Which HD projector?

Brogan

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Now that I've finished my install, I'm starting to think of getting a projector.
I know almost nothing about them so need some advice.

What I do know is that it must be able to project a 16:9 image up to 285cm x 160cm (3.26 diagonal) from a throw distance of approximately 5.2m.
It must be HD (preferably true HD as in 1920 x 1080) and be able to cope with a very light room.
Ideally it will be fairly compact and light as it will be ceiling mounted and not too noisy as it will be just above and behind the viewing position.

It will be used initally with a Pioneer 868 DVD player and in the near future (probably) a Pioneer 969.

So based on those requirements, what should I be looking at?
Or is it better to wait a few more weeks/months as more HD PJs come onto the market?

TIA
 
There aren't many 1080 pjs available right now, at least not under £6000 (only the SOny Ruby so far), but that will change over the next few weeks/months.

WHat's your pj budget?

Gary
 
Gary Lightfoot said:
There aren't many 1080 pjs available right now, at least not under £6000 (only the SOny Ruby so far), but that will change over the next few weeks/months.
I wasn't aware there were so few and that prices were still so high.
Perhaps I would be better off scaling down that requirement to the more usual 720.

WHat's your pj budget?
No budget as such but I will probably be upgrading the plasma, DVD and amp soon so that's going to come to 3 figures and as the PJ will only be used occasionally (i.e. once a week or so), I don't want to spend huge amounts on it.

If I was going for 720 resolution then, what should I be looking at for £1,000-£1,500?
 
I can certainly recommend the Themescene HD72i :thumbsup: the PQ is superb for the price...and i think the Infocus IN76 has come down in price now too and that also retails for £1500...
 
Thanks guys.

My aim is to compile a shortlist which I can then investigate in earnest.

I'm guessing the HD72i should be better than the soon to arrive HD70 about which there is a fairly large thread?

Is there that much improvement over PJs costing less than £1,000 to ones costing around £1,500?
 
Brogan said:
Thanks guys.

My aim is to compile a shortlist which I can then investigate in earnest.

I'm guessing the HD72i should be better than the soon to arrive HD70 about which there is a fairly large thread?

Is there that much improvement over PJs costing less than £1,000 to ones costing around £1,500?
The pre-release specs for the HD70 do look very good. But this is all speculation right now, as it has not hit the streets, there are no reviews, and it isn't even mentioned on Optoma's web.

I recommend you get a demo of DLP anyway - you might be susceptible to rainbow effect (RBE).

I have to force myself to see rainbows on HD72i (display a b/w test pattern and flick my eyes around). Luckily, that's the only way I get to see them, but they are definitely there!
 
Kadders said:
The pre-release specs for the HD70 do look very good. But this is all speculation right now, as it has not hit the streets, there are no reviews, and it isn't even mentioned on Optoma's web.
Going purely on spec's, is the HD72i that much better than the HD70 bearing in mind the price difference?

I recommend you get a demo of DLP anyway - you might be susceptible to rainbow effect (RBE).
I plan to as soon as I have my shortlist compiled.
I suppose I could demo DLP now and if I am susceptible to RBE then I could rule out DLP but as far as I am aware, it varies from PJ to PJ so there would be little point in demoing a DLP PJ I have no intention of buying.
 
Brogan said:
Going purely on spec's, is the HD72i that much better than the HD70 bearing in mind the price difference?
Hard to say - but it looks like the HD70 does not have Faroudja DCDi de-iterlacing. If you intend to send it interlaced signals, yes the HD72i will be visibly superior, IMHO.
... as far as I am aware, [RBE] varies from PJ to PJ so there would be little point in demoing a DLP PJ I have no intention of buying.
I believe that the real difference comes with the speed of the colour wheel. It is reckoned that a 5x wheel removes the problem for most people. A lot of machines (HD72i included) have a 4x, 7 segment (RGBWRGB) wheel. You will almost certainly see rainbows if the wheel spins slower than 4x (as it does in many budget machines). But as I said - I do see them on HD72i if I force myself (which I do not do when watching films etc).
 
Thanks Kadders - useful information.

I presume if I intended to use the PJ for Sky then that would be an interlaced feed in which case the HD72i would be better?

If however I only intend to ever use it with the 868/969 then it wouldn't make a huge difference between the HD72i or the HD70?
 
Brogan said:
I presume if I intended to use the PJ for Sky then that would be an interlaced feed in which case the HD72i would be better?
Yes, Sky is interlaced. The HD70 will surely have some de-interlacing circuitry, though I've seen no mention. But I bet the Faroudja on HD72i will be superior. It's certainly better than my progressive scan DVD player.
If however I only intend to ever use it with the 868/969 then it wouldn't make a huge difference between the HD72i or the HD70?
Possibly not, but without any pro reviews to go on, cannot be sure. I have absolutely no regrets at my HD72i purchase. The PQ is superb on everything I've thrown at it. I expect that a side by side HD70 vs 72i demo may show a few differences, but if all you saw was the HD70, it's probably going to be stunning.
 
OK thanks, food for thought.

I think first I need to decide exactly how I'm going to use the PJ - whether it is from DVD only or a mixture of Sky and DVD.
Then I can make a more informed decision on how much to spend and whether I really need the Faroudja DCDi de-interlacing.

As we tend to watch a lot of movies recorded from Sky my guess is probably yes.
But then again, if we upgrade to Sky HD then that will be an HD feed, not interlaced so the HD70 may suffice.

Decisions, decisions.
 
