Front Projection

[George Bellefontaine]

How many members here have front projector systems in their HT ? If not, how many plan on going the FP route soon ?

C'mon, people, Video Shop is dying !




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[Lex]

I wish I could George, does that count? Video seems to be a difficult area to keep hot. That's not just here, that is most places it seems. Fact is, it's always been a slow spot for us here at the Guide.

If you do tune in, you FP folks, be sure and visit the Chalet for a wonderful opportunity to be on the bleeding, I mean cutting edge of video developments! Typically progressive scan is 20P. Well, Ralph of Alpha DVD is testing 30P, and needs your help!

Thanks,
Lex

[Markj]

I am planning on FP. I am not sure how soon. I will be ordering my screen hopefully in a few weeks. My plan is to get the new Dwin. The projector will probably be ordered next year but if this year continues as it is it could be longer. :cry: I am going ahead with the screen because I do have the funds for it. I just gotta buy something. :roll:

[Kevin P]

I don't have FP (no room for it in my house), but I did install a Zenith Pro895x at a friend's house. I intend to post pictures and details of the install right here, once I find the time to post the pictures up on my web site.

KJP




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[Pat]

I have a FPTV system :yeah:

I think that the Video areas are slow because a new display is a big ticket item and most are not looking to upgrade right away for the latest and greatest.




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[George Bellefontaine]

Well things should soon warm up for Front Projection. New digital projectors are dropping radcically in price and that should see more people getting into front projection. All you need is a manual pull down screen and a table to sit the projector on, hook up to your AV system and voila-- home cinema with a big picture. One of the hot new lcd projectors is the Pasnasonic AE100 that I expect will sell for less than 2K in the US.




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[Lex]

is that one HD ready George? Curious

Lex

[JonMarsh]

Having owned both a couple of CRT FPTV's and LCD, I have to say that the digitial projectors have brought this to a more practical level of use for most folks than setting up and maintaining a CRT rig. The ultimate quality of image still lies with the CRT, but it's getting closer and closer; there are a few digital projectors in the 5K to 12K range that can really do a fairly good job with most material, especially the Hitachi 5500 (LCOS) and the Sharp Z9000 (1280X720 DLP). However, many much lower cost projectors, such as the Plus Piano and the venerable Sony 400Q can do a very nice job on most DVD's. Even the poster child for poor black contract, the Sony 10HT, can be significantly enhanced with service menu adjustments and the use of color enhancing/correcting filters, to produce a very decent high res picture at very respectable brightness- at the price these are available for these days, they're fairly tempting.

I rationalize the cost by the money I'm saving not having cable connected - but then, I'm just a movie buff. A lot of folks wouldn't want to be cut off from their regular broadcast programing. Unfortunately, when you blow up the typical cable picture you get around Northern CA to 72" diagonal, it leaves a LOT to be desired! :LOL:

Regards,

jon




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[Wireless]

I have used FP since the early 90s with only a brief apartment stint using a RPTV. As soon as I moved into a house I had to get a front projector, I was having major withdrawl symptoms. When I fired it up for the first time, my back sank into the chair, my whole body relaxed, and I let out a contented sigh......




John
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[Burke Strickland]

I have a Sony VPL-W400Q LCD front projector. It is a lightweight physically, but a heavy-hitter performance-wise. It renders a gorgeous color palette, gives reasonably sharp images even at very large diagonal screen sizes and is versatile enough to handle just about any video format.

In the four years I've owned it, I've replaced the bulb once and and sent it back to the factory once for warranty-covered updating to then-current specs (and fixing a little problem with it not accepting commands from the remote). :>) Since I had to go back to a 32" set during the time it was gone, I was even more convinced than ever that a projector makes HT "a real theater in your home rather than just a nice TV with a killer sound system" (C). :>)

I am amazed at how often I hear people say "I don't have space for a front projector" and then they lug in a behemoth rear projection set the size of a small car! :>) My projector doesn't weight much, has a small foot print, is simple to set up, and has a zoom lense that allows the projected image to be just about any size you are comfortable with. (I have a ten foot diagonal 16:9 DaLite High power screen, so on really good anamorphic DVDs I get a truly cinematic experience -- but on less than optimal material I can "zoom it down".) As for the space constraint, i have a friend with a small apartment living room as HT who uses a mirror to lengthen the throw distance, and gets a nice sized projected image (100 inches diagonal) in that relatively confined space -- so much for "not enough room for a front projector"... :>)

I couldn't go back to a standard direct view TV for watching movies... (although I DO use a small direct view TV for watching most TV). :>)

Burke

PS -- I wouldn't want to have to fiddle constantly with the convergence and other set up controls the way a CRT unit demands. (To say nothing of the weight and bulk of CRT units.) And in my experience viewing film at commercial theaters, the "blacker than black" that CTRs produce -- which is often thrown in the face of LCD and DLP owners as a CRT "virtue" -- I see as an unnatural exaggeration, not "film-like" at all. Nothing wrong with it as an acquired taste for those who prize it, but NOT an attribute that I find a "deal killer" for the competing technologies, which have so many other reasons to like them.

