CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Mr. Green · Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 1:32 am Post subject:

I had a long run up to CRT's as well. My Grandmother passed away in 1986 and we were left some money which she stipulated had to be used for something fun. My parents bought a Zenith 46" projection TV that could raise and lower from the cabinet. That was an awesome TV we watched everything "big screen" and were the envy of all the neighborhood kids. We had it for about 12 years when it finlly died and we couldn't get parts for it. My parents got another zenith projection TV, but it wasn't as good. I was trying to find pictures for you to look at since it was the coolest TV ever, but haven't found any.

In 1995 while at cooking school one of the theory labs had a strange tablet thing they would put on an overhead projector and it would make an 80" computer screen which I thought was wicked. I spent years trying to find a way to get a budget projector, but no luck. I got married in 98 and couldn't afford anything for years so had to settle for a 27" RCA Proscan TV. It lasted 10 years. It was replaced with a 42" Insignia plasma TV, which I love.

One of my jobs around 2000 used a local theatre for meetings and used a tiny epson lcd projector to make a 20 foot wide screen so they could show us all the powerpoint presentation and such. I was hooked at that point. I spent several years researching digitals and couldn't find anything that would work. LCD screen door at the time was brutal and my wife is really bothered by the old DLP's rainbow effect. I was really stuck because I wanted a projector "that bad".

About 4 years ago I spoke to a client who was calling to make sure he had enough insurance coverage for his NEC 9PGXtra projector. I had no clue what he was talking about, but after an hour on the phone talking about it, he gave me Curts site and told me to forget digitals.

I trolled about on this site for a long time and finally signed up and started asking questions. A nice guy here with a Barco 801s offered to show me his setup. My wife was satisfied she could watch it without getting a headache so I was hooked. I spent a lot more time researching and when we could finally afford it, the rest is history. Now If I could just get a 9500 lc ultra... Wink

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

In 2002 I stumbled onto a local home theater forum. Met someone that invited me to see his home theater. I stopped by while on my way to work and was stunned at what a DIY CRT-based theater could provide. With that in hand, I did some calculations and told the wife that if we stopped the 60-65 movies and dinners per year event practice we should be able to easily afford a DIY home theater in the basement.

Spent the first year trying to work, do work around the home (ahem, chores), etc. and was making slow progress. In an attempt to not the wife to give up on this idea, I bought a CRT projector for a temporary theater in a converted bedroom upstairs. That was a mistake in that it served as a major distract as the wife and I put +3000 hours of movie and HDTV viewing on it.

Finally realizing I would never muster the physical DIY effort again, the wife presented the idea and forced me to get someone else to finish the basement. At the post-drywall stage and hopefully in 2009 the real home theater will be operational. I've got an NEC XG1351LC sitting there waiting, because I cannot afford a better unit that is more capable of 1080P.

But, the ability to be able to walk down into the basement and actually have enough room for our butts and maybe some guest butts will soon be a reality. And what I watched the first time I walked into a home theater was hockey game and some show on HDnet with scantily clad women. SOLD!

Since that first experience, I went and enjoyed visiting about a dozen other home theaters based on a variety of budgets, but all within a reasonable amount and nothing truly $$$. I think most cowsumers are just ignorantly blissful and have no idea what they are missing even with a low-budget approach.

Brad S · Joined: 25 Aug 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Mason City, Iowa

Great thread topic.

My story is as follows......was "in the business" audio/video, consumer electronics 15-20 years ago. Rented a house in college and needed some furniture to fill up a wall. Of course a RCA rack system dolby surround, large terrible speakers with big woofers, hi fi vcr, later replaced speakers with Advent Heritage for fronts, had the Bose AM-7's and AM-3's for surrounds that I could A/B with people who thought Bose was "the best sounding speaker there was" 90% of visitors would pick the Advents in a true blind A/B, but I am not telling any of you anything.

Later upgraded my receiver to a Kenwood dolby pro logic, kenwood 300 disc changer, and a set of JBL cube speakers similar look to the AM-7's & AM-3's which I had sold years before to purchase my Ping Eye 2 berillium coppers 1-wedge. By this time I have 50" Mits rear projection, and direct tv, dvd player etc. I also have been out of "the business" now and am a banker for a few years, part of why I can afford to upgrade some of this stuff. Packed up all my "old reliable gear" and moved to Iowa in 2002.

My Mits 50", Kenwood AVR, Kenwood 300 disc cd, Mits dvd, Mits vcr, Direct TV, Toshiba HD DVD, and JBL cube speakers were packed up again about 13 months ago when my wife and I purchased our new home.

