The 10.6 kit has been gaining a lot of attention these days and now its time for a dedicated Q&A's thread.

This thread is going to summarize all the action going down for the past few months.

Panel: Samsung LTN106W2-L01
Specs

Click here for full pdf. (Not Here Yet----I need some one to find a place to host some of this stuff)

Don't mind the specs, this panel is excellent.
Here is a picture of a projector with this panel in action.


Here are more screen shots from lumenlab members

Pun15her here

Controllers:

There are several controllers floating around that can run this panel. As of right now there are 4 controllers. The Genesis 5221, Genesis FLI8125, MST9E19A, and RTD2523B. Below is a comparison chart.

Here is Compatibility Chart for Controllers

Click to view attachment

Genesis 5221

Genesis FLI8125

MST9E19A

RTD2523B


The first controller was the RTD. The RTD had many problems and Genesis 5221 took its spot. Many people sent me their RTD broads to have them replaced since the Genesis was superior. The RTD is pretty much going to be out of the picture.

The Genesis 5221 is our main controller right now. The only problems are 720p over component is moved over about a half inch on the screen but it is still watchable, 1080i does not work. Other than that, HDTV signals over DVI are flawless. Here is the installation guide for the controller.

The Genesis 8125

The MST9E919A is a new controller that came out. So far component works great on the controller, no shifting. I can confirm that 480p, 720p, and 1080i all works great over Component and DVI. Still dont know if the controller is HDCP. Also the controller has some neat functions like picture in picture, timer, different video settings like a Sony TV eg... Vivid, Warm, User..... The remote is a bit weak like the RTD controller where you have to point the remote right at the IR eye.

Stripping the 10.6 Panel

Here is a excellent stripping guide for the 10.6 panel by geckostudios here

Here is another strip by Pun15her here

Here is another strip by Philw here

The few screenies(pictures of the projected image) that lumenlab members have produced so-far, are very encouraging to say the least. Here's my favorite i got so-far, while testing/building with the 10.6"

batman begins 720p.
aproximatley 70" diag
This was with all the factory polarizers, and layers in-tact, using the "standard optics" you can get in the Lumenlab Store.

[Beginning with known-Plog's:]
elken2004/Dazzzla/Ozstang65 -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18470
pun15her -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18367
HapHazard -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18347
b0rna -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18478
ziggy_man -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17812
SupraGuy -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18526
-=Shiver=- -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18514
cpsubrian -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15772
iPO's -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18708
shadowhawk2020 -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19314
PEGASUS -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19458
conker -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19476
Sinner7 -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...showtopic=19628
kariya762 -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19334
EpitaphILIP -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19846
geckostudios -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19895
SinAngel -- http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20037

Can anyone comment for updating this faq w/ some kind of evaluation of the response time on this LCD panel? Perhaps it's subjective, but rough comparisons vs say a typical LCD TV would be cool.

(Off topic: I've been researching and hunting for my first LCD to test on and have set a manufacturers "reported" response time threshold much lower than the 35ms this one has - namely, 8ms or less. I know manufacturers like to play games with the response time, but I'm assuming the listed response time is rough guide to get what you're looking for... This little LCD panel has peaked my interest but the response time is turning me off...)

Thanks!

Well, I figure that I can afford to take some chances with response time, since I already have my 17"/Pro lens projector up and running.

I'm going for portability with this project, and I'm hoping that it will work for gaming.

Dimensions of the panel, courtesy of Ozstang's PLOG

Click to view attachment

And here's a link to the spec sheet
(Feel free to add this to the first post if you want Johnzo)

Dimensions of the Genesis controller, courtesy of Ozstang's PLOG

Click to view attachment

Here is the link for the MST controller. It is mostly in Chinese with metric units and some English. I have a friend that speaks and reads fluent Chinese and they are helping me translate this PDF. One we have finished I will post the translated PDF document.

Well looks like everything will work out just the way it always does.

Ordered my 10.6 panel and MST controller from Johnzo on Apr 16th.

And just got a call to go back to work this Monday.

How in the heck is a guy ever suppose to goof off if work keeps interfering!

Not even counting that strange look the wife gave me when I told her about the project.

My grandson gonna get a kick out of playing his Wii with life size bowlers!

Well I received my 10.6" Kit with Mst controller and I'll begin major testing tonight.

