just bought front projector. OMG!
 

Last night I brought home an Infocus SP4805 DLP projector with a 76" screen. I didn't have time to install the screen, but I did test out the picture on the dingy white painted panelling in my basement. Unbelieeeeeeeevable. I watched a few minutes of Finding Nemo and was stunned at the quality of the out-of-the-box colors. The screen goes up tonight. The sound system gets moved to the basement tomorrow. I can't believe I'm getting a bigger and better picture than people spending over 2K on TVs. Anyone else gone front projection?

If I had my own house, and full basement etc, I would. However, the bulb burning out would suck, as a side note.

But when I have the room, and ability, i will purchase one. Congrats on the purchase!

What kind of sound system is it?

76 inches you say? How far back is your projector? I really wanna ditch my 32" flat Panasonic CRT for an InFocus 4805. Like really bad. And what screen did you get? Was it custom made that size or an "off the shelf" model. Upon looking at InFocus' site, I can throw out a max image of 72," and no one makes a prebuilt screen that small. If I do do the projector I'll have Stewart Filmscreen custom make one for me.

That sounds awesome, do you mind telling us how much you paid for the projector and how long you expect the bulb to last?

My basement is unfinished at the moment, but I plan on building a front projector into the ceiling when I get rolling on that project in about a year.

*How long is the throw for a 76" image?
*Do you really need a screen or can I just paint the wall white? Glossy or Matte?
*how much fan noise are you dealing with?
*Anything else you could tell me about your experience with the projector would be appreciated.

the_marq: I've heard about a special paint called Screen Goo used specifically for projection televisions. I know nothing more about it, however.

Thanks for the good thoughts! I've done a lot of research on this stuff. The 4805 was definitely the way to go for the price of $1400, which included the 16x9 screen. It's a starter screen. I plan on making my own bigger screen later, if the 76" doesn't cut it. I've read that there are a few paints over at Home Depot that produce very nice screens. One of which is Behr Silversceen. I've got some notes somewhere which use that mixed and layered with other colors.
My projector is 12 ft from the screen. The couch is at 11 ft. Screen door effect is visible up close, but is invisible from the couch. In the store, I saw a demo with a 108" screen. Sitting about 10 ft away, the screen door was faintly visible but not annoying in the least.
I can't wait to set up the sound tonight. I run a mix of Totem and Dynaudio speakers thru 2 amps, a Rotel 2-channel and an Acurus 3-channel. I also have a baby Sunfire subwoofer. It shakes the family room, but probably won't even move air in my bomb-shelter-like basement.

I will post more as my experience grows. The family is pushing me to get everything set up so it's ready to go for the long weekend.

shit, can I come over?

About a year ago my company needed a projector for our conference room. The problem was that the throw was only going to be about 6ft because of the drop lighting we have. I ended up getting a VeiwSonic PJ551 for about $1200. At 6ft. I get a 60" screen size and the picture is great. It has inputs for regualr monitor in, RCA, component video and S-Video and will output HD video. Plus it's really small. I have been thinking of bring my XBox to work and playing Halo2 on it, just to see what it can really do.

Last night I installed the screen and brought the surround sound gear down from the family room. We watched all of Finding Nemo. Pretty cool. I'm looking at a 76" screen and thinking "I could use a bigger picture." I must be nuts!
Learnin's:
1. I need a ceiling mount;
2. Don't put masking tape on a shag carpet and leave it for a few months.

Man, I wish I had that setup.

I'm older than the hills and had a few bucks saved up. Now I have a theater in my cold, dark, damp basement. What's cool is that my wife wanted this, too.

I work for a A/V production and rental company and we deal a lot with home theater installs and conference projection setting..
If you have abut 14-1800 to throw out there Eiki is releasing a very nice product with a DVD player built in that cna do VGA in and out, Svideo, Composite, and RCA, it also takes compact flash media for a photoslideshop..
It woks ceiling or regular mounted, but has manual focus at the moment.

Just a thought for all you home theater buffs. Oh and the bulb is suppose to last well over 10k hours.

post some pictures.... pls

What does a replacement bulb cost?

I think the replacement bulb for mine is $400. It's rated at 4000 hours. If I use it 10 hours per week, that's 400 weeks or 7-8 years. I'm not using it for TV, just movies and special sports events.

