Watched Dances with Wolves on HDTV tonight

Wowsers, what a transfer. I could literally count every hair on two-sock's body even on crappy HD cable. And the blades of prairie grass could be made out individually way into the distance. Hardly any film grain, but lots of detail non-the-less. It looks like it was made yesterday. Regardless of how you feel about the content, this was pure eye-candy - like demo material worthy. If it's this good on broadcast cable, this should really rock with the higher transfer rate and better codec on hi-def disk. I recorded this on my SA HD PVR, and will keep in there until it's released on disk. Yummy. What a surprise!

Skyhawk,

You won't believe this crap. I seems the HD gods want to punish me. My lamp on my 1080p DLP is going up. The screen is viewable but the picture is slightly dimmer. But the good news is it's under warranty, the bad news is I have to buy the lamp first ($250), and Mitsubishi will reinburse.

How many hours on the bulb Tony? I still have a shelved Infocus X1 that had 5200 hours on the bulb (not kidding). I wanted it to die and contemplated accidentally making it drop from its ceiling mount so my wife would agree to an upgrade!

But since it was getting pretty dim, I convinced my wife it would go any time and got a cheap Optoma HD80 to replace it with. There's about 1000 hours on the bulb, no problems yet. I recalibrated the color balance and brightness/contrast at 300 hours, and at 800 hours. Awhile after getting the Optoma, I found a deal for the new Mits HD1500 for less than $800 for the bedroom setup. It's only 720p, but it looks great. I actually have more hours on the Mits now, but that's because on more occasions than I'd like to admit we've fallen asleep with it on all night. But it's the on/off cycles that kill those UHP lamps IMO. I was talking to a tech guy from Infocus before about my old 350 (before my X1), and he said they had a demo one on for 24/7 for nearly a year and it was still going.

I bought the tv last March, and I'm guilty of leaving it on alot. Alot of times I leave the house with it on. I guess I shouldn't have done this but I've learned my $250 dollar lesson. After the bulb starts to dimm how long do you think I have? And by the way I used to own an Optima but I sold it and bought my 57 inch Mits.

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[Post edited by tony1569 on Jan 7, 2008]

It's starting to flicker now so I just turned it off. I guess I don't have long.

It depends on how dim it is. Did you have to push up the reds a lot? As UHP lamps lose pressure, they shift to cooler temperature colors. And have you been able to compensate the brightness by upping your brightness settings?

Anyway, it's good to have an extra lamp anyway. I'd get the new lamp, and shelve the old one as a backup if the lamp brightness is such that you're really screwing up your contrast by upping your brightness settings in your menu. Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that we projector owners have to factor the in the replacement cost of UHP lamps when buying into this technology. But it's so darn sweet, I would sweep floors at night for the $250 or $300 a year or two it costs for replacement bulbs if I had to.

Oops, are you talking about rear projection DLP TVs? I think of bulbs, and well... you know

To be honest I don't know anything about rear projection TV bulbs, except that they're supposed to last like 20,000 hours or something compared to our front projection bulbs that are normally rated 3,000 hours (at low brightness setting).

I say sell the whole darn thing and get into front projection on the cheap! Kidding

Yea, I went up on the contrast and brightness and it just screwed up the picture. I call Mits in the morning. I'll have to submit a proposal to the budget commitee for emergency spending and I hope that she will approve and allocate 500 for 2 bulbs but I doubt it. She'll only approve for one and then give me a lecture on energy consumption.