Well, ALMOST all of them. I can't remember the model of CTX that I found which used that plain halogen bulb. And I still know very little about Optoma or CTX and wish I could hear from some actual users.

i'd like to know as well.

I would definitely seek out some reviews and or user feedback before diving in here. The less expensive projectors are probably geared more towards PowerPoint presentations in the board room. They could have issues with scaling DV to their native resolutions and also might handle motion poorly. Brightness and contrast ratios are not the only things to consider. Also think about how loud the fan is. If at all possible, "audition" a few different models using some of your actual video.

I think you really want to look for units that are designed for "home theatre," and Staples may be the wrong place for that. Haven't ever looked there however so I'm just speculating...

Yeah, I'm trying real hard to find solid info from those sources. And to me, user feedback would be more credible than the manufacturer's own words or "puff piece" blurbs written by dealers looking to make the sale, or even reviews in magazines which carry advertising for these manufacturers.

Actually I am not really looking for a home theatre projector, at least not as its primary application. Using it for PowerPoint would be just the beginning, extending to use for playing back industrial & promotional videos at conferences and other gatherings, for instance. Handling of motion would, of course, be essential. It would be basically an all-around A/V workhorse, and my parameters would be quite different from those of a home-entertainment aficionado. Roadability is a major hot button for me, whereas the home projectionist would need extra-long lamp life for it to be practical for an entertainment center...two different ways of looking at reliability. Fan noise would be usually drowned out by sound reinforcement systems, thus a secondary issue. Brightness and contrast are important and easy to quantify for comparison shopping (and I wonder how easy to "lie" about), but image clarity and color handling are critical too. I wish it were easier to find ways to demo this stuff, and Staples may very well be a poor place to facilitate that.

Thanks for jumping in, Boyd. Hey! I just edited some footage of a lyric spinto soprano singing a tenor aria ("Nessun Dorma" from Turandot)...quite a "b@llsy" performance! :-)

Maybe you should check out what your local A/V rental places handle? They would have a good handle on what is portable and travels well. Many of these places also do sales and might be inclined to let you do sort of a "shoot out" at their place with different units. You might pay a little more this way, but would probably have a better chance of being happy with the results. And you would also have a door to pound on if you weren't happy.

My (rather limited) experience has been with larger, more expensive projectors. We worked with a dealer/rental house/consultant that provided all these services under one roof. We were very happy in the end. My next project will involve doing video projections for Die Walkure on multiple screens for a company in South America, and this should be a challenge since I'm having a hard time getting specific info from the theatre down there.

Nessun Dorma became Pavarotti's signature piece in his "stadium concerts," which tended to cheapen it a little in my mind. But nevertheless it's a terrific aria and will always be one of my favorites.

Happy projector shopping, let us all know what you learn.

Larger, more expensive projectors? Yes, I should say so! I saw those Lightnings and Barcos you used on the Trovatore gig! A little out of my price range, to say nothing of trying to get all those 300-lb. projectors into my truck! Must be nice, though, to be able to fire up a whole opera house stage at 1600x1200.

I'll keep checking. Meanwhile, have a good show in S.A. I hope it's in Argentina where it's summer right now. :-)

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
--Mark Twain

<<<-- Originally posted by Mike Butler : have a good show in S.A. I hope it's in Argentina where it's summer right now. :-) -->>>

Ha, ha.... it is at Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, but I don't go down there until June and then it will be winter there!

We also have a pair of NEC LCD-GT1150 3000 lumen projectors which we use for our title projections on a screen above the stage. These are really nice units - too bad they're always tied up projecting a narrow strip of text. Again, probably overkill and more expensive than you would need.

All this talk of high end projectors is making me feel like my Infocus X1 is outdated (because it is). Yet another item to upgrade.

Not to take away from this great forum, but for some of you who are looking for more user reviews of projectors and related topics check out the Audio-Video Science Forums. Lots of info from Digital Media Servers, Theater Gaming, DVDs, screens, to HD setups, and of course those $25,000 and up projectors already mentioned.

Heh heh, me too...those ones Boyd is using are all, as he says, overkill and out-of-budget for me. Real fun to dream about though.

In this current market, I gotta think I should be able to find >2K lumens for <2K $, with decent rendering of standard TV video.

So, what is on your shopping list to replace the X1 (which was all the shiz when it first came out)?

