I made a post in the under 3,000 projectors about what I was trying to do. But I don't know if that was the right forum to put it in. Here is what I asked..

I want to put a video on a wall displaying landscape's video's like water, waves grass moving and maby even music video's the wall size is 270" W and 88" H (like 22 feet wide and 8 feet tall). I can go about 13 feet out for a throw. So what do I do ?

Do I get one projector that can do that ? ( I don't know if there is one )

Do I use 2 projector's ? if so how do I link the video or projectors so it is seam less. I know I have to have some type of edge blending but how and what do I get to do that

I wanted to run a mac to do this but I am open to anything, and this is going to be in a night club. The room it is going to be in has white walls and is not that dark more like a lounge. I have 7,000 to make it happen do you think it is possible or do I need more money. I need 7k to work tho. Some one please let me know what I should do.

Read the very first thread at the top of this forum for the lowest cost hardware blending solution.

ok I looked at that, I don't know which one to get so I will call the company in a hour or so unless you suggest one. and I don't know the price range for the tv one it didn't say on the site that I could see. I also saw somewhere that the program VLC can do some edge blending. I don't know how well it works tho. I also do not have any projector's yet and if someone could suggest 2 projectors for me to get that would work in my guide lines it would be real helpful.

the C2-260 PCI/ISA Card Video Scaler will that work it is about 776. And then what kind of projector do I use I need one that will have a throw of 8 - 15 feet and will do 135" w by 88 " H. so the total of 2 projector will be 207" W x 88"

you need two cards one for each PJ. CRT's have short throws compared to digitals.my screen is 144 inch and the PJ sites at 165" so a crt is your best option but they are big, bulky, and harder to set up than a digital.

What is your total budget? and how long to you plan to keep this up for?

jst saw 7000 is your budget, CRT's will last a lot longer than and Digital, Look for a marquee, you can get two marquees 8500 for 3000
and then the cards for 1400(both) but they will need a windows softwear program to set them up. You can get two C2-2250's for about 3500, i can hook you up for those. then just some type of split out put from your PC or video sources. Whats your location?

Athanasios

yeah I was going to go with a mac then out of the mac to a DA 1t-VGA-412 to the C2-1250 then to the projectors. And you said the marquees 8500 will that work for the space that I need and the light ? because I figured that I would take two projectors displaying 135" W X 88" H and blend them. I know I need to have like lens shift ; gamma set-up cross hatch; color temp and such to make sure they are the same so I can blend them. is that all I need to take in to a count ?

where can I get a marquees 8500

The room it is going to be in has white walls and is not that dark more like a lounge.

I figured that I would take two projectors displaying 135" W X 88" H and blend them.


IMHO, a single Marquee is not suitable for a 11' wide screen in a white room with high ambient levels.

Thus, also IMHO, a pair of M8500's will not be suitable for a 270"-wide image.

Honestly, if I were you, I'd use two digitals. You'll need to replace bulbs every couple thousand hours, but these will presumably be running for eight to twelve hours at a time, which will help bulb life. You're also not going to be horribly color-critical, so color shift over the bulb life won't really matter. And you ARE brightness-critical, which is really bad for CRTs. And you'll be running only a few kinds of content, which is also really bad for CRTs.

You can do this far, far more cheaply and easily by setting up two carefully-picked digitals with *good mounts*, and edge-matching them instead of blending. The geometry on digitals is so good that if you get the right zoom / placement, you can get very near seamless video (one or two pixels off is hardly going to matter in this context).

Advantages?

-Super bright
-No burn-in worries - run a static logo if you want, and avoid having your blue tube roasted from showing water all the time
-Easy, EASY, EASY to configure: Align the PJs mechanically, use two DVI outputs from a single video card, and set to stretched desktop. Maximize video player. Done, done, and done. No convergence, no multi-thousand-dollar blending unit, no software issues trying to drive weird-ass blended outputs.

Cost? $1k for the computer to run it, probably under $2k per projector and mount depending on what you want, and probably 1/10th or less the time (at how much per hour?) to set it up and get it right.

