Abis Projectors - various questions...

I'm just not sure why you would want to downscale to 800x600.......no point stating it can accept 720p......personally I think you would better either saving a bit more for an HD600 or keeping an eye out for a second hand 720p PJ from the classifieds on here........it will be much better quality than the PJ you are looking at for a couple of hundred more - once you have seen 720p you wouldn't want to go back.........
 
Thanks, but I don't have a couple of hundred more.
What I'm basically asking is this:
I imagine a very few years ago before HDTV 800X600 was about the best you could get. If that is so, was a movie on such a pj watchable? How would such a pj cmpare with a 32 inch TV (non-hd) say?
I tend not to wear glasses in bed, and although my eyesight isn't bad after recent cataract operations (one eye is now short-sighted, the other long) I wuld prefer a picture larger than 40", say. I would also like the picture higher up the wall so I can watch without sitting up in bed. I have no knowledge of pjs and nowhere reasonably accessible by public transport for a demo (the local PC world has 4 models, but can't demo even one).

So I am reliant on you guys for advice. £250 is about the absolute top of my budget and I cannt afford to gamble on second-hand.

So, if I've never seen an expensive pj and am unlikely to, what am I likely to object to in such a pj?

To get a good 50" picture, what distance would the pj need to be frm the wall, how many lumens would I need given bedroom viewing with either a bedside light or no light?

Edit: I've got HDMI output on my laptop, so I don't paricularly want downscaling, but at this price I can't see me avoiding it.
 
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I can't answer all of your questions but here are some answers.

-the 800x600 resolution is a non-widescreen resolution and probably almost any movie related material you feed it will be wideacreen. This means you will have black bars top/bottom. So whatever maximum height of the image your room allows for, the actual area of it used for the movie will be smaller. And it wasn't a few years ago that it was the best you could get. Try 15 years (probably longer, but I'm being cautious).

Compared to an sd tv the image will probably appear less bright, worse colours and with massively worse black level. The size will of course make up for that somewhat, depending on how big the image is. If you already have a 32" tv then I would think this a waste of money if you only go up to 40-50" size. That kind of increase really isn't large enough to justify the drawbacks in image quality.

If your source is a laptop then it can output 800x600 without needing the projector to downscale. A good thing since the projector's scaler is likely not very good (it's too cheap). Keep in mind though that the resolution isn't much better than your 32" tv (720x576).

As others have said, save your money for when you have a bit more. A modest increase in budget will mean you get somethig ten times better. And it will probably be a very long while before you upgrade to something new. With the Abis you will keep wondering why we kept harping on about how crap we think it is. You won't stop looking for faults. It will drive you mad.

Face it buddy, we've ruined it for you ;-)
 
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A second hand 720p Optoma HD700 should be around £250.
 
i very much doubt anyone here will suggest you go for the abis,most are sold from homes or even dropped shipped,a second hand optoma is a far safer bet.
 
Thank you. I understand what you are saying and you are probably correct.
Cornflake manufacturers, for example, can and do make cornflakes which are as good as the "name" brands. Selling them with supermarket names halves the price. Selling them themselves with their own name reduces the price further by eliminating the middleman. This applies with all sorts of goods. How do you KNOW that a company isn't doing this with pjs? I accept that they may be complete rubbish, but if you've never even seen one I just don't get how you can all be so certain. How does a company new to pjs get started with an excellent product (I'm not claiming ABIS is) if everyone says that they must be crap?
Both contributers who have actually had hands-on of the ABIS LXLED say what a great picture it produces. Neither say it is crap. None who say it must be crap have aparently seen it. If you were reading this thread and the subject was freezers instead (or something you knew nothing about) what conclusion would you come to and why?
I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just genuinely want to know why?
 
probably because many people have been stung by these imports,i phone copies ,ipad copies,ive tried them all and they cost a fifth of the price deservedly so,however for £400 you could buy a trusted brand from a trusted seller.

if they wanted to get into the retail market they would send out review units but they arent intended for uk release,so if anything goes wrong you usually get stung.

however if they are a genuine bargain surely word of mouth would have gone around by now and threads would be all over the internet.

i imagine the xled or whaterver cost less than a hundred on alibaba so pop up companies are working on the big markup.
 
I'm not a professional or anything, just love my home cinema, but a lot of the guys on the forum, and on this thread, are....or at least have a frightening amount of experience and knowledge......personally ....regardless of the PJ, I think you will be disappointed with a 800*600 resolution......and, as mentioned above, once you factor in widescreen bars, you will probably be better off with a 40 to 50 inch tv......

If you can wait a few months and save a bit more, it really will be worth it
 
I purchased four Samsung LED Projectors in May this year for £350 each, brand new and warranteed for three years - they are great and work really well in a classroom for school use.

£10,000 for an LED projector of any worth is nonsense! I too am looking at the ABIS and will get a demo model to test, before probably ordering ten for my school.

Also the ANSI lumens figures for LED PJs tends to be lower than standard PJs because of the narrower frequency band of light emitted - it does not necessarily relate to apparant brightness. This is becasue the sensors used to measure the LUMENS output respond to the full spectrum of visible light. LED light sources of red, green and blue combined will give a different quality and set of frequency bands of light ouput. The are sharp and clear even from 1000 lumens which is that of the SAMSUNGs I bought.

Hope this helps. :)
 
And which model would that be my friend??? I did a search and found a 3LCD LED lit samsung PJ and as stated in previous posts not TRUE LED!! Not even HD and not even 16:9? But if it is adequate for you as I have said earlier then all well and good. But the OP came on an AV forum asking its members their opinions and all who have a modicum of a need for a quality picture say no. Hope this helps.
 
The SAMSUNG was the F10, you can also purchase the F10M which has a few extra features such as native presentation software, but both essentially the same.
 
