astroglide's home theater: what i own, what i would buy today

[BukNaked36]

Doesn't anybody have projectors?

I throw a standard TV 100" diagonal image that looks great as long as the signal quality is there. HD is literally jawdropping and I don't even have that great of a setup.

You can pick up a nice 720p projector for about $1000 now and a standard manual screen is roughly $100. You can pick up a ceiling mount off ebay for $50.

For less than the price of a 42" HDTV, you can be shooting a really nice 100" image and everybody will think you dropped five or ten thousand on it.

If anybody is interested www.projectorcentral.com is the best reference on the web and www.avsforum.com has an excellent forum on projectors.

[BukNaked36]

Just as an example this image is on a 9 foot diagonal screen.



edit: Had to add this one because it gets the message across.

[troymclur]

Anybody willing to spend 2-4k on an LCD would be better off spending that on a high-quality projector that will put up an HD image 2-3 times bigger.

[ QUOTE ]
Doesn't anybody have projectors?

I throw a standard TV 100" diagonal image that looks great as long as the signal quality is there. HD is literally jawdropping and I don't even have that great of a setup.

You can pick up a nice 720p projector for about $1000 now and a standard manual screen is roughly $100. You can pick up a ceiling mount off ebay for $50.

For less than the price of a 42" HDTV, you can be shooting a really nice 100" image and everybody will think you dropped five or ten thousand on it.

If anybody is interested www.projectorcentral.com is the best reference on the web and www.avsforum.com has an excellent forum on projectors.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have an HD1000U Mitsubishi and am just gaga over it.

I made a 100in screen myself using this technique, but i painted it on a 4x8 piece of dry-erase board and had it framed. Total cost was just under 200 bucks (130 was for the frame).

I have an Onkyo 790 boxed audio setup

And an oppo 971 Upconverting DVD player.

I'll put up some shots of the setup later if anybody wants. I can say without a doubt that this is the best purchase i have ever made. For the price, it's unbeatable (about 1k for the projector), as the only downside are the blacks, which are still quite amazing. However, movies like Dark City don't look as good as they would on an LCD (though i'm largly nit-picking, as they are still very presentable)

The only downside is that you really need to control the light in your room, you just can't watch anything with sunlight in the room. Ambient light from any bulbs is acceptable, but you really want the room to be as dark as possible, so i'd really only recommend getting a projector for movie watching (though I use it for TV watching with no problems)

[Orangeheat]

I got the Harmony 670 for Christmas and it is awesome! Super simple to program and customize - burns through batteries as noted, but I just picked up a bunch of the 15 minute charge ones and it is not a problem.

Logitech has good customer service as well - the screen stopped functioning (think the kids dropped it) and they sent me a new one by DHL within a couple of days.

Other stuff in the home theater:

TV - Vizio 50" Plasma - Couldn't beat it for the price ($1499) - picture is great! Also has 2 HDMI ins which came in handy. Remote sucked - plan on getting an all in one if you don't have one.

DVD - PHL DVP5960 Philips Up convert DVD Player with HDMI - Bargain at $60 and I don't need to worry about the format war going on.

DVR - Scientific Atlantic Time Warner box with HDMI.

Stand - Techcraft Plasma Stand - Sturdy and lots of access in the back to wire things up.

Surround Sound - Sony Home Theater System (HT-DDW700) - This was pretty cheap at $180 but sounds good and is plenty for my space. The speakers are pre-wired and the sub isn't powered, but overall a good starter. I did spend quite a bit of time and bought good speaker wire and fixtures and ran the runs from behind the home theater to the back of the room through the walls so I can upgrade the system in the future and don't have any exposed wires.

Games - Regular Xbox and Wii with Component cables. Love the Wii - Wife, kids (3 and 4), and I have a ball with bowling.

I got everything except the remote and Wii at thanksgiving. I am not sure why I decided to replace everything I used to have, but it was fun doing it myself, not too expensive, and it is plenty for everyday TV with the occasional DVD marathon.

