CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[JayAllan]

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I am sure each projector has its pros and cons.

I have a DWIN on a 100" Screen in my bedroom and a Sony 1272 in my living room on a 8 foot wide screen. I think it is time to upgrade the Sony.

I am ready for 9" !!! I have looked at the current batch of digital projection systems out there and near as I can tell I would have to spend at least 12k to even get close to the quality of CRT.

So I think a 9 inch CRT is my best bet. I am used to Sony and I love their menu systems. But the 1292 seems like it will not really resolve 1080p well. In a perfect world I would like to watch 1080p on an 8-10 foot wide 16/9 screen from about 20 feet away.

I am curious about tube life, replacement parts, the Dallas chip, and whether I want to hot rod the whole thing or not.

It seems like if I went with a G90 I would probably keep it stock and it would be cheaper than a marquee but maybe not quite as good a picture as a modded out 9500LC?

The Barco 1209s is a nice unit from what I can see. Is it in the middle of these two?

Do all three brands put out roughly the same level of brightness. Am I going too big on screen size?

And finally are tubes much harder to get on any one (or all) of these?

Thanks guys!

[Tim in Phoenix]

Hello

Marquee parts are easily found. Marquees use P19LCP09s and can use LUGs with a slight mod. These are perhaps the last new replacement CRTs still being made new. Mike Parker is out of the Marquee mods business, so not sure what can be hotrodded lately.


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[Nashou66]

Any three would be a good choice from 20 feet away for 1080p.

Athanasios

[HaydnG90]

You definitely want to consider mods (when they become available) for the G90 if thats the route you go. They have transformed the performance of my pj.
Parts are readily available or Curt is able to fix most problems to an existing board with the exception of the IC 421 on the YA. Install a fresh Dallas chip and this won't be something you'll have to think about for another 10 years.
The 1292 is really loud (G90 is too but the 1292 is in a league of its own). Not sure about the Marquee as I've never seen one.
The optimal screen size is 110" diagonal otherwise you'll have to crank up the tube output which will shorten is useful life.
Plenty of good threads here comparing the plusses and minuses of each pj. GL

[JayAllan]

I figured the Marquee would be easiest for parts. They seem to be a bit more expensive than the others though. Like twice as much. Is the picture quality much less on the 1292 than on the G90? I am not worried about the sound issue since I can build a hush box and replace the fans.

I didnt know Mike Parker was no longer doing Mods but there seem to be a few who still are, and the tubes on all those modded PJs are going to likely go out before the boards do so I imagine an aftermarket in the boards will exist.

[Phoenixed]

1292 has 13 fans and has issues with streaking. Or so ive been told. Dragan does Marquee mods here and they are pretty slick.

[Phoenixed]

My suggestion is buy from Curt as his warranty is well well worth it if your getting a new crt machine. I made the mistake of buying from fleabayy. Ended up with two junkers.

[overclkr]

[ecrabb]

[ecrabb]

[jbmeyer13]

The area in which a stock G90 will outperform a stock Marquee 9500LC is focus. If you install either an HD10F (G90 lens) or HFQ900 lens on the Marquee that will even the playing field to some degree.

The Marquee has a cleaner high bandwith video chain; that is it's strong point. Dragan's HD Mods are also an excellent investment that will make a difference.

In reality a G90 or modded 9500LC will be really close in performance, the biggest differentiatior will be the quality of the set up.

Having said this, a nice G70 would be more than sufficient from 20' away. Depending on your budget you might want to start there as they can be had for a real bargain these days.

[CIR Engineering]

I have to say that I disagree with the idea that a G90 and 9500LC Ultra will look about the same when they are properly setup. The two projectors have totally different personalitites and show the image in a different light. A g90 looks unlike a Marquee, and a Marquee will never look like a G90 no matter what you do to it.

The G90 is razor sharp, super bright (about 1.5-2x brighter than a 9500), and has a very punchy low gamma that makes the image pop. The G90 can also go to true black so that when the image is a black feild you cannot even detect the screen (you can't see anything) in a dark room.

The 9500 Ultra has a really clean signal path and a pure image. The 9500 has no gamm correction so it has a rich image that is much darker in mid and low brightness images. The higher gamma gives the 9500 Ultra a bit more depth.

