[jimparis74]

I am planning to buy this BenQ 1085ST short throw projector to use with a Silver Ticket 115in Diagonal 2.35:1 screen


I've read where people talk about having to use anamorphic lenses with their projectors...


I'm not sure if I fully understand what they are really talking about.


But, am I going to need a extra special lens to be able to use this projector/screen combo?


The wall the screen will be going on is 12 feet in width, and I will be viewing the screen in a seated position of about 10 1/2 feet away. Ceiling height is 8 foot.


Would this projector not be able to fill this screen fully when watching movies of the screens ratio?


Would the projector or a dvd player most likely have a feature that could adjust it to work without sacrificing much in terms of picture quality?


And if I must have this additional special lens... what would you recommend would be best, within my budget? (which is very modest considering I'm not spending a lot on the above items.)


Right now I'm just using my computer to watch a occasional movie, so I don't have a dvd player as of yet, but read that some use the Oppo players because they have a lot of ratio/stretch options etc. Any advice on what would work best for this as far as a bluray player would be great too.


Thanks

 

[jautor]

"Short Throw" and "zoom method" (for CIH) sounds like they might not work together... To use a 2.35 screen (on a budget), you would set the zoom to spill over the top/bottom of the screen for 2.35 presentations, and zoom back for 16x9 content. I assume that projector is a manual zoom, but more critical - the zoom range appears to be quite narrow, so don't even know if it could be used for the "zoom method of CIH"...

 

[RLBURNSIDE]

The low end Benqs don't have enough zoom to switch back and forth between 16:9 and 2.37 : 1. (I wanted to do this as well).

But if you're enterprising you can put your ceiling mount on a wooden track and slide it forward for 16:9, and back for 2.37:1

There's a guy who did just that in the w1070 owner's thread, for using the poor-man's-poor-man's "zoom" method. Looks like his results are quite good.

Or you could just install the projector far back enough to run it at wide screen, set your windows desktop resolution to 1920x810, and never use the top + bottom letterbars at all. You could even probably add some black felt on wood in front of the lens, to mask them away.

That's probably going to be good enough. The w1070 and relatives is bright enough to run a 12 foot wide image, at least for the first year-and-a-half on smart Eco. After that you might have to use Normal mode, or have a higher gain screen. But bulbs are cheap at 80 bucks from china. Order one well in advance and replace it around the 4000 hour mark (on Smart Eco, which is what IMO everyone should leave this projector on all the time, it's a great feature, like a zero-lag DI).

I believe the future in home projection is laser projectors which in theory can have arbitrarily adjusted aspect ratio, controlled by software, with no optics or lenses involved.