TruVue Vango - Owner's Thread - Page 7

you could stack any projector but if there are not enough controls to allow you to adjust the picture and they are not places perfectly you will not have a sharp image and might have the wrong kind of 3d looking image. I know some people used to stack their CRT projectors for brightness and it took a long time to dial them in properly.

Thanks for the feedback, so not easily viable I guess. I will carry on scouring classifieds for 3 chippers

Stacking or blending CRT FPs is a whole different animal Blends require a lot of adjustment and really two identical projectors. Stacking a LED is relatively easy belong easy to have the gray scales etc identical. The problem is alignment of the two projectors and one really needs a sort of platform for the second projector to allow minute forward and back, left right adjustments but such devices exist and are used in stacked 3D displays.

Mark-
Would one be able to blend two of there projectors using horizontal lens shift if they were placed side-by-side on a shelf? I'm thinking that might be easier than stacking them on top of each other.

A digital end blend is relatively easy with the right piece of blend electronics particularly with a non bulb projector. A horizontal stack would have the same alignment problems as a vertical stack. We are not talking womens' busts here. A stack is a stack.

Edit: I've no longer got a problem using RGB.

I got the Vango last week and it looks pretty amazing.

What's remote are you all using with it?

For most people yes. 14 fL is reference luminance.

Since you are spending $10,000 on a premium projector, why not get a screen that matches it better? A 110" diagonal StudioTek would be an excellent choice.

Thanks for the suggestion,Tom. It is an excellent idea! I'll buy a new screen as soon as I save enough money to buy one. I don't deficit spend and it took me a few years of throwing quarters in a jar before I saved enough to get the Vango. So now I'm saving for a screen and a Lumagen video processor.

The projector lense is 13' 2" from the screen, so I should be able to fit a 110" screen in my room.

BTW, thanks for doing such a great job calibrating the projector.

I've may have gone insane and have actually started watching TV commercials because this projector makes everything look so good.

When I watch the Celtics on my Vango, they win about .750 of the time.

Alert. My projector shows the Celtics losing to the Clippers by 18 at halftime. I think I need to have it checked out. Something must be wrong.

I have a 105" wide CIH screen so in 2.35 setup it's 105" x 44" and in 16:9 it's 78" x 44". I watch movies and sports mostly. During movie watching (usually 2.35) I have good light control. However, with sports (always 16:9) there is some ambient light.

Assuming 500 lumens, I can get to 15 ft/L in 2.35 and 20 ft/L in 16:9. But in reality, for those who own one, would a Vango work in this setup? The good thing is during sports/light situations, the screen is much smaller. Also, is it important to get the external controller so one can use the "bright" mode?

The screen is SeymourAV acoustically transparent with 1 gain. Also, I'm not using a anamorphic lens, just zooming to the right size.

It will work fine and you will be very happy with the light output. Its not an external controller, its the EE color box which is a video processor which contains gamma calibration, a CMS, and special tables to deal with color issues caused by the high brightness mode and in normal brightness how your eyes perceive colors bouncing off a screen while you are in different lighting environments. The EE color box is now included which each Vango sold. Please give me a call and I will explain the new deal. Prepare to be smiling.

wkumar-
My screen is 80x45 and I watch Sunday afternoon sports with about 95% light control of my west facing windows - I can read (although not easily) in that light. The games look fine, but most definitely look better after the sun sets. Note that I have a Da-lite HP screen so it may not get as washed out as a 1.0 gain screen.

In 2.35:1 you will have ~11 FtL, without an A lens you need to still use the 16x9 area to calculate your light output. The pj is still outputting a 16x9 area it is just "off screen" when you zoom.

Thanks for that correction, I didn't know that about the area. So with an anamorphic lens, assuming no loss at the lens level, you use the 2.35 area?

So if it's down to 11 ft/L with my screen which I think is small to medium in size, what size screens are Vango owners using?

Its early, but I calculate you will get about 12 ft lamberts when you zoom to 2.35. That is the industry standard for films, 12 to 14 ft lamberts. And that will never dim for all intents and purposes. Don't be too trapped by numbers. It will be plenty bright.