[George Bellefontaine]

Yes, Jon, digital projectors are starting to get close to crt. My Sony 400 doesn't have the same deep blacks my Zenith crt has, but I still love the picture I get. I have tweaked it to get even better contrast than when I first got it.

Lex-
The new Panasonic I mentioned is, I bleive, like my Sony. It accepts the 1080i HDTV signal but downconverts it to 480p. That's not true HDTV, but I am told the picture is amazing. We don't have HDTV yet so I have no way of confirming this.

Burke,
Hello fellow 400 owner. I too have owned mine for going on 4 years now, and have replaced the lamp once-- last month to be exact. Isn't it a beauty.




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[P-Dub]

I'm in the camp of wanting a FPTV. I have had the luxury of borrowing a LCD projector to try at home, and I know that's what I want in my system. The LCD I borrowed is far from the best available, but I think it is a good representation of a budget projector. It's a Sanyo PLCS-SW10, 700 Lumens, 250:1 contrast.

I have no screen so the picture is projected upon a yellowish stucco wall, so you know the picture can only get better. I was able to get a 64" 2.35 image, so that translates to roughly a 72" 4:3 screen. I have to make some comprimises in that 2.35 and 1.85 images are fine, 16:9 images are borderline, and a 4:3 image will have to be chopped on the top.

All this talk about FPTV makes me want to borrow the projector again.

In my upgrade chonicles, I was looking at a 43" RPTV. And so far my decision is to hold off. As much as these are nice sets, I can't get over the effect of wanting a bigger picture after I buy, so I'll be saving for a projector.




Paul

There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count, and those that can't.

[George Bellefontaine]

Hey, Paul, once you do get Front Projection, you can never go back to a smaller picture and still have the "cinema experience". I have a 36" Tosh in my study and I can only watch tv fare on it. I tried watching a dvd once and just didn't get the satisfaction of the big pic.




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[Clive]

Okay, okay so does anyone here use a regular RPTV for over the air broadcasts and a Front projector for movies in the same room?

I mean all this talk about FP is making me tingle or mybe I should say "excited" and interested. Mounting a DLP in my space would not be difficult with an automated screen - but someone here talked about having a fptv in an apartment 8O So do the rules of distance to view still apply to FP.
How many people here use front projection for regular viewing? Let me understand your habits and recommendations.




CLIVE




HEY!! Why buy movie tickets when you can own a Theater?

[Brandon B]

I plan to get one next fall. Looking at a Plus piano, or if the price falls far enough, a Sanyo XP21.

BB

[JonMarsh]

Hello Clive,

Since my divorce in 1990, I've only had an apartment to have FPTV in. Usually I've setup for a picture on the order of 6 to 8 feet diagonal. For the 4:3 CRT projector I used to have, 8 ft was the minium diagonal, with a front of projector to screen distance of 12 feet. For 16X9 LCD projector like the 400Q, a 72" diagonal wide screen picture produces a larger 4:3 picture than even a 50" 4:3 RPTV. While not as large as the picture possible in a bigge room, it is even brighter, and the viewing distance feasible in my living room works fine with that screen size.

And it takes up a lot less room than a comparable size RPTV, and doesn't have the convergence and alignment issues, as well as the relatively low brightness of 65" RPTVs, or their high sensitivity to light output versus direction- most 65" RPTV have very directional lenticular lenses and panels, which makes close viewing without strong brightness variation across the screen impossible.

Regards,

Jon




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[George Bellefontaine]

It's hard for me to give advice to Uncle Clive because I have had a room dedicated to Home Theater since 1988. At first I had a 43" RPTV and used to sit about 8 feet back from it, which put my seating a little less than the middle of my room ( 18 feet long by 14 feet by 7 feet high). Then I added a crt projector and an 84" diagonal manual pull down screen and moved the seating back to about 14 feet from the screen. Then I went with the Sony VPL400 lcd projector and changed the screen to a 92" wide by 52" high 16:9 widescreen. My seating stays the same. The 1.5 to 2 times screen width to seating rule is probably fairly safe to use. There is a danger that on some projectors you will see scanlines and/or pixel structure if the picture is too big and you are seated too close. I don't see any kind of pixel structure at 14ft on the Sony lcd projector, but my crt is still used for sports events on tv and some older 4:3 classic movies. It fires at the center of the screen and at 14 feet I can see the scanlines if I look for them. I hope this is helpful, Uncle Clive.




