(Long Post)

Long story short, college is over (for now) and I now find myself a few months away from being able to afford a projector. For the past year and a half I have been agonizing over which projector technology will fit my needs. My good friend bought a three LCD Sanyo last year. After we finished bolting everything to the ceiling and firing it up I knew that I needed a projector. A few months before this I had bought a Sony Xbr970 CRT TV. I agonized for months over which TV technology to purchase and finally decided that I would rather spend my limited college fund on a high end CRT, than a cheap LCD. To this day I still fall in love with that set every time I fire it up for movies or games. After having it calibrated last September I have yet to find a better looking picture.

Before setting up my friends LCD projector I knew very little about projectors as a whole. After perusing through AVS forum I saw the CRT Projector section. After spending a few minutes I found a link to the CRT primer. Since then I have checked in here a few times a week along with curt palmes site to try and get a better handle on which technology is a better fit for my lifestyle.

Why am I not hell bent on picking up a CRT projector you ask?

1. At the moment my current living arrangements can allow for a floor mounted crt projector. The house that I have been living in for college has a halfway finished 20x13 basement room. Between the low ceiling (6 feet 10 inches) and at the landlords request I would be unable to put it anywhere other than the floor. Well the room is perfect otherwise with; concrete walls, complete light control, and purple walls (I am allowed to repaint the room). Sadly I will be moving from here sometime next summer (2009) when the landlord sells the house.

2. I want a long term projector. For optimal use I would want five years out of whatever I buy. In two years I will be starting a graduate program that requires three years of full time study. I do not know where I will end up, most likely the east coast. Coming from Cleveland where little money will net you a generous amount of living space, New York or D.C. will probably come as a shock. Where I will go is still undecided but I do know that I will not have the same amount of space available to me as I do now.


3. While working I will not have a problem funding bulb replacements. For all intents and purposes I am assuming that whichever projector I buy will have 20-30 hours a week of use. The use will of course vary but the source material will be either games (console, PC, old school, new school) or movies (blue-ray, DVD).

4. I am concerned about the input lag on digital projectors for gaming. I am used to some motion blur from my lcd pc monitor but I perfer as minimal as possible.

5. I do not mind tweaking or playing around with settings from time to time. The gentleman who calibrated my CRT TV (Chad B) did an exceptional job and was highly recommended by the people at AVS forums. His work was flawless and he mentioned that I should get a CRT projector which he would be able to properly calibrate and setup. As mentioned before floor/table mount will probably be my only option for now and in the future for both digital or crt. I am confident in his ability to calibrate any projector I decide on.


What do I like in a picture? (In order)
Sharpness
Contrast
Punch
Rich Accurate Colors

Other technology and Problems (Not sure how well these translate to projectors)
LCD- Motion blur (I have an three year old 20 inch wide screen Dell LCD monitor and the motion blur is very annoying for games) Also the colors seem mute at least on the LCD's that I have seen and my pc monitor.

DLP- I have never seen a properly setup DLP TV but the ones at BB and CC seem to cause eyes strain and produce mild rainbow effects. Everyone raves about how real the picture looks but the floor models seem unnatural to me.

CRT- Causes eyestrain to me after a few hours of use. Playing late night games or watching movies at night with dimmed lights the problems are very much accentuated.

LCOS- I have never seen a SXRD TV outside of BB and CC. The picture seemed a little flat color wise but seemed very comfortable to my eyes like LCDs i.e. no eyestrain. I have never seen a game played on this thecnology.

In the end here is what I want out of a projector. A sharp, rich picture that will hold me over until I finish graduate school. I want to be able to use it frequently for gaming and movies, buying bulbs is not a problem now but I am more concerned about having a stable picture that does not require a lot of touch ups from dimming. As a bachelor for the foreseeable future size is not a problem but fan noise is. At the moment I have the physical space for a crt but that could change within 1 year. If a CRT or digital projector can produce a picture similar to my little XBR970 then that is the picture I want. Honestly if digital can come close to that than great. If not, with the information provided which technology will be a decent match?

How much to spend is another problem I am facing. At the moment I want to spend around 3k. This number might change after I start recieving full time paychecks this summer. Will I spend 6k on a projector? Probably not but I am not unwilling to spend more money if I can find a good deal on a high end digital or CRT. More than likely my range will end up between 2-4k. Any insight is greatly appreciated.

