Return to the CurtPalme.com main site CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum
A forum with a sense of fun and community for Home Theater enthusiasts!
Products for Sale ] [ FAQ: Hooking it all up ] [ CRT Primer/FAQ ] [ Best/Worst CRT Projectors List ] [ Setup Tips & Manuals ] [ Advanced Procedures ] [ Newsletters ]

 
Forum FAQForum FAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist  Photo AlbumsPhoto Albums  RegisterRegister 
 MembershipClub Membership   ProfileProfile   Private MessagesPrivate Messages   Log inLog in 
Blu-ray disc release list and must-have titles. Buy the latest and best Blu-ray titles to show off in your home theater!

Blendzilla, it almost didn't happen

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic   Printer-friendly view    CurtPalme.com Forum Index -> CRT Projectors
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Tim in Phoenix




Joined: 21 Oct 2006
Posts: 4378
Location: Phoenix


PostLink    Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2016 5:47 am    Post subject: Blendzilla, it almost didn't happen Reply with quote


        Register to remove this ad. It's free!
Guys

We had a company back in Detroit for ten years, we did a lot of stuff with the car companies, which was the first time I worked with edge blending. Silicon Graphics had a big office there, and GM wanted to see full sized cars on the wall with stereoscopic images and lcd shutter goggles, really cool stuff. The SG tubes could output the image in the appropriate segments with overlap, and a company called Panoram made a contrast modulator. Bingo, we could do stereo across two or three projectors. When they spun the car around, you wanted to duck cause it looked like the bumper was gonna hit your face!

Anyway we sold that company in 1999 and I headed west immediately, I'm in Scottsdale now. Refurbing used Marquee projectors and selling mostly to homeowners. I was called in a few times to fix stuff at Los Alamos Nuclear Labs, that was amazing.

And I'm thinking Damn, what if there was an affordable edge blender that could do HDTV. I wanted component in for the satellite HD, and RGB from a PC running TheaterTek DVD player. HDMI was not a factor yet, but a Moome and some cables let me patch in through a DVI port later. The PC was awesome; near-HD from common DVDs. Two nine inch projectors was $16K each, so another $16K lets you light up a really big screen right? 2.35 only uses 56% of the CRT tube face, so not very efficient. You can side-stack but the alignments are a real chore; some adjustments in the projectors are slammed to the limit. Tough to get the edge focus right on the lenses.

We had been a Folsom Research dealer back in Detroit, so I called them up. They made some interesting video devices; CAD tube to NTSC transcoders, and so on. I told them what I wanted to do. Yeah sure they said, we're rolling out a box soon called DisplayPro HD. Great I said, can I see one? They sent me literature with pictures and specs. And they sent some boxes over, along with their head engineer. John Orr if I remember correctly. I work from home, and we set up in my garage, which I had previously had air conditioned. I sent out invites and got about twenty people in. The DisplayPro was based on sections of two of their other devices; one section was scalers and switching, the other was contrast modulation. And they sent those devices because......DisplayPro was not yet in production.



Stunning picture from the satellite, but awkward to set up or to switch sources. They had live coverage from the Winter Olympics on that week, drop-dead gorgeous stuff. And football games, wow. I was hooked, so I called Folsom a few days later and said I wanted a DisplayPro, and I wanted a dealership. And would you please simplify the controls some, we are not engineers out here.

They said great! Minimum order 30 pieces for $360,000 up front. Twelve week lead time. End of discussion.

I discovered Analog a few months after. The rep comes over from Los Angeles, we unboxed the DVX, and it was running in twenty minutes, this is the exact thing I need. I order one to purchase on 12/22 and the UPS truck rolls in on Christmas Eve. Toys!!!!!! In three years I managed to sell five DVX's along with some projectors. One DVX to Australia, one to Spain, three in the states. Would you wire $33K to someone you never met? Gino did. Andres is travelling to San Francisco for meetings so he diverts here for a day, we watched a lot of stuff all day. I had Wkosmann in Virginia very interested, he calls me and says he has two projectors already, can he borrow a DVX, he wants to do an Open House. Absolutely I tell him, and we line up for his event three weeks from then.

To my horror, a few days before the event, an AV house in California puts thirteen DVXs for sale for $5,000 each. New in the box. A big customer had changed an order at the last minute, and they decided to dump the machines..........I nearly had a seizure. I'm on the phone screaming at the Analog rep. My Virginia guy bought from me anyway 'cause I helped him with projector stuff. Thank you Wm.
Back to top
Spanky Ham




Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 5643
Location: Comedy Central


PostLink    Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2016 2:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kind of ironic. Doc Dog just contacted me yesterday. He is swamped with a couple of NASA projects at the moment.
Back to top
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic   Printer-friendly view    CurtPalme.com Forum Index -> CRT Projectors All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum