Pulling the trigger on an Infocus 4805 (1 Viewer)

[Bill_Boston]

Newbie question about the 4805 (and projectors in general) ... are they only meant for the "big" picture, or, will you still get a good picture if you calibrate the projector for a 50" screen (or possibly less)?

Thank you.

 

[Citizen87645]

I think it looks fine (e.g. not over bright), though some might advise attaching a neutral density filter to decrease the intensity a bit. This opinion after spending about 10 hours playing video games at a friends house and projecting at the minimum distance (six feet or so).

 

[Patrick Nevin]

I just talked to my dealer and he as a 74" screen that he said would work perfect for me setting 7' away form the screen while the 4805 will be 12' back. I mentioned about the SDE and he said that since this is a very entry level projector that i will see some pixels when I am close to the screen but cause I am 7' back i will be fine. .

 

[Citizen87645]

My screen is 73 inches diagonal and I sit about nine feet back from it. That's about as close as I would go; if I could sit further back I would. You may feel differently. Just a heads up.

 

[DaveGTP]

I sit 9-10ft away from the screen - right next to my Infocus X1. I slightly defocused the projector to help solve the very evident screen door. Now I see it only rarely. But even 6"-12" closer and the screen door becomes very apparent.

I can't imagine sitting that close to the projector screen. Honestly, you should fire it up and see before you pay to have it professionally installed.

Conventional wisdom is 1.5x to 2x screen width away from the screen for digital projectors. Especially with 480p projectors, 2x is really the recommended. At 74", that's a minimum of 9.25 ft away @ 1.5 x. 1x distance would be about 6.2 feet. So you're sitting at almost 1x.


You really need to be farther away, or go with a different technology. I know my wife can't see the SDE at all at 9ft, focused normally, but then again she wears contacts, and has atigmatism in her eyes. I have one very near sighted eye and one almost 20/20 eye (and never wear my glasses - haven't had them on in years) - and I clearly see the SDE during white scenes.

 

[Patrick Nevin]

I have worn glasses most of my life. So I will have to see (HAHA) if i can see the screen door effect. I will have to find a movie in my collection with a white scene or just pop in Kill Bill with the chapter text.

 

[Lyle_E]

Finally my 4805 has arrived!!!
Hooked it up and was blown away!!
Plugged in 'Finding Nemo' Did a quick thx calibration.
Now i have to say when I watched this movie on my 43" Hitachi RPTV, I have never seen the detail that this movie has... I was amazed at the scales on all the fish for one.

I have a 75" Diag dalite model B high gain screen and sit 10' back and 15' from the screen Click to see seating arrangment


I would have to agree

tonight I plug in the DVE disc and do it right and tight.

I am glad I pulled the trigger!

 

[Patrick Nevin]

Well tomorrow is the big day. The installer will be at my house between 7:30 or 8:00 AM. I am hoping it will be done by 10, but if it takes longer it will be cool. I will let you guys know how it goes

 

[Patrick Nevin]

Well the screen and the projector were installed yesterday morning. The installer set it up and did some key stoning which is good but i have to do some tweaking on it tonight. I did not use Avila on it yet but that will be also done tonight after it gets dark. The main thing I wanted to get use to last night was how big the picture is with DVD's & TV. The screen size it 74". I do not see any SDE, rainbows, or dust blobs from where I am. The installer told me that when I am done with the projector just press the power button on the remote and to not turn off the projector fully cause the settings will be lost. I turned it off fully last night cause I don't have any settings yet. Well I am off to get ready to go to Best Buy to buy a pro component video switcher and some AR component cables to hook up my PS2 cause my receiver dosen't have component inputs. Well that is all i have for now. If you guys have any tips just let me know.

 

[Jack Gilvey]

He's not too bright. That's even less-informed than his screen suggestions. Power down from the remote, then turn off the switch after the bulb cools, about a minute (green light stops flashing). The settings will not be lost.

 

[Citizen87645]

Yeah, his recommendations haven't been too great, which concerns me a bit overall. Not to rain on your parade or anything, I would just go over the installation and post any concerns you might have here. Other than that, enjoy the heck out of it and congratulations!

 

[DaveGTP]

So I guess it is just a few minutes. I never power down hard unless it will be at least 15 minutes until I am powering it up again.



I would expect your 4805 to have the same basic principles behind it as the X1.



