I’m getting more concerned about the blue. Last night I had several blue lines ‘flash’ across the screen during various scenes. After the movie I opened up the projector and checked how hot the heatsinks on the neckboards were. They were warm to the touch, but not hot. The colour smear I’ve seen on white text seems to be coming from the green tube. The white text is over a darker background, and after the text on the raster the background is darker. Very weird. I hope it isn’t my HVPS — I’ll have to search AVSForum for details on this one.
Whew..
Well, one major server disaster later. I was reorganizing the computer room and hit the power bar of the machine this website is hosted on — one very corrupted mysql database backing the geeklog software was a result. I now know a lot more about mysql than I thought I’d ever need to know. Hopefully everything is back and working.
On a CRT projector note, the blue tube is an increasing worry for me. There is clearly something wrong — I’m going to have to track it down before it becomes a problem. I guess the first step would be swap the neck boards and see if the problem moves with the board.
Other ‘mods’ on the short list. Open up the HVPS and check (repair) the solder connections, add a fan probably. Modify the fan on the LVPS since that 60mm fan is the cause of the most annoying noise. I guess getting a scope on some of the voltages is also a good idea too.
Movie time
Well, we actually had time to sit down and watch a movie last night – SpyKids2.
The movie itself was entertaining. I really like Robert Rodriguez, ever since his first with El Mariachi. It is a quirky movie and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but thumbs up from me. The 10 minute film school was worth the price of the DVD.
The blacks were too black at the start of the movie, but we turned on the projector and watched the movie — no warmup. The movie itself has some fairly ‘dark’ opening scenes as well. After the movie was over I went back and reviewed the opening (dark) scenes and found that I had much better black detail. I’m hoping there is a fine line between warmup time and proper calibration that will give a good balance of ‘instant on’ watching but not be overly bright once the unit warms up a bit.
The blue tube is a growing concern. At one point during the movie I saw one raster line of bright blue randomly on the screen. I need to track down what is going on, it might require swapping the neck boards to see if the problem moves with it.
Overall, I’m pleased with the image quality. I think moving up to the 9″ CRT from the ECP 7″ has helped in detail and brightness and it shows in the end image.
Fixed my green image problem!
Check the FAQ section on setting G2. This was exactly the problem I was having with my overly green image.
Along the way, I also undid a lot of the mistakes I made yesterday. I turned the mini-pots on the back of the RGB board (outside the projector) fully clockwise — effectively passing an unmodified signal into the RGB card. The changes I made yesterday helped my colour balanced, but at a huge cost to overall image quality. Now I have both.
I also discovered that there is something funky going on with my blue tube. It ‘flickers’ or at least does with a low signal. Jiggling the G2 pot (neck board) seemed to affect it — so there is something loose somewhere. I also get a bright ‘flash’ from time to time on the blue.
I used the G2 setting procedure as it is outlined in the FAQ. However, Kal and I discussed how he sets the G2 on his Barco 800. It is similar to how I used to on my ECP — I’m sure this would probably work for the Ampro as well.
(1) display an all-black pattern from Avia or whatever.
(2) Set Brightness to halfway (usually 50), contrast to zero.
(3) adjust G2 one tube at a time until the rasters *just* appear and all 3 tubes are even brightness.
(4) Then use Avia white and black pluge patterns to adjust brightness and contrast.
I also updated My Ampro Gallery with more pictures, check it out.