<<<-- Originally posted by Christopher Go : and of course those $25,000 and up projectors already mentioned. -->>>

Actually the 10,000 lumen variety of projectors I've mentioned are in the $125,000 range... we spent $50,000 just to rent two of them for a month :-)

hmmm, yes, did I mention that those were a little pricey? Hey, even the $8k for that NEC is bad enough.

Gawd, I hate to rent...rent it twice, you coulda bought it. OK, maybe that formula is inaccurate for Boyd's Lightnings, but you get the idea. After seeing hotels charge $700 a day for a cheezy laptop projector, I started bringing our own.

I do believe that it pays to shop when considering rentals. I was quoted $700 per WEEK for a 3K lumen Sony or Toshiba by a local dealer, when the AV dept. of the venue was looking for $500 per DAY for a smaller unit of indeterminate brand.

I remember looking over a rental invoice where I wound up paying the selling price on a Shure SM-58 microphone...4 days @ $24 per day...could have walked into a dealer and BOUGHT one. The mixer rental was about 50% of purchase price. A handful of SM58s and a Mackie 1402vlzpro fit very nicely in my suitcase now.

That's insane! Makes me want to cry.

I think before I get a new projector I want to get a new screen, one that comes down from the ceiling. The portable Da-lite one I have is great but now that I've found a permanent place for my projector and speakers, it's not so important. I'd rather have the convenience of a ceiling mounted screen. And there is that matter of needing a new matte box... the HD projector will have to wait.

Maybe Boyd could siphon off some of his budget to us two, what do you think, Mike? $1000 or so from $50,000 can't be missed! Joking of course, let us know how things turn out in South America, Boyd, sounds exciting.

Mike, agree with you about renting, sometimes it seems better to just out right and buy. Especially here in Hawaii, usually they have to order it in anyway, I might as well order it myself.

You're right, it's hard to find any bargains when renting. The whole thing is sort of counter-intuitive actually. Normally when we rent equipment (like our stage lights) we pay an initial high price for the first week, then reduced rates for additional weeks. That usually isn't true with projectors however.

The problem is that the primary rental market for the bigger units is corporate presentations at trade shows and such. These clients don't flinch at paying several thousand dollars a day since they don't need them for long and their budgets are large. Two years ago when we checked this out the going rate was about $5,000 a day for units in the 10,000 lumen range.

Since there's a pretty strong demand for these units, the A/V companies aren't eager to tie them up for long periods of time on an extended rental, and are not particularly inclined to give you much of a discount either. We actually felt that $50,000 was a very good deal in our case.

But I think the same holds true on a smaller scale for the less powerful projectors, like Mike says. Especially for hotels - we got a similar quote for an event that our PR people wanted to do at a pre-show lecture. They sort of have you by the you-know-whats in this case. Rather than go through the hassle of bringing your own projector (which some venues may not even allow) it's simpler for corporations to just budget the $700.

Perhaps this will start to change however since prices are really dropping fast on the small and medium sized units. Of course there's always the "next big thing," like that 8 foot plasma screen that Samsung demo'ed at CES. A good friend of mine designed the lighting for their booth and was telling me that Samsung's internal cost to build that prototype was $500,000!

Very well said, Boyd.

Of course, as for

<<<They sort of have you by the you-know-whats in this case. Rather than go through the hassle of bringing your own projector (which some venues may not even allow) it's simpler for corporations to just budget the $700.>>>

...been there, done that. And most clients just roll over (or bend over?) so the hotels are not expecting a customer that plays hardball. When informed that I am not allowed to bring, or that they will charge a special fee if I don't rent theirs, I remind them about the number of rooms they are renting to our attendees, the banquet services we are purchasing, to say nothing of the bar revenue generated by attendees after hours, and get them to see the "big picture." Oh yes, and the fact that we do inevitably wind up renting some stuff, just not everything. Hey, I can't bring a stack of EAW speakers and a rack of QSC amplifiers on the plane, and a fastfold screen is a little bulky too. :-)

GOOD NEWS! a poor schmo like me plunked down some serious cash for a nice front projector. i got the BenQ PB6200 after months of research =). got a manual pulldown Da-Lite Screen. i luv watching classic films on the BIG SCREEN! it really makes me feel like i'm back in the golden age of cinema =).

here are some pics:

http://fongunlimited.com/htpc/screen.jpg

http://fongunlimited.com/htpc/

How much was it?

