Which CRT?

[spamboy]

Hi,

I'm intending to setup a dedicated HC room in my new house and am looking at a new projector. I've currently got a z1 and am looking at DLP's, but the idea of getting a quality CRT second hand appeals. I don't mind tweaking and will drive it from an HTPC. I'm thinking £2000 as a maximum, but the lower, the better.

What models should I be looking at? Is there anything that will do 1080? What kind of prices should I expect to pay? Should I forget it and get a DLP instead?

I'd be grateful to get your opinions.

Thanks,

SB

[gizlaroc]

what about an nec xg??

I am thinking of selling mine and buying an nec xg1352LC ora cine8, but this will be in a few months as we are in the process of moving house and the crt sitting in the middle of the room isnt exactly helping the sale, my wife thinks

The only digital I have compared with it recently is the sharp 12k which is not quite there yet, great colours and black levels but it still feels a little fatiguing to watch compared with a crt. Oh you pay 3x the price for the privalige.

I am thinking of buying a dlp along the lies of a BenQ 8700 to use while we are selling the house and moving, selling the nec would help fund this and mean I havent got to store it anywhere as well, and it would give me somthing I can still use while I save all those pennies for one of the Liquid coupled units.

CRT will definitely give you better results, but digitals are just so easy to use (if you hvae a good one) as you set it up and never touch it, if it is not so good you are forever tweaking trying to get good blacks and decent colours etc.
With a CRT though you must have some sort of scaler, whether it be htpc or a dedicated unit, I used a htpc and a quadscan and the htpc was alot better, then I got a lumagen scaler and got rid of the htpc as the image difference was negligable and there is no messing around with the scaler.
But you can get away without either with a digital as it deinterlaces/scales everthing anyway, so you have to consider that in your budget.

At the end of the day I dont think you will get anyone disagreeing that if you have the room CRT is the way to go but this is normally the deciding factor.
Also this is why you can get a £20,000 projector for 90% less, as not many people can accomadate them.

hope that helps a little, and sorry for the sales pitch at the start

[gizlaroc]

just read that you are driving form a htpc, so that sorts out scaling to a decent image.

re 1080, they will all do it, well I say all, most of them will and if they dont then they are not worth looking at, 720p uses more bandwith than 1080i and on an 8" crt with electromagnetic focus, 720p will be just about the ideal.

1080i using d-vhs looks stunning btw.

Where are you based? there are loads of people on here that would be able to demo a crt for you.

[rob12770]

Originally posted by spamboy
Should I forget it and get a DLP instead?

I dont think you will find many folk here that will agree with that considering its the CRT projector forum
My £200 Barco Data CRT PJ (bought localy but through EBay) Blows away my £1500 LCD Machine,
true its not as easy but its definetly worth the trouble, and its all part of the learning process, now that I am more farmilliar with CRT machines, I will get a newer one, although I am in no hurry as the old BD 650 is still great, so you have 2 grand or so ? mabey you should check the AV Hardware classified section in these forums, or ask Roland b4 projection, hes ussually here.

[spamboy]

Thanks, I will have the space and don't mind fiddling with it. Gizlaroc, I'm not really looking to pick one up straightaway, I was going to wait until I moved, so probably not a lot of help to you. In a couple of months I'll certainly consider it. Can you get it do do 1080p? How much would you be looking for?

I tend to keep an eye on ebay and the forums for good deals, which is why I asked for reccomended models, if something comes up at an insane price, I'd get it and store it.

It seems like the models that people are using are Nec XG, Barco (808, 1209), Sony's (what models I'm not sure of yet). Anything else I should be looking at?

I'm based in London, if anyone would be interested in giving me a demo, I'd be very interested.

Thanks,

SB

[gizlaroc]

I did have it advertised a couple of weeks ago and then took the advert down, alot of people thought I was mad selling it to spend 3,4, 5x as much on a Barco cine8 or Liquid coupled XG.
Maybe I am? but when you get these things in your head

The advert I did for ebay is still on my webpage if you want to see some screen shots and pictures of the tubes, there is approx. 1100 hours on the machine.



The only projectors that will do 1080p are things like barco 1209, cine9, sony G90 etc.
Look at picking one up for around £2-3k and then spending another £10,000 getting it retubed. and you got yourself a bargin

There is absolutely no reason to do 1080p at the moment, 720p will look stunning on an 8" crt, and 1080i is my prefered resolution.
When something comes out with a native resolution of 1080p, hd-dvd?, then you need to think about a display device that will handle it, and by that time hopefully you will be able to get a digital to rival crt for under £10k.
You probably wont be able to use any display device that is currently available, the only devices that can do true 1080p at the moment can not handle the encypted signal that they are going to use for HD-DVD anyway, and those that can do not have the resolution, they will be down scaling.

I have added some screen shots taken at 720p and 480p, will take some more at a later date of 1080i D-vhs.

regards

Guy

[spamboy]

I'll admit that 1080p is a luxury at the moment, with only a few test clips and t2 extreme that I've found at the moment, but I don't think it'll be long before we see it, or at least 1080i content (that the pc can present as 1080p) becoming more widely available. It's not essential by any stretch of the imagination as 99.9% of the media I use is dvd, or even divx.

I actually searched the archives and checked out your pj already. I must admit to being tempted - but you want to upgrade, surely I want what you want to upgrade to ;-).

Seriously though, I can't justify buying anything until I move house unless it's really silly money, but I really want to know what's out there before making a decsion. Why did you buy that pj? what resources, reviews etc did you see?

Thanks,

SB

[gizlaroc]

There is about 3 months worth of reading regarding the NEC XG series on www.avsforum.com .

I am looking at a Barco cine 8 with colour filtered and corrected Lenses, the xg has colour filtering too so this is now a must for me, but I am going to be looking at £8k for a used unit, I am hoping that I will have a few grand left over when we move house and I will use this to fund the cine 8.

Knowing my luck though I will not have anything left over or the used cine 8 will be gone and I will end up downgrading,