The first line in the following table is your baseline assumption of 500 lumens with a 16:9 image --> 20 ft/L

The second line is when you use an anamorphic lens (assume 100% efficiency) and spread those 500 lumens into a 2.35 image of the same height (1.33 increase in area) --> 15 ft/L

The third line is if, instead of a lens, you zoom out into the same 2.35 size; as HHF posted, you lose 25% of the lumens that are projected off the screen --> 11.3 ft/L

The fourth line is also for zooming, but also assumes that the projector gains some brightness when zoomed out (this would be irrelevant if the projector lens is constant aperture, I'm not sure what kind of lens the Vango has) --> 12 ft/L

Lumens	CIH AR	ft/L
500	16:9	20
500	2.35	15.0
375	2.35	11.3
400	2.35	12.0

I know of no projector zoom lenses that are constant effective aperture. Obviously by zooming in, one uses more of the glass in the lens and I would expect using up 1.33 of the total zoom ratio of 1.40, one would gain something between 20 and 30% increased brightness. I need to look up the effective F stop at both ends and do the math. But I will state that this projector will be plenty bright and other owners here will confirm that.

The original question seemed to be if wkumar would be able to use the Vango to watch 16x9 sports broadcasts on a fairly small screen with some ambient light. Based on my experience I honestly do not think that would be a problem as long as the ambient light is within reason. Even the brightest projector would have problems with too much light.

Also, I wonder how well a screen like the newer Black Diamond would perform with this projector in the OP's environment. A screen like the StudioTek 100 might be the best choice in a completely dark room, but would one of the Screen Inovations screens be a good choice if you know you're going to be spending a significant proportion of your viewing time watching with ambient light?

Looks like most people think this will work. It's cutting it tight when we get to 11 ft/L on a 2.35 screen, but that will be in a light controlled room. I don't think an anamorphic lens is in the cards for me with this projector.

If I got a regular lamp projector, 800 calibrated lumens would be bright. Beyond that, I'd be really limited to one or two choices that can put out 1,000 before I had to go the 3 chip route. I guess one point on regular lamps is that 800 lumens can drop to 500 pretty quickly with bulb usage.

It would be great to have a .95 DC4 single chip LED that can do 800 lumens in best mode.

I jacked the EE color box into my system today and the max bright setting does indeed increase apparent brightness. How much? I notice it. And since light perception is not linear, it may be a sizable bump. New deliveries of the Vango include the box. If it were me, I would ask that any calibration be of the system and not solely the projector. I would do it three times, projector alone, max bright and max color and save to three memory slots.

I have excellent light control and the basic projector is quite sufficient on a 1.3, 2.35, 128 diagonal screen without an anamorphic lens. While my light control is very good, my room colors in this latest theater are not the best and they tend to impact the image much like ambient.

I suspect, but I don't know, that the color box has no effect on the LED light source in terms of longevity. In other words, the signal content is manipulated to achieve the goal, but the LEDs are not driven harder. I removed it from my system because I did not require the brightness and the changes seemed to unbalance the rec. 709 calibration a bit to my eye.

If you want a projector that you just install and use with no obsession, no dust blobs, and no issues then this one is hard to beat. But if you like to fiddle endlessly, then there are many other choices that will keep you in bliss.

If the Vango had the o/f CR of the JVC's, I'd be on it in a heartbeat.

The maximum brightness mode can be run without the box. It does push the LEDs much harder and the cooling system and the noise of course increases. The color box in max brightness mode does correct the most noticeable color errors caused by pushing the white point much higher. I think calibration is a misnomer in max brightness mode. You can of course calibrate the primaries to the correct points but . . . . the white point can not be calibrated since by definition it has to be much higher to get the extra brightness. The ee max color and brightness mode use the wider color space of the LEDs.

Vince. Make sure you connect the box to the projector by the RS232 cable. You must do this if you want to control the box through the projector menu.

I will be in Lexington from Weds through Sunday for the big weekend of the Keeneland week The weekend of the 17th in April. Let's get together.

I agree with your thinking vis-a-vis calibration. By max brightness without the EE color box are you referring to moving the sliders in the projector menu?

By mid-April, Keeneland will be idlylic. We had light snow and black ice in the Bluegrass at dawn. Winter's malaise sits heavy still.

Maybe in the MKII version of the Vango? Is there a product update coming anytime soon or is it a long way off?

Hi Vince. If ypu select ee max brightness in the projector without the ee color box hooked up, extra brightness you will get with more obvious color errors that one could like accept. With the box, its quite watchable if one has a large enough screen. With my 110 inch D, its too bright to watch with or without the box correcting the colors.

Lexington in the Spring can be nice and warm one day and cold, windy, and raining and snowing on another. I think for most of the Spring meets I have attended, the bad weather days out numbered the good. The weather seems to be better and warmer for the fall meet, at least for the first two weeks.