** OFFICIAL ** Thread for the Projection HT

[hatih]

sigh...currently shopping for a house that has a room worth buying a project for. soon enough victory will be mine!

Although it's good thing if you have a separate room for your projector you can get a decent setup in most homes to the room that is used for something else also, usually the living room.

[TheWrathofBambi]

Yeah i live in a small apartment but i managed with mine, i got a huge sheet of blackout cloth on ebay wich was about 60 bucks and just put it over the biggest wall and thats my screen, you can even project onto a white wall but it wont look as good as it will with screen material

[bujee1]

sigh...currently shopping for a house that has a room worth buying a project for. soon enough victory will be mine!

If you have a room 12 feet deep you can have a 100" screen. There's nothing to it but to do it!



I'm glad the thread is back!

[EMAGDNIM]

Hey, I'm back and ready to help out. I'll post my setup pics once I'm back home (I'm at work selling PJ's HAHA!)

[high_rollin]

I got an Optoma HD65 in June. It's a 720p projector. I'm really pleased with it.

I would like to get an 1080p projector eventually (one with a built-in anamorphic lens preferably), but as of right now, I don't have the means to get one. This one shall tide me over until I do.

I don't have much experience with projectors, but this one definitely performs very well. It was pretty cheap too. Only $1100 CAD. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a decent and affordable projector.

My room's only about 12 feet from wall to wall, and my screen is roughly 100" (I haven't measured it). I usually view from about 8 or 9 feet away, and it holds up pretty well. I do see jagged edges occasionally when I'm looking for them, but other than that, it's great.
My screen is just a white piece of plastic that my dad brought home from his work. It works quite nicely. Except that when my room gets hot, the plastic expands and warps a little, so on panning shots, the image is kinda wavey... but keeping my room cool minimizes that problem. Come winter, it shouldn't be a problem at all.

I only wish I hadn't lost the damn remote already! They're like 100 bucks to replace.

[LastSonOfKrypton]

I got an Optoma HD65 in June. It's a 720p projector. I'm really pleased with it.

*Edited due to size of post *

You might want to check out this post from Josh Z concerning anamorphic lenses.

[high_rollin]

You might want to check out this post from Josh Z concerning anamorphic lenses.

Yeah, I know constant height is difficult to achieve. If I had my way, I would design a projector with a built in scaler, that automatically sizes every aspect ratio to the same height within a 2.40 frame.

I do know of a few projectors that have a built-in anamorphic lens. I saw one that was priced at $5000, and it seemed to have everything you'd need. The details said that it automatically sensed 2.40 movies, and automatically slides the anamorphic lens into place and stretches the picture correctly.
Of course, like I've seen someone point out before, this isn't necessarily constant height. 1.85 movies are letterboxed slightly with a 16x9 frame, and I'm betting there aren't any projectors, and probably not very many scalers (if any) that deal with that problem.
Not that it's a huge problem... but still.

I don't think I'd ever spend my money on just an external anamorphic lens. I foresee a lot of finnicky-ness and slightly skewed picture or stuff like that. Anamorphic lenses are like 2 or 3 thousand dollars... if I was gonna save up that much money, I'd rather just go the extra mile and get a projector with a built-in anamorphic lens. Much easier and more efficient.


What I wish was that I could find a Blu-Ray player which has a setting that you could turn on which would scale every aspect ratio to fit within the area of the frame that 2.40 movie usually occupy. Like, everything would be letterboxed the way that 2.40 movies are, but different aspect ratios would be pillarboxed within that letterbox... so you'd end up with a constant height, without needing an anamorphic lens, and then if you have a projector, you could just frame it up on a 2.40 screen, and you'd be all set.
Yeah, you'd lose a bit of resolution on non-2.40 aspect ratios, but with 1080p, it'd still be pretty good. An acceptable compromise, IMO, to get a simple constant height set-up that requires no extra cost at all.

I actually e-mailed Sony with a request to program a feature like this into the PS3 through a firmware upgrade... but I got some standard response that just listed the features of the display settings on the PS3...

[LastSonOfKrypton]

@ High Rollin

Just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into with one of those Obviously you know a lot more than I do.

[high_rollin]

Just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into with one of those Obviously you know a lot more than I do.

