CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

fefrank · Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 83

We are not talking facts here. This is pure preference. If you had the choice of either one of these projectors which one would you prefer? In the next year we will be finally buying a house Cool

. We are pretty happy about it Laughing

. I get to finally have what I've always wanted; A dedicated home theater basement. So I am wondering if my Barco 1208s/2 would be worth putting in the HT room or should upgrade to 9'' tubes in the near future? I am currently workign on the HD-145 mod for my barco, should I leave it as is?. I am thinking that maybe I could get 1209 tubes and get it to be a 9'' projector. There is a poll, so please vote I have 4 options listed. Remember this is not about facts, please share personal experiences. 9 inch vs 8 inch PQ.CRT vs digital. whatever you name it! and I know some of you are going to have debates Twisted Evil

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

Keep the 1208 for now and enjoy it for a year or two till you figure out your budget in your new house. There will be cost's that come up you may not foresee. In the mean time keep a look out for a nice 9 inch set, no matter what it is, Marquee Barco, NEC 10pg, Sony G90 etc. Save some money towards it and or a video Processor. the VP is the best investment IMO.

I voted Other

Athanasios

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:32 pm Post subject:

Even if you're a master metal craftsman, putting 9" tubes into a 1209 is an exercise in futility. You'd need to find the tubes first, but the metalwork that will be needed would be insane, and you'd lack the all important Scheimpflug adjustments in the end anyway.

As Nash said, look for a 9" set, although I'd say the 10PG is too old now for long term use (IMHO).

The key is going to be finding a set with mint tubes, or close to mint. Do the house purchase first, you may find that like with mine, you go over budget a bit, and a 9" set may be for down the road, so the 1208 will do just fine in the meantime.

Spanky Ham · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5643 Location: Comedy Central

Nash and Curt have already given you good advice. Wait till you get your new house then survey the landscape. In the meantime, you should try to visit a couple of HTs with 9" pjs along with DILA and DLP pjs. From there you can start to figure out what you like about each tech. Here is a question for you, what do you like about the Epson and what you like about the CRT?

HaydnG90 · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 1356

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2802 Location: Budapest, Hungary

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 3:15 pm Post subject:

To me, it's specific to the NEC PG chassis. Bad caps are running rampant. I haven;t seen it in the Xtra or XG chassis, nor in other sets, but the PG at this point is hitting end of life. I've got maybe 15 sets here that I'm about to dump cheap, most with near mint tubes, but you can bet I'll be pulling every board and inspecting caps very carefully before selling.

I haven't seen the same in other brands, heck, the Sony 1270 is older than the PG, and many are still running fine. Ditto for BArco 800s, ECPs, etc.

jeffslife · Joined: 17 Apr 2010 Posts: 4190 Location: ohio usa

The ceiling in my basement with ductwork in place would make it very difficult if not impossible to put in a nice HT room. I have settled
for a barebones mancave. There is just not enough height to do a nice room and do it well. If I replaced all the ductwork with custom made ducts that tucked inside the floor joices it would help alot but it would be cost prohibitive and I still have the issue of the supports running down the middle of the room which creates other issues. The G90 also is a head clearance problem even if I could get it flush to the ceiling, I could possibly recess a digital but not a crt. After craig worked his magic I cant imagine giving up my G90 its just too pretty. If I do a HT room it would be way down the road and I would probably have to go to digital. Unless I could raise my house 18 inches off the foundation. Or I could move. So it looks like a mancave for awhile. I am cool with that though, I only entertain a couple times a year,mostly it just me and my wife. The occasional title fight and the Superbowl and playoffs being the rest of the time and to be honest after a couple hours everybody is drunk anyway and could be in a real cave and it wouldnt matter to them or me for that matter. Whatever you decide, ENJOY !

ecrabb · Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 4:29 pm Post subject:

I voted "Another". This is an oversimplification, but use whatever you like best and whatever fits your budget.

