Gilbert

 

[Stephen Hopkins]

8ft is definitely too close for an 80" screen. Give the 65" and a slight de-focus a try. I've been using an L300U. It has a slightly higher resolution (1/4 HD) and DVI. I'm currently about 10' from a 60" screen with Bravo D1 DVI player and a VERY minor de-focus and it looks great. I'm about to go to an 88" screen at a distance of 15 feet and expect to see no major PQ degredation.

In your case I don't think a scaling DVD player will do much good since the native resolution is so close to the resolution of DVD. Like AAron said, a DVD with a better video section may help though. You may want to look at the refurbished Denon 1200 available from eCost for $220 + SH (almost 65% off retail). They also have the Kenwood Soverign 5700 (same as AAron's) for $270 (72% off retail). Both use the faroudja deinterlacer and have solid mpeg decoders and video dacs.

Hope this helps

 

[ericLee]

I actualy switched dvd players with my older HK dvd25 and I'll stick with that for my primary player. The picture has surprisly improved. It's less sharp but it helps smooth artifacts out nicly. The pioneer pcirture looks artifically sharp, theres still the detail but less blotchy. I can't move the projector beacuse i ran out of cable, so this will have to do for now. When i switched to the pioneer, it appeared to be more sharp, But now it's bothering me.