The stories I'm hearing about the Panasonic are that it is scary good.

I'm having a home demo of the latest SIM2 HT380
tomorrow.

My current HT300 XTRA-H's really fine, but just out of curiosity, as this seemed the most obvious upgrade should I wish to do so, only academic interest, etc. etc...

Nice, I really like the SIM2 projectors

I'd be very interested to hear what you think after you've done the demo.

I had the demo yesterday. There was a bit of a glitch because the HT380 struggled to lock onto the output from my Lumagen. By a process of elimination we traced this down to a dodgy DVI - HDMI convertor plug the chaps had brought along with them.

for source we used my trusty old Oppo DVD player, SkyHD (both through my Lumagen HDQ processor), and a hard drive server which contained "Proper" HD 1080P video samples.

In comparison to my 300 the picture was definitely brighter and colours, particularly reds, looked more realistic. Blacks were blacker and the contrast was greater. It wasn't night and day stuff but to be fair we used it more-or-less out of the box. I usually set up my displays with "Digital Video Essentials" which can make an appreciable difference, but unfortunately I had to impose some unforseen time constraints. Nevertheless it was pretty impressive.

Chris from SIM2 had come along for the afternoon, and just happened to have an HT3000 with him...

This was a different beast - a much brighter image and better in every way - even SWMBO commented the picture "Looked good". Quite a complement! The 1080p material was extremely impressive, albeit featuring subjects that would flatter any display. The difference was very apparent when I wired up my 300, which suddenly looked dull and lacking in contrast.

Unlike the 380 which looks physically identical to my 300, the 3000 is a bigger bit of kit with more connection options.

So, what to do? the 3000 is considerably more expensive than the 380, but is significantly better. to put it in perspective it's less than two-thirds the cost of a 555. still bloody dear though!

I haven't made up my mind what to do, but I suspect the longer I leave it the less inclined I'll be to change. My trusty old 300 looked pretty good again after a night's viewing!

The HT380 is a relatively new product from SIM2 and has the new Unishape lamp technology and 'BrilliantColor' colour wheel+software. I wonder if the HT3000 that was brought along was the 3000-E version - i.e. the latest version of the 3000 fitted with the Unishape and BrilliantColor mods.

Did you see any rainbows with either of these projectors? The BrilliantColor wheel has segments for RGB plus the secondary colours, unlike conventional colour wheels which are RGBRGB. The advantage of the BrilliantColor wheel is that it can produce a more natural colour palette whereas the advantage of the conventional colour wheel is that the colours used to create the image appear at twice the frequency and therefore less susceptible to visible colour separation. If you saw no rainbows looks like you are good to go!

I'm hearing reports that the latest SIM2's have incredibly good inbuilt video processing. Apparently they use a Pixelworks chip but the software has been replaced with propriatary software written by SIM2 themselves, tailored for each model based on that models characteristics. From the reports I've seen, the internal video processing has been compared with $6,000 Lumagen and Crystallio VP's and they've been found not to be any better, in fact having them in the video chain can actually degrade the image. There are owners of the $50k HT5000 projector who would undoubtedly be using a video processor in their systems if it was capable of making an improvement but they choose not to for the reasons stated. Think of it as a $6k discount!

For some reason I'm pretty immune to the "rainbow" effect, but chatting to my friendly dealer he thought this was quite obvious with the 3000. Surprisingly he's more or less talked me out of the 3000 (which incidentally was the older version) & suggested I should try the 380 again on an extended home demo.

I must admit I was pretty swayed by the relative brightness of the 3000 over the 380. So was SWMBO. I guess it's a bit like hi-Fi; sometimes something will grab the attention, but after a while becomes a bit tiresome.

Latest plan - try the 380 again, but maybe hold fire on a decision until I've done a similar exercise with the "new" 3000. Decisions, decisions...

It will be interesting to do the comparison of on-board processing vs. Lumagen. The complication here is by selecting only the "576i" option on the Lumagen's EDID function my Sky HD box will only output in this resolution, leaving the Lumagen to do the scaling/deinterlacing. A much better picture results, the Lumagen being miles better than the Sky box in this regard. Perhaps it'll be DVD direct, Sky HD via Lumagen.

quote:

It will be interesting to do the comparison of on-board processing vs. Lumagen. The complication here is by selecting only the "576i" option on the Lumagen's EDID function my Sky HD box will only output in this resolution, leaving the Lumagen to do the scaling/deinterlacing. A much better picture results, the Lumagen being miles better than the Sky box in this regard. Perhaps it'll be DVD direct, Sky HD via Lumagen.

Hi Tony, does this mean you are back now?

Can the Sky box not output at the going rate? IE 576 programmes at 576, 720 @ 720 and . . well, you know.

If it can (and I thought they did), then the D380 would take everything up to the 1080 level internally. Using an n-Vi @ 576 with the D380 has been rather impressive. The internal scaling is certainly not the weakness that it often is.