I spent a week with an 8350 in my theater, and I wasn't happy with that machine at all. In my cave, on my 96x54 Wilsonart screen, the blacks (greys?) were horrible. If it was between that and a good 8" machine like a 1208, I'd have to go CRT. Maybe if it were in a non-dedicated room, and on a larger scope screen like a 120"-wide. A buddy of mine has that configuration, and it's a very nice, inexpensive machine for a non-dedicated room and non-critical viewing. Seriously, not bad - just not up to par for me.

Now, if you open it up the choices to something like the RS45, then it's a whole different world. The RS45 outclasses the 8350 so badly, there's no comparison. In that case, the advantages of digital start outweighing the few advantages of CRT (for me, personally), and CRT stops making sense for me.

There's some good CRT vs. digital discussion in this thread:
1292Q vs JVC DLA-RS40

Like I said, go to some meets, see some other people's rooms, watch everything you can get your eyes on, and then make a decision.

SC

fefrank · Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 83

Wow! thanks for all the input you guys. You are all the best. But a question still comes to mind When is my 8'' CRT be obsolete? according to the barco spreadsheet my 1208s could go to a maximum resolution of 2000p but I bet that would look horrible. I love CRT, colors are outstanding, blacks are the best I've seen since, in par with plasma. When I tested the barco the convergence wasn't all the way set, the room wasn't light controlled and I was using a vga to rgbhv cable instead of a moome card) The barco did 1080p in a flash. The Dark knight on bluray looked awesome!!!!! but I have my epson 8350 calibrated, and it looks pretty good. Yeah blacks a not nearly as good as the barco but it is smaller in size and I get all the lens shift and zoom without any hassles. I have a question for crabb, when you say non-critical viewing, what do you mean by that? in detail what didn't you like about the 8350 if you remember what crt did you compare it with?. I've had mine for almost 1 year and a half now. It's been a nightmare! I've had to exchange the bulb 3 times already, I've had to return the unit 6 times in the last year and a half for convergence problems 2+ pixels off, dustblob problems, and extreme LCD Flicker and ghosting ( bad green LCD Panel). Now I finally have had this last one for 4 months and I already have a dust blob the size of a baseball in the upper right side of the screen and a star effect of dust blobs all over (not seen in movies) So how much better will my CRT be than the epson overall excluding reliability? I know is a bunch of qestions but this is a serious matter for me especially since I dont have any money to play with.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:12 pm Post subject:

New flash: ALL CRTs are obsolete! Smile

That's according to the digital guys anyway, but they get to continue to suffer from problems like you experience.

There's no real timeline as to when CRTs are obsolete. When tubes run out? When boards fail too often?

I don't think you'll see many CRTs in 10 years, although I said that 10 years ago, and I've sold more high end units and CRTs overall this year than the last 3 combined.

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:43 pm Post subject:

NO question that that's actually happened many times, esp in the early days. I even had local sports bars go back once they nearly went bankrupt buying $1000 bulbs for the digitals. Smile

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

ecrabb · Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 4:39 pm Post subject:

fefrank · Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 83

fefrank · Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 83

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

ecrabb · Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 4:46 pm Post subject:

I agree with Dragan... If you've got the room and you don't mind the CRT negatives, then I'd much, much rather have the 1208 over the 8350 - especially if I were tight on cash. No question. The 1208 is already worth very little, so it isn't going to get much worse. The Epson's value on the other hand - that thing will drop rapidly. Get rid of it while it's still a current model with some good value.

SC

fefrank · Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 83

Alrigth! well after a while of talking to the boss (Wife) and long hours of thinking what I am going to be doing. I am going to be sticking with the barco 1208s/2 for the dedicated home theater room. Then I am using the epson for multimedia living room mostly for tv shows and video games, nothing critical. Keeping the other barco parted out would be a good Idea for extra parts and an extra red tube. I am going to keep going with the HD-145 lenses project that I am doing, and the port 3 card hdmi which is already being made.

Thank you all, you guys are tha bomb! I consider this thread closed. Smile

Thank you ecrabb for the extended explanations and the reviews of crt vs digital and everyone else that commented and voted, your comments and votes were truly appreciated. I give Special thanks to digitalayon for getting me into the hobby that I now love, as it has become an obssesion. XD.

Maybe sometime in the future I'll come across a minty NEC XG135 (My dream of the best birthday present ever!)