[ParalelUni]

Has anyone successfully implemented a 15"-17" WUXGA Panel in one of their projects yet?

[maddmike]

Well there is some effort in trying to find a compatable conrtroller board for a laptop WUXGA screen (15.4") Kronton will be releasing the Crt2LCD-7 mid 2005.. thats what I've heard. It is based on the "Genesis gm1601 chipset" wich supports WUXGA.

This Korean LCD dealer has some board that can handle WUXGA..
http://www.pch119.co...php?goodsIdx=93

There is little support for this right now, but when it happens, it will be easy to make an HDTV projector.

[mpemba]

There has been some movement in this area recently.
There is talk about organizing a group buy of LCDs and controller
boards that work with them.

Considering recent developments, my interest in this has been
re-sparked. These would be 15 inch panels, they would not be 24bit color
they would be dithered, but if you have seen one up close you know
they look very solid. They would also be able to do True HDTV 1920x1200.

There is a wealth of information and resources on this site
regarding the construction of 15" projectors.

I know using laptops have been discussed before, this is different.

This is the board.
G2A110 A/D Board

This is a possible screen choice.
LQ154M1LW02

There are a few things to be hashed out, but I wanted to
hear other peoples thoughts on this.

The reason I am bringing this up is
1) It is starting to to look very feasible
2) It would be a true HDTV projector in a 15" DIY box (I think I may have seen some people who have had some success with those)
3) I want to know what the interest on this site is for such projects.

[minoten]

You've probably already seen it, but maybe peopel reading this now havent, over at the DBG forum im organizing a group buy to do this, it is feasible, and it is going to happen.

http://www.diybuilde...hp?threadid=319

That has over 100 posts, but has a lot of information on the controller and all the alternatives and their limitations and abilities. If you do have any more questions post them here and I would be glad to answer them.

I have already confirmed prices with the LCD and Controller company and have confirmed all the specs etc, both companies are very willing to help us.

[menuball]

I was surprised to see today, when I visited that group in order to read anything further on the SGI 1600SW panel which I happened to buy from Cruser over there, that they have instigated either an annual or a lifetime fee in order to access it.

[mpemba]

There is also a thread over at diyaudio which has some good info too.

I think no matter what happens with my other project I would like to get in
on this.

Anyone else here at LL think they might have some interest in this?

[thexder]

It looks like a great opportunity for the whole DIY community if they're able to pull this project together. I'll definately be following that message thread closely.

[nvl]

I would also be interested in building a 15" HDTV projector.

[kingjamez]

I've already commented in the DBG thread. But just for good measure, I'd commit to purchasing such an LCD. This would solve many problems DIY projectors have right now, namely large fresnels, and expensive optics. With a 15'' 1920x1200 display you can use the standard (cheap) LL optics.... way cool. This would be the last panel we'd ever need.

-Jim

[pagercam]

What exactly is the price, pannel and controller?
I'd be in if the price is reasonable and it would avoid the current PRO lens issues.

[mpemba]

Thats not entirely clear.
The panels have gone for 250-300 on ebay.
And the board looks like it might be 250-300 depending.

So a safe estimate would probably be in the range of 500-600.
I'd think more toward 600 or slightly more.

But, the point about the inexpensive optics is a big one.
Using the standard triplet and fresnels which are in
abundance would defray quite a bit of the cost of
building a high end DIY projector.

[Delta9cbd]

mpemba, on Jan 10 2005, 12:57 AM, said:

But, the point about the inexpensive optics is a big one.
Using the standard triplet and fresnels which are in
abundance would defray quite a bit of the cost of
building a high end DIY projector.

In the most polite manner, Im not so sure if this comment is entirely true.

If the standard LL lens kit is capable of showing up unwanted effects such as pixelation, then I think HDTV resolutions would be reproduced with good result.

But, obviously, using top-line lenses sourced elsewhere would be of a greater advantage, colour chromatic aberration, brightness etc. I make my comment from the money:advantage ratio of the lenses.

I will also add, I was never interested in the idea of using a laptop screen for a project, nor the use of any other "bare" LCD's with seperate controller, due to the unnecessary hassle involved. But now someone has found a possibility in the use of a WUXGA, I can see a very big advantage.

One question: Does anyone actually know the pin allocation of these boards mentioned above, or do you have access to a circuit diagram?

[kingjamez]

As to image quality, the standard LL lens kit is not of poor quality. The real difference in the pro lens kit is the size panel that can be projected, and the focal length of the zoom lens. Using the standard fresnels, with the standard triplet I can clearly see the sharp edges of the screen door effect. Sure as we approach 1080i resolutions that may change, but no one has gotten that high yet. I'm quite confident in the abilities of the lowly $63.00 kit, mine looks absolutly stunning.