Brogan said:
But then again, if we upgrade to Sky HD then that will be an HD feed, not interlaced so the HD70 may suffice.
Bear in mind that most of Sky HD's output is SD!
 
Kadders said:
Bear in mind that most of Sky HD's output is SD!
Good point.
Expanding on that though, if you watch a normal SD channel on SKY HD is it output as a standard interlaced signal from the HDMI port?
And it is only the HD channels that are output as HD feeds?
 
Sky HD does de-interlace (but not well) and outputs 576p by default for SD content. It can be forced to send 576i if your pj has better de-interlacing (likely!), or if you have a scaler.

Bear in mind too, that Sky HD does not always have a great transmitted bitrate. So while it is technically HD, you will sometimes see 'blocky' areas. Sky Movies sometimes suffers from this. BBC is probably the best HD channel. You'll only get true HD from DVD-HD (or BlueRay), or from HTPC. Yes Sky HD is worth having generally, but it does suffer from being compressed for transmission.
 
Thanks again Kadders.

So in summary, if watching a lot of SD content/interlaced feeds from Sky/Sky HD, it would be better to go for a PJ with a good Faroudja DCDi deinterlacing chip as in the HD72i.

Otherwise, if mainly watching HD feeds from either DVD or Sky HD, the HD70 would probably be good enough (going mainly off the spec's on paper).
 
It looks like it's going to be more complicated than I thought.

I was planning on siting the PJ about 5.2 metres or so from the screen - partly for aesthetics and also to be able to get a decent image size.
However, it would seem that 92" diagonal is the usual upper limit for a pull down screen - they can go up to 119" but there are problems with keeping the screen flat apparently.
Even with 119", this still means the furthest away I can site the PJ is 5m and the image will be at maximum zoom.

The problem is with a screen only 92" diagonal, this gives an image of just 2.03m x 1.14m which is frankly almost pointless - it's barely larger than the plasma...well OK it's quite a bit larger but you get my point.
Also, the PJ would have to be mounted between 3.26m and 3.87m from the screen which would put it slap bang in the middle of the lounge and would look stupid.

So, what are my options?
How can I mount the PJ 5.2m away from the screen and get an image of 2.85m x 1.6m (diagonal 3.27m) on a retractable screen?
It needs to be retractable as it will be coming down over the front of the plasma.
Any ideas?

How do others cope with this?
Are your PJs sited so much closed to the screen or are you using custom made screens?

On second thoughts, it may be better posting this in the screen forum.
 
At the moment Luzertech is selling the Infocus 7210 DC3 projector for £1399, it is in a different class to the HD72i and IN76, I have brought from them recently the projectors are brand new with 2 year warranty

Dave
 
AVdavid said:
At the moment Luzertech is selling the Infocus 7210 DC3 projector for £1399, it is in a different class to the HD72i and IN76, I have brought from them recently the projectors are brand new with 2 year warranty
Any particular reason why they seem to be selling them so much cheaper than everyone else?

Also, I notice it doesn't have HDMI, only DVI.

Edit: And a Google search yields no results for Luzertech.
 
Kadders said:
But I bet the Faroudja on HD72i will be superior.
I believe that the Faroudja chips in current PJs do SD deinterlacing only. Deinterlacing of 1080i is probably going to be a lot less sophisticated.
 
Brogan said:
Edit: And a Google search yields no results for Luzertech.
That's because you have a typo there (provided by AVdavid)! ...
http://www.luzerntech.com

They are in Ireland, and have a good reputation. They sell via ebay mainly (at the same 'buy-it-now' price as those on their site above). A lot of what they sell are reconditioned units, but they do say clearly if that is the case. I believe the Infocus 7210 pjs they had were new; but they have been discontinued, so maybe Luzerntech got a job lot cheap. I say had because the 7210 no longer appears on Luzerntech's site, so you are probably out of luck anyway!
 
Brogan said:
So, what are my options?
How can I mount the PJ 5.2m away from the screen and get an image of 2.85m x 1.6m (diagonal 3.27m) on a retractable screen?
It needs to be retractable as it will be coming down over the front of the plasma.
Any ideas?

How do others cope with this?
Are your PJs sited so much closed to the screen or are you using custom made screens?
There is no real problem ceiling mounting half way down the room. The 72i for instance is quite small and almost silent - hardly more noticible than a light fitting (yeah, right!). If you don't like the idea of larger screen (mine is 92" diagonal and is way big enough!) you could consider the ceiling mount option.
 
Kadders said:
There is no real problem ceiling mounting half way down the room. The 72i for instance is quite small and almost silent - hardly more noticible than a light fitting (yeah, right!). If you don't like the idea of larger screen (mine is 92" diagonal and is way big enough!) you could consider the ceiling mount option.
A large screen is exactly what I want but until I stumbled onto the Gray Wolf 120" it seemed that 92" was the upper limit and I thought that was too small.

I will be ceiling mounting the PJ as that's the only place it can go.

Do you think an image of 266cm x 149cm (305cm diagonal) will be too large when viewed from a distance of about 3.8 metres?
Using the standard viewing distance/1.5 this gives an image size of 253cm so it's only slightly over that.
 
No I don't think that is too large from that distance. It all depends whether your lounge can support such a size (and it sounds like it can!). I'm happy with my 92"!

What I meant by 'ceiling mount option' was mounting it further down the room (if needed). It may sound strange, but it is no real issue. It can even be in front of the viewing area. Mine is not too far from the back of the room, but is directly above where I view from. It is unobtrusive, honestly!
 

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