I have already posted a similar article on Curte Plames forum for suggestions from both sides of the fence.

Forin

Keep your eyes on Sanyo Z2000, currently the most economical 1080p projector, around $1600 after rebate. You could also get a good 720p projector for under $1,000 and then upgrade in 2 yrs to 1080p projector.
Try a demo at a local av dealer for DLP & LCoS projectors. As far as input lag goes, I never really notice any when I was using Sanyo Z4, Mits HC5000 (both LCD) and Sony VW60 (LCoS). Noticed slight motion blur with Sanyo Z4 but much better then my LCD monitor. Mits was better at handling motions and the Sony just look very clean.

Some people see blur in LCOS. If you see the rainbows in the store DLP units, you will probably see it worse with a projector.

Have you tried CRT with a faster refresh rate?

ed_t- The problem with finding a projector dealer is that I live in Cleveland, high end video and audio stores do not exist in the area. That is why I have had to rely on viewing tv's from BB and CC.

Cameron- I used to run my old Sony pc monitor at 85hz for long EQ sessions back in the day, and never expereinced any eyestrain. I am not sure what a XBR 970's refresh rate is set at, this could be my problem.

Then you best bet is to try asking forum members if they would give you a demo of their set up.

With the right VP, you can increase the refresh on a good CRT FP.

Hi, forin,

I too am looking into the possibility of getting a projector in the not-distant future, and here's what I've found:

At first, I was checking into the possibility of a CRT projector like you. For me, being a gamer, input lag is a HUGE deal. It also seemed to me, at first, that CRT was a cheap way to get a projector that could do 1080p with good contrast. I've since given up on the idea. I think that CRT is a ripoff and unreasonably inconvenient, unless you're already a die-hard enthusiast who owns one or more, or if you're an absolute glutton for punishment with some serious electrical engineering know-how. Here's why:

1) CRTs are not as cheap as they seem at first. They ought to be dirt cheap, given all their inconveniences and downsides, but aren't. First of all, *none* of the projectors actually have the video board bandwidth to fully process a 1080p signal at 60Hz. Not unless you get them modded. And asking around, I found that that mod will run you about $1000 (and the inconvenience of opening your projector, pulling it apart, and then packing up the necessary boards and sending them to the modder). Then, if you want good HDMI, you'll need to buy a mod card that costs about $600. And then there's the price of replacing CRTs, which is *much* higher than replacing a bulb.

2) Even after getting their CRT projectors modded, I read all sorts of reports on the curtpalme boards of people having trouble hooking up their PS3s, because the image was shifted to far to the right, or there was a line down the middle, or whatever. Apparently most of these problems were caused by signal timings that the projector couldn't handle, and stuff like that. Most people were solving this by using Home Theater PCs as image processors to create custom timings. Well, there goes the CRT input lag advantage. Or they were modding the boards. More money/time and hassle.

3) You said you wanted a stable picture that doesn't require a lot of touchups from dimming. Well, those CRT guys are *constantly* having to tweak their pictures to adjust for drift and an endless other host of other problems. Additionally, those CRT projectors weigh around 200 pounds, making it very inconvenient to mess with them. And you will have zero support, because all these projectors are ancient refurbished dinosaurs.


As for what I do recommend, after checking around, I've learned that Panasonic makes a projector that they especially designed with gaming and lag reduction in mind, called the PT-AX200u, released in September. It has an ultra-fast Game Mode that apparently has under 5 ms of lag. It can do 2000 lumens, which is quite respectable. And while it's an LCD projector, the reviews all say that there is no screen door effect. The motion blur is also apparently quite low. It's also able to do 2:2 pulldown for 24 fps movies.

The main downside is that it's only 720p (although the reviews say that it looks higher, due to the lack of screen door, and excellent downscaling of 1080p content). And of course no affordable digital projector right now is going to give you a picture like your XBR TV.

It's quite cheap too. You can get it new for under $1300, and I've seen it on ebay/craig's list for under $1000. If I were buying right now, that's what I think I'd get. As it is, I'm going to hang back and see if Panasonic will release a gaming-oriented 1080p version this fall.