Thats cool about the different input. I have to say, I haven't seen the input you are talking about either, so I can't compare and argue which is better, I am only going with what I saw and what people say who have seen BOTH. Apparantly the transcoder has to be very good anyways, or you lose quality, but its supposed to be very good picture quality. The interlaced via iscan that I saw is burnt on my brain because I have an interlaced player myself, plus no intention of getting HDTV, since I have regular cable TV now and I'm less interested in TV. I have VHS and laserdisc right now too. An iscan is a good idea for me personally.
I agree, this little projector is incredible. When I first sat down in front of the screen and the owner asked me what I wanted to try out, I handed him Apocalypse Now and when we watched the seen of the mission briefing, with all the close ups of the characters, I was in awe of the detail I was seeing. I could barely see anything objectional, it just looked awesome. I was stitting 1.3x screen width away and sometimes I saw screen door, but I'd say I saw it less than 20% of the time and it was limited and localized, never largely uniform over the entire picture.
The thing that totally blew me away, was the closeups NEVER seemed to have screen door. When you saw Mila Jovovich's Face or Bruce Willis's face in Fifth Element, or Martin Sheens face in Apocalypse now, the detail on their faces was so incredible, that you couldn't be distracted by screen door that might be elsewhere in the picture, because the focal point of the movie always seemed to be totally full of fine detail and absent of screen door. I did see screen door sometimes, like on the scene where they took the hand and recreated the fifth element, Mila Jovovich's character, the the brutal guard guy, who was also in Blade Runner, his face had some screen door, but again, that was when viewed from 1.3x screen width. You are always drawn to the high detail portions of the screen and they almost always appeared free of screen door. in fact, during those close ups, I stood up and walked toward the screen and I couldn't see screen door on high detail closeups of faces even when I was less than 1.0x screen width away. Amazing. In my room, the potential AE100 setup, I will be 2.0x away and I doubt very much that I will see any screen door.
I did notice the vertical banding, but if I was left with that kind of picture degredation, I couldn't care less. It was easier to see on certain scenes, and it was sometimes wider spread, but you could ignore it so easily it was a non-issue for me. I find that my eyes and brain only focus on things that are uniform horizontally, and the vertical banding was pretty minimal. Also, I believe the guy who gave me the demo has reduced the vertical banding from the level that I saw, and if that is true, then it would have to be practically invisible, or at least, not an issue for 99% of people.
I need some advice here about buying an AE100. If I bought an AE100, I would be using the following sources: 1)interlaced DVD, 2) vhs, 3) laserdisc (until I sell it) and 4) regular cable tv all through an iscan. I'd be pushing my budget over the max and I'd be very tempted to sell my 32" JVC TV to recover some of the cost.
So would you guys ditch your only TV completely in favour of the AE100? It does mean I would ideally need to have the lights off even when watching cable TV. I can acheive absolute darkness in my room, but I'm not sure I'll like having to turn the lights off to watch TV. Is anyone using their AE100 in place of their TV?
)? Please note, the pj will be used for dvd playback and X-Box use only (no cable, vcr, sat), which leads to my second question: is a projector susceptible to burn-in from video-game use, as RPTVs are? Or can I play to my heart's content? The X-Box consideration will be a deal-breaker for me, as I only have one digital receiver (can't afford a second right now) and as we all know, half the fun of the X-Box is playing in 5.1, right?
