Convince Me or Talk Me Out Of It-Marquee Floor Mounted on Smaller Screen

I rent, so I'm stuck with a floor mount only, as I'm just not willing to rip apart a ceiling and patch it back after I move out. Plus, my ceiling is sloped horridly (roof slope), so hanging would be 2x as hard. So I floor mount.


I hate floor mounting. The projector literally takes the best seat in the room. Every position except right in front of the lenses feels "off center" by a large amount, and I can't quite get the audio right, as my "best seat" is off center from all speaker arrays.


Not only that, we don't have kiddies or pets to fingerprint/lick the lenses. But without lens caps, the lens pickup a ton of dust. I used to not cap them, now I always cap them when not in use as the amount of dust buildup has been incredible. Something to think about.


They do make projection port glass, but its expensive. (Same stuff they use at the movie theater to prevent reflections.) We've had a few threads about that in the past on hushbox construction, and I think a few members do in fact have their hushboxes faced with a small glass port. I think I saw a nice ceiling mounted hushbox a few months back with a glass face. Just can't remember enough to try and search for it.

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Gee, Can I send the bill to you for that 60" plasma?


That helps


I don't want a plasma, nor do I want a 60" screen. To say that 80" is the smallest size is...well, a bit out there...so many things come into play on the design of a theatre, that you simply cannot make a banket statement like that....


say I only sit 9' back? Well then, 80" could be considered too large by some, and 60" too small. Shoot, 60" may be too large for someone at that viewing distance.


And I don't think it has anything to do with "space for a properly setup system."...there's no doubt in my mind that Mike Parker knows how to setup a 9500LC...And again, properly setup is realtive to screen size. You can have a system properly setup on a 68" screen or on a 120" screen...which will have the better picture.


And as Mike said, the lenses were actually built for a smaller screen.

Jay,


You can send me the bill for the 60" plasma, I'll approve it and send it back to you for payment.


Let me put it this way, anything smaller than 80" is NOT Home Theatre, it's Home Room.


In your original post, you NEVER said you had HD10L lenses! If I knew that, I would have told you SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT. Since you said you had a 92" wide screen, you can't use HD10L lenses.


My opinion has changed, use the HD10L lenses and make the picture 60 inches wide.


Good Luck

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Cool, thanks...then I can trade it in on a pair of 9500LC and it won't matter Sorry if I came off a bit harsh...I didn't mean to..when I re-read it I thought maybe it would come off the wrong way...thanks for not being offended


Although I still don't agree that the screen only makes the theatre...I still think it has as much to do with viewing distance...but that's ok, we each have our own opinions...and that is what I asked for...talk me in/out of it, huh?


I will verify my lenses...although I know they are not Gt17, I'm not sure the are HD10...is there an HD10 (non-LC) and an HD10L (LC)? Or is there something in between?

Jay,


You need to hope they ARE NOT HD10L lenses. The biggest picture you can get on them is 72" wide on an 85xx and 86" on a 95xx. If you were running a 92" wide screen, you MUST have GT17's. If you were running a 92" wide screen with HD10L's the picture must have been mean.


If you need HD10L lenses, many people would trade for GT17's, BUT NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.


Getting back to picture size, what is the total size of the room? Why did you want to go from 92" down to 72"? Is there a real reason (besides trying to save the tubes)? I'm all for picture quality, however, a properly tweaked 8500 will easily give you an excellent picture at 80". The only real reason to go any smaller is purely room size, but this is Home "Theatre"


Bruce

techman707:
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Uhh Bruce, could you define 'mean'? I've a 9501LC with HD10L's on a 96" wide screen, love the size and other than preferring a little more brightness now and then have been pretty happy with it.


What does the GT17 lens do differently for the wider screen, and what is the difference in the resulting 'look'?



Jay, man that is an interesting dilemma. Besides the increase in brightness, what is it that you like about the smaller size? Seems like you would see less detail and less of a 'being there' feeling which I personally would miss. And what of the tube wear issue? How real is that across the expected time you will actually use that particular projector? Just curious.


--Bill

My seat is right at about 9' maybe a couple inches less. So on an 80" screen, 1.5xwidth equates to a viewing dimension of 120" (10') as recommended. If I go to a 72", I'm pretty much right in the sweet spot...asuming I want to be 1.5x width.


