CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[AnalogRocks]

[AnalogRocks]

[Elaine Benes]

To all of you who recommend HD145's over HD-8 Rev B's, have you read the sticky thread about lenses ?

I'm just curious as the lppm resolving capability of the two lenses is the same. This means they have EQUAL resolving power. You don't get any advantage, resolution wise, switching. Also, having done the switch twice, on two different Marquees TRYING to see an improvement, I can say from *my* experience, there is NO resolving advantage of HD145's over HD8-RevB lenses...

Color filtering can be achieved much less expensively by coloring your glycol...

Anecdotally, in my experimentation with HD145's, they produced slightly dimmer corners of the image when compared to the same raster size, screen size, resolution when using HD8-RevB lenses.

Much, much more important for proper resolving of high resolution sources is proper and very, very good magnetics setup. Again, just from my own experience, the best magnetic setup I've seen, consistently over many different chassis and producers, is the factory magnetic setup. I know others swear they can get much, much better setup than the factory setup, I'm just saying, personally, the best magnetic setup I've seen, on Marquee's, Barco's, and especially NEC's, has been the factory setup. I've had a PG Xtra which could fully resolve 1080p with a factory set magnetics. The unfortunate aspect of this is that *most* crt projectors have had the magnetics screwed with by someone at some point in their history. The vast, vast majority do not arrive at an end user 10 years after production, un-molested. I've had about 3 NEC's like this, maybe 2 Marquee's, and a single Barco, out of about 300 or so projectors owned...

[perisoft]

Elaine, my PT65s (which are spec-wise similar to HD8s IIRC) just can't resolve 1920x1080. I can see test patterns *EASILY* looking at the tube face, but it's a blur on screen - this is a center on/off pattern, with the optical focus as good as it gets. I can see phosphor grain, but it can't resolve the line pattern. I'm using a color filter on the back of the PT65, but it's an optical filter, not a sheet of plastic, so it shouldn't affect the focus that badly.

[Elaine Benes]

Sorry perisoft, I can't answer you from experience, I tried to buy a set of those lenses to use in place of my RevB's, but was un-successful, so I can't corroborate or refute your results with my own. I don't recall ever seeing the lppm rating of those lenses either, but I think that is the critical spec for resolving capability. It makes sense to me, logically, that they'd be lower in that respect though, because they were originally found only on ES projectors, no EM projectors *that I know of* ever used PT-65's or even PT-43's(which I think are supposed to be sharper). The advantage, supposedly of the PT variants is the color filtering.

So is the lppm resolving capability of the PT65's the same as the HD8 RevB's ?

[perisoft]

I could be totally wrong about the specs on the 65s - but someone here did a test switching between HD8bs and PT65s, and the PT65s appeared to be sharper. I didn't have the setup in place to do a real test when I switched, and my main concern was the ability to mate the color filter to the flat rear face of the PT65s, rather than resolution.

[jkruger]

I happen to have a set of each. If you want them you can have them for the cost of shipping. Then you can do your own comparisons. I saw no difference on my 1272, but it wasn't setup perfectly either. They are stored with an extra BG800 that I have no use for. Send me a PM.

[mikeb23ft]

So, to bring this thread back, a few updates.

I wound up with the winning bid on the Barco 808s in question. Good example of a cleanly modded projector and a good deal at exactly $500.

I showed up at the guys house, and my first impression of the projector was that it was absolutely huge. This may seem obvious to most of you but I didn't realize just how big a CRT projector is. Quite massive. He ran some video off of his home network at 720p and it looked great, even though he'd only done a quick setup. I was pleased with the picture quality but wondering where I was going to put the thing.

The seller then opened it up so I could check out the boards and stuff and it sizzled and broke. Seriously. Just like that, dead PJ. I stayed for about 10 minutes while he swapped out some boards and checked the fuses but nothing worked, so no PJ for me. This also happened to a Barco Graphics 400 that I was going to look at. I think maybe I'm cursed and should look into getting a Sony.

Anyway, after getting a feel for the size of a CRT PJ and what's involved in setting one up, I'm definitely going to wait until after I move to even start looking again. I suppose I'll have to settle for my 60" CRT display. At least it isn't digital, though. I just spent a week watching my friends uncalibrated 3 year old LCD with horrible refresh rate and motion tracking and I can honestly say my BOTL Philips CRT looks better. So, I'm going to get a CRT PJ, but I'm not sure when, and I think I'll also be constructing a HTPC to go with it. So, that's the update- a sort of massive fail, but a good learning experience.

[perisoft]

Oh jeez... Better before the sale than after, I guess. Still - I'd have offered the guy 250. For an extra 250 curt could almost certainly find a board to fix it - and assuming it didn't spot-burn the tubes it'd be good as new. And still a smoking deal for an awesome pj.

[Elaine Benes]

[joatmon]

[mikeb23ft]

Didn't want to make him an offer on the nonworking PJ because I really don't have anywhere to put it right now and the last thing I need is another project. As far as what PJ I'm looking for now, I'm not really sure. It all depends on the space in the house we move to. Now trying to decide if I should rent or buy, so I have things to worry about other than HT for a few months at least. Probably won't stop me from looking though