-Jim

[mpemba]

Quote

But, obviously, using top-line lenses sourced elsewhere would be of a greater advantage, colour chromatic aberration, brightness etc. I make my comment from the money:advantage ratio of the lenses.

If you took my comment to mean that the use of a lower quality
lens will yield the same results as the use of a higher quality lens,
I'm sorry. I suppose I was unclear.

The size of these panels enables us to use the lenses we are using
in the standard lumenlab design. This is important because
we have ready access to these, and know where to find them at a good price
in bulk.

Are you thinking that since these panels have so much more information
than the lenses we use in the standard 15" projectors will start to show
their quality or lack there of? If that is what your saying, I disagree as I have seen
the results of projectors with 1600x1200 panels with these lenses and they perform
just as well as when they're matched with the lower resolution 1024x768 panels.

Yes, the higher quality optics you have, the better, is normally the case.
Only I'm not sure if spending $500 on a lens, would yield you an increase in
quality most of us would be comfortable parting with $450 for.

[pagercam]

The laptop screens are generaly 18bit (256K color) and require some level of dithering, it this case when the panel can accept 6 bits per color I'm not totally sure what they mean by dithering but it suggets that color fedelity isn't the best. More pixles are certainly good and the wide screen high res laptops that I've seen are very nice and don't seem to have any color problems so I'm not quite sure what to think, but there may be some magic sauce in the drivers to make the screen look better than it does on its own. The higher resolution sound great but at $600 I'd find it pretty risky to go down this road without seeing results first. There isn't that much HDTV content at the moment. 24bit color with less pixels at 1/2 to 1/3 the price sounds safer and I'll upgrade once its proven. Best of luck and please show pictures ASAP becasue native HDTV sounds really cool and I'd jump on this pretty quick once its proven.

[DIY101]

Any distortion that the 15" lens make won't be any worse with a WUXGA panel than it would be with a XGA panel. If you make the projected image bigger this will make any distortions and imperfections more noticeable, but upping the resolution won't make it worse.

[Delta9cbd]

mpemba, if you read what I had written carefully you will see you have completely missed my point and have also contradicted yourself. You initially disagreed with kingjamez when he suggested - "With a 15'' 1920x1200 display you can use the standard (cheap) LL optics.... way cool.", now you agree with him.

I said I disagreed with your comment about using the more expensive LL lens kit to gain a better picture with a HDTV resolutions. I said you would have more or less the same results with the standard LL lens kit, which I also said was capable of picking out unwanted effect such as pixelation (so it must be good enough)

My objective lenses are bought from Germany. If you want to split hairs, these are better than anything LL would ever stock, but also cost about 3 times more. They do settle colour errors like chromatic aberration, but again, nothing anyone on this site would notice in a hurry.

Basically, what I said was; Use the standard LL lens kit for HDTV resolutions. There is nothing wrong with it, and it will perform well with high resolution HDTV. That was my initial point, I was agreeing with kingjamez. If you now carefully read what you wrote you will see that you said; "Using the standard triplet and fresnels which are in abundance would defray quite a bit of the cost of building a high end DIY projector" From that comment, I figure that you think using the standard lens kit would go against the whole point of using a WUXGA panel - Bottom line, I disagree. I think it would be more than capable, so much so, infact, I even believe the screen door effect would still be visible. Which would prove its capabilities.

[minoten]

There is a drawback if you use the LL standard fresnels...their not quite big enough.

15.4" LCD Panel is 331.2mm x 207.0mm
LL Standard Fresnels are 319mm x 252mm

If you used the LL fresnels, you would lose 12.2mm(331.2-319) of your vertical screen.
12.2mm of the screen will equate into a loss of 70 pixels or 3% of the screen. You will end up with a panel that has an actual resolution of 1849 x 1200, which is 96% of a 1080 HD picture.

But I do not know of any wider fresnels around, so I will be using LL's when I build mine.

Now, with the WUXGA kit, I know no one wants to spend $620 bucks to find out if the thing is good etc. Instead, I will try to gather some people together to split the initial $800 dollar test kit cost. I will not risk puting up $800 if I am going to give these things away cost (Risk = Reward), but if everyone is willing to pitch in and risk a little then I dont see a problem. We will then have the kit shipped here and will rigorously test it. If it passes spec, we can then order kits pieces for those people that were in the initial test kit buy.