And if one of them dies, you just buy another one - or, actually, have another one waiting. This is business, and three days down while you wait for a card to get diagnosed is a lot more costly than having a backup PJ sitting in the stock room.

yeah I was thinking about it and I was going to use 2 digital's. Now if I just use a MAC mini and use this DA 1t-VGA-412 spliter from TVone to split the picture and just run I to the digital's I would just have to make shure they have the same settings as far as color and gamma and then just you the lens shift to get them next to each other. that way I will save a lot of time and money. But will I have a problem with seeing a seam or will it not be very noticeable ? I want the quality to still be good and people watching it not to see two different pictures and only see one.

yeah I was thinking about it and I was going to use 2 digital's. Now if I just use a MAC mini and use this DA 1t-VGA-412 spliter from TVone to split the picture and just run I to the digital's I would just have to make shure they have the same settings as far as color and gamma and then just you the lens shift to get them next to each other. that way I will save a lot of time and money. But will I have a problem with seeing a seam or will it not be very noticeable ? I want the quality to still be good and people watching it not to see two different pictures and only see one.


Depends how careful you are with positioning the projectors. You might find that using lens shift results in slight geometry differences between the two projectors, so you can't get things quite right, or that you get barrel / pincushion distortion at some zoom ratios. I've played with doing this off-hand, and it seems like it should be doable, though. And my experience with projectors with lens shift is that the geometry is still quite good.

The best thing would be to find a couple of projectors and play with them sitting on the floor aimed at the wall, so you get a feel for things.

Even if you're a pixel or so off, remember that it's a pixel along a 200" screen. If people are more than a couple feet away, I doubt they'll ever notice - and 90% of them won't even know it's two projectors, so they won't even bother LOOKING for a problem. And if someone from this forum shows up and complains, tell 'em where to stick it! :D

Another thing - try to make sure you use every millimeter of the wall surface, and have 'natural borders' for the screen. If the image just stops an inch from the edge of the wall, peoples' eyes will say, "That's a projector" - but if it goes RIGHT to the edge, perfectly, it'll look much, much cooler.

Probably the best thing you can do for the 'wow' factor is make sure you're feeding it good video. If you get two 720p projectors, you'll end up with something like 2200x720 (I don't think you'll use the whole width of each PJ with the screen size you've got), so make sure you use every one of those pixels and I think your crowds will love it. One way to really knock peoples' socks off would be to run a slick slideshow with really good quality (ie, 10-megapixel DSLR source) photos doing some pan-and-zoom - neat ambiance, and the visual effect should be really nice.

Another option is to use something like the winamp eggdrop visualizer. My 6-month-old son is absolutely gobsmacked by it when I project it on the vaulted ceiling in our house!

What you could do then is get 3 digitals and three of the C2-1250 blend units and do it that way. Go with a inexpensive digitals as they would be easier to set up, Crt's are much harder to set up but do last longer when on for long periods of time. the nice thing about the Tv_one units is they have edge blending for all sides of the image so you can use three four 5 etc, as many as you need. 3 marquees could do it better than 2, but once again you need to know how to set them up . these are old PJs and finding three with low hours and abpout the same wear on the tubes unles your lucky and can find 3 in mint shape..having said that go digital, use three. get ones under 1000 then you'll have enough for the units, If you need the units PM and I can get you a good deal.

Athanasios

Athanasios

Well, what are the cheapest projectors with build in softedgeblending? Quick scan, it seems with the current Panasonics it starts at the PT-DW5100E 5.500 Ansi-lumen Single Chip W-XGA 16: 9 DLP Projector. The PT-D4000E 4000 Ansi-lumen XGA DLP Projector, the current entry level single chip DLP machine doesn't have the function, according to an online specsheet, the predecessor 3500 didn't use to have it either. The 5500, 5600 and 5700 (5000, 5500, 6000 ANSI Lumens) XGA machines have had it since the series introduction four years ago, but probably even two new old stock models would still break your budget. These are designed for 24/7 use though, with a watercooled DLP chip, and there's no blend units to worry about.

Even if the place is smoke free, doing for a sealed optical unit with good filters would be wise if going with LCD projectors.

So, any other cheaper models that have build in softedgeblending?

I only need 2 projector's not 3. and the only projector I saw was that panasonic and I think it was like 5k and for two I am over budget. If I could get something like that for cheaper than that would be great. I just have to find a 2 digitals that are under 3k I would like it for 2k but I have to find one that does that size of screen at that throw. and that is hard for me I don't know how to compute how far I have to be away to get 135" by 88" I know I want to use a 16:10 ratio tho

At 135x88, you're not at 16:9 or 16:10 - something like 1.53:1 instead of 1.78:1 for 16:9. So you don't really need to worry about the aspect ratio - you just need to worry about getting an 88" high image with the throw distance you have to work with. You'll either have a 16:9 screen as the left part and whatever remains as the right part (so the seam will be over to the right) or have some cropped on either side. Depends how you want to handle it in software.

Check out projectorcentral.com's throw distance calculator. It's been quite useful for us picking various PJs out.

