CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Mr Bob · Last edited by Mr Bob on Mon Apr 12, 2010 9:48 pm; edited 3 times in total

It has come to my attention that many triple gun CRT front projectors are still up and running on line doublers, triplers and quadruplers. These owners are pleased with their displays, which have been the best for decades. But many are now wondering about HD and whether they should buy new to get it.

DON'T!

There is no need for that! It would be a downgrade!

You gotta remember, HD was not around when these CRT front projectors were designed and built, but that the projectors themselves were designed for the highest of scanrates, then and in the future, many of them much higher than today's HD. As such, they can do 1080i and 1080p standing on their heads!

The best they had to use back then was Faroudja and Runco and 480i, and line doubling, tripling and quadrupling was the only game in town. C Band satellite - the big dish - was the best possible picture. Your projector was CAPABLE of HD, but there was no HD content yet, to display. It was still just a gleam in the eyes of its inventors.

Those who were lucky enough to have a C band in their back yard had the best possible picture, and those who had to play their content from other sources had fantastic scalers to make up the difference as much as possible.

Now everything has changed, and HD knocks the socks off any scaler built back then.

The important thing is, you don't have to replace your display to get HD! And HD looks better on triple gun CRT than even the best Faroudja, Runco Controller or Crystal Image upconverter did back then.

It also looks better than most of the fixed pixels you can buy out there today, including ALL of the relatively affordable ones. And still has the best blacks in the game, for both depth and shadow detail. The military has many applications of CRT in its displays, and sees no need to renovate them. Many planetariums use CRT triple gun displays, projecting seamless starfields and comets and swirling masses... I did a 3D display for a biogenetics company a few years ago that use today's shutter glasses, fed by IR rays sweeping the room at all times, to display DNA strands 3 dimensionally. Oakland Airport has a huge CRT video wall, with 12 separate screens all blended together seamlessly in the Southwest Terminal, that forms one huge picture and looks absolutely fabulous.

I am currently working on a DWIN CRT projector, and the owner and the integrator and I just sat down the other day to discuss it. These things all came out, and it's the second time in 2 months where this discussion had to happen. The other was a Marquee LC 9500 installation and calibration in San Luis Obispo for a doctor, a beautiful piece supplied by Curt. I steered the good doctor that way when he called me wanting me to repair his 7" gun Zenith. Since it was onto a 10' screen, a discussion was definitely needed, and his buying the 9" gun Marquee from Curt and having me install it and set it up was the result.

The doctor had never seen HD on his 10' screen before, which we shortened to 9' wide, markedly increasing the light level of his images. All he had seen before was the upconverted 480i from his Crystal Image, shot from 7" guns onto a 10' screen. I don't believe he's stopped grinning since...

KEEP YOUR CRT DISPLAY! Get it calibrated and put HD thru it and have images you only dreamed of before, with how your display was originally set up. I guaranty you that if you take it out of its mothballs and have me calibrate it for you, I'll put a big smile on your face.

If you want proof, check out the Screenshot War!!!!!!!! thread here on the AVS.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=900831

Wink

Mr Bob

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

Glad your posting over here Bob, we have much more fun here. especially in the Political posts where some go crazy and want to shoot themselves in the face Very Happy

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

Love that avatar Dawgz!!! mmm Yummy but crunch Wink

Nashou

ecrabb

Mr Bob · Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 9:32 pm Post subject:

Then please get me to where the uninformed owners out there who don't know this are! Those are the owners I am really trying to reach!

Suggestions welcome, on how to do that, where to go, etc. There's gotta be hundreds of CRT projectors out there whose owners are not clued in. I met 2 in the last month!

b

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

Mr Bob · Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 9:44 pm Post subject:

Hm. Get the shoppers, who have been lured into buying new because of all the bad info out there from the retailers, badmouthing CRT to get food into their families' mouths!

Yes, I'll do that directly...

Thanks -

b

HaydnG90 · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 1356

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

Bob, I'm pretty sure that everybody who's on this forum has known that for a long time already. You're preaching to the choir.

Scalers are great for making SD content watchable on a big projection screen, but native HD is entirely something else. There is no comparison, particularly at 1080p.

CJ

Mr Bob · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 12:47 am Post subject:

That was what I thought too, a month or 2 ago. Then I ran into these guys who had CRT pjs and didn't know that. So I am trying to find the last of them before they off their incredible CRT sets.

b

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 1:51 am Post subject:

Mr Bob · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 1:55 am Post subject:

True enough...

b

stefuel · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 10:21 am Post subject:

I did see this same post over at AVS and it left me wondering, How long had Bob been in a coma. Laughing

I mean really, HD has been around for years now. The CRT purest's were early adopters of anything HD and everything that put them one step ahead of the other guy. I actually looked at the original post date to make sure this wasn't something dragged out of the archives Confused

Mr Bob · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 12:20 pm Post subject:

So true. Couldn't believe it myself...

b

jantje112 · Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 328

You have HD broadcast for years in the US.

In the netherlands HD is just beginning to make a statement, with a few HD channels

Mr Bob · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:54 pm Post subject:

Yeah, several years ago at CES I had the pleasure of meeting the Minister of Communications of Brazil and his lovely wife (do all dignitaries have lovely young wives? He was older but WAS very distinguished, gotta say, she befit him...)

At that time we had had HD for about 7 years already, yet they were just starting up over there.

Shoulda seen the security for that meeting! Never seen that much before, at CES!

Shocked

b

MrBlonde83 · Joined: 16 Mar 2009 Posts: 132 Location: Lansford, PA

Heck.. Even 720p looks beautiful on my low end ecp Smile

Mark_A_W · Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 10:45 pm Post subject:

This is surreal.

Even us in the Antipodes have been watching HD for about 7 years - and back then we had to download TS files from US cable.

It's the 21st century. No one with a projector is watching SD.

papalek · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 1536 Location: Longs SC