The unfinished 18 long x 14.5 wide x 8 high room in the basement was crying to me to become a home theater, but the room became a storage room with all our junk we moved from our other house. Within weeks of moving in, I had become introduced to AVS and Curt's site and I set out to absorb as much information as I can.

Soon I came across a used Sony 1252 (later learned ecrabb had his hands on it at one time), bought the crescendo systems 2200 and hd fury through this site, splashed the picture up on the textured wall in our finished part of the basement on a milk crate in the middle of the room and WOW what a pic!

I have been caught up in analysis paralysis for 12 months and have been picking up odds and ends such as 8 aura bass shakers, uboats for the riser/stage, sound isolation clips to drywall on hat channel. I finally went down and cleaned that room out to a bare slate as it was 12 months prior about 3-4 weeks ago.

To motivate my efforts, I just ordered my speakers (7) Elemental Designs W6-6tC's, an Elemental Designs A5-350 subwoofer, an eq2, a Denon AVR1909, and a Panasonic DMP-BDP60 BluRay. I am really excited about the idea of 7 identical speakers in my system...

Just for kickers, I have my eyes on a NEC XG-110LC which should be a nice upgrade from my 1252 oh and I never mentioned I picked up a BarcoGraphics 800 last fall with transcoder, remote, ceiling mount that never made it out of the garage.

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

Other than crappy sports-bar and airplane projectors, the first CRT projector I ever saw was... mine. Smile

I worked a deal with Curt to pick up 5 XGs 852's from a local seller. I did the heavy lifting, got to pick one to keep, then shipped the rest to Canada. Then there was a long protracted period of hair-tearing as I tried to figure out what was wrong with it. I had NO idea what I was doing and might have messed up something myself, but eventually I decided the previous owner had mucked with The Pots You Must Not Touch. Still, I managed to get a pretty darn respectable picture out of it. Since then I've had a Dwin HD700, a Sony G70, and a Marquee 8500. Probably would have kept the G70 but it had some issues I couldn't resolve so I sold it to Curt and went back to the Marquee. With color-filtered lenses it throws a pretty nice image.

akajester · Joined: 09 Jul 2008 Posts: 934 Location: Wisconsin

My first CRT experience was a friend who bought his marquee from Curt. I believe he started his addiction after years of research on AVS. Anyways, I helped him drywall his basement HT and was then invited over to view it in action. I was so amazed. Awesome blacks and contrast. I didn't think this was possible. He mentioned the great service he got from Curt. Every time I searched for info on the web I ended up back on Curt's site! WTG Kal! Smile

After all the flatpanel displays started coming out I just couldn't stand the look of them. All around me people were buying this sh#t, walking out of the store with a terrible looking set. I would go to local stores hoping that they would look better with every new generation, but they didn't. Sales people would ask my opinion and they'd get all defensive when I started on about how bad they looked. They'd tell me that you can't get HD on an "analog" set, you had to have digital to see digital. It seemed like all brainwashing to me.

Anyways. Years later I got to finish my basement. It's not anything near what others here have, but it works great for my family with little kids. I stumbled on a great deal on a BG808 with color corrected lenses and under 5000 hours and haven't looked back!
My wife is spoiled as we have all CRT's in our house. When she comes home from other houses she comments about how awful their tv looked, or how bad the Wii looks on a big screen. I love it. Smile

**kal** · Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 3:59 pm Post subject:

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

Dang!!!

Those are Purty!!!!

How do they sound??? Hearing those wilson's last week have spoiled my ears! Crying or Very sad

Brad S · Joined: 25 Aug 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Mason City, Iowa

I can't believe I am going to fess up to this....I have not heard them yet. They were made in partnership with Swan and I have read many positive comments about those speakers and have a friend who has had them in his listening room and was very impressed. My understanding is they are a little softer, mellow sound and I am excited of the prospect of a uniform timber match all the way around.

Their subs have received rave reviews and this same friend has one of their 12" subs from last years line up which is just a beast.

I think I should have ample sound quality and quantity in my 2,200 cubic feet space. I don't want to give up the length of my room so I am not going to go with speakers behind the screen in the front. I am leaning towards placing the sides and surrounds within pillars event though I hate the thought of hiding these beauties.

I have taken a leap of faith based upon a friends experience with the company and their products. I am also a big "Chamber of Commerce" guy and will proudly display a home grown Iowa product in my theater.

