Hi, I am considering a last minute, painters cloth drapped over the pergola, outdoor movie night in my backyard.
I do not own a projector, but I have been lurking around this forum for awhile, so I do know what projectors are all about.
However, I am considering borrowing a basic presentation type projector to show the movie.
Has anyone ever done an outside movie with one of these types of projectors? Are they bright enought?

Maybe you should do a dry run and see what it looks like before your planned GTG . I would be willing to bet that the cool factor will out weigh the lost picture quality using this projector .

I've been using a "business class" Sharp projector for three years and it looks great. drunkonjack is correct, the WOW factor will be huge no matter what you use.

My mantra is...

People don't go to outdoor movies for the sound or picture quality...they go to have a good time.

Good luck,
Tom

A business projector is often a goo solution for outdoor movies because they're brighter than home theater projectors. It will probably be perfectly fine.

Jim

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I will let you all know how it turns out.

I too am interested in doing this. What does everyone run the dvd from and what is used for sound? (ie a laptop with speakers plugged in)

I just grabbed an old receiver & speakers from my garage. Some people buy outdoor speakers for a more permanent setup.

I use a $29 DVD player a $149 "sale-as-is" HTiB.

Tom

Wow factor is a given! I used a business projector with a HTiB from Panasonic (under $200) Set it up using a PVC Frame with a King size thermal bed sheet,tie wrapped. My neighbors and friends were awed!

Ok, so I picked up a plain old projector from work. Turns out, its not so plan. This is what I picked up.
http://projectorcentral.com/Toshiba_DPD-TLP-670.htm
In its day, according to ProjectorCentral, it listed for nearly $7,000.00.

Its got RGB input and S-Video for a whopping 480p or 480i (still unpublished/unknown)

I hooked it up to my laptop for RGB as well as for comparison my Sony DVP which has S-video (basic DVD player).

I think, while the RGB had more of a screen door effect, it clearly seemed better as far as color and image. I think I will go with that setup for my outdoor movie night this weekend.

As for sound, I guess I will have a basic output from my laptop to L/R input on a receiver and feed a couple of speakers and call it a day.

This is gonna be cool.

Here was my setup as well as a couple of pics. NOTE: Everything used for this event was from items I currently have in my house. Except for the FP, that was "borrowed" from work. ;)
The only cost was beer, pop, snacks, popcorn and DVD rental!

I decided to go with the setup in my driveway instead of the back yard because the mosquitos are horrible right now and I didnt want them driving people away.

I had an old painters cloth, which I think is BOC that someone sewed together for a big drop cloth. Luckily there wasnt much paint on it. I sort of wrapped the cloth from top to bottom of my garage door. If you were to look from the inside of my garage door, you would see some cloth at the top and some cloth at the bottom. From the outside, the cloth is top to bottom. To keep it tight, I clamped the top (inside) to a metal frame support on my door. And at the bottom, I used full paint cans to keep that stable (as I didnt have enought cloth to pull up to another support bar. There were wringles and the seems of the sewing didnt make the overall material squares, so there were some "undulation, if you will", in my screen. However, as you can see, once the movie was on ....that was all gone. No one complained, not even me, silently. In a pinch, this is the best setup. Come to think of it, I do not think I will do it any other way.

For the projector, I used a Toshiba TLP670 (http://projectorcentral.com/Toshiba_DPD-TLP-670.htm )
Back in its day, this thing was $7000.00 (MSRP)! It did very WELL. Actually, this is my first projected movie exp, and while I have been waiting to get a PTAX100u for my basement project. I am defintely sold that going big with a Front PJ, is the way to go.

For video source, I used my IBM Thinkpad T-41 laptop, feeding video to project using RGB cable. I believe the projector is only 480p. I could have done S-Video, from a DVD player, but honestly, my tests of that showed the RGB to be better. I am not sure why, but in a pinch, it didnt matter.

For audio source, I used my Sony receiver (from my 5.1 system in my basement) connecting a simple mini jack out of my headphone jack on my PC to L/R input on Receiver.

For speakers, I hooked up my Polk sub and L/R Bose 301's.(I borrowed the Sub from my 5.1 system in my basement and the L/R Bose 301 I had laying around)

This took me probably 1.5hrs to setup as I did it all myself, except for a little help with putting the painters cloth on the garage door.