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[Clive]

Thanks George and Jon................. In other words you both maybe saying that everytime you and your family go to watch regular programming you fire up the projectors? Would you suggest for others reading this thread (say to save on bulb life.. etc) to maybe arrange our theaters to include a regular direct view (Tube) television depending on the family's viewing habits? What would be the ideal setup?




CLIVE




HEY!! Why buy movie tickets when you can own a Theater?

[JonMarsh]

An FPTV is not practical during the day, unless you have black out curtains, and many folks would like to watch TV under normal lighting. For that reasons it probalby is a good idea to have a "conventional" TV in a common room for that kind of viewing.

My own habits are probably not very mainstream- I virtually never watch cable or broadcast TV (too busy with other things); even my daughter doesn't, so the TV in the living room has always been used just for movies.

We also have a Tosh RPTV in my daughter's bedroom, for those times when she wants to watch something and I'm puttering around with music or something else in the living room. It's also good for when she has some friends on a sleep over, and want to watch a movie or two late; the built in sound is adequate for that (for her), and that set has a VCR, Laser disk player, and DVD player connected. It's a privelege which she doesn't abuse, fortunately, so we don't have any battles over that.

But I realize my TV viewing habits or lack of them aren't very mainstream, so I agree that most folks might want to have a standard set. I know peoples home that there is always one or two TV's going anytime someone is awake, and that would go through the old bulb lifetime pretty quick. Six hours a day would be a new bulb every year- that's about $30 a month - which won't buy basic cable anymore in many parts of the country. It would certainly pay for an adequate 32" set fairly quickly.

Regards,

Jon




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[George Bellefontaine]

Sorry Uncle Clive, guess my post wasn't too clear. Like Jon I rarely watch broascast tv. Now that the NHL playoffs are on I do like to watch the games on my crt big screen, but when I do watch regular tv fare, I usually go to my study where I have a 36" Toshiba. I use my lcd proj. for most of my movie watching. This way i get about three years of lamp life. Lamps for my Sony run around $600 Cdn., so I don't like to waste lamplife on reg. tv viewing. Now I am aware that many people do have regular tvs in their living rooms and use a pull down screen ( in front of the conventional tv) and fire up an lcd or dlp projector for the really big picture at movietime.




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[Clive]

Thanks George/Guys for this because my purchases now should and will affect the future growth of our HT. We are planning in a year or so to purchase a bigger home and your answers have changed my thoughts on the subject of video playback.

So my answer to the original Question would be that we'll be purchasing a FPTV of some sorts, most likely DLP.




CLIVE




HEY!! Why buy movie tickets when you can own a Theater?

[George Bellefontaine]

Good luck. And let us know how it goes when you finally have everything up and running.




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[Clive]

The New house has to come first, we'er still looking in a year or so but as you can bet it will be some project has we are still buying components piece by piece for the new setup. Will be a blast!! I am very anxious!




CLIVE




HEY!! Why buy movie tickets when you can own a Theater?

[George Bellefontaine]

Good things are worth waiting for, Uncle Clive.




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[Westly197]

I recently started using FP. I didn't want to invest too much in the current offerings and needed something very bright because I can't control the ambient light in my viewing room. I found a used Sharp 2200 Ansi Lumens XGA projector for $1800 plus a new bulb for another $400 and I'm very happy for the next few years. It was a huge quality improvement over my old 60 4:3 RPTV and I can watch movies on up to 156" screen. It has power zoom and focus so I can change the screen size by remote. The next projector I get will have the proper digital interface (DVI or what ever gets settled on), will be 16X9, have a huge contrast ratio, and will be very bright if I've still not found a solution to my ambient light issues. This projector is perfect to hold me over till all the issues with HDTV get settled and the performance to price ratio improves even more. The projector I got had a MSRP of $10,000 one and 1/2 years before I got it for $1800, and is still under warranty!




- Wes

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[George Bellefontaine]

Welcome to FP land. Sounds like you got a good deal on that Proj. Glad to hear you are happy with it. To me the big big screen is what movie watching at home is really all about. That's not to knock anyone who is still using direct view ( I still have a couple of those myself) or RPTV. It's where most of us start. But once I went to an 8 foot screen I could never enjoy watching movies any other way-- even on my 36" Toshiba.




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