DON'T leave it powered off 'soft' without hard shutdown via the button. The fan continues to run at a minimal level. Thus, as some have said on AVS, it operates as a room air cleaner, sucking in air, dirtying up the filter (which normally needs to be cleaned every 250 hours).

 

[Patrick Nevin]

Thanks for the tips guys. I did do a hard power down last night and checked the settings today and they did not reset. I did calibrate it last night but it was hard to do the color cause of my cheap dvd player. I love the fact that there is no burn-in with DLP projectors, cause I was watching TV in 4:3 mode today. I also love the feature of letterbox for DVD's not formatted for wide screen TV's. There is a little tilting in the picture which the left side is hight than the right side. Would that be due to my subwoofer or my speakers? I noticed after calibrating that the blacks are not black, but I am gonna be repainting my room a dark color and getting dark carpet in about a month? Any suggestions on color? If that helps it I hope my picture will be more black. If not I will buy a lens filter for it. When using AVIA for the contrast test should I use the two moving bars and adjust the contrast just to were I can see one bar moving, cause that is what I did last night. Well that is all I have for now

 

[Citizen87645]

Umm...please explain?

 

[Patrick Nevin]

It is perfect on the right side but as you look on the left side of the screen the image GRADUALLY tilts up.

 

[Citizen87645]

I was confused about that relating to your speakers. I'm not sure how that could happen.

 

[SteveCoug]

Here's my experience with my InFocus 4805 ...

Screen distance is VERY important.

I have a 92" diagonal screen and when I first set it up, I was sitting 11 feet away. The picture was good, but I could see some pixels, especially in white areas. When I got my DVB318 DVD player, I went from 480 to 1080i and the higher resolution was much better, but I could still some some pixels or lines if I looked for them. My wife and kids say I am way too picky, they don't notice them but I could see them. I got up and moved a few feet behind the couch and the picture was much better. So I re-arranged some stuff in the room and was able to move the couch back to 13 feet away from the screen and that made a BIG difference. Now I can't see pixels even when I look for them. So I would say you need to be at least 13 feet from the screen to avoid the "screen door effect" if you are using a 92 inch screen and you are very particular about your video quality. If I could move back further, I defintely would. The 4805 looks GREAT .. but you have to view it from the proper distance or you may be disappointed.

Now I admit that I am overly critical, but I assume that people that take the time to read this forum are the same way.

I was actually considering sending my screen back and getting a smaller screen until I was able to reconfigure the furniture in the room to give me an extra couple feet of distance away from the screen.

For the "average" viewer, the 11 foot distance was probably OK, but to a video nerd who is looking for flaws (like me) the visible pixels would have bugged me more and more over time.

As for the fan noise, it is definitely there. But I run my surround sound so loud that I drown it out. ;-)

The PJ also generates a lot of HEAT. I live in Seattle and we don't have air conditioning so the room can get pretty hot on a summer day or evening if you are watching movies for a few hours. I keep the door of my rec room open and use a fan to blow cool air into the room from the rest of the basement to prevent my rec room from getting too hot for comfort.

This probably isn't an issue if you have air conditioning, but it's something to consider if you have a room that can get over heated.

 

[Parker Clack]

Steve:

Some guys have built hush boxes that also include fans to exhaust the heat from the unit. They are usually made out of plexy. You just put your projector in the box, add some flexable exhaust pipe and vent the heated air out of the room. That way you get the noise of the fan elemented and the heat from the projector gone.

There have been several posts in the past on these hush boxes so you might want to search the forum to get an idea of what I am talking about. One of them is with a company called Whisper Flow.

Parker

 

[DaveGTP]

My screen is a 88" 16:9ish screen (size is weird because it was easier to just build using untrimmed lumber). It is 6ft wide by 51" tall (51" x 72").

I am about 9-10 feet away. Defocusing the pj just a bit made the SDE go away in everything (except once in a while in something white).

 

[Citizen87645]

If you want to see an example of a hushbox go to www.whisperflow.com

I tried to contact the guy twice but received no response. I know it's not his main source of income, but still...Anyways, I wound up building one of my own. I don't have the option of venting the air out of the room, but the noise is definitely reduced by more than 50%, which is enough to eliminate it as an annoyance during quiet passages of films. I don't think I listen to things as loud as some people so noise reduction was important.