I don't have any pictures from during the construction of the projector but I do have pictures of the finished results which could be helpful to somebody just starting out. The best part is after I put it all togeather I did not have to tweak this at all. Also after running it for three hours the temperature never got above 81 degrees. I think I got lucky with the placement of things because it's even staying cool in the back of the box were the lamp is.
Here is a list of the materials I used.

1. The box is made from 3/4" MDF

2. LL standard lens kit

3. CMV 522A lcd from www.newegg.com

4. Coil and cap ballast and 400watt Metal Halide bulb from www.1000bulbs.com

5. The fan is a Mad dog Turbo Flow 120mm 100cfm fan from Comp U.S.A
(It Works Great! the box never goes above 82 degrees)

6. I bought my switches from radio shack as well as the barrier strips for wiring

7. I bought my VGA adaptor that is below my switches at www.monoprice.com

8. I used pvc from home depot for my focus ring (works perfect)

9. The thermometer on the back I bought from Wal-mart.

As far as measurements I used the following diagram and matched the measurments exactly.
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When it came to wiring I drew up this wiring schematic it works perfect.
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Here is a tip for other people using the CMV 522A LCD's
after you have your electronics mounted and the control buttons plugged in you can fold over the control buttons so that they stick out a hole you make on the bottom of the projector. That way you can access your controls and you don't have to lengthen your cable that goes to the controls. Here are some pics to show you what I mean. The only reason i mention this is because I know some people are opening and closing their box each time they use it to turn on the LCD.

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Here is another picture from the front you can see the controls mounted on the bottom of the projector. I cut the control section from the front of the monitor and used that to mount them so that it looks nice.
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Here are some pictures of the outside of the box.
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For the reflector I am using the IKEA napkin ring. Here is a picture of how I mounted the reflector. It's an easy way to mount it and it works really good.
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Here are a few pictures of the inside.
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Ok now for the good stuff.
Just so you know I am using an Avermedia TVbox9 and a $50 DVD with S-video from my son's room.

First I wanted to see how big the picture could get and boy does it get big.
You can see in this picture the 8' diag screen I was using with an old projector and it totally overlaps it.

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Then I threw on the Fifth Element.
I moved the projector back even further and the picture size got to be 14' across
Here is a huge shot of lilu
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Another Fifth Element shot.
This one the projector is moved closer so it's a little smaller
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20th Century Fox logo
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Then I through in Gladiator.
I took two pictures but I am not sure which one I like best. I was messing around with the image controls on the Avermedia TVbox9 I like them both but I think I like the second one better.
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I then threw in Finding Nemo and took the picture everybody seems to take.
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Wow, Images look very bright for such a large projection. As far as TVBox9 the upper looks more realistic to me, lower looks too blue, but veryone has there own tastes.

Yeah i was surprised it was so bright from that distance as well.
I really don't see much difference from being that far back and the lighting is even across the entire screen.
i used a laser level to line everything up i think that really helped.

Somebody e-mailed me about the cooling in the box today.
I thought I would answer it in here.

As I said Iam using the Mad Dog Turbo flow fan from www.compusa.com
it is a 120mm fan that moves 100cfm
It's a pretty quiet fan and does not distract me at all.

I have the box setup so the air is getting sucked in from the top of the box then in between the rear fresnel and the LCD. Then it passes through a 1/2 gap at the bottom of the rear fresnel through the bulb area and out the back.

I am using Lexan from Home Depot for the heat shield and UV filter.

The heat usually goes up and down from 79 - 81 degrees.
My temerature probe is located between the LCD and rear fresnel.

The vent slot on the lid of the projector were the air comes in is 1/2"

Your results are unbelievable!

Hello could you please provide some details of how your stand attaches to your box and where to get the materials. I am mounting my to the ceiling soon and I want to make a stand just like the one you have with those big plastic knobs but I want to make sure it is safely mounted.

Thank you!

By the way, you solved my button delima with your tip! Big thanks!

