Marquee Modification Performance enhancement thread

Ill say below 10fl is no good for HD material, and 12fl is the magic point to reach, Justin we calibrated your setup to 14fl, and you can turn it up to 17fl, you might share your subjective visual experience.

Its not the peak lightoutput itself that is important, but the more light output, the better graduation you get out of black, so for those that care about low level shadow details, its important to get as high a output as possible. 2nd is the dynamic range in the image.

At my current setup im douing 11fl on a 110" neutral gain screen with LUG tubes and GT17 lenses, its not to much, and when i get some time again ill shift to LCP tubes, both to gain some light output, and i find them to have better color uniformity.

I just bought 4 new tubes last time i was over there,  had to as i got a brand new blue LCP tube for 50$ on ebay, so rebuild a 9518 sim with those tubes, now i have 1 new 9543 and 2 absolutely stunningly mint with new LCP tube projectors stored in Gregs basement in Indiana.. The biggest problems these days is not to find the tubes, but that i bought shitloads of new or mint projectors for pennies, like the 6 newly retubed, and 1 brand new spare in texas for 450$, so what is a set of new tubes worth.. I still buy them if i find them for the right price, doubt ill ever use them, other than rebuilding sim projectors.. Have 1 left with burned out tubes.

Funny thing is i found another new blue LCP in germany short after for 56 euro. Whats not to like about that.

And that was pretty much exactely my point.. The yoke is not the real problem here, but the controle of the yoke.
Its possible to focus super sharp on a standard Marquee, but just not uniformly across the screen.

Now there is also a compromise to be made when setting focus, as you dont have optimum focus for bothe resolution and line sharpness, or high and low output, so if you focus for max sharpness on a cross hatch pattern with 100% ire lines, you will have overfocused finer details at lower output, you can test this using the DVE disc and toggle between the geometry pattern and pixel phase pattern.
I belive that has to do with the way the phosfor reacts.
The only real difference i see between the LUG and LCP is the phosfor, the LUG having finer phosfor grain, wich is also why i guess they are harder to controle at higher drive levels, the bit more rugh phosfor in the LCP tubes seems to be able to handle better all around, except it looks a bit more rough on screen when displaying 1 color, not that i really can see it while watching a movie, but im left with the feeling the LUG looks a bit more smooth, then comes the other parameters, and in the end i think i prefer the LCPs overall performance.

The caps in the marquee ir rarely a problem, sure if they are dead, but thats mostly a issue on the later VDC build projectors where they used super shitty caps, the Electrohome machines seems to last forever except the 2 caps on the neckboard if they have a lot of hours on them, LVPS really dont do much difference new old or recapped, but the videochain itself, wich is totaly untransparent what is what, there is so many revisions and neckboard models that its a pain, and the vim is equally different from year to year, the latest beeing the worse, and that have more effect on blooming than anything else, and videochain issues should not be adressed by tampering with the focus systm, thats simply dealing with it the wrong way around.

I spent a lot of time matching neckboards for optimum performance, and found that around 50% of the neckboards from 1996 to 2003 did not pass the performance test, wich includet bandwidth handeling gain and in cases streaking. And all neckboards build after 2003 is not worth wasting 30 sec on.

I have recapped boards and PS here i have used to swap in and out, and to my frustration it was pretty much waste of time, i do know DIY people love the cap mods, as i guess thats all they really can do and feel they did something, but i find that Gjakys efforts are far more effective and on target, and he has a super professional atitude towards the hole mod thing.

So personally i role my eyes everytime i read about change the caps here and there.. I experienced Chris Stephens HVPS mods that introduced heavy crosstalk, like WTF how can nobody have noticed. Thats the level most mods have, so like i mentioned before, go find a old Marquee Electrohome build, actually 1996-1997 might be the best ones ever, from there it got messy.

And mixing any of that with MP mods is just a total disaster, as he have no clue how to measure or test that the boards are even worth a mod, and 99% of his work leads to shorts or simple mistakes that result in a never ending cycle of shipping around the world.. Sure multiple members can confirm that.. 

This was told by MP, I'd take it with a grain of salt...

The streaking is rare on standard Electrohome boards, but i seen it on lot of the MP boards, along with incresed crosstalk, and early blooming, so replacing a component to something better, how is that defined.. Price, specs, or test in the specifik aplication, covering all the complexity of it.? I think its helthy not to fix something that is not broke, i know thats not how DIY modding works, and im sure thats why its almost always worse than standard, and to do mods ull have to do multiple tests, measurements, wich is hard to define, and even testing hundreds of hours you might still miss a issue you notice much later.
Thats the reason i basically leave most of the marquee original, and concentrate about the main issue, the videochain, i simply miss seeing positive results on various mods on the remaining boards. Now a dead or bad cap is not mod work, its maintenance.

And when arguing mods in a public space like this, it would make sence to present evidence, like measurements pictures and so on, to keep it a notch above never ending Bla bla bla...

So why dont we all who like to play around with the focus issue start agreeing on a pattern, a meter and then post some pictures of that specifik pattern at specifik light output, wich might turn out verry differently.

And chris when you keep bringing up the addet resolution like 3K, try be a bit more specifik how and why u think it should work, from simple math/ bandwidth, and how ull manage to add bandwidth and maintain the projectors capability to resolve the source on a pixel/ bit dept level, and how u thought about douing the hole format convertion of colorspace, dynamic range, and pixel and bit resolution, without compromising the quality of the source to much.