Opinions on Projector Lamps

[LaserKen]

Originally Posted by frogmort

I copied this from my HT gallery thread, but I thought you guys might like to check it out:




I spent about an hour cleaning my pj while I had it opened up changing out the lamp. Also, I have my pj sitting on a shelf with one of my rear surrounds, and although I have my rear surrounds sitting on some supports with foam rubber on them to reduce vibration, tonight I also cut out some foam rubber to go under my pj's feet to help reduce vibration to it even more. When I used to play some really bass heavy music and have a menu popped up on screen, I could visibly notice the letters and numbers on the menu moving around a tiny bit. I'm pretty sure that most of the vibration was from my subs and not my surrounds, but with the new foam supports under my pj's feet, it doesn't show any noticeable vibration at all.

It took me quite a while to get everything lined up and perfectly squared with the screen, but after I did, I turned off the lights and did a calibration with my AVS calibration disc. I really couldn't believe how much better it looks overall. It seems to be much sharper and have more depth and better black levels than I ever remember it having before, which I'm sure is due to the increased contrast of the new lamp. The colors also really popped more than I can remember it looking before. I may even need to back the overall color level down a notch or two.

The only negative thing that I've noticed is that when I'm projecting a completely bright white image onto the entire screen, I can see just a bit of a red shade on the far left side of the screen and just a bit of a green shade on the far right side of the screen. I'm pretty sure it's always been this way, but the new super bright lamp seems to make it a little more obvious. Is this a convergence issue or something? It's really not that big of a deal since other than specifically looking for it with a completely white screen it isn't noticeable at all.

I ran it for a couple of hours in high lamp mode while demoing various blu-rays before shutting it down. I may try using it in low mode just to see if it looks good enough, but as I have my pj about twelve and a half feet from the screen with it zoomed to the maximum size and am projecting a 130" diagonal 16x9 image, I'll probably just blast it in high mode. When I first got my pj, I set up a memory for low mode to try to protect the lamp, and with nothing to compare to it looked great, but when I compared it to my high lamp mode memory, it just couldn't compare. I just don't see the point in getting a pj and not using it in the best possible setting.


Anyway, I'm super stoked to have my pj working like a champ again.

I recently had to replace the bulb in my Epson 8500 after 1600 hours (I'm thrilled you got a new free one; I tried and failed using the same card). I, too, got red and green that I hadn't seen before at the top and bottom of the image. They're masked by the screen. I may need to take a shot at a dust blob. Do they create a "spot" on the screen, only visible at certain times (like when projecting a color like blu on a player's menu screen)?