As I said, room size has nothign to do with it. My room is 29x14...but the rear of the room is the game room...it's basically divided, and the 2 are never in use at the same time. But, the 9' pool table dictates where my seating is.


The other side of that is the amount of punch on a 72" screen is better than on an 80"...that can't be argued. Not that it won't (or doesn't) look great on the 80, but...anyway.


Maybe mine are HD-8 lenses...that seems to ring a bell. My ECP had HD6 (I think...it's been too long ago.) But it has been on a 92" screen and looked gorgeous...but it looks better on an 80.


This has gone way off topic. I didn't want to discuss opinions on what the proper size for a home theatre screen are. I wanted opinions on the floor mounting and would it be worth taking off the ceiling for ease of access and changing, and would the picture improvement be worth it...not what kinds of lenses and whether it could be classified as a home theatre or not. It's all subjective and relative to each other.

Why I want to do it is irrelative...I just do! I do this for a living day in/day out, so sometimes I like to experiment and try different things. Knowing that I may have an opportunity to double stack, and concerned about 2 of them on the ceiling, makes me want to floor mount it now rather than later. Let's not discuss anymore about whether it's the wrong or right size any longer.


Any other opinions?

Bill, I just think the punch might be worth it. The image increase from the 92 down to the 80 was pretty incredible. After seeing basically a 9500LC on an 87" over the weekend, and mine being an 8500 (non-LC) got me thinking.


Also, I don't think my ceiling would support 2 pjs, I really need to move it closer to the screen anyway (just for the 80") so I can get my 80 against the wall, and I was just looking for what folks thought. If I've got to take it down, strenghen, etc, why not make the most of it!


I may try to go to a stack at sometime in the future, hence the floor mount...so it was really an issue of floor mount 1 now or possibly 2 later. If some said that floor mounting was great (in their opinion) and other expressed that the screen size would be better image, then it would be a no brainer. So far I've got one opinion that hates floor mounting, and one that loves the smaller image for picture quality, and one that thinks the screen size is too small period...so I'm still torn


I knew Tim ran a 72", as did others, and after seeing that 9", I don't know...just kind of came to me.

Jay,

you're on the right track. But if you go floor, there are two things to be concerned with. One; you'll want to make sure that it is as stable as possible as to not jar it from it position of setup, as well as to not knock it around. Second; you'll want to make sure it is protected from accidental spills, so it must have spill proof covering. Other than that, the only other issue would be astetics.


Techman,

There's more to a Marquee than what you see in the manual. How else could you explain a 9500 with HD-10 lenses working well on larger screens. Also, with the HD-10 lenses (liquid coupled only) there's a sweet spot for this lense that may not be a problem for larger screen sizes with video sources, but with a computer graphics source, there would be an isssue.


Anyway, the size of screen that determines what is HT, is up to the user, we can only give our opinion here. Using your method, if someone has a Sony 1030, and a room that's 200" wide, they MUST use a screen that's somewhere around 120" - Now that makes sense mathematically, but it'll make a fool out of you technically.

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Mike Parker,


I never stated ANY "method" for determining screen size, however, using a 9500LC on a 68" screen and calling it Home Theatre is the sign of either an apartment dweller, or a HT wanna be.


It's obviously by your statement " How else could you explain a 9500 with HD-10 lenses working well on larger screens" you don't understand the purpose of why Electrohome chose to use 3 sets of lenses (HD10L, GT17, GT26) for their liquid coupled projectors.


P.S. It might interest you to know that I was on the SMPTE committee that formulated the seating distance standard for motion picture theatres, so I have a passing knowledge of these things.


Regards,

Bruce

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Interesting... so it's good to know that a commitee that determined the seating distance in motion picture theaters, also determined what size screens constitutes home theater.


And, it may also interest you, that I have many years experience sitting on commitees that designed presentation systems, installed, serviced, and sold the Marquee projector as well as others.


But now I'm sadden to find out that my setup is not a real home theater setup. I don't want to be a wanna be ...


I'll change it to 68.5"

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Gee, I didn't know that you were on committees, which ones, I'd like to know?


But first, I thought you would tell us about the lenses for the Marquees that you "can't read about in the manual".


68.5 makes a cheap Stewart screen purchase. That's a plus