Tag Archive for 'Projector'

New Toys

Published on 22 February, 2010. View Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

I got some new toys over the past few weeks. :D

First up, since I got my projector, I’ve been using my PC’s speakers and swapping HDMI cables around to watch stuff, since the projector only has one HDMI input (most sub-£1000 projectors only have one jack which isn’t really that surprising, since they’re designed to be used alongside a receiver of some kind for the sound). Now that’s all very well and good, but if you have a PC, Sky+HD box, and an Xbox 360 all using HDMI, it gets to be quite annoying. Now, the obvious thing that I could do would be to buy an HDMI switch, but then I’d still be using my PC speakers. Which is another problem since I was swapping the audio cables around as well, and there’s no remote for them either. And they sounded odd coming from the wrong side of the bedroom when I was using them for the projector.

So, I did a little shopping around and settled on either the Sony SRT-DN1000 or Onkyo TX-SR577 AV receiver, and some Mordaunt Short 902i speakers. I chose the receiver because (both models) have 4 HDMI ports, they can decode HD audio formats such as DTS HD Master Audio, and they both look decent enough. I was originally going to get the Sony model, but Richer Sounds had sold out of it so I decided on the Onkyo. Really, the only thing that was making me want to choose the Sony over the Onkyo was that the Sony looks nicer, it has an on-screen GUI (which, honestly, I can go without), and, well, it’s a Sony, and I have a lot of trust in Sony because they make very good quality gear – our downstairs TV setup is completely Sony, aside from the Sky+HD box. However, like I said, RS had sold out of the Sony so I went with the Onkyo. I suppose the Sony has one more thing that I would have liked now that I’ve played with the Onkyo, and that is you can rename the inputs – for example, instead of the receiver showing “CBL/SAT”, it can show “Sky+HD”. Sadly, the Onkyo doesn’t have this feature, so I’ll have to do without it. It’s not a must have, but it’s a nice thing to have nonetheless. Another thing I like about the Sony is that if the audio format switches, it says so on the display, in big letters, for a few seconds – the Onkyo, on the other hand, shows a tiny little icon on the display that you can only see if you’re close up. Again, it’s not a major feature, but it’s another “nice” thing to have. Overall, the receiver is pretty decent. It has a good selection of features, and it does the job well.

Onto the speakers. I decided to get a pair of Mordaunt Short 902i speakers, for several reasons. First of all, they’re decent sized bookshelf speakers so they negate the need for me to have a subwoofer. As out house is, quite literally, made out of paper, you can hear every bang downstairs from my bedroom, and vice versa, which means that a subwoofer wouldn’t do much other than annoy everyone downstairs (or next door). The MS speakers pack enough of a punch to not need a subwoofer, in my opinion, which is great. Hell, even if I lived in a soundproof room I don’t think I’d bother with a subwoofer – on their own they’re extremely good. And of course the other reason I got them is because they’ve been praised about all over the place, and they’ve got a 5 star review over at What Hi-Fi. Do I like them? Hell yes! They’re fantastic, amazing, and awesome – the clarity is fantastic and you can really hear the detail in music, movies and TV shows. And for the price they better be. :P

Dell U2410

Finally, I got a Dell U2410. Yes, I got another 24″ monitor. I know, I know, I had a Dell 2407WFP-HC a year or two ago, which I sold, however I did and still do regret doing so, hence why I’ve gone and purchased the U2410. However, in my opinion (and from what I can see I’m actually the only person on earth who likes it), it looks a lot nicer than the 2407WFP did. The U2410′s stand is a big rectangle block (with the usual tilt/swivel/rotate features), and the monitor itself is completely black, with a touch of dark grey around the edge and on the stand. The menu and control buttons are also different, they’re now touch-based. I can’t say that this works all that well (it often ignores your finger tapping on them), but most of the time it behaves and you don’t really use it that often so, hey, it’s no big deal – the power button is actually a physical one so that’s fine. The screen itself is, from what I can remember, a bit better quality than the old one, and brighter, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same thing. The Samsung 205BW that I was using before for my PC is still on my desk, but mostly as a secondary screen for watching TV on more than anything else. I don’t really have an actual need for it but I don’t want to dump it in the garage or sell it or anything, so it can live on my desk for now.