The panasonic DLPs are fixed install/rental machines, so they come with interchangable lenses, more expensive but very flexible when it comes to throwlengths.

Google shows the US version of the 5500 available at 3200 USD online, these are remanufactured though, have a look anyway, would just get you in on that 7K budget, and bright, better contrast/color than budget LCD, and reliable.

http://www.proviewdigital.com/PT-D5500UR.html

New ones (the model was introduced 4 years ago, 5700 is the current model) are indeed 5K USD: http://officewonderland.com/product/view/759, according to a quick search.

One need to check if it comes with a lens though.

A single bright projector wouldn't do?

A single bright projector wouldn't do?

I bet you could get the needed lumens from one box. The issue would be finding something that would throw +20' wide from 13' back. That would be a really short throw lens.

I'm not current with the digitals but even doing ~11' wide from 13' back may require special glass?

That's my reasoning to, just asking to see if I was overlooking an option. The Panasonics I have been going on about have an optional fixed 0.8 lens, but just as the other lenses it costs... The 5700U is offered on ebay.com for under 5K, the 5600U for under 4, the 4000U has a buy now price of below 3K, if 4K ANSI Lumens (lets say 3K effective)' suffices the 4000U can take the same .8 lens, but that still would result in a throw over 16+ feet.

We get near 1:1 throw ratio / diagonal from standard projectors for my work (motion simulators with big projection screens). There aren't many that will do it, but there are some - I think projectorcentral will let you search by throw ratio, though I'm not sure.

My strong, strong instinct is to do as Google does - use more commodity equipment and have a backup, rather than try to find uberhardware and pay twice as much.

If it's a real problem, you could switch to using a PC, and get three very inexpensive projectors, and edge match across three outputs using a triplehead2go from Matrox. Build the PC for $500 or so, use the analog triplehead2go for about 250, and three 1024x768 projectors (with a one as backup) that you can probably get for under $800 each. You'll have the same or better resolution (if you went with two 720p projectors you'd have just a bit less), low cost, and more brightness than you'd get with two.

So, there are other options. 'Commercial' solutions are all well and good, but sometimes they're only good for spending twice as much on an inferior result. :)

I want to put a video on a wall displaying landscape's video's like water, waves grass moving and maby even music video's the wall size is 270" W and 88" H (like 22 feet wide and 8 feet tall). I can go about 13 feet out for a throw. So what do I do ?

this is going to be in a night club. The room it is going to be in has white walls and is not that dark more like a lounge.

Another thing - try to make sure you use every millimeter of the wall surface, and have 'natural borders' for the screen. If the image just stops an inch from the edge of the wall, peoples' eyes will say, "That's a projector" - but if it goes RIGHT to the edge, perfectly, it'll look much, much cooler.

The issue would be finding something that would throw +20' wide from 13' back. That would be a really short throw lens.

Another important consideration... you don't mention using Rear Projection, so if anybody ever walks between the projector(s) and the screen/wall, you'll get a shadow.

If this is a nightclub, you'll probably have more shadows than screen image.

Plus you'll be zapping a bunch of drunks with thousand of lumens when they look up towards the projector(s).

Even if you mount them very high (12'+) in the ceiling, you'll end up with extreme keystone, which will kill your geometry (and phosphor/panel optimization) on either CRT or d!%!#@|.

But if you happen to have 12'-20' behind the screen wall, then Rear Projection would be good.

An acrylic rear projection screen that size would cost a multiple of the listed budget.

Let alone construction costs

Somewhat more afforadable short throw projectors have recently become available like the Epson EMP-400W. http://www.epson.co.uk/products/video_projectors/EMP-400W.htm

The cheap LCD solution has one issue to consider, these come without a sealed lightengine, so there will be considerable dust and dirt build-up even if the place is smokefree, so they might last less than a year. The sealed optics units that are sold into public venues are more expensive.

Post some pics and or youtube clip of the premiere VJ performance, will you.

If you are not playing videos you could go with a matrix dual head or tripple head 2 go

here is a youtube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHeP0hGR2Q

guru3d reivew
http://www.guru3d.com/article/matrox-triplehead-2-go-digital-edition-dvi-review/1

ok well that Triple head 2 go can that blend ? I need to have no seam at all now and I need to get a throw of 8 feet or 13 feet on or the other because there is something the way that we can't mount on. I also can raise the budget some maby 10k I think I would need to go with 3 digitals but I don't know witch one's to go with. if I use the triple head 2 go and can blend with them I would not have to spend money on the tvone scaler.

You need the VLC player with Panoramix plug-in, as the triple head only does hard edge blending, so you need software to let the video overlap.