worth it? projector & small screen size (1 Viewer)

[SteveSs]

A question or 2 for you all. I am researching projectors for a theater area in my basement. I am severely limited in my dimensions. The best I can do is a throw of 10ft and seating of 11-12 ft. Using an Infocus SP4805, I come up with a screen size of w57xh32xd65. That's pretty small compared to these monster screens most projector owners have. Do you think it's worth it? The space savings over a CRT or RPTV is important to me, so maybe that's my answer. Still, I am curious what others would choose to do.

The other question I have is whether I would have less SDE and RBE by having the smaller screen.

Thanks.
Steve

 

[Neil Joseph]

You have less sde the smaller you make the screen, yes. The rbe would diminish too because much of the effect comes from panning your head/eyes quickly across a screen.

A consideration is, if you move, to another room perhaps, then you could use the existing pj for a larger screen, also the physical move would be much easier. I should dig up an old (and very funny) thread on a rptv that would not fit (easily) into a ht owner's new room.

 

[SolomonP]

Perhaps try a different projector? I have a Sanyo Z1 and have an 11' throw and can get well north of 100" (I don't have it that big, but it can be if I want it). The reason that I didn't get an X1 or even 4805 was the throw ratio--I wanted a bigger image in a smaller room.

My wife and I are both front-row theatre goers, so we were willing to trade off some artifacts for screen size. You may have different priorities. A smaller screen will give you more brightness, more sharpness and fewer artifacts (and also less sensitivity to ambient light). A bigger screen gives you, well, a bigger screen. It all depends on what YOU and YOUR EYES prefer.

I will say this, though. We just moved from a 2nd floor apartment to another 2nd floor apartment. It was a dream moving an 8' projector instead of a 170 lb RPTV. Our current room feels bigger because we don't have a big box on the floor. Even if you can only get a 65" screen, I'd STILL go FP over RPTV.

 

[Leo Kerr]

I'm using a Panny PT-LC75u with a roughly 8' throw to a 65/70" diagonal screen.

There's nothing silly about it at all. The only silly thing is consider this:

you can spend $1500-$2000 and get a nice, small, quiet projector that'll do a 50" diag picture. Or you can spend $5000 and get a 37" diagonal LCD TV.

Hmmm...

Leo Kerr

 

[Stephen Bort]

Hi, guys, pretty new, so could you explain sde and rbe?

Also, if you can get an 100" screen at 11' with the Z1 and a 72" screen at 11' with the 4805, what are you giving up when a projector has a greater throw ratio? Is throw ratio listed on a projector's features?

 

[Cameron Wright]

SDE is screen door effect. Common in all LCD projectors. Some of the more costly ones don't have SDE as visible. It looks like you are looking at a screen door if you sit to close and look really closely at the image.. happens because LCD uses a zillion little mirrors to reflect the image. not sure what RBE is tho....

 

[Steven_Jobe]

RBE is rainbow effect. It is the appearance or rainbows which can only be seen by some and occurs only with DLP projectors.

 

[teapot2001]

I would look at other projectors. With my Panasonic 300u, I can get around a 100" image from distance of 10'.

~T

 

[Lee Distad]

If you're going with a budget projector, the Toshiba TLP-ET1 will throw a 16x9 100" screen at 8'2".

 

[SteveSs]

Lot's of good information and suggestions. Thanks. I'm interested in those examples of people with close seating and giant screens. It sounds like some of you are using screens that exceed the 2:1 guideline for seating distance vs. screen width. I guess that's why they call it a "guideline." My research seems to indicate that the DLP projectors all seem to project in similar dimensions (at least the lower priced ones). The Panny PT-L500U seems to be the most affordable LCD that will give me a larger picture at 10ft. Hopefully I can demo one somewhere. Do LCDs have the same problems with SDE and RBE? I know they are more sensitive to light conditions...

 

[SolomonP]

SDE (screen door effect) occurs on both LCD and DLP projectors. LCD tends to have more SDE than DLP and lower res projectors tend to have more SDE than higher res. That being said, you can generally get more pixels/$ in LCD, so you can some times have less SDE for the same cost due to the higher resolution.

RBE is unique to 1-chip DLPs. I can't see it personally, but it's supposedly a sensation of color smearing which is caused by the nature of DLP projection. 1-chip DLPs only show 1 color at a time (Red, Green, Blue), and your eye mixes them together. Some people can IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES discern the individual colors and some of them are bothered by this. 3 chip DLPs (very expensive), CRTs, and LCDs don't have this problem because they display all three colors at once.

LCDs are not always more sensitive to light conditions than DLPs. Some LCD projectors are brighter than DLPs. This can give you an ADVANTAGE in bad light conditions (frequently more than enough to counter the contrast ratio limitations).

FYI, on the LCDs, the Panasonics are generally considered to have better video quality than the Sanyo. That being said, the Sanyo has lens shift which gives you A LOT more flexibility in positioning. It CAN BE a reason to buy a Sanyo Z2 over a Panasonic PT-L500 (it's why I bought my Z1 instead of Panny 300).

One other note.... On the 500/Z2 you can exceed the 2x screen width pretty comfortably. On my lower res Z1, I sit around 1.5x screen width and am very happy (simply because I don't really care about the artifacts that I see--many would consider my screen too large).

 

[Steven_Jobe]

I have a Sony VPL-HS20 and I seriously sit in one part of my media room no more than 5 or 6 feet from it(it's a 92" screen) and see no artifacts of any sort and I have very very good vision. It may be that it's a $3500 projector but the specs are comparative to the $1500 ones. This may be off topic and I don't remember what all was written about this but I saw something and just wanted to comment.