I'm in the midst of a home remodel which includes the home theatre I've been dreaming of for countless years...the major components are the Marantz VP12S4L long throw DLP projector and an 8 foot motorized Stewart screen. Both are being built in so that they will be all but invisible when not in use as the room is not dedicated for home theater. Can't wait...!

nice charles!

the BenQ i got was bought from a vendor from pricegrabber.com. i think it was pagecomputers.com. terrible shopping experience but good front projector product. i think it was $1090 delivered. i paid for overnight delivery because that's how anything $1k+ should be purchased. it makes sense when you think about it because UPS/FedEx/DHL they all bang packages around. the less time spent in handling the better. i'm sure you guys know from buying DV cams that it is true.

the screen i bought from mountandmore.com for roughly $190 for high contrast white matte 100" diagonal manual pull down. the entire metal enclosure for the screen measures roughly 89-90" wide. i have no room to pull it all the way down so i dunno what the measurements are vertically. eitherway i can only project 65-70" max because i only have a 11' long bedroom. very tiny but still works =).

now, perhaps i'm a bit picky but i was surprised at how much mpeg2 compression showed up when i first saw progressive DVD image. i mean i ignore it most of the time and concentrate on the story/audio/larger than life picture experience but when i get really, really picky i do notice it. when i tune 1080i or 720p it is TOTALLY different. for some strange reason i expected progressive DVD images (480p) to look like 720p... but alas it was not meant to be =). when i play t2 extreme edition through the computer (1080p) it looks very sharp on the FP. i KNOW that HD-DVD/BluRay will make helluva different on the big screen.

now that i'm totally spoiled by FP, i'm getting greedy again. i'm waiting for 1920x1080p native front projectors to come down from $18+k to $1,000. that's when you know cinema as you know it today will die =).

I'll have to save up for awhile to afford that Marantz pjtr...I do recall that I loved Marantz gear as far back as when I was a snot-nosed kid (that's a long time ago to put it mildly). Even at their lowest point when they were part of Superscope they were at least a little better than their competition. And in their good years they were right up there with McIntosh.

I'm selling off a bunch of film gear to pay for the Marantz and accoutrements--it has a neat symmetry in the big scheme of things (film acquistion giving way to digital exhibition...?) As painful as it was for me to do, I hired a home theater specialist to design and install the system as I am too tied up with everything else in the remodel to do the research and run the miles of cable, etc. He is a big fan of the Marantz, and it does seem to be the one to beat in its class. At least for the next 6 months...

Can't wait to see what it does with the HD satellite signal.

That Marantz projector is a serious beast. Damn! It looks a bit funny though,
but hey, it's the image that counts! I've been pretty pleased with my
InFocus X2, especially since I didn't have to pay for it. However, I still
don't have it setup properly (as in easy to setup) and not darkened room
available. So currently I really can't start watching before 10.30 PM, that's
a bummer.

Oh well, can't have everything I guess :)

hi charles,

are you buying the VP-10S1 or the VP-12S4? 10S1 is roughly $38k and 12S4 is roughly $15k. both are 1280x720 resolution.

if you were buying the 10S1, why not get a 1920x1080p FP like th Qualia004?

http://www.projectorcentral.com/Sony-Qualia-004.htm

As I said, I'm getting the VP12S4L, which is the long throw version of the S4 projector. $38K--that's a bit rich for my blood!

but you're pretty close, if you just save enough for $27k you can get the qualia004 and be in 1080p heaven!

Or could always wait, prices will come down.

Anhar

i think 1080p front projectors won't be in the $1,000 range until 2010 or much, much later. 720p are coming closer to $1,000 but 1080p much later.

Just got a BenQ PB6240.

DLP™, 2700 lumens, XGA, $1299 plus free replacement lamp via rebate coupon (ain't got that yet), so far it kicks a$$! Nice and bright for its small size, nice and clear for both presentations and movies. Gotta try it on a really big screen (20+ feet). As for fan noise, hey that's why we have 7.1 surround sound, we never even hear it under the movie soundtrack. (Actually, the noise is pretty low.)

While the DaLite Insta Theatres are pretty cool, there's a newer more portable screen technology from Epson that looks pretty cool.

It's called the Accolade Duet.

You can get info on the Epson Website by searching "accolade"

Appears much lighter and the same screen works for either 4X3 or 16X9 content.

Well I'm using a Draper Luma 100" NTSC now. It's a manual pulldown that hangs from hooks on the ceiling. Good for 4:3 or 16:9 or whatever.

