I got my LT150 last Tuesday and finally tested it out last night. I'd been waiting to finish a dedicated room in the basement before seriously shopping for a projector, but I couldn't pass up the Dell deal. I had to move furniture around in the living room, remove a wall hanging, and move the computer (HTPC) to the middle of the living room (after detaching monitor, phone lines, and printer). Then I hooked up the LT150 to my Elsa Gladiac GeForce video card, sat it on the coffee table about 11 feet from my off-white living room wall, and fired it up for about an 80" wide picture. I set the (HTPC) to 1024 x 768 and optimal refresh rate (would it be better to set it specifically at 60 Hz?) I turned off the white segment on the projector and used the natural 2 gamma setting. I left everything else the way it came out of the box. The blue background on the standard Windows ME desktop looked a little pale, but when I loaded up Powerdvd, the colors on the opening screen looked great. I watched Air Force I for awhile and thought the picture was pretty good without being "tweaked" (partly because I don't know how), but then I popped in Jurassic Park and was overwhelmed. The room was completely dark and the picture was plenty bright. I have a 50" Hitachi Ultravision calibrated with Video Essentials that yields a picture that I've been pretty happy with, but I couldn't get over the quality of the picture out of this projector at 4 times the size of the picture on the RPTV. I'm not saying picture was as good as the RPTV, but the size sure made it seem better and I paid less for the projector.
With a screen and proper masking, this thing should be awesome. There was a frame of light around the projected image (is this the Halo?). With this and the black bars masked out, it should really make the picture stand out. I guess I'm easily satisfied because I liked the picture on my bare wall and it isn't even white. I looked at the images on Video Essentials, but didn't attempt any calibrations. I'm not that good with computers and didn't know how to get into the control panel settings and still have VE running in Powerdvd. Anyway, I noticed that the yellow in the color bars looks better without calibration than the it does on my RPTV after calibration and the reds look about the same. The video montage looked pretty good, but there is one scene with vertical iron bars and as the picture panned across these, the bars broke up into segments.
This isn't much of a review as I'm not as knowledgeable as most of the guys here. I didn't see any crawlies or rainbows, but then I didn't watch that many movies. I don't have anywhere nearby where I can see projectors firsthand, so I have to rely on what I read here in the AVS forums. I really want to thank Grant and all the others who have provided so much information about this projector.
Unfortunately, I've got a lot of work ahead of me before I can get the LT150 set up in its own room. In the meantime, I'm tempted to put my living room furniture on casters so I don't have to wait so long to watch a movie on my new projector again. I was up pretty late last night putting everything back in place, but it was worth it.
Randy D
With a screen and proper masking, this thing should be awesome. There was a frame of light around the projected image (is this the Halo?). With this and the black bars masked out, it should really make the picture stand out. I guess I'm easily satisfied because I liked the picture on my bare wall and it isn't even white. I looked at the images on Video Essentials, but didn't attempt any calibrations. I'm not that good with computers and didn't know how to get into the control panel settings and still have VE running in Powerdvd. Anyway, I noticed that the yellow in the color bars looks better without calibration than the it does on my RPTV after calibration and the reds look about the same. The video montage looked pretty good, but there is one scene with vertical iron bars and as the picture panned across these, the bars broke up into segments.
This isn't much of a review as I'm not as knowledgeable as most of the guys here. I didn't see any crawlies or rainbows, but then I didn't watch that many movies. I don't have anywhere nearby where I can see projectors firsthand, so I have to rely on what I read here in the AVS forums. I really want to thank Grant and all the others who have provided so much information about this projector.
Unfortunately, I've got a lot of work ahead of me before I can get the LT150 set up in its own room. In the meantime, I'm tempted to put my living room furniture on casters so I don't have to wait so long to watch a movie on my new projector again. I was up pretty late last night putting everything back in place, but it was worth it.
Randy D