'it's 106 miles to chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses'
'hit it'
As of thursday I am now the very happy owner of a second hand Barco 1208 with about 1300 hours on the clock. It's absolutely excellent.
The first shock of the day was Roland turning up at my door sans moustache
the second was seeing just how huge the 1208 looked in his car.
However once in and up on the ceiling it looked pretty much exactly how large I thought it would. Everything went smoothly, with only a few little niggles.
Colours are great - blue is fine. I'm running it at 1440x720 and thoroughly enjoying myself. I'm seeing detail in films that I've simply not seen before - I'm going to have to rewatch everything!
Blues Brothers was a joy to watch, as was Iron Monkey and a bit of Shrek tonight.
What really stood out though was the opening section to Mystery Men (it's a black cityscape with lots of stars etc, similar to a clean cut version of bladerunner). When I tried this on an LCD projector it was absolutely awful - horribly washed out, with detail that just couldnt be made out. It's wonderful on CRT - real 3D effect, great blacks etc
The BG1208 is lovely and quiet too, although this is admittedly offset by the HTPC I'm using to drive it - temporarily using my dual Slot 1 system with inbuilt fans - very noisy.
I've not sorted out proper blackouts, but it turns out this is less important than you'd expect because the reflections from the magnolia walls are quite significant. I think until I've repainted, blackouts are fairly useless.
So, what's still to do? Well, couple of little black spots (probably black paint) on the screen which I need to see if I can remove, should just be a matter of finding the right solvent.
The output from the BG1208 sometimes overhangs the screen to the left by a little bit; I was also getting a blue line to the right of the screen but just changed the right hand blanking to mask it out. May need to change the geometry slightly.
The greyscale test pattern shown by AVIA when Roland set the system up doesnt show quite enough differentiation between the two end blacks. This seems, however, to be something related to the G400 card in my HTPC. I'm sure this is fixable, but seeing as I'm going to build a new system with a different graphics card..
I'm having a fair number of issues with the aspect ratio in WinDVD 3. Probably going to buy TheatreTek anyway.
The great picture from the BG1208 now unfortunately highlights the inadequacy of my sound system, so that must be next!
I think I'm going to have a lot of fun rewatching my films
Pictures to follow, once I finish and develop the film.
PK
'hit it'
As of thursday I am now the very happy owner of a second hand Barco 1208 with about 1300 hours on the clock. It's absolutely excellent.
The first shock of the day was Roland turning up at my door sans moustache
the second was seeing just how huge the 1208 looked in his car. However once in and up on the ceiling it looked pretty much exactly how large I thought it would. Everything went smoothly, with only a few little niggles.
Colours are great - blue is fine. I'm running it at 1440x720 and thoroughly enjoying myself. I'm seeing detail in films that I've simply not seen before - I'm going to have to rewatch everything!
Blues Brothers was a joy to watch, as was Iron Monkey and a bit of Shrek tonight.
What really stood out though was the opening section to Mystery Men (it's a black cityscape with lots of stars etc, similar to a clean cut version of bladerunner). When I tried this on an LCD projector it was absolutely awful - horribly washed out, with detail that just couldnt be made out. It's wonderful on CRT - real 3D effect, great blacks etc
The BG1208 is lovely and quiet too, although this is admittedly offset by the HTPC I'm using to drive it - temporarily using my dual Slot 1 system with inbuilt fans - very noisy.
I've not sorted out proper blackouts, but it turns out this is less important than you'd expect because the reflections from the magnolia walls are quite significant. I think until I've repainted, blackouts are fairly useless.
So, what's still to do? Well, couple of little black spots (probably black paint) on the screen which I need to see if I can remove, should just be a matter of finding the right solvent.
The output from the BG1208 sometimes overhangs the screen to the left by a little bit; I was also getting a blue line to the right of the screen but just changed the right hand blanking to mask it out. May need to change the geometry slightly.
The greyscale test pattern shown by AVIA when Roland set the system up doesnt show quite enough differentiation between the two end blacks. This seems, however, to be something related to the G400 card in my HTPC. I'm sure this is fixable, but seeing as I'm going to build a new system with a different graphics card..
I'm having a fair number of issues with the aspect ratio in WinDVD 3. Probably going to buy TheatreTek anyway.
The great picture from the BG1208 now unfortunately highlights the inadequacy of my sound system, so that must be next!
I think I'm going to have a lot of fun rewatching my films
Pictures to follow, once I finish and develop the film.
PK