The G90 has some streaking from dark objects onto bright objects and also has quite a bit of noise. Noise is most easily detectable on bright scenes and in reds.

The 9500 has trouble doing pitch black and you can almost always see the screen illuminated even on a black feild when in a dark room. The lens flapping is a terrible design on the 9500 and it is really hard to get the optics done well. 9500's tend to streak bright objects onto dark backgrounds, but this varies from unit to unit. Side focus is often a problem on Marquee machines. And the image centering with the f#@king magnets is totally stupid and a real pain.

The G90 smokes the 9500 in reliability, they hardly ever go down. But when G90's fail the parts are usually more expensive, though not as bad as they used to be. It can take more time to trouble shoot a G90. 9500's fail all the time, but they are so numerious that parts are everywhere as well as people who know how to fix them.

There is more, but after calibrating hundreds of CRT projectors this is what I see. I have well over 50 G90's that I currently maintain and I don't know how many Marquee's (lots). I have a G90 in my own theater.

craigr

[mr_ro_co]

[Curt Palme]

My $.02. I can agree with pretty much everything that's been said. Craig really knows his stuff, and yes, I'd say side by side you'd see slight differences between the sets. The 909 is like a hot rod. Runs like a champ, but you will need to be under the hood from time to time. I've worked out a bunch of the problem parts issues, and do a crapload of upgrades before selling one at this point, even though it's about the latest chassis vintage. According to a fellow tech that isn't on here often, anything under a 2.0 software version on the 909 is considered a problematic machine.

It's &^%$&$ razor sharp. From the one unit that I did a careful setup on, it's on par with the G90 at least, if not more so.

Put it this way though, the 909 is twice the price of any of the other 9" sets. It won't give you twice the performance.

As an indicator, I've been selling low hour, low wear G90s for $3000, $3500 with a new green tube. I've sold 7 since Jan, and have two in stock. I have more 1209s and 9500s in stock as well for similar pricing. Of course, they are cheaper as is with no warranty, but usually by the time you're done futzing with the sets, you'll be into them for as much as I sell them for. I haven't seen any age related failures specifically, but a surplus 10,000 hour set that's 15 years old that' s transported across the country with minimal packing is bound to have a bunch of issues with it before it's ready for use.

You won't regret any of them though. All of them will run circles around the Sony 12XX.

[Curt Palme]

My $.02. I can agree with pretty much everything that's been said. Craig really knows his stuff, and yes, I'd say side by side you'd see slight differences between the sets. The 909 is like a hot rod. Runs like a champ, but you will need to be under the hood from time to time. I've worked out a bunch of the problem parts issues, and do a crapload of upgrades before selling one at this point, even though it's about the latest chassis vintage. According to a fellow tech that isn't on here often, anything under a 2.0 software version on the 909 is considered a problematic machine.

It's &^%$&$ razor sharp. From the one unit that I did a careful setup on, it's on par with the G90 at least, if not more so.

Put it this way though, the 909 is twice the price of any of the other 9" sets. It won't give you twice the performance.

As an indicator, I've been selling low hour, low wear G90s for $3000, $3500 with a new green tube. I've sold 7 since Jan, and have two in stock. I have more 1209s and 9500s in stock as well for similar pricing. Of course, they are cheaper as is with no warranty, but usually by the time you're done futzing with the sets, you'll be into them for as much as I sell them for. I haven't seen any age related failures specifically, but a surplus 10,000 hour set that's 15 years old that' s transported across the country with minimal packing is bound to have a bunch of issues with it before it's ready for use.

You won't regret any of them though. All of them will run circles around the Sony 12XX.

[Tim in Phoenix]

Guys

Craig speaks of more Marquee failures; that has not been my experience. The 9500 and Ultra were sold in very large numbers commercially, and many have found their way to home use, so I expect that there are a lot more Marquees in use, so maybe the large population has had more issues than the small numbers of 909s or G90s.

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[Nashou66]

Craig probably is still having nightmares when he came to my place to do my M8000 when I first got into CRT. the HDM started smoking bad after he finished the calibration and wee were watching clips.


He maxed out that Bitch!!

Athanasios

[CIR Engineering]

[Nashou66]

How many G90's were made? And How many are in Use?

I bet if there were the same numbers of both it be a wash.

Nashou

[CIR Engineering]

[Nashou66]

[CIR Engineering]