After having Greg Eisemann's DVI mod for more than a year and recently upgrading to the rest of the mods along with the latest DVI mod, I would like to share my experiences and address any concerns anyone might have with Greg's mods.

Before I begin, I would like to share my first impression when I got everything working. In a word, awesome! I was extremely happy with my investment when I saw the crisp vivid clarity that was put forth from my HD-DVD player (A1). I have included some pictures to try to show this, but they did not come out very well and don't do it justice. They are included just the same so at least you get an idea of what to expect.

My configuration: Barco Graphics 808 (non-s), 180 DVB tubes, stock lenses, Carada Criterion Series 2.35:1 136" screen with brilliant white (~1.4 gain).

About the DVI mod:

When I first got the DVI mod over a year ago, I was very happy with it. I was able to do away with the need for a transcoder for component sources and could simply use DVI. Being able to feed an all digital signal straight into the projector and have it convert to analog right on the circuit board inside the projector allows for lossless long cable runs and less cabling than RG6 or similar for port 5.

With the first DVI version, I was able to use it with my HD-DVD player just fine, but with my PC, I was limited to 1280x1024 and couldn't really do much else. Because of this I still used port 5 for my PC so I could set the resolution to whatever I wanted. With the new version of the DVI, Greg is able to program the EDID's to any custom resolution you want. I have a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen. I used to use 1440x720 when I was using port 5, but after getting the new DVI version and the other mods done, I wanted to push it to a real 2.35:1 aspect ratio that is pretty much perfect for 1920x1080 2.35:1 movies. I use 1920x818x60p. When hooking up my HTPC to the DVI port, I automatically get this as an option. The picture quality in this mode is excellent. Watching 2.35:1 movies never looked better and I get all of the resolution contained within the 1920x1080 movie itself.

When I first got the new version of the DVI card back, I had some custom resolutions programmed in, and I had Greg set the maximum's really high on the EDID settings. This resulted in most screen modes using the most aggressive timings and this caused some pretty bad sparklies when using my HTPC. The sparklies were non-existent from my HD-DVD player. Even when booting up Windows, the sparklies were there. I purchased an HDMI equalizer from monoprice and it helped the problem, but it did not eliminate it. After playing with Powerstrip for awhile, I realized that the EDID's were set to aggressively and had them reprogrammed more conservatively. Before the maximum resolution/refresh was 1920x1080x64Hz. Now it is 1920x1080x61Hz. Still above 60Hz but it eliminates the sparklies when using the HDMI equalizer. Without the equalizer, there are occasional sparklies when it defaults to the highest frequencies. I will probably need to have the EDID's reprogrammed one more time to use Greg's standard 1080p timings and it will probably eliminate the sparklies without the equalizer.

For 1.85:1 movies from my PC, I still have some work to do. I might need to have my EDID's reprogrammed one more time for perfect 1920x1080p for 1.85:1 movies. The timings that it is using are timings that I provided to Greg rather than using his standard 1080p timings. The projector will sync to my timings for a few minutes, then it loses the signal for some reason. While it is working, the picture is quite sharp so I know it can do 1080p with good clarity. I just need to get the right timings programmed. I am not in that big of a hurry to fix this issue so I haven't bothered sending my DVI card in for an EDID reprogramming yet. I could use 1280x720p in the mean time.

For movies from my HD-DVD player on my 2.35:1 screen, I have two memory banks programmed on the Barco (3 and 93). One is for 2.35:1 movies where the black part of the picture is projected above and below the screen. The other is for 1.85:1 or 4:3 movies and the picture is squished vertically and horizontally leaving black bars on the left and right side of the screen. With the first DVI mod, I had a bad issue where there was a noisy vertical black bar cutting through the left side of the picture. This happened when I was shrinking the horizontal width too far. After getting the new DVI card and the other mods, this problem went away entirely and the picture looks beautiful!

This past weekend, I got the Panasonic BD10a Blu-Ray player. Currently the player is not working for me because it automatically selects 1080p and the option for 1080i is grayed out. This is due to it not liking my current EDID programming and there is no way to force the player to use 1080i. I blame this on the Panasonic for not having an option to override what it thinks is best. For standard 1080p timings, the picture appears, but the porch settings are not right and part of the picture is cut off horizontally. It seems that the timings from the EDID's are used by PC's, but not by external players. To get around this, I have ordered a Lumagen HDP scaler. I will feed my external sources into the Lumagen at 1080i and set the Lumagen to deinterlace it and send 1920x818p to the projector for 2.35:1 movies and 1920x1080p (with timings that work) for 1.85:1 movies. I will also experiment with 48Hz. I was planning on getting a scaler anyway because I wanted a way to have a progressive signal from all of my 1080i sources. I am pretty sure the Lumagen will let me set any mode I want, so it should do away with the need to have my EDID's reprogrammed except for my HTPC 1080p mode that is not quite right yet.

• Long lossless cable runs using HDMI equalizer
• Programmable EDID's to any custom resolution you want for HTPC's
• Haven't gotten the EDID's just right yet, but Greg will reprogram for free
• Fixed vertical black bar problem with 1.85:1 aspect ratio movies
• Doesn't work with 1080p players without a scaler to redo the timings. 1080p is possible, just not at the defaults of players that ignore the EDID 1080p timings.

