As an experiment I moved the AE7000 closer to the screen. It’s a little less than 15’ back now instead of 19’. There’s no way to compare brightness since I don’t have a meter but based on how much I had to resize the image to fit the screen I’m sure I gained quite a bit. Also with the projector sitting about 3 feet from my head I couldn’t hear any fan noise in either eco or normal mode.
I went through most of my demo disks today including regular DVDs. The first thing I noticed was how much more of a difference in PQ BD makes over DVD now. The differences in detail, black level and colour stand out much more than they did with the AE4000.
The biggest difference I noticed today since most of what I demoed was regular DVD was how much more shadow detail I could see. In the beginning of “Appleseed on my AE4000 and previous Samsung DLP the bad guys after the heroine look like grey figures without much detail until they get outside and away from the shadows. Now even in the shadows I can see detail in their armour and that their pants are woodland digitized camouflage and that their armour is mostly shades of red.
Surprisingly the clearest image I have on a BD disk Toto’s “Beyond Live” doesn’t look any clearer on the AE7000 than it does on the AE4000. Similarly, and expected, the clarity of most regular anime doesn’t look any different either.
In order to move the projector closer I also moved my seats forward about 2’ placing them 13’ rather than 15’ from the screen. 15’ was the THX recommended distance to get a 36 degree viewing angle. The angle is now 44 degrees. I’ll have to see if that has any effect on my eyes. I’m also worried about my vision which is getting steadily worse. Recently I’ve noticed that even things far away are starting to get blurry in my left eye (injured in the Marine Corps) which seems to be giving me more vision related problems like headaches. So I’m not sure if 2’ closer is going to compound that problem or not. To help prevent eye strain I’m also now turning on lights when I’m not watching a movie or playing a game which seems to help. Movies and games don’t seem to be an issue yet, just reading text on the screen for now.
There are already a couple good things I’ve noticed from the closer seating. First with more of my field of vision taken up by the screen I’m no longer noticing the light reflecting off the walls and ceiling as much as before (yes even black curtains and paint have a sheen). It’s diminished so much that now my legs and leather chairs are very bright and annoying just like in my apartment. The “grey” bars above and below 2.35:1 movies are also very noticeable now, so I guess I need to do some masking.
Another thing I’ve noticed is a huge improvement in the balance of the 360 degree soundstage. I thought I had gotten things about as good as they were going to get when I finally mounted my surrounds but it still wasn’t quite as perfect as my apartment. However, now it’s as good or maybe better because of the added wide speakers. Moving my seats only 2’ forward has produced a night and day difference in the quality of my surround sound.
I’m not sure if it’s significant but I decided to check out what the ratio of the distance from the front speakers to my seats and the rear speakers to my seats was (front distance/rear distance) and for my apartment it was 1.2, while for my new seating configuration It’s 1.25, much closer than the 2 it was previously. I remember when I first research HT speaker placement recommendations were that the ideal placement, even with distance adjustments on the receiver, was still to try and place your seating as close to the center of a circle formed by your speakers as possible. While I can’t do a circle in this rather long room the present setup does place my front and rear speakers closer to equal distance and my surround and wide speakers also closer to equal distance from my seating. I’m not sure if this means anything but it might be worth checking out if you have flexibility in speaker and seating placement.
One of my best tests for 360 degree soundstage is at the beginning of “Kaena: The Prophecy” when the spaceship is moving away from you going forward and large spinning hyper-drive things come from behind you passing forward. The sound syncs up perfectly now with the spinning things which has never quite happened before in this room. All other test like the first night in the jungle in Avatar, the opening fight in Master and Commander and especially the opening scene in Appleseed all sound so much more immersive than they ever have before in this room.
Even the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion fire test came comes out perfect and quick. This one is where I place the character with his back to a crackling fire and as quickly as possible try to make the sound come from directly behind me without having to turn back and forth too much to get it sounding right. I note the compass direction and then turn 180 degrees from the direction I was facing when I thought he fire was centered behind me to see if I’m facing exactly toward the fire. It works perfect now.
Here I’ve been moving my speakers all over but barely touched my seats since I wanted to stay close to 15 feet. Well if 2 feet and 8 degrees of viewing angle improve things this much I say screw THX and SMPTE can really kiss my . . . .
