CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

I posted this at the "other" site, and even though I hope for a diamond in the rough, I don't expect many good responses. I thought I would try here in case anyone is keeping up with digitals.

Bottom Line: Married white male desperately seeking a good looking PJ under $3000 (if built in vertical stretch) or under $2000 (if no built in vertical stretch) capable of looking good on a 50”x118” 2.35:1 screen in a bat cave. Installation flexibility is not a nearly as big of a concern as image quality. And about image quality, all I care about is film quality—don’t care about games, don’t care about sports—films, films, films. What PJs should I check out?

To set the baseline, 1.5 years ago I upgraded from my old CRT pj to a Barco Cine 8 Onyx—an 8” liquid coupled, color filter, high resolution tubed CRT. This is one of (and arguably) the best 8” CRT PJ ever made. The PJ cost me less than I’m willing to spend now and my picture is fantastic—so I’m spoiled, I expect a great picture at a cheap price!

So, why the change? The answer is twofold. First, I’m sick of my 16:9 screen. Having a projector with a 16:9 screen is simply having a big TV! I want a larger 2.35:1 image. So, I have two options:
1) Remount my CRT back further and do a pseudo-constant image area (CIA) set up based around a 2.05:1 screen.
2) Change to a digital with an anamorphic lens to do a CIH set up.
The second reason is that I may move to a location with a less CRT-friendly room to set up in. If this occurs, number 1 is not an option.

The main problem with number 1 is that I can’t achieve the image size I want. Although my PJ can do a great 1080 with a CIA set up, CRTs have zero mounting flexibility. Thus, even sliding the PJ back to partially obstruct my second row’s aisle will only get me a 16:9 image of 49”x87” and a 2.35:1 image of 42.5”x100.5”. With my current 16:9 screen, 16:9 images are 52"x92" and 2.35:1 images are 39”x92”. So, I lose a little on the 16:9 size to gain not much on the 2.35:1 image. Almost doesn’t seem worth it.

So, the digital search began. I thought about losing resolution over what I have now and going down to a 720p PJ until a great 1080 PJ got really cheap. But, this proved to no avail. 720p DLPs and LCDs have way too much SDE from my preferred viewing location (<1.5x image width from the 16:9 image). The single chip DLPs also concern me as I see RBE constantly with a 4x color wheel and sometimes with a 5x color wheel. Not only that, but I sometimes get “DLP fatigue”—further given that about 10-15% of humans suffer varying degrees of DLP fatigue, even if I didn’t, I’m not sure I’d want a DLP because it might bother my visitors.

I considered a 720p Panny LCD due to the smoothscreen. But they look horrible. Flat, un-engaging images. The 900 had terrible blue-blacks, every AX100 I’ve seen had such horrible uniformity issues that made the minor color shift of my CRT look great! So, I’m not sold that Panny even knows how to make a good looking PJ!

So, I looked at a used JVC 1400x788 LCoS (HX1 and HX2). Good looking image for high APL scenes--no RBE, no SDE, …and NO CONTRAST. Low light scenes where terrible with a “haze” over them and fade to blacks were just comical.

So, on to 1080p LCDs. Given the dirt cheap price of the HC4900, I went for some critical viewing of my neighbors HC5000. First off, quality issues have me troubled. His first one developed a green line in the image, and this second one has some stuck green pixels that I find distracting. That aside, the image was not really impressive after watching for awhile. Oh, it was sharp all right and color accuracy was very nice. But, who in the heck are they trying to fool with that claimed 10,000:1 contrast ratio!!! Give me a break—the D65 calibrated contrast ratio is closer to 3000:1—pretty much looked the same as a DC2+ 720p DLP—and that was with the uber-distracting auto iris (every fade to black was a fade to light grey followed by the auto-iris clamping it down to medium grey). Disengaging the distracting iris put the CR under 1000:1—it looked as bad as the JVCs mentioned above. I’m used to perfect convergence and the green and blue where a half a pixel off. So everyone’s face had a green shadow on the left side and a blue shadow on the right side—again, very distracting. Lastly, the SDE was too bad to sit at my preferred viewing distance. The inter-pixel spacing on this 1080 LCD looked to be about the same size in the projected image as the inter-pixel spacing on a 720p DLP. So, it really needs to be watched >1.7x image width from a 16:9 image.

The only other PJs I can think of trying to see:
- Epson 1080UB (but I’m afraid it will have the same SDE and quality issues as the HC5000 I saw)
- Panny AE2000 (smoothscreen will take care of the SDE, but have they improved their image quality?)
- Optoma HD80 (Optoma quality, or lack thereof, scares me a little, but even though the 6x color wheel should eliminate RBE, I’m still a bit worried about the DLP fatigue)
Are any of these really worth trying to check out? Is there some PJ I’ve missed (new or used) that would be better in the price range then everything I’ve seen? Or, am I SOL?

**kal**

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

**kal**

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

**kal** · Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 9:52 pm Post subject:

Yep, there's something to be said about a bigger screen with 1920x1080 content. You can go pretty big before it starts to get soft due to individual pixel structure. In fact, you'd have to go 6 times the area to make it the 'same' softness as DVD.

You could easily have a screen 50% wider and it would still be much much sharper than DVD.

scottap · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 177 Location: Palo Alto, CA

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

paw · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 1176 Location: Arvada, CO

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

scottap · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 177 Location: Palo Alto, CA

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

**kal**

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

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

benareeno · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 1614 Location: ottawa, canada

I go back and forth down this road so often...as most of you know, it's ridiculous!

Digitals can have nice pics in brighter scenes...and not as nice pics in darker scenes.

Digitals can be virtually silent (a HUGE plus!!!) - crt's are far more difficult to get to this level of nirvana, unless you're one of McGyver's on the forum (Yes Kal, I'm talking about you).

Crt still has the best pic, case closed......crt is a pain in the ass, case closed!

See, I still can't figure this damn thing out!!

In retrospect, I had my most enjoyable movie viewing on a 27" tv about 12 years ago with a Harman Kardon (then high end) receiver and B&W speakers...I watched tons of flicks on LD and dvd. I loved it...since I started into projectors, I don't watch movies. I just tweak the projector. It's fun, but not rewarding...

As long as the projector is loud, I don't bother with a good movie...it would be ruined by the noise. THen there's that one little convergence or focus issue...etc etc.

I also strive for a CIH setup...with an acoustically transparent screen. I've run CIH with crt's...seems like a good option to me. But something always holds me back from loving it. Hmmm....where's that 27" tv I had?

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

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY

Person99 · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 4899 Location: Flower Mound, TX

Yes I do, and it is VERY stretched. But I'm not showing you!

perisoft · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 2920 Location: Ithaca, NY