If you check out their website you will find they have a "package builder" which provides heavy discounts if you buy packages. The pricing was so good I couldn't pass it up.

Thanks for the comments Kal and thanks for all your efforts on this site!

Zubinell · Joined: 10 Feb 2009 Posts: 39

Sometimes about 1988 or 89 I was working at a big estate in Connecticut installing a large scale video security system for a newspaper publisher at a summer house. Quite the summer house, perhaps 500 acres, no less then 10 bedrooms and a 150' pool. They did not want to see the C band satellite dish so we installed it about 3/4 of a miles across on of the fields behind one of the barns and trenched a cable. pretty much built a private Cable TV system with local modulated channels showing camera inputs throughout the estate. During off season is when all of the activity happens for contractor type work. This was in the early summer and there were many things happening before the family comes. While we were out of town contractors, we would just get a room in the estate and work until the jobs were done. We were on site for about 3 weeks during this visit. While we were there do our thing there was a team from St Louis doing some "Entetainment" television set ups. There was to be a large viewing room set up in the attic of the main house and I recall being drafted into the mule team to carry some damn fool HUGH RPTV up the main circular staircase, but when we reached the attic stair case, even though it was larger then the main stair of most homes.. the TV was too big to fit. So we carried it back down. A few days later while we were busy doing other things I was aware of things going on in the attic again with a lot of activity. After the live in french chef finished serving our dinner and we completed our nightly hot/tub swimming pool skinny dip with the european maid staff, one of the guys from the St Louis team said we should grab some beers and come to the attic room. We found that after the RPTV would not make it to the attic, the PLAN B was FRONT PROJECTION. There I was introduced to Home Theater. They had a projector set up with some projector device. I do not know what model but I do believe it was N.E.C. The PJ was set into a table and there was a modular furniture set up with a fixed mount 96" screen. I expect that there was a line doubler in the mix someplace because when we watched that VHS of TOP GUN the image was so clean that I became hooked on the Front Pro thing. Then I learned I could never afford that kind of set up with new equipment at that time. But kept my eye open and found a Sony 1031 somewhere along the way and that was my first. I have never been without a front projector since. Now the 4th projector I own is a Barco BD808s. What will we do when all of the CRT PJ's have aged to beyond use?

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:34 pm Post subject:

Zubinell · Joined: 10 Feb 2009 Posts: 39

A.R. has the answer again. But then I will be at the same place I was in 1989 .. with a $20K pricetag on the toy and $20 in my pocket. I can only afford this kind of fun when I can do it cheap. Time will tell.

Bucketfoot · Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 698 Location: Centennial, CO

lexx21 · Joined: 10 Oct 2008 Posts: 119

My first crt projector experience went like this..... my mom and step dad owned a bar/restaurant that was across the street from the local university. In 1976 the summer olympics were about to start, so my step dad purchased an Advent projector for the business. Since it used a 6' curved screen, he built a table for it and the projector so that customers could watch. Once word got out that we had that setup, the place was always packed during sporting events.

Early Saturday mornings my brother and I would go with them to get things setup for the day. He and I would hang out watching cartoons on the big screen. I still remember watching the original BSG on that thing. It was amazing! I ended up doing repairs on it myself to keep it going until it was sold in 1983.

About a year ago I picked up a Mits 55809 and tweaked it fairly well. I have since taken the plunge to get a 7" front projector (Dwin 700) and can hardly wait for it to arrive.

Rdean · Joined: 13 Oct 2006 Posts: 258

Gino · Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 6:25 am Post subject:

I was browsing through ebay one night in 2005 and saw CRT projectors with huge rrp's but going for a fraction of the cost. Intrigued at getting such a great bargain, my searches lead me to avsforum. Doing my research I decided to pick up a refurbished Visual Dynamics Ref 8 projector (8500 with some mods and a sexy fibreglass case). After watching it for a few months, I had a faulty HDM. During my 2 month down time, my impatience led me to a 9500LC from Tim Martin. As Curt was repairing my HDM, he too offered one to me. I told Tim I would likely go with Curt as his was cheaper, so he told about his BlendZilla and the rest is history. Quite a big upgrade in such a short time frame! But blending led me to travelling the globe seeing other blend and stack setups. Cliff's and his G90 stack being the first dedicated home theatre I'd ever seen (I have travelled there twice). Then was Art Sonneborn's G90 stack, William's 9500LC blend, and Andre's 9500LC blend (Also travelled there twice).