Need Help with Positioning of My New Projector

Hi,

I have just purchased a Sharp XV Z200E after much deliberation.
Now I need to mount the projector onto my ceiling but am unsure as to exactly the placement.

I have used the calculator on projectorcentral.com using the XV Z200U (same model USA version) and have the following inputs: -

Aspect Ratio = 16:9
Screen Gain = 1.0 (automatically set as this by default - is this correct?)
Image Diagonal = 200cm
Image Horizontal = 174cm
Image Vertical = 98cm

Throw Distance = 4.15m

My questions are: -
Must I position the lens exactly 4.15m away from the wall I am projecting to? I have heard that there is a minimum and a maximum throw range and the positioning should be somewhere in the middle of these figures?
To the right side of the calculator their is a small graph that shows the throw range values as 3.41m to 4.15m with 3.74m being in the middle of this graph, is this the actual optimum placement for the projector.

I have read the instructions for using the calculator but I am still confused. Any help would be massively appreciated - I would just like some confirmation that my reading of the results are correct either way (or completely wrong if this is the case). Thanks.

[reevesy]

well....i personally would'nt get too technical about positioning.....
i know it sounds silly but carefully hold it in your hands roughly where its going and zoom/focus in till it fills your screen and looks ok...then you can fix a mount in the place where you're happy.
.....any fine tweaking can be done later.
thats how i did my h30 anyhow.
hope its a starting place for you.

[Oakleyspatz]

I agree, hold the pj roughly where you wish to position it and project onto the wall where the screen will go. Play around with the zoom until you have an image you are happy with.
Try not to have the zoom at max or min as this restricts your fine tuning of image size but somewhere in the middle. If the image is too small, try moving the pj back slightly and visa versa. If you are limited as to where the pj can go, then you may need to rely on the zoom to get the image size you want from a given distance.

[sniffer66]

Did you buy the 200 new ?

Yep - brand new

My first projector, set it up just to see what it would look like. Slapped matrix revolutions on my dvd player without even having my surround sound set up and sat their for a good 20 minutes gobsmacked at the image quality in silence staring at the picture (no screen), came around, set up my surround sound and sat back and watched the whole trilogy