But first the Incredible Good News is that Hdcp IS enabled through HDMI/DVI inputs.

Yes you heard me correctly. HDCP IS ENABLED. I tested it with 2 different upconverting DVD players and a laptop with HD-Dvd and Hdmi outputs, and it works fine. 480p, 720p and 1080i all upconverted fine with copywrited Dvds. And the HD-Dvd's played perfectly from the laptop at 1920x1080.

More to come.

Here's what I've tested so far.

HDMI.....HDCP Enabled with 2 Upconverting Dvd players
480p---Works
576p---Works
720p---Works
1080i--Works
1080p--Works

Component with Upconverting Dvd player and Xbox 360
480p---Works
576p---Works
720p---Works
1080i--Works
1080p--Works

VGA through upconverting Dvd player
640x480---Doesn't Work right, shifts upward
800x600---Doesn't Work right, shifts upward
1024x768---Works

VGA from laptop
Displays perfectly anything I throw at it up to 1920x1200

HDMI/DVI from laptop
Everything works but it doesn't scale to fit so there is some overlap of icons. In other words some icons will hang over the sides of the screen a little.

Is your friend fluent in english too, or is this going to be one of those 'fun reads'?

Has anyone done any gaming tests with say a driving game or FPS?

I like the size and res of the panel but the response time has me a bit worried.

Wardog

i don't really know what the problem is on mine but colors are messed up.

The translated MST control board .pdf document is completed but to large even in zip formate to load here. Any suggestions as to where I can place it for community use?

http://www.rapidshare.com/

How big is it ?

I might can fit it on my Ftp site.

How much interest would there be in a group buy of longer LVDS cables for this panel? I am in communication with someone who can make them to custom sizes.

EDIT: The seller would be making the cables by hand and wants $45 a piece or $38 per 10. Too rich for my blood at the moment.

It's 3.9 M pdf or zipped.

Send it to me and I'll host it.

jonjandran @ wavetel.us

remove the spaces.

Here's the link for the translated Pdf file for the Mst controller :

Right click and choose "Save Link As" to save it to your computer.

Mst Pdf File

Why does the controller board pic show the Audio/Video inputs for the Genesis FLI8125 board with the Scart connector ? But it shows the proper osd/lvds/Ir/ connections?

And the last schematic pic shows the proper audio/video inputs ????

Can I get a show of hands from the people who have managed to get the tuner working that came with the early versions of the Genesis 5221 boards? (And if you do raise your hand, please speak up concerning how you went about programming the channels.)

Trying to decide whether it's even worth including the tuner in my retrofit...

I'm interested in this as well.

Johnzo:

What type of F-type female adapter is in the tuner of the MST board?
I've looked at RadioShack and can't find anything like that. It's looks like a RCA to an F-type female.

Thanks

Phil

P.S.
Bueller,Bueller......tap,tap,tap is this thing on?

Boy this really is a DIY board.

Had to break down and make my own.

I keep finding references to the MST board having HDTV capability.
Looking at it's frequency range that doesn't jive.
Any other thoughts?

Link 1

Link 2

What are you talking about.

HDTV is 720p/1080i/and 1080p.

720p is 1280x720 @ 60hz
1080i is 1920x1080 @30hz
1080p is 1920x1080 @60hz

The Mst controller accepts up to 1080p and outputs up to either 1440x900 or 1680x1050 depending on what spec sheet you look at.

It is more than capable of Hdtv.

The tuner

If you look at the first link it say's. "The main design of the chip is MST9E19A can achieve HDTV signal reproduction.

Now to me, that means a TV signal, HDTV, not a source such as a DVD player or resolution of the screen.

I don't believe that's what they mean, that would be too wonderful.

But I thought I'd ask since there are a lot more people on this board that know about the MST than I do.

A "HDTv Signal" doesn't mean a TV signal necessarily. It means the signal from the Hdmi/Vga/Component inputs. Signal=Frequency. And with this controller they are talking about the Hdtv signal coming from Hdtv sources.

It does not have a Ota Hd digital tuner, which would mean it would receive Ota Hd signals. And they never stated anywhere that it does.

