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I'm back in college part time, trying to finish up a bachelor's degree that I abandoned 15 years ago. The classes are weekend classes, 6-10pm Friday nights and 8am-5pm the next day (a bit arduous), 3 weekends a semester for a 3-credit class. The class I had this weekend was the first weekend of a theatre history class. Watching performances of historic plays is a large part of the class.
27 of us in a classroom struggling to view "Oedipus Rex" on a 20-inch VHS/TV combo unit hanging from the ceiling in one corner of the room simply did not cut it. So I volunteer to "help out" for the Saturday session...
I bring my Infocus X1, a 25-ft breakout cable, and a Philips S-VHS VCR (unfortunately, most educational multimedia offerings at smaller state colleges tend to languish behind the times with respect to technology -- no DVD offerings here). The VHS looked better when enlarged than I anticipated. In fact, it looks better than Dish does.
I had initially hoped just to run the sound back to the TV in the corner, but when I hit Walmart at 6am before the class to get an audio cable long enough, the longest they had was 12 feet. Not gunna cut it.
Plan B: Find a cheap boombox to run the audio lines from the VCR into. No boomboxes had any line inputs. ARGH!
Plan C: After checking out the volume-producing capability on several mini stereos, I decided on this little "home audio system":
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...3A96890%3A4479
Very nicely put together with solid construction; wooden speaker cabinets, plenty of balls under the hood for volume, and DVD with component out to boot (not progressive though), as well as coax and fibre audio outputs. For my purposes I really didn't care if it had CD or DVD. Filled the classroom quite nicely. I'll definitely find a use for it once the class is over. Worth checking out for an office system or some such...
The video screen that was able to be scrounged up was crappo muy grande, with tears, used primarily for overhead projection.
Nevertheless, the image looked quite nice at about 70" 4:3 size. Even from those people sitting up front, there were no complaints. No comments about any rainbows. Just a lot of "thank yous" after the class.
-Dan
27 of us in a classroom struggling to view "Oedipus Rex" on a 20-inch VHS/TV combo unit hanging from the ceiling in one corner of the room simply did not cut it. So I volunteer to "help out" for the Saturday session...
I bring my Infocus X1, a 25-ft breakout cable, and a Philips S-VHS VCR (unfortunately, most educational multimedia offerings at smaller state colleges tend to languish behind the times with respect to technology -- no DVD offerings here). The VHS looked better when enlarged than I anticipated. In fact, it looks better than Dish does.
I had initially hoped just to run the sound back to the TV in the corner, but when I hit Walmart at 6am before the class to get an audio cable long enough, the longest they had was 12 feet. Not gunna cut it.
Plan B: Find a cheap boombox to run the audio lines from the VCR into. No boomboxes had any line inputs. ARGH!
Plan C: After checking out the volume-producing capability on several mini stereos, I decided on this little "home audio system":
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...3A96890%3A4479
Very nicely put together with solid construction; wooden speaker cabinets, plenty of balls under the hood for volume, and DVD with component out to boot (not progressive though), as well as coax and fibre audio outputs. For my purposes I really didn't care if it had CD or DVD. Filled the classroom quite nicely. I'll definitely find a use for it once the class is over. Worth checking out for an office system or some such...
The video screen that was able to be scrounged up was crappo muy grande, with tears, used primarily for overhead projection.
Nevertheless, the image looked quite nice at about 70" 4:3 size. Even from those people sitting up front, there were no complaints. No comments about any rainbows. Just a lot of "thank yous" after the class.
-Dan