I bought a projector back in July and everyone who sees it is amazed. And I just have mine projecting on a light grey wall. I spent $1900 and have a 110 inch high definition setup!!!!

i've always been interested in getting a front projector, even more so than a big rear projection tv or plasma. the thing is, i'm only 22 and don't think i'll have a house with a nice basement anytime soon, meaning i'd have to deal with natural light interfering with the picture. does anyone know just how big an issue this is? are there any projectors out there bright enough to compensate for this?

i doubt i'll be getting one anytime soon anyway, but i'm still curious and eventually i'll have the funds to afford one, so i might as well plan ahead, right?

Today's DLP projectors actually work pretty well in non-light controlled situations. I can even have a light on in the same room and not be completely put off.

Very nice. I really like the Totem sound. Almost...almost bought a set of Model One Sigs, but they were hard to find in my area.

Have fun. Sounds like a great set up.

Some more experiences with my new projector. This weekend we watched 'Rebecca', a 1940 black and white Hitchcock film. The DVD is from Criterion, so the quality of the source was topnotch. I found that my eyes were getting strained near the end of the film. I was starting to see rainbows. I believe they are more pronounced in B&W films because of the lack of color they could blend in to. About an hour later we watched 'Dodgeball'. This was a much different experience. No rainbows, no fatigue. It's pretty exciting to see a giant 16x9 picture on your own wall.

Congrats on your purchase! I've always wanted to get a projector for my second bedroom, and set it up as a movie room. I've done some research on video projectors, and I found a pretty good online resource that answers a lot of questions using video projectors and offers buying advice. They sell projectors, but I found the FAQs, and the buying guides on the left to be very useful.

Link Projector People

I bought a BenQ PB6200 in April, and have loved the experience immensely. I get an effective ~90" screen size with the projector 14 ft away, and since the couch is closer, we've got a better-viewing-angle-than-THX-specs setup (45.2 degrees according to the Viewing Distance Calc ). It seems almost silly going to the theatre, when the projector showing on our (carefully painted) wall takes up as much field-of-vision real estate as all but the biggest screens. The best thing you can do, though, is find a high-end AV shop and have them give you a grand tour in your price range. Pick 2-3 of your favorites inside that price range, and do some research on the finer details and issues with those projectors.

At 1700 lumens, the picture's still fairly visible even with the blinds open and without sunlight shining directly in, but the colors are washed out. Whatever projector you have, you'll want to either watch it at night or put it in a room with thick drapes. Projector Central has plenty of info about projectors from beginners up through an intermediate level, and lots of good purchasing info, so be sure to at least check them out before making a purchase.

Projector Central was my bible for the last months, guiding me through my purchase. Definitely a good recommendation.

So, on Friday, with the shopping all done and the house cleaned up, I watched all 3 Indiana Jones flicks. Just what I needed; another reason to sit on my ass all day long.

The SP4805 is a very nice DLP projector.

Personally I am a big fan of the CRT Electrohome Marquee series. I have a couple of the 8500's and thier picture quality is just amazing. I previously had an 8000 and have recently upgraded to the Electrohome marquee 8500 due to increased brightness and stigmata control. They are rated at a resolution of 1600x1200 but will go higher. The screen I am using is a da-lite matte finish 96"x96" pulldown and a 16x9 image ratio displayed on it.

I use this projector with a vga to rgb cable and run all my regular cable/game consoles through the ati 9800pro AIW. I also have a KVM switch setup so I can switch to the HDTV cable box using the pc keyboard. These projectors have a serial port on the back so with a little programming I was able to set them up to turn on and off via keystroke instead of adding thier remote controls into the already large remote pile =P.

The only downside to these CRTs is the size and weight. It is a real chore to mount the units to the ceiling. Also even when this is done properly they are quite the eyesore.

I purchased all of my CRT projectors via ebay and electrohome marquee projectors go for around $600-$2500 based on thier condition and the quality of the seller's auction page. Though I have never spent over $1,200 for any of my electrohome projectors.

Nocuous, you are talking about one of those gigantic 3 color projectors that I would see in bars? I'm amazed that people have those at home. But I guess it might be worth it for the resolution specs you mentioned. Can you describe for me the differences in picture quality between your 8500 and the $1500 LCD/DLP projectors that are saturating the market these days?

The main image differences are resolution and contrast. The typical contrast of a CRT is 25,000:1 where some of the best DLP are 3000:1 a very noticible difference.

A similar comparison would be to look at the difference between LCD monitors and CRT monitors. The pixels on an lcd are easily visible at all times, even the high quality dell 1600x1200 ones always have a little bit of a squared pixel look to them where a good CRT has less noticible individual pixels. Same is true with projectors when comparing DLP to CRT. The image quality from DLP has a little bit of a non anti-aliased look to it.