So, that’s about it. Now all I need is a bigger bedroom. Or at the very least, a wider one. :(

Oh, and there aren’t any photos of the speakers or receiver that I have which are decent enough, because they’re not really all that interesting to look at…and I can’t seem to get a good photo of them, so, yeah, lol. :P

Birmimgham IMAX Tour

Published on 31 January, 2010. View Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

A week or two ago, I sent a tweet to @imaxbirmingham on Twitter and asked if I could have a tour of the projection room. I’ve only ever seen projection rooms by looking through the window, and I’ve never seen an IMAX projector in person, so I thought it was worth a go to ask – and it was! The next day, I got an email from their PR manager, Caroline, asking if I’d like to go along one day and see it, as a special once-off treat. So, yesterday (30th Jan), I went along to Birmingham with my dad (he expressed an interest in coming along), and met up with Caroline’s colleague, Sally, who gave us a tour.

So, up we went in the escalator to the 5th floor, which is the upper part of the IMAX theatre, normally off limits to normal visitors. The 4th floor is where you usually exit the theatre, and the 5th is all the behind the scenes stuff. Walking out the escalator, there was a small hand-operated forklift (for lifting the film reels), about 50 boxes of the Harry Potter film, and a few large metal cases with film reels in them. Quick explanation: when they get the film, it’s in boxes, so it has to be manually spliced together into one long film. Anyway, moving on, down the hall we went, and into the projection room!

Birmingham IMAX Tour - IMAX GT Projector

So, the projection room. First and foremost is the huge IMAX projector – it’s MUCH larger than a 35mm projector, and along with the film reels behind it, it takes up a lot of room, as you can see:

Birmingham IMAX Tour - Film Reels for the Projector

The projector itself is pretty much the same basic idea as any other projector, just bigger. The first thing you notice are the pipes coming out the back of it – the big one is for air cooling, the smaller ones are for water cooling, mainly for the £3,500 Xenon bulb (which, while we’re at it, only lasts 900 hours, which isn’t much compared to, say, my home projector). In fact, the cooling is so critical that there’s a pump room next to the projection room, which has backup pumps if needed, and uses its own dedicated water supply from (I presume) the council. The air also has another role – somehow, through some fancy complicated method, it uses compressed air to keep the film rock solid steady. If you go to and IMAX flick yourself, doubtless you’ll notice that. Compared to normal cinemas, it pretty much doesn’t move at all. Impressive stuff.

Next, obviously, is the 70mm film. Since Avatar 3D was about to be shown, it was loaded into the projector, almost ready to go. As it’s a 3D title, there’s a separate reel of film for both the left and right eye. These run through the projector around the front and then pop out the other side to go back onto two separate reels. The way they do it, is that the film is loaded from the centre of the reel. This means that once it’s done, there’s no need to rewind the reel back to the start point, unlike normal cinemas. This obviously saves time, which is a bonus, plus it means the film doesn’t suffer the extra stress – especially for something like Avatar, which they’ve sold over 51,000 tickets for, which is a lot of screenings.

In the same room they also have a selection of the other currently showing titles – such as Deep Sea, Space Station, and so on.

Birmingham IMAX Tour - Film Reels

Now for the noisy part. The audio. It’s pretty simple really. The audio isn’t on the film itself, it’s delivered digitally, either on a DVD or HDD, and stored on one of the servers (two HDDs, one of which is a backup). The IMAX projector sends out a pulse to the server every so often, so the sound is always kept in sync. The soundtrack is a six channel mix, which is then delivered to all of the sixteen power amplifiers, and then to the bi-amped speakers within the theatre. So, obviously, it’s quite loud. And since there’s a DVD drive and microphones hooked up to it all, you actually could have a karaoke night if you rented the cinema. :P

Birmingham IMAX Tour - Audio System

And a video of the control panel for the whole system (which I got to start the film with myself! :D ):

Finally, as well as the IMAX projector, there are two other projectors next to it – a 35mm projector, which is used for the pre-show trailers (eg, Pearl and Dean advertising), as well as a generic office-style projector which they use to show the PowerPoint presentation that shows upcoming films at the IMAX and other announcements.

