Cleaning the color wheel

As I mentioned in my last post, my projector was not working...a really good example of the symptoms can be seen in this You Tube post...

Color wheel problem example

so, having decided that I just needed to get on to it...a bit of searching turned up no clear instructions on how to investigate and fix this for the HD72. I did find a very useful document that describes replacing the bulb on the HD72 and that I used to replace my bulb a couple of years ago. This gave me the basic instructions for getting inside, but I also decided to write my own guide for others that might follow in my footsteps. This can be found at...

Clean Optoma HD72 colour wheel

I hope this is of use to others, as the links above were useful in building my confidence to give this a go.

The projector is now clean, re-installed and running sweetly (my wife claims it is quieter after the cleaning also). That's a huge relief. At least we have the internet TV back working in the basement... getting broadcast working down there is the next part of the project. I need to wait until I can get the parts to try that again, but will post progress as I go.

Not raining, pouring

Just before I left for a week of business travel, my Optoma HD72 decided to start acting up. So not only does the basement have no OTA TV at the moment, the internet TV is out of action until I can get this fixed. Searching on Google suggests that the cause of the symptoms I see are a defective color wheel (or color wheel sensor). Many posts indicate that dust/dirt on the color wheel sensor  can cause this, and cleaning can get rid of the problem. Unfortunately, this means surgery when I get home to open up the box and give it a good clean out.

On the bright side, many users report successful cleanings, so I am hopeful. However, I am sure this will be a stressful job.

Updates at the weekend when I've had a chance to run this.

Quit while you are ahead

After a bit of tinkering, I have still been unable to get satisfactory performance from the EyeTv One. The s/w seems OK, but I am concerned that the h/w is too flaky. After lots of deliberating I have decided to return the EyeTV one back to Amazon and seek a different solution. The returns process seems pretty slick, but since this is the first time that I have used it, I'll report on how it goes when the credit is returned.

I now need to find an alternative solution for the projector in the basement. Currently I am looking at a couple of different options....

Elgato HD Home Run : This uses a different hardware solution but with the same EyeTV software as the other Elgato products. A little more expensive, but it does provide a 2 tuner solution. Research under way on this.

Kworld HDMI based HD TV Tuner : This provides a TV only solution with no PVR function.

Channel Master CM7001 : Another option for the TV only tuner.

Many of the cheaper DTV tuners only seem to have SD video interfaces as they assume that you have an older SD TV with no ASTC tuner. For the few of us with projectors we need a box with an HD output and that gets more expensive...

Hey, looks like I'm watching the Stanley Cup playoffs on the samller HD panels at home for the time being. Go Sens Go !

Good for Sens, Bad for EyeTV

A great comeback win for the Sens last night in OT, but no thanks to my EyeTV. The solid performance on the hub from the night before evaporated and it was giving me the same performance as for the Red Wings game. Sad. I have not been able to get this longer term reliable and gave up watching and went and used a (little) TV for the rest of the game.

Currently searching forums and deciding how to proceed with this to a reliable solution...

TV Teething !

The RF amplifier arrived yesterday and was quickly patched into my cable room. This now delivers 12 (or 13, I haven't done the check to see if some channels are duplicated) channels to the the 3 TV locations in the house. Grand ! Just what I was hoping for.

I had also set up the EyeTV One to record the Red Wings vs Predators game as a test to pipe clean the process before the Sens game (Go Sens Go!) tonight. This did not run quite so smoothly. The EyeTV woke up at the required time and started recording no problem (even though the kids were watching the BBC iPlayer (via the VPN) at the same time. We started watching the game about an hour in and the recording worked OK to start. After about 15-20 minutes the picture started breaking up, getting blocky and juddery. Hmmm. Skipping through the recording to the live point showed that this only got worse as the recording continued and was still bad when live. I restarted the EyeTV app and the signal came back clean. I initially thought that this may be due to me using an external USB HDD to record the show, so I set that back to the internal HDD for the buffering. After about 15 minutes of watching the game live the picture broke up again. Restart EyeTV and we're back again. After a couple of these my wife went to watch the game on another TV to leave me to tinker with the problem (thanks !).

Internet searching suggested that I should try a powered USB Hub between the EyeTV hardware and the Mac mini. I ripped a hub out of my iMac install upstairs and tried this. Bingo. I ran for almost an hour without any breakup and the solution seemed a lot more robust.

I programmed the EyeTV for the game tonight and we'll see how it goes tonight for real....

Cut Off Day !

Today is cable tv cut off day in our house ! Final preparations have been going on over the weekend - in between kids hockey - and I have installed the final RF cable to route new OTA antenna, via a splitter, to my basement equipment room so that we can watch the Stanley Cup playoffs on the projection TV. Pulling the cable was the biggest pain - a sore arm and a lot of swearing later and I have it fed through the basement ceiling cavity so it is invisible for my wife. I connected it up to the EyeTV One and installed the s/w on the Mac mini. Boom, 12 channels tuned in and worked perfectly. I am hoping that when my RF amp arrives I can take this to 14, but time will tell. I have not set up the PVR functionality yet (no time last night) but I can watch HD CBC so we're good for the playoffs.

I'll get the PVR set up soon and report in more detail on the progress... and life without cable TV.

New Toys!

I believe that my Elgato Eye Tv One (Eye TV One) has arrived in the post today. This should let me get OTA HD onto the Mac Mini in the basement before the cable goes next week. Given that it is Stanley Cup playoff time (Go Sens Go!) I will likely not get to trying this before the weekend. That said, this is my route to OTA PVR so I'll post on progress soon.