The contrast difference is most noticible when playing computer games or watching dark movies on the projector. Where the DLP will just give you a black screen as it has fewer shades of black available to it. An example would be a game like Doom3 in some of the darker areas you can still see what is going on with a CRT without having to modify your settings (like gama) while playing. Another good example would be skin tones. Note that your image source needs to be a high quality source for these differences to be noticible (basically not a camera in the theatre recording of a movie).

Brightness can be an issue with some CRT projectors however that is why I have the 8500. At 1200 lumens I can open the windows during mid-day and still see the screen decently. However the quality is much better with the blinds shut. With my old 8000 I had to keep the blinds shut for it to be readable which is a little strange as they both have the same lumens rating though the 8500 definately looks brighter even at 50% brightness.

Now many people will not notice this stuff but I am kinda a Home theatre nut. However it is a common saying amoung fellow home theatre nuts that once you go crt you can never go back =P.

Here is a link with the specs on the whole electrohome series http://www.crtcinema.com/ehomespecs.html
CRTCinema is a great site for info on the different CRT projectors.

Holy moly Batman, 145+lbs! Are you ceiling or floor mounted? Now you've got me interested. So, when I start talking this up at home, can I blame you?

I have both of mine ceiling mounted. Downstairs was the easiest as it was a low flat ceiling. Upstairs in my room I had to make a ceiling mount which would take the vaulted ceiling into account =).

Dude, I would love to run FarCry on the PC with those projectors....

well, i just moved a few weeks ago and i've already bought all the new furniture i need, so it's time to focus on a new home theater setup. after many, many hours of research... i've finally decided to go with the panasonic pt-ae700u. my top four choices were: the ae700u, the dell 2300mp, the viewsonic pj551, and the infocus 4805.

the viewsonic and dell both had very impressive numbers on paper (especially for the price), but they are both designed to be business projectors and so i thought i'd be better off going with a projector that has proven itself in a home theater setup.

it was a tough choice between the 4805 and the ae700. dlp vs lcd, resolution vs brightness, etc... it all got confusing very quickly. in the end, i chose the ae700u because of the highly adjustable throw distance (thanks to a 2x zoom lens) and because of the higher resolution.

as for a screen, i'm going to temporarily use a Roc-Ion blackout drapery liner that can be bought at wal-mart.com for about $40 which will give me a screen size of about 120".

i'm not sure exactly when or where i'll get the projector from, but i'll report back once everything is set up. i'm quite excited. :)

that's so cool! i wish i had a front projector. If i had one i would use it 24/7!!!

My basement remodel has begun. I took a day off on Wednesday and ran all of my wires. I'm in-wall wiring for 5.1. The only way I could go 7.1 or more is by using in-ceiling speakers, so I'm not even bothering. My contractor was really cool. I asked him for a few changes while I was wiring, and he jumped right on it. He had a basement theater so he knew what was needed. I've got both component and s-video going to the projector. My receiver is not great at video switching, so the component is going from DVD straight to the projector. The s-video will be used for receiver on-screen set-up.

Dude, that's frigging cool.
But I don't see the need for Dolby 7.1...
That's like equipping your car with NASA technology stuff (yeah, bad comparison)
I think you'll be enjoying the 5.1 a lot.

catmandu, please post pics when you're done!

I have been taking digi snaps durng the process. What I neglected, as silly as it sounds, is a set of before pix! Hopefully I can dredge up some old pix from years ago.

Is it true front projectors wash out really bad when the room's lights are on?

Depends on the projector. The new DLPs have a high contrast ratio and light output, which keeps a pretty good picture on the screen even if lights are on. In my case, I tend to leave on a light or 2 about 18 ft back (I sit 12 feet back) or 15 feet to the side. LCD projectors are quite a bit more sensitive to ambient light.

I've made a front projector for <$200, and the bulbs don't cost $300-400 each either

All I did was put a LCD panel on top of an overhead projector. Is it glamorous and high-def? Nope. But it gets the job done, and it's a lot of fun playing XBox games or computer games on an 80"+ screen.

Now I want to build my own high-def unit. Hundreds of people are building their own using disassembled LCD monitors and throwing a bunch of optics and lighting together. Check out http://www.diyprojectorcompany.com/ and http://www.lumenlab.com/. For $600-800, you can build a unit that's higher resolution and cheaper to run (bulbs last longer and are < $100) than commercial units. Best of all, it's completely upgradable because you built it, and you can easily switch stuff around.

Infocus makes great dlp projectors.