CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[perisoft]

OK... so, I'm getting stuff ready for my HT. One thing I haven't got is a screen, and my plan was to put together a DIY thing.

But I spied, on craigslist, a guy selling a Runco 852 (Zenith PRO 900x) with a 10' Stewart. He (or she? it?) won't tell me much about the PJ aside from that it 'works' (hah) but even if it's minty it's not worth a whole lot anyway, and I already have a PJ. Three, actually.

And he won't send a pic of the screen - he says, and I quote, "Screen is screen." Great. But it's a motorized Stewart and if it's in reasonable shape it'd be pretty cool.

He wants $300 for the pair but I can probably talk him down. If the tubes in the runco are toasty, can I part it out to get a bit of money back from the deal? And if they're not, is the thing worth ANYTHING? Advice appreciated!

(Oh, the thing is a few hours away so I can't really check it out first. All or nothing.)

[papalek]

It sounds like a good deal to me. You can always replace the material in the screen. The motorized assembly is the expensive part.

[Zebu Fellenz]

It really depends on what the screen is, if it is a ST 130 than $300 for a 10' screen is a steal.

[perisoft]

Yeah... unfortunately I doubt I'll find out before I'm there. I would suspect the screen is of the same vintage as the PJ, but that's not *necessarily* the case. Eh.

Any comments on the PJ or should I just leave it on the curb as I drive off?

[ecrabb]

It also depends on the condition... If it's in perfect shape, it's a steal. If the screen material is beat to hell and you have to replace it, I wouldn't call it 'not expensive' by any means. Plus, if it's tab-tensioned, I don't know that's something you can easily do yourself or not.

Total crap shoot. You'll have to just go see it. Could be more worth the drive and money, or it could be a total waste of time.

Seller sounds like an ass to me.

SC

[perisoft]

Oh, the seller's definitely an ass. He's in the Bronx, for crying out loud.

The thing has been up for a bit, and being in NYC the PJ and screen are probably taking up half his apartment. Maybe I'll offer him $150 and see if he bites.

Yeah, I'd think a tab-tensioned screen would be a pain to redo. If I want a pain, I can save some cash and make my own... Main reason to try this is that it's easily retractable (WAF) and might be better than a homebrew if it's in OK shape. We shall see.

[JustGreg]

[perisoft]

Well, I pretty much dropped the idea, but lo and behold the guy shoots an email back the other day saying he loves my product (motion platforms.. I used my work email 'cos I thought he might look at it and think I'm cool) and to make him an offer. And he'll pay half my gas.

So, I offer him $150 minus half gas, which would put me at $120 - as it happens my wife goes down to NYC every week for acting classes anyway, so I can drive her instead of her taking the bus (saves $50 or so, so the trip down gets me $20 ahead) and with half my gas discounted by seller that'll make my outlay about $130.

I figure that's worth it; if the runco is in nice shape I can probably craigslist or ebay it for fifty or seventy five bucks (It's a Zenith Pro 900x, not listed as high up as a 1271 but the specs aren't too bad. LC, too, better than my bg808s ). If the screen's good, it's a great deal - I need to be able to get the screen out of the way 'cos the far wall has a door and a window we'll want to be able to use (Don't worry, I'm putting a super thick arc of curtains across it!).

So, we'll see. Maybe he screwed up and it's a DTV 1200 instead of a DTV 852...

[paw]

With the window and door, you're not likely to get light bleeding through the screen. However, you will get light around the screen. I have a similar situation with a Stewart Ultramatt 150. No light comes through the screen.

[perisoft]

Well, I'm off to pick up the PJ and screen. Five hours down, pick it up, five hours back. Wish me luck... report later, if I don't just come in the door and fall into bed!

[perisoft]

OK, I'm back! Got back here at 7:30pm; left at 7am... almost all of that time was driving, except a 45 minute nap on the way back (luckily not while the car was moving) and the hour or so it took to load the stuff up.

So, my cost ended up being $120.

The PJ is as advertised; it's dirty but actually in good shape (a couple of dings but that's it). The R/B tubes appear to be pristine; the G has some wear - but I haven't pulled the lenses yet so this isn't necessarily totally accurate.

I fired it up on a desk this evening, did an optical focus and a user menu convergence (just an H/V alignment really) and it's actually pretty dead on. The focus is very nice, at least as good as I got out of my 1271 at first blush. But I haven't got the remote, so i can't converge or do geometry - the video inputs were converged 'close enough' already.

Color looks pretty nice, it generally works well. Only thing I noticed is an occasional flicker - brightness wavering. Not sure what that is.

If anybody has a remote for one of these things, send me a PM.

I hooked it up to my laptop via s-video (!!) and fired up the fifth element, and it actually looked not too bad. The built in line doubler does a pretty good job, all things considered. It was running at 1024x768, nominally, and regular windows text was kinda-sorta readable, which for a 480i svideo signal is about as good as you're gonna get. Video was soft but nice and smooth.

I would have grabbed some pics, but my Nikon managed to drain its batteries. First time for that!

...but that's not the important bit. What I really wanted was the screen.

So - the screen. It's actually a 4:3 - 120" *diagonal* so it's 80" wide. That's actually fine with me, I was running an 85" wide screen with the HT setup for testing and it could probably do with being a tiny bit smaller. My field of view will be the same regardless, it'll just be brighter.

It's motorized, but I haven't hung it up and tried to run it. I'm not sure what kind of signal they need to go, so any advice is appreciated. I'm hoping I can find a way to have it drop down to a 16:9 format instead of 4:3.

It's dusty and the case is a little dinged, but seems solid enough. The fabric is rolled tight and doesn't look beat up.

It's a Stewart Ultramatte 150. Did a google search and it seems that it's fairly high gain, but it does say that it works great for 'line doublers'. How you project an image with a line doubler I don't know, but there you go...

Anybody have any comments/advice on the screen? Appreciated!

[paw]

I've got a Stewart Luxus Model A. It's 120AC powered. It came with a 3 position (up, off, down) switch that is AC. I just looked at Stewart website (www.stewartfilm.com). They offer the following controls for the Model A

CONTROL:
HVS (High Voltage 3-Position Switch) Included
LVC (Low Voltage Control) Optional
STI (12 Volt Screen Trigger Interface) Optional
IRR (Infrared Remote Control) Optional
WRC (Wireless RF Remote Control) Optional

Here's a link to their control info

http://www.stewartfilmscreen.com/control_systems.htm

Here's a link to their electric screens

http://www.stewartfilmscreen.com/Electricscreenmodels.htm