All was tested and worked fine. Except 5 mins before show time, I thought I would connect to Sirius and play some music and NO SOUND! Turned out that my laptop has external audio buttons that override all settings...it was muted (there is no indication that the override is on!) Whew, that was close, I was close to re-wiring everything...and it was getting dark and people were gathering.

Anyway, it was a huge success.

I printed up tickets using Steve Movie Ticket Generator 2.0 (http://www.gregsguns.com/tickets/) and had my kids hand them out to some neighbors.

Just as it was showtime, I cued up some pre-movie clips of Lets all go to Lobby, a no-cell reminder, and a Feature Presentation clip. Then on to the movie (Night at the Museum).

Everyone was in awe and everyone watched the entire movie.

At the end, i put on that popular You Tube clip where the guy does hand puppet (called Hand Puppet Master - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdWkUwMeVuw) in front of a projector and then everyone left.
I actually got a round of applause..:):D

I thank everyone here and AVS for helping make this a memorable occasion for me. Without the innovation and support here, I would have never known to do this or how!

As the adults were leaving, they asked when the next movie night would be!

I especially got a kick out of the drive bys...especially the police! :)

These pics are big, but I just got a new pc, w/vista, and I DONT have picture editing tools to reduce the size.
Setup (w/flash) (the wrinkles were barely noticeable when the movie started) (http://home.comcast.net/~dougguzek/DSC06954.JPG)
Movie shot (http://home.comcast.net/~dougguzek/DSC06955.JPG)
Audience (http://home.comcast.net/~dougguzek/DSC06962.JPG)

Nicely done, Kezug.

It's hard to image how the wrinkles in the painters cloth won't mess up the image until you realize the image is projected, and not actually painted on the cloth. If the audience looks at the image from generally the same direction as the projector is projection then they see picture, not wrinkles.

On the other hand I'm a little bit too much of a perfectionist and would have spent another hour trying to get those wrinkles out. ;-(

I've been testing my blow up screen with a Sharp 800x600 data projector and so far think it would be just fine. It too has Svideo and VGA inputs, but I hadn't considered playing the DVD on my laptop and using the VGA input. I've got several choices of portable DVD players to choose from, but the best any of them offer for outputs is Svideo. In fact it stuns me when I realize that I've got 14 devices in my house that can play DVDS, and only two people live here. ;-)

Well, I learned a lesson: GIve yourself plenty of time to setup. I was frantically setting up the event (suprise) while my daughter was doing the pinata (sp?). Darkness just fell and on with the pre-show.

I chose Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back and found the movie just too dark.

This is only my 2nd showing for outdoor FP event and I am very new at handling Projectors as well. I didnt even THINK to go into the menu and adjust brightness, instead I fumed about it all night and it really left me deflated.

So for any of you doing this for the first time, give yourself plenty of time to setup and prepare...if you are not sure if the movie will play well on a FP, then demo it to yourself before the event if you can so you really have time to adjust the setup accordingly, or choose a different movie.

To compare, I threw on Cars and it was stunning, at the same setting, The Empire Strikes Back was very dim. But this was only after the event... :(

It was dissapointing to me because I know the newbies attending now do not know how good it can be and are now probably not going to come back or appreciate what I did.

Has anyone else gone through these woes?

I'm getting more and more pressure (from my wife who bought it for me) to set up my Gemmie inflatable on the big rear deck for the neighbors. I won't do it without a dry run, though. I've got enough speakers and gear to do true 5.1 on the deck, but want to have it all set up and proven before opening night. Dusk is getting earlier every day now, and the weather is about right, so I don't really have any excuse to not "Just Do It". It's just gonna be work.

Of all the posts about screens that I have seen, I ended up simply draping my BOC right over the top of my garage door, clamped to the metal support bars on the inside of the door, and then sliding the bottom part of the cloth underneath the door. I then pull it snug, place a few 1 gallon paint cans for hold and I am done with the screen. This takes 2 people (3 is best) and only 5 mins. I like this setup as it provides a study hold on my screen no matter the wind.
Then everything else is setup in the drive way.

This works for me... I dont have a grand enough back yard to do that kind of setup, but I like using my garage door and not having to do any framing.

What I need to do, is train a few of my neighbors how to hang the BOC on the door without wrinkles, while I setup all the other stuff ;)