CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

captainslug · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Sterling, VA

So I knew bupkis about CRT projectors until about 3 weeks ago. One of the neighboring bays to where I work used to be occupied by a company that does professional video conferencing installations. Well they moved 3 weeks ago and were pitching things into a rented dumpster. The only item they couldn't lift in was left on a cart outside of it.
Recognizing it as a projector I claimed it and since then I've been researching and tinkering with it.

Model: Electrohome Marquee 8110+ ACON (Missing camera but I'm waiting for one to come i nthe mail through eBay)
Service menu Hour meter: 1,700

There's a service tag stating that the tubes were replaced in 2002 and I don't think it's been used much since then. The lenses are pretty good. Someone obviously tried to clean them with the wrong kind of cloth so the red and green lenses have some scratches.
The tube faces show no signs of wear at all.

I've done mechanical alignment of the tubes and lenses, electronic alignment through geometry and convergence.
The current signal input is through an HD tuner box and a VGA to RGBHV cable.
And the screen I'm projecting on is 120" diagonal 4:3 ratio.

The only puzzling thing I can't seem to figure out at the moment is that I can't get the blue to focus as sharply as the other colors. I will try to get pictures of the grid pattern for each color later tonight.

Here's a sample of the current picture quality

tri_joel · Joined: 03 Jul 2007 Posts: 646 Location: Northern Virginia

You suck.

I drive by every dumpster in Tysons Corner everyday and still have not found a PJ.

cbe317 · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 214 Location: Thunderbolt, GA

Nice find!

You might want to check out the marquee maintenance section of this site. There is great info there for keeping your PJ healthy.

Good luck!

C.

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

Welcome to the forum and........
Nice score!!! Thumbs Up

Without a pattern to look at I'd say the pic looks pretty good. Look at that contrast ratio baby!

HD8 lenses don't focus in the corners for a damn either so don't kill yourself trying too hard. As you have nothing into this and need lenses anyway, contact Barry of JoustMods fame for a set of 144's and adapter plates. You'll get more accurate color reproduction and better corner focus. Using the 144's changes your TD (closer) a bit too. If you don't want to go that route right now HD8 lenses are a dime a dozen and very easy to find. I have 2 sets myself I'll never use.

If you want it the best it can be without any MPMods (highly recommended at some point), do a full reinitialization on it from the service menu, get the pj aligned in all axis' as close to perfect to the screen as you can, do a good magnetics setup, and then go through the Guided Setup. Repetition is the best way to understand how everything fits together and affects each other, eg, mechanical vs electronic, geometry menu vs service menu, etc.

Make sure to check the P14 heater voltage too. ~6.34VDC is where you want it. The procedure is in the link below.

You've probably already found all the Marquee info on this site but I'll link it anyway just in case.

http://www.curtpalme.com/ElectrohomeMarquee_Downloads.shtm

also check out Tim's site at www.etechvideo.com for more setup info and advanced procedures.

Welcome to the Marquee Maniacs club. Thumbs Up

Greg

dbaisey · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:46 pm Post subject:

Don't know this projector but most run the blue in defocus mode so it wont be as sharp. Nice snag BTW. Are you sure they had it out there to dispose of or to load it up? Doug

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

Brian Hampton · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 1173

Wow,

Nice, I love to hear about a CRT FP saved from the dumpsters. I would have gone dumpster diving for sure that night,.. who knows what other ultra valuable stuff they couldn't be bothered to correctly deal with?

-Brian

Heywood Jablome · Joined: 12 Mar 2006 Posts: 1548

Nicest dumpster save I've heard was an 8500LC... one of IIRC FOURTY that were tossed during an electrical deconstruction (preceeding a total demolition) of a big bank in a high-rise in Boston. (10 floors, four conference rooms per floor apparently.)
An AVS member bought that PJ from the electrician that saved it and I picked it up, crated it, and sent it to Canada. The seller said two other guys saved one PJ each, and the other thirty seven went into the dumpster. Crying or Very sad

--Edit: Blue defocus serves to "smooth" the color balance response of the projector thru the scale of brightness... IIRC due to the way our eyes perceive blue light at different intensities (and the ability of the blue phosphor to reproduce blue light through different intensities) the defocus "smears" the blue a little and boosts our perception of it. (Little memory, lot of conjecture in that statement.)

captainslug · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Sterling, VA

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:23 pm Post subject:

Ya lucky bastard. That's a pretty nice machine... for FREE.

Welcome to the club and prepare to be sucked into a whole new addiction.

SC

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:55 pm Post subject:

The P14 filament mod is mandatory. If the hour counter wasn't reset, then I'll bet the tubes were changed due to the filament issue.

I have the astig yokes/components if you want to supercharge the set to turn the 8110 into an 8500 by adding astig control.

Great score!

Heywood Jablome · Joined: 12 Mar 2006 Posts: 1548

Not mentioned yet is the fact that your dumpster save is one of the very few projectors still in new production:
http://www.vdcmarquee.com/html/catalog.html

captainslug · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Sterling, VA

My camera isn't great at night photography.

It's picking up the scan lines because ISO is set so high on the camera. Grid seems a bit punched so I need to do more geometry adjustment.

Damned awesome for free. I CANNOT wait to try playing PC games using 3D games with this thing.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:55 pm Post subject:

Hey guys.....the stangest thing happened to me today. I was at an AV company to buy a projector when I came out it was gone!

J/K(hehehhe)

Joust · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:43 am Post subject:

since VDC still makes this projector, I do not understand why they would not make it have more video bandwidth so that it fully resolves 1080p right out of the box.

captainslug · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Sterling, VA

Well according to the manual there was an optional HDTV card. It's just that nobody really offers one anymore (aside from here).
For now I'm just playing regular DVDs through component using an external Tuner box. Was the cheapest solution that gave the best picture quality.
Once my gaming computer is ready then I will REALLY get to have fun with this. More on that later.

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

Get Kims transcoder and the HD Fury your pretty much set for HD component and HDMI HD.

Fujifrontier · Joined: 20 Oct 2007 Posts: 354 Location: San Antonio, Texas

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

The grid patterns make it look like you have some banding unless it was the cammera. Banding is when you see horizontal varying shades of the color
bring up the full white field and see if you can notice it on each color, hit color>1,2,3...to show each color under the whit feild individually. Also go check out the AVSforum. lots more info and help there too.

Athanasios

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

That's what I thought too. The blue especially looks like it has banding. If it looks that way in person, you can address that. If it's just the camera, never mind.