Panasonic PT-AX100E Hidden / System menu

You can access a hidden menu on the Panasonic PT-AX100E projector by bringing up the menu, highlighting the "Options", er, option and holding down the Enter button for a few seconds. The "Options" menu must be highlighting the first option "Input Guide". The menu is called "Ext Options".

While I have no idea what most of these options actually do and therefore strongly recommend not changing them, I did have a fiddle with the "Flicker Fixing" option. In this you get six screens showing your current input in red, green and blue in desk and ceiling mode. You use the Up and Down controls to switch between screens and Left and Right to tune the value. If the image flickers, take a note of the original value, then tune the value until the flickering stops or becomes much less intense. Use the Return or Menu buttons to return to the menu.

Another option I looked at was the projector "Self Check" which gives you the temperature of the unit and tells you there are five fans inside! I sit directly underneath my projector, it is literally a foot above me, I can touch it while sitting. I use it in Eco-Mode and the noise it produces ranges from virtually silent to audible but unobtrusive. I'd have never guessed there were five fans working inside. The noise of the projector is drowned out by the fan on my Xbox (not 360) sitting a couple of meters away on the other side of the room!

Oh, and by the way, the projector is still working fabulously. Yay!

Onkyo TX-SR674 Hidden Menus

For some reason, the Onkyo TX-SR674 automatically deinterlaces 480i / 576i signals that are output through it's HDMI interface (it leaves all other signals and signals output through all other interfaces untouched). While it does a reasonable job, it is a significantly worse job than my display device (a Panasonic PT-AX100E projector - which is still working great).

I emailed Onkyo's support staff and was pleasantly astonished to receive a reply a couple of days later. I had asked if there was a hidden menu that might contain an option to disable this automatic deinterlacing.

There are two hidden menus for video adjustment. To access them you make sure the receiver is on, then hold down the "Video 3" or "Video 4" button and simultaneously press the "Power" button (as if turning the receiver off). The Video 3 hidden menu allows you to adjust the up-conversion of S-Video / Composite signals. The Video 4 hidden menu supplies options regarding the HDMI interface.

As is clear from the fact that the menus are hidden, these contain options that you shouldn't play with if you don't already know what they do. Note that the HDMI/CEC Mode option should never be changed. For details of what the menu options mean, you should contact Onkyo you should supply you with the same instructions as me.

Sadly, there is an option to output 480i / 576i but it didn't seem to make any difference and the HDMI interface still output 480p / 576p.

However, this is a good news story about a quality intelligent timely response from a major manufacturer and you don't get many of them.