Thanks, JM. I may be overthinking this right now and may be perfectly happy with it after setup.
Your aim/goal is a good one, but I think you might be attributing a little bit too much importance, perhaps. As I was implying, if you have a MTM like the ER18, getting to be on-axis becomes more important, to avoid larger amounts of lobing. Mild tilt should work fine. A big tilt would perhaps negate one of the attributes of a vertical MTM, and that is the reduction of floor/ceiling bounce.
DNR?
Digital Noise Reduction. If poorly done, or excessively done, it replaces fine film detail with digital artifacts that look strange. A poor transfer with excessive DNR could remove the freckles, wrinkles, pores, etc, of a face, and make it look waxy/glossy and completely homogeneous, for instance.
IMO, it is by far the easiest flaw with video to pick out. It is in fact so easy to pick out, I remarked about the DNR on my friend's Panasonic V10 plasma. Looking around the menus a bit for him, I saw that the pic mode he was on had a couple of different DNRs as default settings (whereas THX mode did not). Turned it off, bam, totally different TV now.
There have been bluray rereleases due to terrible transfers, with DNR being the #1 culprit (if of a few culprits), for instance, Gangs of New York has now two releases on BD.
Patton is supposed to be one of the worst of all time. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is pretty bad too, I've seen the first couple of minutes, and didn't want to continue. I thought Pan's Labyrinth was pretty bad.
Old film does not necessarily mean a greater need for DNR. In fact, some of the very best looking things I've seen are older. So, if even old masters can look great, it seems less excusable for a movie that is just a couple of years old.
DNR should be used as a tool, sparingly used. The problem is that sometimes, maybe even often times, it's just maxed out, and applied to the entire picture, beginning to end of film. Some people thought that the studios thought we would like it, as it would make everything closer to cartoon-looking, perhaps. I dunno. Anyways, the hard-cores would even demand that DNR should never* be used, and that personal preference choices should be given to add DNR (whether with many receivers, vp's, etc). Once introduced, you've lost detail, and you can never get it back.