And as for :

quote:

For some reason I'm pretty immune to the "rainbow" effect, but chatting to my friendly dealer he thought this was quite obvious with the 3000. Surprisingly he's more or less talked me out of the 3000 (which incidentally was the older version) & suggested I should try the 380 again on an extended home demo.

Well . . . I personally thought that the rainbow effects outweighed the brightness. A new spec 3000 should combine the qualities of course!

We are burning in a new D380 as we speak, by the way.

Alastair

Well, my new projector has arrived. It's a SIM2 Domino D80. This is a 1080p DLP machine - I decided in the end to stick with DLP again and go with a SIM2 projector this time. In a similar way that Naim have a distinctive approach to bringing out what they believe are the important elements in music reproduction, SIM2 have their particular approach to what makes a good cinematic image. SIM2 projectors may not have the highest on/off contrast ratio figures in their class but they trade this with natural colour reproduction, a clarity in the image that comes from high grade optics and an extremely high simultaneous contrast ratio - i.e. the contrast ratio within a given image.

The D80's fan noise is louder than the Optoma's; so I failed to achieve that target. The on/off contrast ratio is probably only 50% greater than the Optoma's; so I failed on that score as well - although simultaneous contrast is much higher, probably about 50% higher - so I'm claiming 'overall' contrast ratio improvements to be what I hoped for. It wasn't cheaper than my previous projector either so thats another failed target.

However, it's throwing a pretty impressive looking image. Bright scenes don't show a huge improvement - resolution/detail 'appear' the same but close observation shows that textures are better defined. Leather looks more like real leather, wool seems more fibrous and so on. The improved clarity in the image is there as well, as if the lens was a little hazy previously.

The big improvements though are in mid to dark scenes which look very detailed and three dimensional. It jumps out as I'm not used to getting so much detail and depth in dark scenes, it keeps the image quite natural looking and doesn't intrude the way a flat, grainy and 'digital' looking image can. The other big area of improvement here is the very smooth, solid, stable looking colours which previously could look rather grainy and noisy unless a scene is brightly lit.

The only criticism of the image at this point is that the projector could benefit from a professional ISF calibration. After playing around with the user-defined colour temp I've managed a good compromise between bright and dark areas. Peak whites are a little blue/green and dark areas a little warm. When the bulb has stabilised after 100hrs or so I might as well get it spot on with a proper calibration using the service menu controls. I might even invest in the colourimetry tools and have a go myself!

quote:

Originally posted by Signals UK:

quote:

It will be interesting to do the comparison of on-board processing vs. Lumagen. The complication here is by selecting only the "576i" option on the Lumagen's EDID function my Sky HD box will only output in this resolution, leaving the Lumagen to do the scaling/deinterlacing. A much better picture results, the Lumagen being miles better than the Sky box in this regard. Perhaps it'll be DVD direct, Sky HD via Lumagen.

Can the Sky box not output at the going rate? IE 576 programmes at 576, 720 @ 720 and . . well, you know.

Alastair

Sorry, I was a bit unclear. The idea is to stop the Sky box from de-interlacing 576i content. The Lumagen's set to accept 576i (but not P), 720P and 1080i.

Hi Allan,

How goes it on the 2 channel audio front? I think we both now have SL2s?

Do you still come this way? It would be good to see you again. I could introduce you to Tony if you have the time.

My e-mail address is in my profile if you need it.

Best wishes.

John.

A colourimeter has arrived! May have a play with that this weekend if there's time, otherwise something to look forward to over the Christmas holidays . I think I'll have a practice on the PC monitor's and TV first though.

Hi John, quite a few changes on the 2-channel front in the last 12 months (see profile) as explained earlier in the thread. I do get to Norwich occasionally so I will definitely contact you next time I'm around.

I'd be very interested in how you get on with the colourimeter Alan.

If you're visiting J.N. I'll pop up & meet you if that's OK!

I would be up for that to John if Allan lets you know when he is coming.
Would be nice to meet the man that has given me losts of good advice over the last few years on the AV Front.
Even if he has got shot of all his great Naim kit.And gone over to Total linn.
I have got to go up and see a good friend in the new year not far from you as you know and it would be good to do the two things over my stop over.
I hope you are feeling better.
I will post your albums on Monday.
Regards Munch

Thanks Stuart.

Allan - Stuart told me when I met him a couple of weeks ago, that you'd 'gone Linn' - and I'd forgotten.

You and Tony would have much to discuss.

Have a good Christmas.

John.

Thanks to the kind efforts of the chaps at "Signals" I'm now watching a SIM2 HT3000E!

Andy spent a happy couple of hours installing brackets etc. Unfortunately it's a rather bigger beast than my old "300" model, so required quite a bit of fettling to put it up. Plus it's a fair bit heavier!

The picture quality is just breathtaking. More of everything I guess - brightness, contrast, black levels.

Many thanks to "Signals" and Chris at SIM2 for making this happen before Christmas. Now, is there anything decent to watch...

Tony,
When do we get to see the pics of the out with the old in with the new?
And some of the hd on the screen would be nice.
Munch