6 posts tagged “projector”
Would you ever consider having your life taped for a reality show?
Well not only would I bore the crap out of people, like MJ would, but I bet I would confuse the crap out of a lot of people. True that a large portion of our population is comfortable with computers, navigating, using internet and email... what I do is a lot more complicated than that.
My dual screen monitor chock full of open windows when I work would be enough to make people wonder, how on earth do I keep track of all this??
And this one isn't even as busy as some of my other desktops, I'm still in the process of installing all my programs since I rebuilt it over a week ago. We've just been slacking off in August, but now September is here, and my oldest is in school and I want to move ahead on some personal projects I'm working on. I also have one more web site to build for the company.
Oh, I just remembered, did anyone have suggestions for another computer post? I did one about Projectors recently, and thought maybe I could do another one soon.
I made an extensive post about the basics of projectors here.
Below are some action shots of our projector in action!
This is the desktop of the computer we have hooked up to it. Looks pretty clear even on this shrunken photo. That is a fish that Lee, or his buddy, caught on a trip a couple years ago.
This one is actually shot on the outside of our house. That's me standing next to it so you can see how big the picture is. The siding on the side of the house is pretty close together and is just off -white so it's easy to project the movie.
Now Lee knows more about this than I do, but he's explained it all to me, and I do understand it, I am just not sure if I retained it all. I usually just leave the buying decisions on these particular things to him, because I know he knows.
From what I understand, there are 2 main types of projectors: DLP and LCD. DLP is suppose to be the better of the 2 according to Lee. With LCD, light is reflected off, or through this mirror like thingy. With DLP, the surface of this little CPU-sized thing is covered with hundreds to thousands of little microscopic mirrors. And light is projected off of them and out to your screen. When a pixel needs to be dark then the little mirror shifts so that the light aimed at it, doesn't hit it. This results is a better black, because with LCD, light is still shone out to your screen in the 'black' areas, and you cannot shine the color black. With DLP, no light, or very little, is sent out on the black areas, which results in a black-black, instead of like a dark brown or gray.
The brand of projector that Lee bought after much research is a BenQ 620P. This is the closest I could find to it.
The big thing about buying a projector is finding a place to put it. They all have throw distances, which is how far away from the wall they can be (minimum). Most are 6 feet and up. They are making new ones that can be just a few feet, and it's rumored they are making them that can go a few inches from the wall/screen. I can't wait for those. All they have to do is angle the light just right so your screen is not skewed.
Our living room is not the biggest and turned out to be perfect for our projector. We have it mounted on one end, up near the roof, we then marked the edges of the screen it threw out and painted a large, flat white rectangle on the wall. This saved us from buying a screen. Because they can run 400$ and can be annoying. You have to store it somewhere and unroll it, etc. Depending on your set up... you might need one. You never know.
We actually have our projector upside down, sitting on CDs, on that shelf in the picture above, because of the angle it throws the image (See pic below) With the little remote control that comes with the projectors, you can access the menu and rotate the image so it projects an upside down image.
With it up near the ceiling, it also helps prevent anyone from blocking the light while walking around. It's out of the way, and out of reach of the kids! And with the size of the living room we end up with a 92" screen. You can see the door to the left of our screen which gives you an idea of the size.
You do have to watch out though... they get hot! It's best to have air flowing over it to help cool it or you could burn out the bulb. We bought a decent sized air purifier from Canadian tire and have it sitting just below it. It cleans dust out of the air, and blows cool air straight up to the projector. We usually only run that when the projector is on.
And you don't want to burn out the bulb, they are the most expensive part. (I think that's what houses the mirrors) The technology keeps changing and the units get cheaper, but the bulbs stay roughly the same. They last about 4000 hours, give or take, and cost about 360$ to replace. It's usually one unit so you slide out the last one, and pop in the new one. If you use your projector for movies and sports and other good stuff, then a bulb should last 2 to 3 years. By then it might be more feasible to just buy a new projector!
Specifications:
Resolution: Like computer monitors, what resolutions the projector supports. 1024 x 768 is about standard I think, and a good resolution for your computer if you hook it up to the projector.
Brightness: This is measured in Lumens, and how bright the projected image is. The higher the number, then the less dark you need to make the room. We can watch ours with the lights on, but it just isn't as good. We made sure the drapes block out most of the light from our window too. But the room doesn't have to be pitch black to watch it. The link to the projector above has 2200 Lumens, and is a good place to start. Higher lumens would mean a more expensive unit.
Contrast Ratio: This is the ratio between the brightest to the darkest. Obviously the higher the # the darker your blacks. The projector above has about 2000:1, and our blacks are perfect.
Throw Ratio: I mentioned above. Is the minimum (optimal) distance for putting your projector and still get a good screen. Once you position your projector you can also adjust the zoom so that the image is clear, and not fuzzy. Just turn the little dial that is on top of the projector bulb part. (kind of like zooming in on a camera)
Image Size: This is the min to max size of the thrown image, and still have a good quality image. This can be anywhere from 50" to 280" and up! But you can see how huge 92" is from the image I show above.
Lamp Life: How many hours it should last for (minimum) If taken care of it should last longer. But over this # and you might lose some quality. Most are about 4000 hours.
There are other specs, which I don't know are as important. Except for the input terminals:
Now this projector (different than the first link I gave you, but is the projector in the image above) can have a cable come from the computer (the light blue one, 3 rows of pins). The one just to the right of it is for HDMI, and can also come from your computer. It has a better quality signal, and is starting to become more popular.