About the rest of the cards' mods:

Along with the latest version of the DVI mod, I decided to get the rest of the mods. What a trip this turned out to be! When I first got them, everything was working beautifully from my HD-DVD player. I did not spend a lot of time with my PC at first since I was having the sparklies problem and other issues with my first version of the custom timings that were programmed into the EDID's (1920x1080x64Hz, etc). So, I focused on the HD-DVD player.

I roughly retweaked the geometry and convergence and some other settings and I was immediately blown away by the quality improvement. I was so excited to have such a wonderful picture. It was at this point that I was happy that I did not invest in a Sony Ruby instead of going with Greg's mods. I had demoed a Ruby and was faced with the decision of investing a little money on my existing projector or a lot of money on a new one. What I saw from the Ruby was extremely nice, and after getting the mods back, I was completely satisfied with my own projector and was no longer concerned about the Ruby. My projector was just as nice as what I witnessed on the Ruby and cost me a lot less.

After about 8 hours of run time, everything went dark and the projector was making funny noises. This is where the fun began (not!). My first thought was that I had blown a bunch of money and ended up ruining my projector. I called up Greg and explained what happened. Greg was very good about it and worked with me to troubleshoot the problem. To make a long story short, Greg replaced a bunch of my boards for free and we finally found the problem that caused all of the trouble. There was a resistor that was bent during shipping that was causing a short circuit on one of the boards. This blew the power supply and a couple other boards. I am happy to say that despite all of the potential costs, Greg was excellent to work with and stayed on the problem until it was resolved and never asked for any additional money. Now that is customer service! He told me that he was able to repair all of the other boards, so I am glad that he is not out a bunch of working spare cards.

After getting everything working again, along with the newer EDID programming, I was able to really dig in and start tweaking. I noticed that I was able to dial in much better focus with the magnetics on the tubes than before and the electronic focusing was much better than before. In other words, the picture is much sharper. Also, the brightness and contrast settings are different than what I used to use (about 10 less on the contrast and 7 more on the brightness). I am glad that I am able to drop the contrast back because that helps with blooming issues.

Now that everything is dialed in just right, I am extremely impressed and happy with the results. It is sharper, the colors are more vivid, and the projector is less noisy (the tubes used to whine more during bright scenes). I was also happy when I tried 1.85:1 movies from the HD-DVD player and I no longer had the vertical black bar problem! Another thing I noticed is when playing with different timings from my PC, the projector just works. Before, I would have an unstable and soft/fuzzy image when pushing the limits. Now, it just displays it and it always looks nice. In the case of my 1080p timings, it obviously is on the boarder of what is possible because it only works for a few minutes and then goes out, but while it is working, it looks very nice. Some day I will have Greg reprogram it with his 1080p timings and it should be good to go.

Lessons learned from my experience:

• The cards are very delicate. Make sure you pack them well when you ship them.
• Check all connectors and components on the boards when you get them back to makes sure everything is seated properly and not shorting out anything
• Start with the standard EDID programming if you don't need anything special. Since I am using 2.35:1, I wanted custom resolutions. They work great except 1080p.
• Invest in a scaler if you want 1080p from external sources besides PC's
• Retweak your magnetics and electronic focus after getting the mods back because the focus mods change everything for the better.

About other problems before and still after with the projector:

My only real problem that I had before and still have after the mods is convergence on the left side. I played with the width coils and a bunch of other stuff and I just can't get the left side to converge perfectly. This is no fault of Greg's and he worked with me to help troubleshoot the problem. He even offered to send me a new convergence tray to test with, but I declined since it is not really worth the effort. What I am planning to do after I get the scaler is try setting the horizontal resolution to something like 2000 and move the 1920 picture to the right side where it converges better. It may or may not work, but I can live with how it is currently.

About Greg:

Greg Eisemann was a pleasure to work with. He is very knowledgeable and will help you out with any problem you may have with his mods and any other problem with your projector as well. He definitely deserves recognition for all of the hard work he has put in and his product really shows that he knows what he is doing. For those who have Barco projectors and are contemplating these mods or switching to digital, consider the costs and your investments into your existing equipment. Greg has provided an upgrade for old Barco's to the new technologies (DVI with HDCP) and extended their life.

The pictures I took are not the best quality, but can give an idea about what to expect. It is kind of like filming a movie with a video camera at the theater. It's just not the same. I installed an internal HDMI cable under port 3 as seen in one of the photos. The photo of the internet text from cnn.com is at 1920x818p. The letters are very small at this resolution and I blew them up by taking close ups with the camera. They look really good from a normal viewing distance and are totally legible. The Star Wars screenshots are from my PC at 1920x818p. The rest of the movies and the HD test screen are from my HD-DVD player at 1080i. It clips half the vertical resolution when you pause it, so it is not representative of every pixel that is shown.

I hope you enjoyed my review. I tried to remember all of my experiences so that I could show the whole story. In the end, I am very happy and I can't wait for the Lumagen HDP to show up so I can get progressive picture from my 1080i sources. Let me know if you have any questions.

Mike