X1 owners (1 Viewer)

[Jim Mcc]

I am looking to buy my first projector, and I am leaning toward DLP. I like the X1's reviews and price, but I am worried about my low ceiling(6'8" tall) and my screen being too low, due to the big offset of X1. I want to run it in 16:9 mode with a 16:9 screen. How will this look with the X1? What's this light spill I read about? Projectorcentral.com says there is "no degredation of signal" when using keystone with DVD's or HDTV. But is there a limit to how much I can cheat my screen up by tilting projector and using keystone? Thanks for any info. you can give me.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Jim:

I own a X1 and love it, but if I were purchasing a pj today, I would fork over the additional $500 or so for the Infocus 4805.

The 4805 is an improvement over the X1 (operating in one of its two home theater modes) in the area of lumens, contrast, color saturation, and color purity. In addition, the 4805 is equipped with a native 16:9 DLP chip as opposed to the X1's 4:3 chip with a 16:9 mode. Many owners of the X1, myself included, operate it exclusively in its 16:9 mode. Thus, the "light spill" that you've read about.

The 4805's color wheel provides an effective speed of 4x, which is twice the speed of the wheel in the X1. This helps to reduce the "Rainbow Effect" (RBE) for those individuals that are sensitive to it. The 4805 also provides an available DVI input which will be required for future HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray players.

Finally, the 4805 contains a much more advanced Faroudja DCDi chip than the one contained in the X1.

With that low ceiling, I would be prone to purchasing a projector table with adjustable telescoping legs as opposed to mounting the projector in the ceiling. This would give you the most flexibility in your installation. Da-Lite manufactures these kinds of tables.



Da-Lite also has available, as an accessory, a drape that can be attached to the front of the table to help make it appear a little more attractive in a permanent installation.

Good Luck!

 

[Mike LS]

I think the biggest compromise with your room will be screen size.

The ceilings in my room are probably 7'6" or so and I have my X1 ceiling mounted. My 16x9 screen is about 87". Overall size of the screen assembly is a little over 100" with the masking included.

With those ceiling heights, you'd still be fine ceiling mounting your projector, just don't expect to get a 100" 16x9 image unless you don't mind the bottom of the screen being about a 18" from the floor. As it is, my bottom screen masking is just a tad lower than my chair rail which is at 36" I think. That puts the screen starting at around 40" from the floor which is a little low, but not to where it's uncomfortable to look at for long periods of time.

You just need to make sure you mount the PJ as close to the ceiling as you can and still have good ventilation. You'll probably have to elevate the lens up just a little bit and use 2 or 3 clicks of keystone, but that little won't really make a difference in your image overall.

As far as your light spill question, that's the fact that the X1 is a 4:3 projector and always casts a square (basically) block of light regardless of what "mode" you have it in. It's like watching a widescreen movie on a 4:3 TV....you have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. When you use the X1 in 16x9 mode, the image is projected in the middle of the square light path, so there are unused portions of dark light over and under the image. This can be psuedo solved with masking. You take black felt or similar material and cover the unused portions of the screen so that the light spill isn't evident when the PJ is on.

Email me if you want some pictures that illustrate this.