Limitations of a 800 x 600 format? (1 Viewer)

[Domonic A]

What are my limitations with a projector with a 800 x 600 format that is DTV/HDTV compatible, up to 1080i formats?

This is the Marantz VP8000 that I have inquried about in another post. For this thing to only have 700 Lumens and a 500:1 contrast ratio, this thing looked great.

Is it possible that this projector is as good as another that my be putting out 1000+ Lumens and a higher contrast ratio?

I NEED HELP!!!!

Thank You,
Domonic A.

 

[Neil Joseph]

It is very possible. That is the problem with specs. They are usually always ideal-world figures. There are projectors with "lower" specs that are pretty much calibrated correctly out of the box. Then there are other projectors that have much better looking specs but require much more tweaking and adjusting to achieve the properly calibrated results and by the time these adjustments have been made, the picture has lost a lot of its brightness and/or contrast ratio specs.

 

[Allan Jayne]

The 800 x 600 format does not quite give you 16:9 mode. A 16:9 picture within the projector's default 4:3 frame wants to occupy 450 rows of pixels, not quite enough for 480p. A 16:9 picture with 480 pixels vertically wants 853 pixels horizontally.

The alternatives are the usual ones mentioned time and again on this forum and subject to the features of you equipment which may include an external scaler. Have an 800 x 480 picture with 3% or 26 projector pixels' worth of picture cropped off each side, have an 800 x 480 picture that is slightly squished side to side, or use an anamorphic lens.

As an example of scalers with flexible scaling, if you have a Lumagen scaler, if you select output resolution of 800 x 600 and an "output aspect ratio" of 1.66:1 the picture will be automatically scaled to 800 x 480 and your projector will show the entire picture with a little side to side squishing.

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[BrianMagog]

Any links to a good anamorphic lens? I have an 800x600 projector with nearly those same specs (I bought a few years ago, at the time it wasn't quite as obsolete!) . Last I looked (about 2 years ago), these lenses were astronomically priced. Have they gone down any? Thanks.