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9kids
Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Posts: 138
Location: Manassas, VA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:51 pm Post subject: My outdoor theater |
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Anyone ever test the Max screen size of a Marque 8111+.
We had a party last weekend on Sunday night. A going away party for some friends that are moving away. About 30 or so friends. I have had several of my friends suggest that I pull out my extra Marque 8111 and try and show a movie against the side of the house. So Sunday I decided to give it a try. I have a gravel drive next to the side of my house, so I pulled a car in and set the projector on top of the car. I am guessing it was at least 25 ft. maybe closer to 30 ft from the house. I figured that I would probably run out of manual focus adjustment and have to move the car closer. I hooked it up to my laptop, setup some small powered PC speakers and waited for it to get dark to see what would happen. After a good meal of hamburgers and hotdogs and all the other picnic goodies, a few beers, and some party socializing, I suddenly realized it was dark enough that I could try to start setting up the projector. I was shocked to find that at that distance I still had quite a bit of manual focus left. The picture size seemed to be enormous on the side of the house. I would say 25 ft. but that is beyond the spec. of HD8 lenses, I wished I had thought to get a tape measure out and check. After a quick manual setup and some geometry tweaks I hit the ACON full and let it do its thing. ACON has always worked well in the past but at this size it really did not do so well except at the center of the screen (house). So with 30 people anxiously waiting to see something besides gridlines I did the fastest manual convergence I have ever done. With such a fast setup and projecting against aluminum siding I was not expecting much, but I was very surprised at how good it looked from about 40 to 50 feet back. The yard is slightly sloped up hill away from the house so with all the lawn chairs on the hill everyone could see straight on. Our neighborhood has no street lights and there was no moon out so the picture was plenty bright enough (I did push the contrast pretty hard). My wife cooked up a whole bunch of microware popcorn and we all had a great time watching a movie on the side of the house. Everyone was very impressed, including myself, at how good it looked. The only real downer was having to lug that thing back in the basement at 12:30 at night.
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jantje112
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Posts: 328
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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Pictures????
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Clarence
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 3827
Location: Smith Mtn Lake, VA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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We love backyard movies. My neighbor buddies started by just showing on the side of the house like you did, but then I built a 10x20 screen out of electrical conduit pipe from Home Depot:
(more details: http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=725735 )
I'm surprised that the Marquee was bright enough. I found a cheap JVC G15 D-ILA... works great... much easier to move around than a CRT.
Here's some pictures from last year...
This year, I replaced the tarp (too shiny and too wrinkly) with a seamless 10'x20' piece of material... works much better than the tarp. We watched the Steelers-Redskins pre-season game a couple of weeks ago. Had about 75 people attend... lots of fun. I forgot to take pictures with the new material.
After Halloween is better because of the time change... it doesn't get dark now in the summer until 8:30 or so... too late for a kids movie. But in November, you can start the movie at 7:30. But then you got to worry about it getting too cold.
Anyways, we're building a deck this fall and I've already got plans to include a semi-permanent cubby hole for the projector with A/V and power lines.
Last edited by Clarence on Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
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9kids
Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Posts: 138
Location: Manassas, VA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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I tried but I am not very good with my digital camera in manual mode and in auto mode at 50 feet back it was just to dark
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9kids
Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Posts: 138
Location: Manassas, VA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:52 pm Post subject: |
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That’s great Clarence, great pictures too. I really need to learn more about my camera. I could just put some pulleys up on the eaves of my house and pull a screen up over the siding. Does the link you gave talk about where to get such a big piece of fabric?
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 9:07 pm Post subject: |
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Clarence, where'd you source the 10x20 piece of seamless material and what is it?
Movie night in the neighborhood - I think I feel a late-September project coming on...
SC
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Clarence
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 3827
Location: Smith Mtn Lake, VA
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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I've owned a couple of DLP projectors, big 3-chippers, over the years. Every one of them died before very long, which sucked
because the main reason I bought them was to do outdoor movie nights.
But I did keep the lenses.  The 3:1 Minolta zoom lens became the basis for a very decent compact refracting telescope. 
Considering that it's a goat-chokingly expensive optic, it SHOULD perform well. And for the most part, it does. But it has just a little
bit of chromatic aberration visible at high magnifications....which I have noticed repeatedly on many DLP projectors.
Call me picky, but a 12,000 dollar lens should be fully apochromatic!
CJ
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