And, of course, here’s a video of the projector in action. It’s very loud – if you’re standing next to it it sounds like a generator. And it’s not even loud compared to the pump room I mentioned earlier – that’s much louder.

So, that’s the projection room. Anyway, walking back out into the lobby and around the maze of passages, I also saw their dishwasher. Yes, a dishwasher. Technically, it’s not used for dishes, but it’s a big silver machine about the length of a car, which washes and dries off all the 3D glasses after they’re used, so they’re nice and clean for new people to use. They’re then carted back out to the lobby, where they’re handed out for the next screening. And lastly, we looked at the back of the screen itself – nothing much back there, it’s mostly just scaffolding holding up the screen (which, indecently, had to be lowered in through the roof when they built it because it’s so large), along with some surprisingly small speakers. The screen itself is silver, with millions of tiny holes in it for the sound to pass through (which most, if not all theatres have anyway). And that’s it!

An interesting thing (I hope I’m allowed to say this :P ) that Sally mentioned is that she’s flying off to Belgium in the next few weeks to go and find out more about the new digital IMAX projectors, to maybe upgrade the theatre to at a later date. That would mean that the projector wouldn’t need the huge reels behind it, nor would they need all the film either, as the films would then be delivered on a simple hard drive. And one hard drive is a lot better than 50 boxes of heavy plastic! Plus, of course, you get the benefits of going digital – the film doesn’t degrade, the quality is better, and so on.

Overall, it was very interesting seeing all the different parts of the cinema, finding out how it all works, and seeing it all in action, so I would like to, of course, say a big thank you to Sally, Caroline, and the rest of the people at Millennium Point for letting me go and see it all. :)

Note: All the images shown have further notes explaining them on Flickr, so be sure to click through to see them. ;)

Optoma HD65

Published on 28 April, 2009. View Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Optoma HD65 - Front

A while back, I mentioned how I was amazed at the quality of one of Sony’s high-end home cinema projectors. Well, a few months later, and I decided to consider getting a projector, albeit a cheaper “low-end” 720p model. I did some research, had a look around, and decided to settle on the Optoma HD65. It seems to be the “must have” projector in the sub-£1000 market, and from what I’ve read, it’s a popular model. So, the price. It’s actually pretty good – it’s on sale for £500-700 or so, depending on where you look, and, despite loads of places being out of stock, I found 4 of them available at “LambdaTek” for £560. So, I bought one. :)

It arrived today, so I brought the box upstairs to my room, opened it, and I was pleasantly suprised. It’s quite small. The overall footprint is a little smaller then the MacBook. Like I said in that other post, I had previously borrowed a few different SD projectors from my dad’s work back in 2000, and from what I can remember, they were considerably larger. The HD65, however, is nice and small. And it’s mostly white, too, which is nice if you want it to be less noticable in a room. ;)

As for placement – most “permanent” installs are mounted on the roof. However, this poses two problems for me. One of which is that our house is rented, so we’re not allowed to drill holes in the roof, and second, the light on the roof in my bedroom hangs down quite far, so if I was to mount it on the roof, the light would block the picture. That said, I found a pretty good spot for it. My windowsill. It’s just big enough to accommodate it, and it’s a good height too – I didn’t even need to prop up the leg on the front of the projector. It also fills the projection wall perfectly, with only about 10-15cm left on each side of the picture. :D

So, as it got dark (The one downside about projectors is they need a dark room. Oh, and it’s summer time, and my curtains don’t block out any light. Fun. :P ) I hooked it up to my HTPC, turned it on, set it up (I really didn’t need to change any settings other then the zoom and focus), and put Back to the Future Part I (in 720p) on. And, wow, the picture really is good, even with an old film like BTTF. Okay, so it’s a projector, and it’s never going to beat a high end LCD TV at this price, and you need a dark room and a huge blank wall, but, honestly, it’s worth losing a wee bit of quality for the sake of having a 90″+ screen. The whole movie was so immersive, after 10 minutes, I didn’t notice anything other then the movie. It’s fantastic!