Hehe... yeah, I spend a lot of time thinking about it. 2.40 is my favourite aspect ratio, so go figure.

[pat00139]

"What I wish was that I could find a Blu-Ray player which has a setting that you could turn on which would scale every aspect ratio to fit within the area of the frame that 2.40 movie usually occupy"

Not a BD player, but the Oppo 983 player has an 'Anamorphic' zoom feature for just that purpose. The upconversion is astounding, and the Anchor Bay Tech chip inside is strong enough to be able to accomodate that kind of feature for people using projectors. One big reason I got my Epson was because of the way DVDs looked on that player. I wanted to take advantage of that player, so now my screen is four times as it used to be and I couldn't be more pleased. The 983, for those who don't know, has the ABT102 deinterlacer and ABT1018 scaler, which are the same chips found in Anchor Bay's DVDO VP30 external scaler.

Given this is a projector thread, I figure I can contribute to it. I have an Epson Home Cinema 1080UB projector. It's not able to accomodate an anamorphic lens, but that's not too big of an issue for me at this one. If I ever get a truly dedicated home theatre, I'll spend the money for that, but for now I'm really happy with the Epson.

[bujee1]

[QUOTE=high_rollin;1158244]I got an Optoma HD65 in June. It's a 720p projector. I'm really pleased with it.

I would like to get an 1080p projector eventually (one with a built-in anamorphic lens preferably), but as of right now, I don't have the means to get one. This one shall tide me over until I do.

I don't have much experience with projectors, but this one definitely performs very well. It was pretty cheap too. Only $1100 CAD. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a decent and affordable projector.

My room's only about 12 feet from wall to wall, and my screen is roughly 100" (I haven't measured it). I usually view from about 8 or 9 feet away, and it holds up pretty well. I do see jagged edges occasionally when I'm looking for them, but other than that, it's great.
My screen is just a white piece of plastic that my dad brought home from his work. It works quite nicely. Except that when my room gets hot, the plastic expands and warps a little, so on panning shots, the image is kinda wavey... but keeping my room cool minimizes that problem. Come winter, it shouldn't be a problem at all.

I only wish I hadn't lost the damn remote already! They're like 100 bucks to replace.

Nice pictures!

Thanks for posting .

I noticed you have your projector on a shelf. How does that work?

[EMAGDNIM]

With all the new projectors announced and being shown at CEDIA I think it's "upgrade time" for me! I donno, I am rather excited to see what the major companies are planning to release. And what's great about new projectors being announced is that the current higher end models prices drops...

It's a total win-win!

[bujee1]

More pictures guys !
Don't make me post my latest theater pics.
I'll do it!
I'm as bad as a proud papa.
I'm sure many of you are as well .

Let us see your man (or woman) cave!

If you've got a family/living room that converts let us see that too !

[hatih]

I didn't find pictures of my projector with quick search but here are some images from the screen:
Here is a good use for my projector, sadly this is very rare sight in my screen.
http://www.kolumbus.fi/harri.h/kotit...i/IMG_7968.JPG

Why is this image here? Because there is no wrong place for Commando
http://www.kolumbus.fi/harri.h/kotit...i/IMG_7453.JPG

I tried to use this projector with my PS2 but since I don't have better way to connect them together than s-video I would need a line doubler to get a decent picture.
http://www.kolumbus.fi/harri.h/kotit...i/170_7012.JPG
(TV is 34" and screen is 2 meters wide (about 6,5 feet, I think))

Projector is Barco Data 701, basic CRT-projector. I use it with SD resolution (it can do 720p but that drives it over its specs) so for me HD-time in projector world is still future. (At the moment it seems to be in distant future, I had a plan to upgrade my projector and TV early next year but repairing a house is so damn expensive that I think I must postpone that upgrade.) My house is so small that I don't have separate viewing room, irony is in the fact that I lived years in apartments that had an extra room for projector but at the time I actually got a projector I had to put it in living room.
http://www.curtpalme.com/Barco701.shtm

[Chickengas]

How about cheap alternatives to block out light, but still have a nice looking room? Anyone build their own screen? I am looking into a projector with scope lens and building a screen with a 2.35:1 ratio for scope movies with movable masking to convert it to 16:9 for flat presentations.