I posted in this thread a year and a half ago about the pending home theater--happy to say that was finished up about six months after that post and we have been in heaven ever since. Attach see pic in viewing mode--the screen pulls up into ceiling leaving artwork behind it (OK, that part isn't done yet, we are still looking for the right piece of art!) which makes it like a "normal" living room. The projector porthole is visible in the top right corner. The math involved in making sure that the angle was just right was confounding, and it turned out that the Marantz was one of the very few that could both handle the length of the throw as well as the vertical displacement of the image without requiring keystone adjustment. We had to install intake and outtake vents in the housing that feed up through the roof which keeps the heat down, and the enclosure manages to knock out almost all of the fan noise which is significant with this projector.

A few months after the installation, the 1080p version came out, which hurt just a little--but at $3000 additional over the 720p price, I don't think I would have gone there. The projector looks simply amazing with the HD satellite signal and DVD's, and does an admirable job of upscaling SD. The Stewart screen is great too--a few wrinkles at first which had me all nervous but those ironed themselves out after a few weeks.

Nice room, Charles! And if you hadn't pointed it out, nobody would have know where your pjtr was.

charles,

here's the most important question. content creators like you are in an unique position to evaluate what your own shows look like @home.

how does your own works hold up at your home gear compared to pro gear?

That's a pretty cool question!

Honestly, I feel like this projector is good enough to go head to head with what might be considered "pro" in a lot of ways, it really has a fantastic contrast range! I don't often see much projected on a smallish screen (as opposed to a cinema)--some telecine suites now have HD projectors but I haven't transferred footage in one of those.

What is interesting is watching the primetime network shows in 16:9 and HD, a very different experience than it used to be. In other words, I'm used to going to the cinema to watch the features I work on and having one very distinct experience (having to wait for about a year, seeing it up on the big screen, having several months of your life compacted into 2 hours!) versus working on "ER" etc. (usually 4-6 weeks turnaround but a "small screen" experience. So having the clarity and visual impact of watching TV on the projector has brought the episodic world that much closer to a theatrical presentation.

It hasn't happened yet, but I feel like I could very satisfactorily screen "dailies" from an HD shoot on my projector and be quite comfortable with the results. Really looking forward to getting the HV20 as my first HD purchase and watching it on this system. And RED? the mind boggles!

i'm curious about about how people work in both TV/Film industry often feel about having to view production quality sources through high quality equipment vs. having viewed LOW quality stuff @home for all these years prior to 1080p or digital displays being available at home. it's v. interesting =D. being an amatuer (like many on DVI here) when i shoot HD weddings, i prefer watching them on the highest resolution displays vs. SD.

OMG Charles

I am 'insane with anger' (Jealous) in seeing your theatre.

WOW !

(Goes off to cry to wife about needing things)

Thanks John (er...I think!)

Remember that there's ALWAYS bigger and better of everything out there...this was a culmination of nearly 20 years of dreaming, since I first hooked up a set of speakers to a VHS-Hifi deck and found that it made watching movies on my 20" Trinitron so much more rewarding (my friend dubbed it "Chuckievision" back then!)

After seeing RED 4K footage projected on the Sony 4K projector numerous times
now I guess I'm spoiled :)

Can't imagine living without a projector anymore. Here at home still have a SD
projector in a crappy setup though. But it's a great experience. Charles theater
is very nicely constructed and you wouldn't know it's there.

If you want to see something really s(l)ick: http://htguys.com/archive/2005/September192005.html
(I would've gone with a much bigger / wider screen though, but that build is fairly old now)

From having seen a number of home theater designs on HGTV type shows etc., I've come to the conclusion that they are the modern-day equivalent of the basement cocktail bars from the 70's which were generally decorated with themes (Wild West, nautical etc) and had plenty of kitschy artifacts like little guys wearing barrels who peed when you pulled the barrel down etc...anyone else remember those? Nowadays it seems to be about making kitschy versions of movie palaces with popcorn machines, family name emblazoned on the marquee etc. Obviously my taste runs a little different, hence the hidden home theater concept!

LOL

-

I'm still stuck in 27" television land.

Rob, that theatre looks great. I wish there were more themed places like this and not the usual metroplex corporate cookie cut. I moved about 8 months ago to Wilmington, NC and have gone to my local theatre that is straight out of the late 80's

I love it.