1 Question: Does my 10.6 wxga panel have 3 layers on the front (polar / AG / polar) or just one (polar)?

Answer: The 10.6 wxga panels come with two different layer configurations on the front viewing side. If you have 3 front layers (NOT the mirror side), the top polar will lift and you'll still see an image with the panel operating. If you have 1 layer, lifting a layer corner the image will dissappear and will turn white. This test requires a backlight and a test movie to play while you lift the corner of the layer(s). The 1 layer version is better, not appearing to have AG so you don't need to strip.

2 Question: Does my 10.6 wxga panel have 3 layers on the back (backlight, mirrored side)?

Answer: Yes, all the kits so far have 3 layers on the back (mirror 1 / mirror 2 / polar). The mirror layers can be stripped easily by hand. Mirror 1 can be removed in one piece very carefully by starting at the corners and pulling towards the center of the panel alternating directions. Peel any layer parrallel to the glass. Mirror 2 can be removed by hand by pulling thin strips approx. 1/2 inch wide. Mirror 2 may leave minor glue residue that will clean up with water, tissue or soft fingernail work. That leaves just a shiny nice factory polar.

3 Question: Will totally stripping my 10.6 for SHC polarizer replacement improve my projection?

Answer: Comparing a fully stripped (down to the panel glass) 10.6" with loose mounted SHC polars to a mirror stripped 10.6" with original factory polars using the same lighting, fresnel spacing and projection size yielded the following results. Brightness: Center white screen lux was 100 with the factory polars and 70 with the SHC. That's a 30% drop in brightness using SHC polars . The white was also crushed by the SHC. Contrast & Glowies: The SHC setup has very nice even black screen (no glowies) using split fresnels. The factory polars have some glowies using split fresnels but they can be reduced by adjusting panel angle. Both SHC and factory polars produced terrible glowies using unsplit fresnels. Color rendering: The factory polars rendered colors much brighter and cleaner that SHC polars. I prefer the factory polars with split fresnels for the brightest, cleanest projection. Using a 150w ceramic, the SHC brightness cut was too much. The SHC setup may work much better with 400w light engine to make up for the loss.

ok so how do i get a 10.6 and MST controller?

Ask Johnzo, he's the U.S. hookup.

question, so this MST controller supports 1080p sources but the lcd isnt capable of outputting at these resolutions so it downconverts them to a lower resolution (which is what)? If so how does it look as opposed to having the full 1920x1080 resolution. I guess my question is playing a blu ray movie on this, does it look substantially worse (or different) then playing it on a wuxga 15.4 projector?

Also it seems to me the best controller for this package is def the MST since it has many different inputs (HDMI and component plus HDCP support yay! ) but on the compatability chart it seems to have problems with scaling, can anyone elaborate on that? I would be interested in plugging maybe multiple gaming systems(ps2, ps3, 360, wii) and digital cable into one of these bad boys and of course they all run in different resolutions so im wondering what kind of results i would get (also i saw there was some concern over the refresh times of this lcd possibly not being suitable for gaming, has anyone tried it out yet and what were your results)

And since im asking questions one more, i would need an AV system selector as just about all those devices run off of component in and i think it would simplify things, any recomendations on good ones? Thanks you guys rock!

Actually, the MST only has a problem with aspect switching (which none of them do). It shows everything works fine.

As far as the resolution, The difference are in details. A 1080p panel will be able to display finer details of a 1080p signal that a 720p panel can't, but that doesn't mean that the 720 will look terrible. Comparing video from my projector to a friends projector (Panasonic AE1000U), his definitely looks better, but it's not a complete letdown. I still get good detail (much better than standard tv). If you MUST have the 1080p display, then build a 1080p projector, but otherwise I wouldn't worry too much. Check out my plog for some picture to see what this panel can reproduce.

David

It's also a matter of projection size and viewing distance.

With a projection of less than 120" and a seating distance of around 12' you wouldn't be able to notice and difference in detail between the 15.4" projector at 1080p and the 10.6" at 720p.

The larger you get the more you can discern differences between 1080p and 720p.

Cool, this sounds like a great combo, the only thing im really left wondering is about the response times, since ill be using it primarily for gaming and movies, how does it perform? Any ghosting issues? What are others experiences with it in regards to this?

I haven't seen any ghosting with Xbox360 or PS3.

No ghosting for me either, using the MST controller.

Im planning on stripping my LCD 2morrow, iv recently heard that there is only one polarizer on the front of the LCD.
Looking at the front of mine i can clearly see a thick piece of "Something" stuck to the panal and then a small gap around the edges, Is this safe to remove or does is this the actual polarizer?
Don't want to try and remove it if i don't have to.