I will be updating the following page with new information (daily, hopefully), so look here for your updates:
http://members.cox.net/minoten

Note: About dithering, all the LCD panels you guys use for your PJ's now are dithered, except for the SGI 1600SW. If you want to know about the quality of these lcd's, go to any notebook forum for the Dell Inspiron 8600's and see how they are all switching their Toshiba/Hitachi/Samsung LCD's for Sharp's. :-)

[Delta9cbd]

That is indeed true.

But I have no problems in locating projection-grade fresnels of suitable size here in the UK. The argument was regarding the objective lens kit.

Also, for the dimensions you gave, I think the pixel loss would be roughly 84787 pixels, 3.68% of the screen if you used LL fresnels. I think you must have made a typo, its a little more than 70 pixels

Your page has great detail. Where is the outlet for these "kits", LCD and matched controller, or do you have contact with the LCD outlet, or indeed own it??

[minoten]

I ment horizontal pixel loss Your % loss is correct though, should have rounded to 4%

Anyways I just updated the site, added some more specifications to the panel, and some OSD images. Still waiting on the controller company for the revised specs.

Not to start another debate, but I heard that if you want a good picture that you should put both fresnels behind the LCD, so that once the light passes through the LCD it just has to go through the PJ lens and onto your wall, eliminating a fresnel inbetween that may blur the picture. Of course it eliminates your keystone, but some of us may not need it. What do you guys think about this?

[Delta9cbd]

The problem with that method would be that the light is already on its way to the fresnels focal point before it has travelled through the LCD (un-parallel light).

The idea of splitting the fresnels and placing the LCD between the two is so we can achieve parallel light passing through the LCD. This tends to be a sharper and brighter method.

There are methods of doing away with the collector fresnel altogether (front fresnel)

[mpemba]

Delta9cbd,....uh....ok.

I must have totally misinterpreted your initial post.

15" HDTV panel good.
Being most of the projectors built here use 15 inch LCDs,
I thought the reasons why would be obvious.

*Edit*

I just reread our posts, I think I found the source of the confusion.

Defray: 1 : to provide for the payment of : PAY
2 archaic : to bear the expenses of

When I said that using the standard triplet would defray
quite a bit of the costs of building a high end DIY projector,
what I meant was, since you weren't spending the extra
money on a more expensive triplet (like the pro lens for instance)
that you would need to buy because up until the advent of these
smaller HDTV capable panels the only option was larger screens
that required larger more expensive lens, the expensiveness was lessened.

hmm...that didn't simplify it at all really


Ok..

Pro lens kit = $250
17" SXVGA panel $200
Total $450

Standard Kit $62.00
WUXGA board and panel $600
Total $662

Basically, what I was saying is you could put the money you saved on
not having to buy the pro lens kit toward the WUXGA board and panel.

[Delta9cbd]

Delta9cbd, on Jan 10 2005, 07:56 PM, said:

Your page has great detail. Where is the outlet for these "kits", LCD and matched controller, or do you have contact with the LCD outlet, or indeed own it??

minoten, you missed my question a couple posts back...??

The OSD looks great!!

[minoten]

Quote

Your page has great detail. Where is the outlet for these "kits", LCD and matched controller, or do you have contact with the LCD outlet, or indeed own it??

The LCD's come from an LCD company in Taiwan, and the controller comes from Winmate in Taiwan. They are two seperate companies. They are "kits" in the sense that when we do the group buy, 10 people send me $620 bucks and they will recieve the lcd panel and the controller, so its a kit once they recieve it, but I do not buy them as kits. I do have contact with an LCD outlet, they quoted me for the LCD's. $350 dollars each for 10 Sharp WUXGA 15.4" LCD panels, BRAND NEW, 30 day warranty. If you know another company that can sell for less, please PM me, I would be very interested.

No one has been interested in helping me, so thats the cheapest price I could find on my own.

I hope that answers your question, let me know if you have any others.

[Delta9cbd]

mpemba; So, after all that, you do infact agree with everything I said!

I completely understand what you meant in that paragraph. The word "defray" was just used slightly out of context, in the paragraph you wrote.

Im sorry for all that confusion...wow...!

minoten; This mission sounds like a real go-ahead. I am guessing the MOQ is 10 x WUXGA panels?? Unfortunately, I dont know of any other outlets, WUXGA is still very fresh tech. I still want to try and get that cost down a bit, but you have the best info/real facts on the actual hardware. I cant find much here in the UK, WUXGA hardware is almost non-existant, except in high-end lappys. Which the screens your talking about were probably destined for. I will do some research on laptop spares.