Thanks, I drank too much coffee and at 400 ISO the digital camera was unforgiving
. I needed a tripod !! If you liked the tiny pictures (I had to shrink them down per AVS rules), you'd really like the real 80" wide image. I was using Athlon 1.4G PC, after market MSI Geforce2 GTS pro 64MD DDR, WinDVD 2.8, Hitachi GD-7500 DVD drive (12x)--PC was bought from
www.computerbuys2000.com for <$500 and videocard for $138 for 3D games
, and 15 foot SVGA male to SVGA male cable from
www.pccables.com for $13. I have a Toshiba interlaced DVD player via 50 foot S-video and it looks great too except image is slightly softer than HTPC. I chose the HTPC route as it's a little sharper and I needed a second PC for the kids anyways. I have a 17" monitor too and switch cabling when I needed to compute rather than watching movie. I like the HTPC better due to region-free and progressive playback. I have the sound via 50 foot RG-6 (black TV coaxial cable type for $10 at Walmart) with 2 RCA to coaxial converters ($3 each) into my DD/DTS receiver. SPDIF digital coaxial out is via Vortex SQ1500 ($9 by internet). Sounds great though not as good as set-top box DVD player (center channel not as loud as set top box which can be boosted with receiver). The Sony is a great projector though can have a few dead pixels (nature of LCD unfortunately). Blacks are very dark gray but not noticeable when viewed in context of surrounding imaging. Dim or no light is essential for best picture quality. Tile board really boost the brightness of this 550 lumens projector to around 800 range, I think. I actually had to turn down brightness to minimum and crank contrast to max on this type screen). If I stand up I'll get hotspotting but sitting 2 feet below projector, image is uniformly bright with much better colors. Heck this tile board is $10 at Lowes and very easy to keep clean
. Good luck with your FP purchase.
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Huey ;-]
