CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Ridebreck]

Register to remove this ad. It's free!

Ok, so here's the skinny: My Craigslist Mits WS-55909 that I scored and repaired for a whopping $150 is still going strong, and I plan to keep her until the wheels fall off. We're currently in the process of home shopping and I eventually plan on undertaking some form of a basement theater build in the future no matter what house we purchase - whether that's a full-on dedicated HT or more of a media room remains to be determined. However, I'm currently leaning towards a more open-style media room / bar where I would have a TV for general tv / kids movies / guests where we would want the lights on and then having a motorized screen/PJ with light control for when we want to get a more cinematic experience.

Obviously flat panels are the bees knees right now and yeah, they're sleek and trim and all that, but I've got a 55" set that can do 1080i that I've only got $150 invested in. My thinking is that I could get new tubes from VDC, buy an HD Fury, and fly in someone like Craig to install the new tubes, and tweak her to the nines for about the same price as a nice 55" flat panel would run. My question is whether this would be a sound investment or would it be better to simply keep the Mits as a good, general purpose living room tv and make the investment in a new, top-of-the-line (for a day) 1080p set with all the bells and whistles?

Thoughts?

[Spanky Ham]

Tough call. I am not a big fan of the flat panels, but in this case it might be a decent option. How much are the tubes?

Why not make the pj do both?

[Ridebreck]

Last time I checked on the tube price, I believe that I could buy a full set for less than $500. This was around 6 months ago.

Likely room usage and need for light control are the two reasons why I don't want to use the PJ for every day TV, kids movies, etc. The house that we sold in Dallas had a dedicated HT off of the game room upstairs. What I found was that for how my family used both spaces, often times the kids would want to have a movie or kids TV show on while they played in the game room. To me, this was a waste for the projector. I envision many other situations where we may want some sort of video on the screen, but still want the lights on, and I hate washed-out images. In short, unless the screen is going to be the focus of attention, I don't want to burn the bulb time.

It could very well end up that we buy a house that has enough space for both a play room, bar / concession area, and a dedicated HT. In fact, that would be my preference. However, the vast majority of what we've looked at so far would need to have more of a multi-purpose space - sort of like Kal's basement. The one big advantage that flat panels have going for them is their inherent flexibility in placement. I love this Mits, but she's a big 'un and can't just be put anywhere. Ultimately, that could become the decision maker.

[Spanky Ham]

Maybe you could do a rear pro. I know what you are saying about washed out images, but with enough lumens you can still have a decent image.

[Ridebreck]

I've thought about a rear projection setup. If we happen to settle on a house that has a crawl space in the right location off of the basement, then I'll likely go that route.

[cmjohnson]

Get your tube part numbers and check for them on ebay. I see new in the box CRTS for RPTVs on there all the time. I've even bought
a few, myself, and retubed an HD capable RPTV for a stupidly low price ( I think I got the full set of tubes for 75 bucks!) and then
sold the set for 500 bucks. It was a set I got for free with a lot of tube wear, but mostly it was just filthy in all the optics.

The new tubes were assemblies, too. Drop 'em in, bolt the lenses on, converge it, do a quick calibration, done. It was a nice afternoon's work.

CJ

[JustGreg]