Questions from a Newbie? (1 Viewer)

[Jason_M]

I am looking into creating my first HT and i have a few questions. i want a projector. Here are my questions:

1. what is this rainbow effect I am reading about?
2. what is better DLP or LCD?
3. how often do you replace bulb?
4. how will I know what size screen to use?
5. what is the diff. between XGA and SVGA?
6. what is the diff. in a business projector and a media projector?


i work at circuit city and the 2nd link in my sig shows the projectors I can get, which would be best for the money? i am not a baller by any means so money is always a concern. thanks guys.

 

[Gregg Loewen]

hi Jason

Do a search on each of the questions you have put forth and you will find all the answers you need.

Best wishes

Gregg

 

[Benson R]

The search function will definetly get you the answers to yours questions but as someone who has been pouring through all the threads before purchasing a FP I understand its sometimes difficult for a newbie to find there answer in 20 page long threads.

I'll try to answer a few of your questions, but I am definetly a novice compared to most around here so you should follow up my answers by searching on your own.

1. The rainbow effect is a sideeffect of the way dlp fp creates the picture. Instead of having 3 different color beams converging together there is one with a rotating color wheel in front of it. At any given instant only one color is being shown but your vision percieves all the colors combined together. However for many people this can create floating rainbows in the picture for an instant every once in a while. Whether you see them depends on the person.
2. Depends on the person. The negative of dlp is the rainbow effect and the plus is better contrast and brighter more punchy image. The negative of lcd is a more pronounced screen door effect(you can see the pixel structure, its like looking at the image through a screen door) and less contrast and brightness. The big plus is no rainbow effect.
3. Depends on the projector, check the manufactur's website it should say. I only know of the x1 which I believe is now 4000 which I think is rather long.
4. Again check manufacturer's website. I have my x1 at 14.5 feet and I get an image width between 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 feet.
5. xga and svga are resolution. svga is 800x600 and xga is 1024x800 I believe. More resolution is better but with dvd it wont make a huge difference but with hdtv you will want that extra resolution.
6.Business is designed for boardroom presentations. Usually moderately lit rooms and excel presentation. Requires brightness high contrast but color accuracy and other things is less important. Media is intended for light controlled hometheaters where you can by with a little less brightness but color and other parts of the image are more important. Many of the popular projectors around here though are advertised as business use but are popular for hometheater use.

Hope that helps, and please if anyone catches mistakes(which i'm sure there are) please correct me.

 

[Jason_M]

Thanks for the help Benson. I am a regular on a lot of other forums that deal with car audio and I always try to help others because the search function is useful at times but can take forever. So I really appreciate you helping me instead of directing me to the search engine. Thanks again.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

Re: Rainbow Effect

This varies wildly from person to person. For myself, I do not seem to be prone to it with my Infocus X1 and no one who has seen the projector at my house has seen it either. However, some people are very susceptible to them. The only real way to know is to do some viewing yourself.

 

[Benson R]

I'm glad you appreciate the help Jason. As far as your question to which projector from the list is the best buy, I cant answer because I have only seen the projector I own in action, the x1.

However the nearly universal consesus right now seems to be that the x1 is king of the low end. However it still has the problem with rainbows which is subjective. What I would do is pick up the x1, watch it for a week or two, then if the rainbows are a problem return it and go with an lcd projector.

 

[Jason_M]

cool, maybe I'll try that.

 

[ChadLB]

www.projectorcentral.com will answer alot of questions.

 

[joey mr]

i will give tell you a little secret for the low end units try the benq6100 or the optoma h30 with 6 segment and 4 xcolor wheel vey sweet pj's

and for lcd check out the epson home 10

 

[Benson R]

I thought about ordering the Benq6100 but the only dealer I knew of that carried it and I trusted was newegg. Unfortunately Newegg's return policy was only for defective units. I wanted to be able to return the unit if unsatified so I found Bestbuy's return policy on the x1 better for my needs. Plus I think Jason wants to order from projector's that circuit city carries because I think he wants to use his employee discount.

 

[Jason_M]

Bingo!! Not only that, if I have issues I can return it easily since I work there and not get hassled. I really don't want to go online even if it is cheaper, because i don't trust return policies online.