The picture itself is pretty damn good. Between the projector and my TV, there’s not that much of a difference. The TV works better during the day, obviously, but I think the picture quality on both is roughly the same at night, with one exception – the projector, with daytime scenes on movies, looks slightly more washed out, but it’s not that noticable – a minor issue. The other problem is that if you sit too close to the screen (or in my case, the wall), you can notice the individual pixels. However, if I sit more then about two meters from the screen, I can’t see them, and with this size screen…you’ll want to sit more then two meters away. Of course, this is probably less of an issue on the more expensive 1080p projectors, but for a small-average sized room, it’s fine. :)

Finally, two more complaints. Firstly, and it’s a bit irritating, is the fan noise. It’s fairly noisy when it’s on, but if you’re watching a good movie with the sound turned up, it should be drowned out. Sadly, this is a problem with most projectors as they need to get rid of the large amounts of heat that the bulb generates. Last, the grille on the front of the projector (as you can see in the photo above) gets REALLY hot during use, so much so that I couldn’t touch it for more then about a second without it burning my finger. This is, again, normal for projectors, but it means that they need plenty of ventilation to keep cool during use, and the HD65 is no exception. 8)

Overall, I’m very happy with it so far, and the picture quality is suprisingly good. If you’re in the market for a budget projector (or even a mid-range one), take a look at the HD65. With a small footprint, good looks, great picture quality, and being easy to use too, it’s a great choice and I highly recommend it if you’re a movie buff. :D

Now, the only thing I have to do is get my dad to like it. He’s very anti-projector, mainly because he’s used to the horrible quality ones they use in pubs / offices and thinks they’re all like that, among other things. I hope I can prove him wrong. :P

I really want a Sony Bravia VPL-HW10

Published on 29 December, 2008. View Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I’ve always liked projectors since I first got to use one back in 2000, during the Sydney Olympics. My dad was given permission from his office at the time to bring home one of the work projectors over the weekend. Actually, he managed to bring home several different models over several weekends, and (bear in mind that this was 2000, when we still had a CRT TV, and a VCR) I hooked it up to the VCR and fed the video output into the projector. It was incredibly immersive watching the Olympic games on a massive screen, and I also hooked up a friend’s PS2 to one, and played GT3 on it. It was impressive driving around on a huge screen, and I became hooked. However, I’ve never actually owned a projector because they cost so much, and the price of bulbs is quite a lot.

Now, bear in mind that the projector that I used back then had either a 640×480 or 800×600 resolution (I can’t remember exactly, but it was one of those), and was designed for office work – plus, this is almost 9 years ago, so the technology has come forward a lot in the time. However, you still need to spend a lot of cash to get a decent unit, even now, in 2008 (well, 2009, since it’s a few days away). I’ve seen a few displays of projectors in stores, but I’ve only ever seen one HD projector in action – a 1080p Sony Bravia model at my local Sony Store last year (2007), which at the time cost a whopping £7000. The quality was stunning though, when showing a BluRay disc, and I felt even more compelled to want one. But seriously, 7 grand? No thanks.

I often read Engadget HD for news, and noticed that Sony have recently released a new model, the VPL-HW10, which is a full 1080/24p projector, and you can get it for as low as £1500-£1800. I know that’s a lot of money, especially for a TV (of sorts), but bear in mind that our 40″ HDTV cost close to £1000 last year, and even Sony’s high end 52″ LCD TVs cost between £1200 and £3000. So, such a good quality projector that can probably give an image double the size of a 52″ TV, and for £1500 is a pretty damn good price in my eyes. Plus, after seeing a blog post by someone who actually purchased one, the photos he took of the projected image are, simply put, jaw dropping. I’d say that it actually looks BETTER then our 1080p TV does, and that’s saying something, especially considering our TV is on the higher end of Sony’s mid-range TVs, and that I’m only saying that after seeing some still photos. I’ve not seen this thing in action at all. Take a look, and have a read of the article:

Take note, especially, of the photo of Cristian Bale driving the Lamborghini. You can see pretty much all the detail there is to see. I seriously am impressed, and I really, really, seriously, badly want the Sony VPL-HW10 projector. Now all I need is a way of aquiring that amount of money, and getting my parents to say yes to putting one into our lounge. :o