Oh BTW my orignal lcd was going to be a PS1 but decided against that and sent it back, however i ordered the varifocal which suppose to be for 10" lcd, What side affects will i see blurred edges, dim edges or simply missing edges?

Kind regards

when i got my controller it did not have that piece. i wanted to know where i can get that and what is it called? thanks.

It's a European to F-type adapter available at Radio Shack.
I asked that same question and never did get a reply. I guess the experts though it was to dumb a question to deserve an answer.

Of course maybe they didn't know what it was.

hey thanks! so i just ask for an European to F-type adapter? at radio shack?
if so thank you.

Questions about Geometry from the Menu from the MST board:

Clock, what does it control?

Phase, what does this control?

Ok, I am exploring multiple options looking for native 720p pixel-for-pixel unscaled (let the high-quality signal hit the LCD un-changed please).

My question is: will this panel display 1280x720p if that is fed directly to it? I don't want to have my signal interlaced at any stage from source to display, and I can't afford 1080p sources right now, so 720p is the choice I like.

So 768 pixels, subtract 720 pixels, equals 48 stray pixels, then I want to see 24 lines dark on the top and bottom, do any of the input boards support this?

Has anyone heard of a cheap "non-scaling" box to add dead lines of resolution to a signal?

Does vertical stretching of the pixels account for a lot at this high resolution? I am not going to be reading text unless I am on the PC, and that will send 1:1 pixels, so I am OK with it if it isn't all that noticeable, I don't like the aspect squishing either.

Whose brilliant idea was it to make all LCD's scale? Not the engineers I bet, probably the idiots in marketing reacting to pressure from un-educated consumers.

My only other choice seems to bump all the way up to a Samsung "t" suffix 17" panel, with 3 scaling options:

1. Scaled to all edges (like most LCDs )
2. 1:1 accurate, no scaling
3. Stretch to edges, keep aspect ratio (AKA dark pixels, screen objects aren't squished or stretched

Of course that means a huge box, an expensive and rare Samsung 17", only VGA inputs native (not a huge problem, but I would like to watch a VCR or play the Playstation every now and then)

PS, that 35ms is rated at 25°C, isn't the interior of a DIY usually a bit hotter than that? Will this make the gel move faster and decrease the switching time? Not that it matters, as long as it doesn't look like a laptop from the late 90's.

I am now looking seriously at this panel because I am getting some money, According to this link from above:

Link 2

The MST board has a "Scale - FULL" setting on the first picture of the on-screen menu.

What are all the options available? Does this scale the signal into 1:1 pixel resolutions? Or is it just a 4:3 support mode?

I don't need HDCP yet, but the resolution support is important to me, and the 720p over component, so I think I am going to go with one of these as soon as the money comes in, it is $290 + shipping (or is that shipping included) correct?

I think it's $295 shipped.

And no it doesn't do 1:1 pixel mapping. The Mst scales everything to the panels native resolution. I think the Rtd did 1:1 but johnzo doesn't sell it anymore.

Do you even have the scale option there like the picture in that link shows?

Yes it's there but it doesn't do anything.

So you press left or right and the word "full" doesn't change? Or it does change and nothing happens?

I guess this is one of those circumstances where a movie is worth a million words.

I would sincerely love to buy one of these, I just don't like to have to run everything through a PC just to get a correct aspect ratio (If I was going to do that, I might as well use a 17" 1280x1024 display for 1/6th the price, or the 14.1" panel for less than 1/2 the price)

Is 4:3 content stretched all the way to each edge? Or does that kick in and display in a box?

The problem with making an 84" projector is that you can see the rings of fuzziness left by the poor scaling chip (I know you can't see them from your seat watching a movie, but just knowing that they are there while I payed $300 for this setup is a bit unnerving)

Has anyone got an option here? Honestly I can't find a 720p panel, or one that doesn't scale.

Is there an inexpensive Component input card, because I am going to have to build a HTPC to run the inputs through to fix the aspect ratio.

Can we make the firmware on the board send blank pixels to the 24 top and bottom rows? Is the MST firmware open enough that we can compile our own?

Nope nothing at all changes/happens when you press left/right/enter/etc.

Yes 4:3 is stretched all the way across the screen.

Don't think the firmware is accessible.