Thats the one I looked at, don't get me wrong if you are not bothered about HD picture quality then the lamp life is a great plus but for watching a film I personally need HD.
 
Hi,

No probs :) I think you're right - it's not going to be the best home movie projector. I will be looking to get a decent 3D home movieprojector next year and have no idea what would be best for that at the moment!
 
I ended up investing in an Optoma PK301 projector.

All I can say about it is WOW! £228 from Optoma directly and it is a pretty decent projector.

It isn't full HD but it can certainly do a 120" screen quite easily onto a thermal blackout blind which I bought for £19.99 from Range.

It doesn't look much worse than the type of image you get from a cinema, and when it's plugged in you can even have normal house lights on and still see the screen fine. Unplugged it drops it's lumens and at that stage it does struggle to cope with house lights.

For £228 it's certainly bigger than any TV I could buy for that and it is pretty damn amazing to play games on.

I don't know quite what resolution it does do, on my PS3 it does say it's gone to 720p mode and when playing a Blu-Ray on it over a DVD the picture quality is significantly better - I watched two Harry Potters, the Philosophers (Sorcerers) Stone and the Half Blood Prince, the Philosopers Stone was on DVD and the Half Blood Prince was on Blu-Ray and you could see a massive difference between the two, a lot more than I've even noticed on our Panasonic full HD TV downstairs.

Also watched Red Riding Hood (the horror version) at Halloween on it and we were amazed with the scenery behind that you don't normally notice on a TV, I think it was filmed in Sweden and the scenery really did look realistic.

The only downside with this projector is the sound quality, but then again I suppose you don't buy a projector for sound, you buy it for what it's meant to do - picture! Luckily I have a full Kenwood Dolby 5.1 surround sound set up anyway so we use that for the sound with optical out from the PS3 instead of relying on the projectors sound.

When I have everything switched on including my Sony Sub-woofer it certainly does feel like a night at the movies.
 
on full power it's at 50 lumens and produces a 16:9 screen which is 6ft in width (I know this 'cos it fills up the entire area where my window is, and my window is 6ft)

So anyone know how to convert 6ft wide at 16:9 to diagonal size?

Plus I've also tried it outside on the side of our house, this was at night, could have been better if the bricks weren't tan coloured.
 
84" thats still impressive considering some producing 2,000 lumens struggle in daylight.
 
I've attached two pictures here so you can see the type of image you get from the PK301

IMAG0062.jpg


This first one is taken with the lights on (the light is a 11w (60W equivalent) energy saver bulb) onto a 6ft wide blind. To give you an impression of the size of screen the monitor below it is a 21" monitor.

IMAG0061.jpg


And this one is a picture of the projector with the lights off (again same image, same size and everything)

Both pictures can be viewed here at my Picasa web album

https://picasaweb.google.com/darrenforster99/PK301Projector?authuser=0&feat=directlink
 
OK! The test post worked so here's a quickie:

I just bought an LXLED-2 and it arrived today. I wrote such a long review which was lost when I tried to post it. Serve me right for not copying and saving it first I guess. :-(

This is a pale shadow of my other review because I am too tired to type it all out again but in a nutshell:

For the money it is amazing.

The picture is a lot brighter than my other projector and plenty bright enough, especially in a darkened room which how I always watch films.

Straight out of the box, the picture would satisfy most of our wives. However, once I had tweaked the settings manually I was amazed by the quality of picture.

I haven't even hooked up my Blu-Ray yet. My visitors thought upscaled DVD output to 1080P (and presumably downscaled to 720P by the projector) was HD!

I hate the fact that it will not display 4:3 without stretching it horizontally,a major shortcoming. Yes some of us do watch Casablanca, Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind and like to see them in the correct aspect ratio!

It probably does it through composite but not HDMI. If you are fortunate to have a player which scales properly and outputs the result in HDMI this won't be a problem for you but I do not.

This projector is amazing value. I guess if you have a workforce that thinks a digestive biscuit is a luxury item you can knock this sort of item out at this price (I paid £374.) (No disrespect intended.) For the money it is astounding.

Obviously a quick review written because there seem to be so few out there. Any questions, ask I will try to help but my preliminary verdict is wow.
 
OK! The test post worked so here's a quickie:

I just bought an LXLED-2 and it arrived today. I wrote such a long review which was lost when I tried to post it. Serve me right for not copying and saving it first I guess. :-(

This is a pale shadow of my other review because I am too tired to type it all out again but in a nutshell:

For the money it is amazing.

The picture is a lot brighter than my other projector and plenty bright enough, especially in a darkened room which how I always watch films.

Straight out of the box, the picture would satisfy most of our wives. However, once I had tweaked the settings manually I was amazed by the quality of picture.

I haven't even hooked up my Blu-Ray yet. My visitors thought upscaled DVD output to 1080P (and presumably downscaled to 720P by the projector) was HD!

I hate the fact that it will not display 4:3 without stretching it horizontally,a major shortcoming. Yes some of us do watch Casablanca, Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind and like to see them in the correct aspect ratio!

It probably does it through composite but not HDMI. If you are fortunate to have a player which scales properly and outputs the result in HDMI this won't be a problem for you but I do not.

This projector is amazing value. I guess if you have a workforce that thinks a digestive biscuit is a luxury item you can knock this sort of item out at this price (I paid £374.) (No disrespect intended.) For the money it is astounding.

Obviously a quick review written because there seem to be so few out there. Any questions, ask I will try to help but my preliminary verdict is wow.
 
welcome to the forum Wil, really sorry that you bought this PJ before checking on the forum first though. What PJ did you have before this??
If you had asked on here first we would have adviced you to spend your money a bit better, oh well if you are happy then thats all that counts.
 

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