Projectors for watching video

[Stephen Jackson]

I searched a couple of threads and found more confusing information.

So here's my question.

What type of projector are you using to show movies on?

I have a situation where I have to show several videos on a 9'X12' screen in clubs across the country.

So the lighting will vary from venue to venue as well as the throw distance that I have to work with. The screen is a dual screen So I can use a projector that's front and rear projection.

I had almost settled onthe Panasonic LB20U with their daylight technology but I'm not certain that I need a XGA or SVGA since the projector will be used for video.

Any help is appreciated

[Dylan Couper]

www.projectorcentral.com is the only help I can give.

[Stephen Jackson]

Thanks I've been to projectorcentral as well as few other projector websites. I'm interested in hearind from videographers who use projectors not the home and corporate users.

[Chris Hurd]

I think the biggest drawback to using a projector for home theater is the amount of noise generated by the fan. You would probably need to put the projector in a noise-proof housing and then find a way to vent the fan output so that heat doesn't build up. My experience with projectors is limited to trade show applications, not home use, but in that process I've had a number of conversations with folks about this particular topic.

[Bennis Hahn]

you should think about using SVGA or XGA for video. We have a laptop playing the DVD hooked to the projector this way and the picture quality is more then one very large step up from S-Video

[Adam Bray]

I own a Panasonic AE700U. It's for home theater. All I can say is this thing ROCKS! Great value for the money. It has all the little bells and whitstles. Short throw, with HUGE (mine is 113" wide) screen and no screen door effect even when sitting close to it. My seat are about 8' away and I don't notice any pixels at all. Do some research on them. You wont see anyone have anything bad to say about it.

[Vince Crabb]

Stephen,

Don't know if you're still looking for a projector or not, and this application isn't for/from a videographer, but I learned a lot real fast when we added video to our church sanctuary.

Projector - Sharp XG-P25X (XGA native output)
Screen - DaLite 9'x12' motorized
Switcher/Scaler - Kramer VP-723DS

1st - daytime ambient light will absolutely wreak havoc on your screen (image washout) with probably anything less than 2500 lumens - we wound up going with a 4000 lumen projector and rarely have a problem with washout (we only get it now and then because the screen is located directly behind and above the choir loft and 1 or 2 of the lights above them are slightly mis-aimed and hit the bottom edge of the screen). Along with lumen output, look also for a unit with high a contrast ratio.

2nd - the higher the native output resolution of the projector the better - our native output is XGA, which matches the output of the PC we use. With the scaler/switcher, all other connected formats are upscaled to that resolution (XGA) making even crappy VHS look very good! We also do a movie night for the youth a couple of times each month; after the 1st time they saw the quality of this set-up, they no longer wanted to watch movies on their 36" set!

3rd - since it sounds like you might have situations where the projector may be farther away from the screen than a standard lens can handle, simply purchase a good long-throw lens; Buhl makes excellent lenses for nearly all projector makes and models.

4th - someone mentioned projectorcentral.com in an earlier post; it's a great place to quickly and easily compare the specs of different makes/models of projectors at a glance

I know I mentioned a switcher/scaler, which you may or may not need, but if you intend to use more than just one component to send whatever image to your screen, it may be worth the added investment. We run a laptop, a DVD/VHS player, and a GL2 through ours, and all images are upscaled to XGA, the native resolution of the projector.

If any of this info has been beneficial to you and you want some photos of our set-up in use, just email me at vcrabb@gmail.com and I'll gladly send you some pics as well as additional, more specific info on how all of it is integrated.

[Nate Ford]

the pana mentioned above is a fabulous home theater projector, but it doesn't have the output for clubs and other mixed lighting situations.

it sounds like you're using a fastfold screen. if possible, don't use the fabric that does both front and rp. it does both adequately, but noy well. get the dedicated front and rp fabrics. however, i'm not sure what sort of clubs you're talking about, or what else will be going on while you're projecting, but i think you'll find that you have little use for rp. the normal lens that comes on most projectors give you around a 2:1 throw ratio. that's to say, you need to be 24 feet back from a 12' wide screen. the zooms on them typically give you a little wiggle room, but not much. with a typical stock lcd lens, you'll probably find that you have an operating distance between like 22 and 28 feet or so.

so what you're really looking for is a more industrial strength proj, of the sort designed for small-medium size auditoriums. these are the only models that ever offer any lens options anyhow. they're big, and they tend to have lots of connections since once the thing is installed, nobody's going to be plugging in extra stuff.

for my money, i think nec and sanyo make the best projectors for this type of application. with nec, you'd want at least the mt series, although the gt series would be better (though much harder on your back.) i don't really remember the sanyo model numbers at the moment, but their brighter projectors are very nice as well.

other than brightness and contrast ratio, another important thing to look at is the signal processing. whether you're talking about an svga proj or an xga, your interlaced low-res video has to at some point be uprezzed and the scan rate converted. there are all sorts of approaches to doing this, from the aforementioned laptop technique, to dedicated scalers and scan converters, to letting the projector handle it. this is one area where i think nec has done a good job, if you're going to go with the latter route. i've never been especially impressed by the way that computers handle ntsc, but maybe i just haven't looked at the right stuff.

after i typed that, i opened up "king of new york" on my g5 (radeon 9650 with a 20" apple cinema display, over dvi.) it looked pretty good, and it's nice to have a widescreen display, but it still didn't look nearly as good as it does on a decent tube.

i've used a lot of extron's scaler/scan converter stuff, and it gives a markedly better performance than going ntsc straight into the projector, but with a good projector, it's the sort of thing that will only be noticed by someone with a critical eye while they a/b two identical projectors connected to the same video source. (when i used to sell and install those things, i got to do a lot of stuff like that.)

[Jack Smith]

We use Epson data grade rgb input 1024 native and they work very well for small and medium venues