Hello Fellow Members

I currently own a Infocus Screenplay 4800, X1 . The bulb has kicked the bucket and Retail prices are $340 to $480 Canadian dollars. The projector is no longer worth the investment in another bulb for that price but before I lose all hope I came up with an idea..

Let me know if this makes sense.

The Infocus comes with a 150 watt DC Arc tube 1100 lumens bulb rated at 3000 to 4000 hours. The ballast for the unit converts 100 to 240 Volts AC to low voltage DC levels. I had read at that many electrical devices--like light bulbs--only require that the electrons move. They don't care if the electrons flow through the wire or simply move back-and-forth. Thus a light bulb can be used with either AC or DC electricity.

So is it possible to purchase a 150 watt halogen bulb or similar bulb for less and have it work??

Like this one that sells for US $16.25 on ebay.

ELD/EJN Replacement Projector Lamp 21 Volts 150 Watts

I'd also be interested to know if any people have had much success doing a cheap replacement. I can imagine getting the same performance from a diy lamp would be pretty tricky. Also i guess you need to override the lamp working signal to get the projector to turn on

Unfortunately the bulb monitor in the projector will not let you try such a substitution. The bulds that most projectors use have the unique feature that after the bulb is struck, the bulb resistance decreases. The projector will shut down if it does not detect this change in resistance. Here are some threads to research:
http://www.***************.com/forum_topic.cfm?which=1263
http://www.stereo3d.com/discus/messages/21/2324.html?1080477918

Oh, and by the way, the projector strikes the lamp with a 4 second 5000v spike in order to get it started - putting in a 250v lamp will guarantee an explosion. For everything I have seen it is not worth the time, risk, and poorer performance. If there was a cheap feasable solution to the expesive bulb issue - some low-end projector would have utilized it by now.

Epson Powerlite S-4 Projector was bulbs for less then $200 bucks. I saw one go on ebay going for $155 new and few online stores have it for less then two franklins for new bulbs.

Now I wouldn't use this for HT because its an SVGA LCD. But it'd be fun for video games or surfing the net and wouldn't have to feel to guilty about racking up the hours.

I saw a refurb H56 going for a little over $500 bucks at an online site. This was the projector that went head to head against the HT1000. Granted its old tech., but basically cost just as much as a bulb and its an XGA with a 4x color wheel.

Chris