Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Time to select my projector and screen size

I apologize that this is (sort of) OT! Anyway, my (way in the future) plans are to get a projector and screen as well. My question is for those of you that already have this setup, do you use it only for movies or do you also include regular TV viewing? I was thinking a huge screen might be a bit overkill for regular TV viewing since frequent and constant use would be hard on the projector, not to mention having to change out expensive burnt out bulbs.

I know people that use it for both movies, TV, and gaming, and those that just use it for movies. I fall into the movie crowd at the moment. HDTV hasn't made it's way to our household yet, and without it I wouldn't want to watch TV on a screen that big unless it was HD.

I use my pj mostly to watch movies. I've tried it with SD TV and it wasn't worth it. I plan on watching HDTV though as soon as I'm done building my HTPC

My turn to jump in. I went through the Z3 vs. the Panny 700 a year ago. I went with teh Z3 at the time because it had the throw distance that I needed, and Sirquack liked his Z2. Each year, the LCD quality gets even more and more impressive, and the DLP prices get lower and lower (as Alan mentioned). It is really a tough time to pick a projector these days.

If I had the cash, I would probably, dare I say it, go with a nice DLP. But I am not made of money, and I wanted a great sub-$2000 projector too, so I went with the Z3.

Keep this in mind. Whatver you go with of your choices, it will look awesome compared to a 27" TV (not slamming on anyone here with a 27" TV. I look at a 27" TV most of the time myself.)

The Z3 does a good job of upconverting, but let me tell it to you like this. I have a Panny S97 DVD player that can upconvert my DVDs from 480i to 480p, 720p, or 1080i (to name a few). My Z3 can do even more choices than that, but too maxes out at 1080i. I have things set for 720p and it looks every bit as good as 1080i because of the progressive vs. interlaced, but that is another story... Anyway, if the DVD is a great quality transfer, or even a computer animated movie, I like using HDMI and letting my Panny S97 do the upconvertion. I think that it does a "sharper" quality job. If the movie isn't animated, or is a lesser quality transfer (a little grainy), I let the Z3 do it as it gives it, what Sirquack calls (and I agree with) a more "film-like" look.

I hope that this helps.

(Disclaimer, upconversion does NOT actually increase the image resolution, but interpolates the pixels to "fill in" extra pixels to simulate greater resolution. I like it, but wanted to share this due to other forum members' opinions of upconverting.)

Now for SonicFox's question. I use mine for movies/videos only. I don't have a HDTV signal coming into my house, and regular satellite looks good, but isn't worth the hours off of the bulb's life in my opinion.

Interesting and troubling comments here.

I am building this room for sitting down and being entertained for a couple hours every now and then. I have no intentions of having two TV areas. This is it. I’ll be watching the satellite and DVD’s both in this room with the projector. I don’t waste much time sitting on my ass, but when I do, I want great sound and video.

That being said, what will one of these projectors do for standard definition satellite? Running the satiate through my HK 7300 improved the picture quite a bit, and it ‘up-converts’ to 480P. It does this better than my DVD player too (Integra 8.5).

Also, there is an up-conversion and an up-scaling. I think some of you are getting these two terms confused. Hell, I thought I knew the difference, now I’m doubting myself again. Can someone clarify that???

Mike, I'll take a shot at it. All present N.American DVDs and standard definition TV are 480i. If a display device(set or projector)has a "native resolution" of e.g. 720p, then it has to display at 720p to show a full picture, regardless of what the original source material was. The term for changing from interlaced to progressive is "deinterlacing", and "converting" shouldn't be used. The term for mathematically interpolating more pixels(e.g. to get from 480 to 720)to fill the picture is "scaling", and again, "conversion" shouldn't be used. The quality of deinterlacing and scaling may or may not be better in a player or receiver than what a TV set or projector would do itself. In any case, this doesn't really "convert" the lower definition DVD or SDTV into high definition, although if the equipment is good it can look pretty good.

Sonic, I use my projector for DVD's and HDTV broadcasts primarily. Most projectors will go 2,000+ hours before you have to worry about replacing a $200 bulb.

mdrew,

Keep in mind that ALL projection systems in your price range will look better when in a dark room. Are you going to alway watch TV in the dark? What about when entertaining friends?

Just something to think about...

As for standard cable or satellite on a 106" (or abouts) image... If you have digital cable, you should be OK. Regular cable TV will just be too grainy for that size of image. My problem when I hooked up my DISH signal to it was that I didn't have the receiver hooked up to my projector, but instead rerouted the signal over coax through my house, and then through an old VCR (to act as the tuner so I could get to "channel 3" and then to the projector. It was FAR from the ideal source signal of the DISH network. Again, you should be fine with satellite or digital cable if directly connected to your home theater gear.

Sirquack is correct that the bulb will last about 2000 hours (more or less depending on the settings you use on your projector). A bulb for my Z3 will run me about $300-$350 depending on where I get it from. That is down about $100 from where they prices were a year ago.

JohnK,
You are right on the mark. I misused the term "upconversion" based off of previous posts, and just falling into that line of "word usage". Scaling has been around for years. Places like Best Buy, Circuit City, and other "electronics outlets", advertise scaling as "upconversion" because it is a catchy phrase. But again, JohnK is right... It really refers to scaling.

And again, it IS deinterlacing, and not converting to use the absolute correct technical term, yet the act of altering any image IS a convertion of that image, but that is not JohnK's point. Use the right words people! (talking to myself here )

Thanks for all the input guys.

I think if you take the time to look, there really is a "conversion" though. Look at the HK 7300 and 740 product descriptions. They specifically say that they “up-convert” and improve picture quality. Not just scaling. This is where I’m getting baffled.

$300 for a bulb huh? Well that sucks! Gues I’ll be going through about one a year.