I have owned a few projectors, both DLP and LCD, and have always found them lacking when it comes to the display of B&W movies. With DLP the rainbow effect seems to be worse with B&W content, and with LCD there are issues with screen uniformity and color tinting, especially in areas that are white or light gray. While researching on the internet today I found a handful of posts and articles suggesting a possible solution. It is to remove or slightly displace the color wheel on a DLP projector which in theory should leave you with a pure B&W image. Has anyone attempted this before and what were your results? I'm curious if you could do this to one of the budget DLPs that many people endorse on this forum, such as the Benq 1070 or the Optoma HD131Xe. The Optoma in particular seems especially attractive, as its strength is its superior contrast ratio. I'm almost tempted to buy a cheap used DLP on ebay to experiment on. I currently own an Epson 8700ub and my ideal situation would be to save that for the color movies and use a cheap modified DLP for B&W ones. About half my Bluray and DVD collection is of B&W movies so coming up with some solution is very important to me. If anyone has any knowledge of this I would appreciate the help!
From what I've read the Sony HW40ES in "cinema 2" is prefect for B&W. It's the projector that I'm getting next month so I can't say first hand, but much of my movie collection is B&W.
The experiment was a failure. I was able to move the color wheel out of the light path inside the projector to test my theory. It did produce a "black and white" image but it held a heavy blue cast that I wasn't able to calibrate out now that the color wheel was missing. The only adjustment I could make was to image brightness. So sadly it didn't work out. Fortunately though I did no damage to the projector and was able to put everything back in its proper place.
Terrell78 - Please let me know how it goes with the Sony. That may be my next option. Sadly there are none available for me to view in my area.
Wow, can't believe I forgot that..colorwheel does all the white-balance work in PJs without a color filter. You could try to get or make a red-tinted filter of some kind, but it would have to be something like a spotlight gel that can handle some serious heat.
The Sony should be great for both parts of your film collection..its colors, uniformity and lens quality (helps against chromatic aberration which is more of a threat for b&w movies) are supposed to be top-notch. I imagine it'll be nicer to have one great PJ rather than trying to setup and mount two different ones on the same screen.
Do LCoS projectors suffer from the same tinting problems as LCD ones (where white or light colored portions of the screen display a red or blue cast)? Can they near or match the quality of a DLP projector in this regard?
It varies from unit to unit. But generally, they do suffer from color uniformity issues. That's one of the reasons DLP appeals to me.
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