The S-Video port is for your tv signal I think. (2nd from the left), the one to the left of that I think is regular video. The S-Video is where you would hook up the Wii too.
Lee has ours hooked up so that audio and some video runs through our audio receiver. I really don't have a clue how he did that, and if all the cables came out of their plugs tonight, I'd be screwed. But this pic above is a good projector unit, according to Lee.
Now! Compare the projectors I have shown you to any 52" HD Flat Panel Tv . You're looking at 2000$ and up. You can get smaller flat panel TV's for more reasonable prices nowadays, but when you compare the size of the screen you can get for 600$ up to 1500$... a large flat panel TV doesn't seem like a good deal. There is more care involved with projectors, and the bulb, like I said. But imagine watching Lord of the Rings on 92" screen! I posted about all the movies we watched recently, and since we got the projector, we will re-watch all sorts of movies we've seen before. At that size, you start to notice details you never saw before. And TV's never ever really display a computer desktop very well. They are either stretched or skewed. Projectors just work with them so much easier.
We also do have a smaller TV that we use for the kids, and for other shows I tape off our Sattelite feed. We try to save the projector for movies and our most favorite shows. And Hockey!!! 92" of HDTV NHL!! Wooohooo!
It's given a bad rep, when it doesn't need to be. The commercial was stupid because no one needs speakers that big unless you're hosting Woodstock. We have small out of the way ones which you almost can't see in the picture in our living room. And we could blow out the windows if we really wanted to.
Hope this was all helpful... and I hope it was all accurate!
Well I sat down to write the projector post, almost had it done. I had some links, even drew a nice picture in paintbrush... then Vox decided that when i accidentally click on one of my pictures, it would navigate to it inside of the text box we write posts in. So I LOST the whole god damn thing. I dont remember everything I wrote...
So now I have to go to another room before I smash my monitor, because after dealing with sooooo much crap at my old job i almost have no patience left for anything that is a waste of my time...and it's taking a lot of restraint not to smash one of my monitors with my keyboard right now.
I will write the post in WORD and copy and paste it... later, after I go shoot something in a video game. because we are out of beer and wadka.
I'm still working on the projector post. Almost ready. I will try tomorrow I promise.
Right now I am watching Olympics and having some wadka. This is definately the most i've sat in front of the boob tube in 2 years. Most of the time I'm in front of the computer, and only watch the tv a few times a week as we find some tv shows and movies we want to watch. (*cough* download)
My brain is still a little fried from having my soul slowly drained out of me by work, but I did think of a movie related post the other day. I had posted a long time ago about human driven action movies (titled: "Why I miss the 80's" - you better go read it, it took me a long time to go through all my posts backwards to find it!)
Anyhoo, I realized that Lee and I also watch a lot of movie sequels, trilogies etc, in sequence, from time to time. At least every year to 16 months we watch all of Band of Brothers. An incredible series if you haven't seen it yet! We also once a year or so re-watch all of the Matrix movies and Lord of the Rings (extended version of course). My post I talked about above ("Why I miss the 80s") was about the Leathal Weapon series. We watched all 4 over a 3 day period. Next I plan on talking Lee into re-watching the Die Hards. You pick up on little things you miss the first or second time around this way!
We watch some TV shows like this. We heard wonderful things about Heroes and Dexter half way through the first seasons, so we found the episodes we missed (not saying how - someone could be reading this... *cough* *cough*) and just watched a few episodes a night until we were caught up. It's the only way to watch TV!!
If you haven't seen Dexter... you gotta! It's the most original show out there, imo.
We look for new shows now and then we think we might like, but have missed, and find the episodes. The British sit com "Spaced" with the guys from "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" was great!!! if you are a British comedy fan. (Simon Pegg was also in Band of Brothers and plays Scotty in the new Start Trek film... incidentally) One I would like to watch is '24', but I don't want to start watching half way through, I'm sure I will be lost on a lot of details. So we'll start back at season one , episode one, sometime soon.
I tape several shows a week then sit down one night when I have no work to do, and the kids go down at a decent hour and watch them all. Since I can ffwd through commercials, each episode of CSI, or Supernatural, or House only takes 40 minutes. Once I had 3 weeks of episodes backed up on our PVR and I watched all 3 of each show in order. heh heh. I haven't seen a commercial in 2 years. The only thing I really miss is movie previews, but I check the yahoo movies or IMDB site regularly to see what is coming up.
With the projector we have hooked up to the spare computer in the living room, it allows us to watch these on a glorious 92 inch screen that has amazing clarity for the price we paid for it.
The white square is the full sized screen we get. With widescreen movies we still have the bars at the top and bottom but it's still a very wide picture.
We hope to help people set up these kinds of systems in their homes, with the new business we're starting. Because no one thinks that a projector can work for them. Well, i think this is mostly because electronic stores do not want to sell a 900$ projector like the one above, they want to sell the 3000$ 30" flat screen plasma (or more!). Projectors are given kind of a bad rap... we have converted 2 friends actually, who came over and saw ours in action. They can hook to your TV cable, computer and Wii at the same time with the right setup (like ours... *cough*). With DVDs you just pop it into your computer dvd drive (if you have one, if not - get one!) and watch the movie through that.
For treats we let the kids watch their favorite cartoons on it... 92" of Nemo! wow!
Wow, I managed to get a lot of words out there for being half brain dead. :)
I should stop before I keep rambling on.
If anyone needs help picking out a projector, I can pick Lee's brain apart. He knows them better, and I know them fairly decently.