Orange

[Borodog]

I just toured a new visualization-wall facility last week that is 14'x10', 6400 x 4096 resolution. It's fairly impressive. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[BukNaked36]

[ QUOTE ]
I just toured a new visualization-wall facility last week that is 14'x10', 6400 x 4096 resolution. It's fairly impressive. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

That sounds absolutely insane.

[astroglide]

[ QUOTE ]
Doesn't anybody have projectors?

[/ QUOTE ]

i only keep up on them peripherally, but if i had a theater-capable spare room i would probably pick up a sony vpl-vw50 (pearl) or jvc dla-rs1 in a flash.

a theater room and dogs are the things i most look forward to in a home. i doubt i will buy one until i have a kid though, my condo suits our needs just fine.

[goofyballer]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm really surprised that you're talking about burn-in on plasma. Do you disagree with the conventional wisdom that it isn't an issue anymore with newer models.

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i think the effects are dramatically overstated. you're not going to blow up your television by playing a video game, etc. but i have seen enough slightly smoked sets in-person to have lingering concerns about 4:3 black boxes, since i refuse to stretch. the bottom line for me is that a 0.25% or whatever chance of burn-in is too great when i get just as easily get 0.0%. it's the same thing as the dlp rainbows, not many people see them but i can avoid the risk entirely. i will take impossible over extremely unlikely if it's reasonable.

[/ QUOTE ]

I suppose it varies from person to person depending on what you like to watch, but very little of the content I watch is 4:3 anymore. Most of my TV usage is for HD sports, Xbox 360 (all games display in HD, and even a decent amount of Xbox games have HD support as well), and mostly mainstream TV shows. The local ABC and CW affiliates doesn't broadcast in HD (bastards) but I can download HD rips of shows like Lost or One Tree Hill and stream them over my Xbox. Pretty much the only thing I watch in standard definition are non-HD sporting events (which are becoming more and more rare), shows like Family Guy that don't exist in widescreen, and cable shows like The Shield.

What do you think about the picture quality of plasmas versus rear-projection TVs (LCD and SXRD)? I bought my KDF-E50A10 (Sony 50" LCD rear-projection) a little over a year ago, and I probably would have gone with a Panasonic 50" plasma instead if not for price ($3500 vs $2200). I'm happy with my purchase, although I do see the screen door effect to a certain degree during some programming, especially hockey games (something to do w/ the white background I guess). However, when I was shopping for sets and doing a lot of comparing in stores, I thought that the plasma displays had a noticeably better PQ than the RP LCDs.

That said, SXRDs were pretty new back then and I still haven't seen one up close; also, being able to get 1080p way cheaper on an SXRD than on a plasma these days is nice, and I've heard they're pretty hot.

[Myrtle]

[ QUOTE ]
myrtle i'm sure we all welcome any corrections or insight, but you could just post when you've got the time and let the facts speak for themselves instead of citing credentials. your post read to me like a kind of presumptuous "i'll clue you in after i'm done being a professional" announcement. please don't take this as a personal assault, i'm just saying i think it's a bad approach. imagine if somebody went to a strat thread and said, "i'm a pro holdem player, and most of you have it wrong." especially if they didn't claim what or why.

[/ QUOTE ]

....y'know what, astro?

It's 8:40pm here and I'm still at work closing out the month, and thought I'd take a quick look at the thread to see if there were any responses to my post of early this morning.

You couldn't be farther from the truth if you think that there's any presumption in me surrounding this subject.....just a whole hell of a lot of experience with thes things for the past 40 years or so.

I'll take your suggestion and change my approach......

Why don't we all forget my prior post, and that I know anything about this subject.

I'm sure that you all can do just fine without any presumptuous knowledge on my part.

[Myrtle]

I promised a simple, no 'bs' fix for anyone who has a plasma and is concerned about 'burn-in'.

Go to........

http://www.pixelprotector.com/

They're out of the UK and this disc is the best 40 bucks you'll ever spend.