InFocus 4805 for TV viewing (1 Viewer)

[DerekCV]

I know the Infocus 4805 topic has been beat to death... but I spent the last hour reading and didn't find a definiative answer.

I'm looking at getting a FP, I saw the 4805 at a store and thought that the picture was great. But they where playing DVD's and High Def TV through it. Right now I just have standard cable TV, not digital, not HD, just standard... so how is the picture on the 4805 when running a standard cable signal through it? I will be using it as an everyday TV and maybe the computer from time to time, in addition to moviesIs it horrible or is it decent? Thanks.

D

 

[George_W_K]

I don't have cable or satellite, but I can say that regular broadcast television signals look really good on the 4805.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Due to the built-in Faroudja de-interlacer, the 4805 can do a "decent" job with standard cable.

Just don't expect miracles ...

 

[James Phung]

You must remember watching regular tv on a small rptv, you won't notice the imperfections in the picture, but blow it up to 80+" they're going to be more noticeable. If you only have standard cable, I'm assuming you're just using your tv tuner to view channels. With the 4805, you'll need a vcr or cable box (anything with a tuner) in order to watch regular television. If you're going to get the 4805, I'd recommend getting an hd tuner (you can find some for under $200) that will give you regular hd channels along with standard tv.

 

[Seth--L]

Keep in mind that if you're using it for everyday TV viewing, you're going to go through the bulb quicker than normal (normal being DVD use only), and they aren't exactly cheap. Of course this will depend on just how many hours of TV you watch.

 

[terence]

Watching the local news right now on my 4805, and it looks great! Thx to the Faroudja de-interlacer chip, i'm using Dish Net as my tv provider. If the channels are not compressed the images look really good, if they are then yuck! YMWV

 

[TicoTVA]

Faroudja de-interlacer chip and its native 854 resolution is closer to that of STD , both make for a good non -HD pic

 

[lloydMon]

I've got Dish and a 4805 and it looks ok, nothing great.

 

[drobbins]

I get digital (not HD) tv through my phone company. Some channels are great some are not so good. Most all are decent though. I think it depends on the signal that they get from the broadcast station. As was stated it will just make any imperfection larger. I don't know if other projectors could do better. They just show what is given to them. I do watch a fair amount of tv with mine.

 

[MikeH]

drobbins (and others)..

How often to you need to replace the bulb. This is my main concern/worry about moving to a projector as it will be the main viewing source for all material.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Jack Ferry]

I found the picture using standard cable to be satisfactory. Nothing to write home about, but also not as bad as some of the forum comments might lead you to think. Still, once I hooked up the HD I was really spoiled.



The bulb is supposed to be good for about 3000 hours. Just do the math; how many hours a week do you normally watch TV?
I've had my 4805 for about 9 months and have 270 hours on it. Some days we use it a lot, other days not at all. At $300 a bulb, it's 10 cents an hour. If I can get 3 or 4 years out of the bulb, I don't think I'll complain too much.

 

[drobbins]

We have been using our theater much more than normal for many reasons, 1 new theater, 2 winter time, & 3 Blockbuster movie exchange program. We have put about 320 hours on our bulb in a little over 2 months. As for the price of a replacement bulb, I can buy the 4805 and a few bulbs for less that other TVs with a smaller screen. From what I have seen all the bulbs for projectors are in the same general price range. Ours is a dedicated theater, If you have room use a smaller tv for the news, weather channel etc.. You were wondering about picture quality, what do you think an up close of Larry King looks like on a 91" screen?

 

[John S]

Like 3 weeks ago, I hooked up one of these projos for somebody with a pull down screen. They use it in their living room for everything. They seem very happy with the arrangement so far on all sources. I'd give it a thumbs up...

 

[Jack Ferry]

That may be the best argument I ever heard for going back to a 19" TV.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Don't know how much this helps, but.....

It depends on how much you blow up the picture. I'm using an X1 with a 96" 4:3 screen, so 4:3 pictures are pretty gigantic. NTSC Dish Network looks awful, unwatchable even. 4:3 DTV broadcast programming from my HD STB looks good, LaserDiscs look very good. Since your projector is going to be 16:9, your picture will be the size of mine if I select "native" on the projector. This is a much smaller picture, and actually is tolerable for Dish, still not very good though.

 

[Scott L]

I think it looks like crap. It's not the 4805's fault. Blowing up NTSC is always a challenge. Once everything goes HD it won't be a problem anymore, because even the SD material on the HD channels (ie- watching Conan after Jay on NBC-HD) looks decent.

 

[Pat Frank]

I can confirm that. I recently switched to DirecTV's HD service, and it looks amazing on my 4805. Out of this world.

 

[Brian Fellmeth]

Regular TV is OK. I just got HD going, and its spectacular. Way better than DVD which I don't understand since DVD matches the PJ's native projection- should be as good as it can be. The PJ somehow does something with the extra data in an HD signal despite the pixel limitation.

 

[John S]

Brian, I have done some testing, and I am convinced the source resolution is way more important than the display resolution once you get to 480p and beyond. HD looks really killer at ED, since the source contains more details than a DVD it does make it through even at ED (480p) display resolutions.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Brian, John, it's not the source resolution that makes HDTV look better than DVD, it's the fact that HDTV has much better color resolution than DVD. The amount of pixels in the picture is not the whole story, the amount of color depth in the pixels is also very important. For example... How often do you see "banding" in large solid color areas on DVD? How often do you see thid "banding" on HDTV? If I showed you two pictures, both the same resolution, but one with 32K colors and one with 64K colors, you could easily that the 64K color picture looks better than the 32K color picture. Same kind of thing here. Number of pixels is only part of the story.

Much less often! My problem with HDTV is the darn macroblocking.