So I am an extremely broke college student, and I want to get a super low end projector. The problem I have with many projectors out there is the price of the replacement bulbs. I have been looking at the projectors that use MR16 halogen bulbs. I know they are toys, but that is all I really need.

I recently came across a MR16 that gave claims that were almost too good to be true. The company claims that a simple 12v 50w MR16 narrow beam spot lamp can have a life span of 18,000 hours and produce approx. 8600 lumens. If that is true, this might just make the toy somewhat usable in my opinion.

I sadly cannot post a link to the bulb since I have not made the obligatory 3 posts. The bulb can be found at 1000bulbs(dot)com and it is called Ultraline Titan.

So I am an extremely broke college student, and I want to get a super low end projector. The problem I have with many projectors out there is the price of the replacement bulbs. I have been looking at the projectors that use MR16 halogen bulbs. I know they are toys, but that is all I really need.

I recently came across a MR16 that gave claims that were almost too good to be true. The company claims that a simple 12v 50w MR16 narrow beam spot lamp can have a life span of 18,000 hours and produce approx. 8600 lumens. If that is true, this might just make the toy somewhat usable in my opinion.

I sadly cannot post a link to the bulb since I have not made the obligatory 3 posts. The bulb can be found at 1000bulbs(dot)com and it is called Ultraline Titan.
If this is not a joke, sounds to good to be true. 8600 lumens from a kids toy bulb and 18k hours? I wouldn't worry to much with bulb life, b the time it blows, you'll probably want to upgrade. I used my HD70 pj pretty much everyday for almost two years now and I only have 500 hours on it. Which is less than what I put on it, on economy mode the bulb hours don't clock as fast.

Even if you burned through one bulb per year, your still only talking 300 bucks, thats less than a dollar a day. Heck I spend at least 5-6 buks per meal each day even if I cook at home, so one more buck won't break the bank in my opinion. Don't buy a cheap kids toy pj, its probably not worth your time.

I'm a broke college guy myself, so I know what its like to not have a nickel in the pocket and low end pjs are getting pretty cheap.

I am seriously thinking about buying that bulb. Here is the kicker: it is only $10! Then again, I watched an ad for the bulb on the site (conveniently lacking a demonstration of the bulb), and they talk about getting a crew on machinery to change it, so I guess it is meant to be industrial lighting or something. Here I am thinking about putting it in a kid's projector.

look at the datasheet of it on USHIO website:(just put www in front since I cannot post links) ushio.com/files/specs/Ultralinetitan.pdf

anyways, they're all 50W halogen lamps, but as the beam angle gets larger, the luminous intensity gets less - so I think that 620 lumen FNV/60/FG/ULTRA TITAN lamp is no different than the 8600 EXT/FG/ULTRA TITAN lumen lamp other than the beam angle produced (tighter beam will be more intense light collected but over smaller area). So I think they're getting their "lumens" based on the beam angle produced. Besides, that's a very high lm/W rating for a halogen lamp. But at $10, couldn't hurt to test it...

Yeah, I have become somewhat of an "expert" on halogens after my hours of "just 'cuz" research. The spot lights generally use an angle of 12 degrees to increase the core intensity of the light. What confuses me is that the bulb that I mentioned here is rated in lumens, but the rest of their bulbs are rates by CBCP (center beam candle power).

Like you said, at $10 it is worth a test. Especially since a lot of the projectors on the moderate end of the spectrum are rated at 2000 lumens. I have not even looked into $3k plus models.

kind of like this:

I think you guys are confusing Lumens (the total amount of light produced) with Candela, which is a measure of luminous intensity. It is possible to have a very high Candela with low lumens, if the light is very directional (eg a spotlight).

With the halogen bulb being discussed, the candela rating is high because it is a focussed beam. The Lumen rating is not given, but would be the same for all the different beam angle variants of this bulb.

The figure that matters for a projector is the Lumens. Note that while Halogen bulbs are more efficient than normal incandescent room lighting, they are MUCH less efficient that the discharge type bulbs that are used on most projectors (by a factor of 5 or more). They don't quote a figure, but the halogen bulbs being discussed would probably have an output of about 800 lumens. The actual output from the projector will be MUCH LESS than 800 lumens (probably under 100 lumens), due to the losses inherent in the projection technology. LCD projectors are brighter than DLP, largely because the colour wheels used in DLP only let a small fraction of the total light through at any one time.

yes, this is not lumens. it is "lumens" but with "cd" rated thereafter ie. candelas; which as you stated is very different from luminous intensity

That is why I jumped on these boards. It seems the manufacturer made some terminology mistakes. Thanks for the clear up.

I have few worries about the power of the bulb though. I used to work at a movie theater, and we used slide projectors that used MR16 bulbs that projected across an entire auditorium in moderate lighting conditions with no problems. They were 12v bulbs too, so we will see what happens.

What you guys ARE confusing is bulb brightness vs projector brightness. Projectors already use bulbs that are much brighter than the light the projector puts out.