James Bergeron
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2001
- Messages
- 831
Hi All,
I finally got my W500 setup and watched and the chance to get a movie in (Transformers).
First a little about me and my setup.
I just moved homes, previously having built a dedicated theatre using an NEC 6PG CRT projector. Pic here: http://www3.sympatico.ca/james.bergeron/morepics.html
In my new home I was not going to be able to build a dedicated theatre room but wanted a similar experience on a budget. I decided on the W500 because of the low price and reviews I read here and online.
In my new setup I am sitting about 12 feet away from a 110" diagonal screen and was worried about black level and screen door effect -- I am not longer worried about those.
For my source I was using a Panasonic player (forget the model), it outputs 480p only via component, this was top of the line when I purchased it about 7 years ago, I remember paying around $900 + taxes :frowning:.
With this setup I noticed quite a bit of compression artifacts around detailed scenes. Mostly in faces where pot marks or hair on the face were present, I also noticed it around writing on screen or if any vertical / angled lines such as the power station tower in Transformers that falls just short of one of the soldiers.
I went out and purchased an LG player that upconverts via HDMI to 1080p at Best Buy on the weekend, lucky for me this was a door crasher sale and it only cost me $79. The difference was obvious immediately and I am now extremely pleased with my budget upgrade.
Black levels are plenty fine for me, screen door effect is not noticeable from my viewing distance, colour reproduction and brightness are excellent. I settled for 720p upconversion from the LG player as it looked best to me (less artifacts).
Artifacts are still slightly visible but you have to be looking for them, that is the only downside to this projector over my NEC 6PG I used previously.
The screen I am using is a DIY screen built from white vinyl material. I was originally going to use blackout cloth which I used for my NEC projector but the store was all out of the fabric, so I went with the white vinyl, I was a little worried about hot spotting but it turned out excellent.
The screen cost was about $120cdn including curtains around it, projector was $998 or something and DVD-player $79. It cost me about $50 for speaker wire for my new room, and about $30 for some plastic channel to hide the wires going from the rear of the room to the front, oh and almost forgot a stereo cabinet from Wal-mart for $130 which houses all my gear and the projector on top (my old theatre was built into the wall). I am happy with this setup for now and the cost was very minimal, some day I might move my equipment behind the rear wall in the storage room but I don't see a need for it.
Here are a few pics with my old DVD-Player, you can see some of the artifacts on the big gorilla around the chest and around the head, these are gone now, thankfully.
I finally got my W500 setup and watched and the chance to get a movie in (Transformers).
First a little about me and my setup.
I just moved homes, previously having built a dedicated theatre using an NEC 6PG CRT projector. Pic here: http://www3.sympatico.ca/james.bergeron/morepics.html
In my new home I was not going to be able to build a dedicated theatre room but wanted a similar experience on a budget. I decided on the W500 because of the low price and reviews I read here and online.
In my new setup I am sitting about 12 feet away from a 110" diagonal screen and was worried about black level and screen door effect -- I am not longer worried about those.
For my source I was using a Panasonic player (forget the model), it outputs 480p only via component, this was top of the line when I purchased it about 7 years ago, I remember paying around $900 + taxes :frowning:.
With this setup I noticed quite a bit of compression artifacts around detailed scenes. Mostly in faces where pot marks or hair on the face were present, I also noticed it around writing on screen or if any vertical / angled lines such as the power station tower in Transformers that falls just short of one of the soldiers.
I went out and purchased an LG player that upconverts via HDMI to 1080p at Best Buy on the weekend, lucky for me this was a door crasher sale and it only cost me $79. The difference was obvious immediately and I am now extremely pleased with my budget upgrade.
Black levels are plenty fine for me, screen door effect is not noticeable from my viewing distance, colour reproduction and brightness are excellent. I settled for 720p upconversion from the LG player as it looked best to me (less artifacts).
Artifacts are still slightly visible but you have to be looking for them, that is the only downside to this projector over my NEC 6PG I used previously.
The screen I am using is a DIY screen built from white vinyl material. I was originally going to use blackout cloth which I used for my NEC projector but the store was all out of the fabric, so I went with the white vinyl, I was a little worried about hot spotting but it turned out excellent.
The screen cost was about $120cdn including curtains around it, projector was $998 or something and DVD-player $79. It cost me about $50 for speaker wire for my new room, and about $30 for some plastic channel to hide the wires going from the rear of the room to the front, oh and almost forgot a stereo cabinet from Wal-mart for $130 which houses all my gear and the projector on top (my old theatre was built into the wall). I am happy with this setup for now and the cost was very minimal, some day I might move my equipment behind the rear wall in the storage room but I don't see a need for it.
Here are a few pics with my old DVD-Player, you can see some of the artifacts on the big gorilla around the chest and around the head, these are gone now, thankfully.