Iam glad to hear somebody else could use the idea about the buttons.
I cut the stand out of MDF board just like the projector.
I then drilled a hole through the box for the mounting bolt to go through. I counter sunk the hole on the inside so that the bolt head would not get in the way of the LCD or fresnels.
I also put a spacer between the outside of the projector and the stand. the bolt also goes through this.
To make the spacer I used the circle piece that was left over from cutting out the larger of the three decrotive holes on the side of the stand. i then ran the bolts through the projector then through the spacer and through the side of the stand. The plastic knobs screw on to the end of the bolt. I bought the plastic knobs from Ace hardware but I am sure any hardware store has them. Here are a couple of close up pictures of the stand and the spacer.
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I watched starwarsIII tonight and took a picture of vaders head.
I would have taken more pictures but I get too into watching the movie to stop and horse around with stuff.
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I found another picture from the other day that I took of the Fifth element so here is that one as well.
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Hi wireman24

Your results look great ! I have a question about your Avermedia box9. , How do you think it operates ? for ease of operation and picture quality ?




Cheers




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Wireman, How are you holding down your lcd boards or are they just sitting on the bottom of the case?

Nice results

Jhonbuster99
I think the tvbox9 works great. I bought it refurbished from www.newegg.com for $99. It is very easy to setup and the onscreen display menus are easy to navigate. I really like that you can control color, contrast, tint, brightness, volume and all sorts of other things from the remote. That way i don't have to get up off my lazy ass to mess around with that stuff during a movie. I have three monitors here at home and the only one it does not seem to work with is a CRT monitor that I have but it works great with the other two.

Idor84
To mount the LCD boards I flipped over the metal cover that was covering them inside the monitor and mounted them back into that. It works great because it already had mounting holes for the VGA port and power supply cable which makes it alot stronger because then those cables are supported and not just hanging off the boards and putting strain on it. Here is a picture of the metal cover I am talking about. I covered the edges with electrical tape that's why you could not see it in my other pictures.
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I then used construction adhesive to glue that down to the bottom of my case.
The construction adhesive I used was Liquidnails Its a great glue and super strong I used it on most of the stuff on my case like the wood frame for my LCD and rear fres it's ten times stronger then plain old wood glue.

Today i mounted my DVD player onto the projector as well as the Avermedia TVbox9. I think it looks pretty cool what do you guys think?
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Here is a picture of the back.
I also took some more pictures of some movies I was watching I will post those soon.
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It all looks Magic!




cheers




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Very professional. Impressed is the word. I am building your stand this weekend!

I was watching Alien vs Predator this morning and i thought it might be a good movie to take some pictures of to show how the projector does with a dark movie. I am only using a 1.6 mega pixel camera so it looks a little grainy but the pictures turned out pretty good. Like everybody says it looks better in person. The cool thing is I am not loosing any details even in dark scenes.
The screen size is 13 feet across!!!!!
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This is my favorite part of the movie it looks so cool when the predator jumps up from behind the alien queen.
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I took some pictures from Attack of the clones and thought I would post them.
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I think this next picture turned out pretty good.
It's a dark scene but you can still see alot of detail in the planet and in the reflection of the ship.
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Another Yoda shot. I like how this picture turned out. Look at Yodas skin and you can see how smooth it is. It's a really clear picture in real life.
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I slaughtered them.... Like ANIMALS!

Sorry, couldn't resist. Those results look awesome!

Nick

Movies look great on the projector and I have been really enjoting it.
The X-box on the other hand is another story it's kind of dark and blurry. It almost looks like it is out of focus but nothing I do can get a sharp image out of it. I have plenty of travel on my triplet and you can go back and forth well past focus in both directions. i have the x-box running through a TVbox9 using S-video monster cables. I am just wondering if we are asking too much out of the old x-box? I think the X-box 360 will be cool because movies using component video look jaw dropping on this projector. What do you guys think? what are your expierences with using the old X-box.

Here are some pics that I took they are just too blurry for me and the pics look almost exactly like it does in real life. I am thinking I will be better off using my plasma tv for the x-box and watching tv and when I want to watch a movie I will use the projector.

Here is a picture of burnout 3.
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Here is a picture of forza.
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This last picture is of Ghost Recon Summit Strike.
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Ed, I don't know but maybe this would have better resolution than svideo

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=...roducts_id=1905

just an idea

It's not your xbox its you avermedia box. I have the avermedia 5 which has rca and svideo inputs but the images was just never as sharp as I though it should have been. The only way to make a big jump in your image quality is to gethdtv quality with one of the tv boxes that has component inputs or a a vga component adapter so that you will actualy get the 480p/i that the xbox can push out. I can't go back to s-vieo now since I got my component cables games like Halo I could just barely read the words and now everything is alot sharper just by switching cables. I thought the avermedia 9 had component input and output though?

I really shouldn't compare my pj to yours since I have a 250 watt not a 400 but I am curious about your reflector I'm not using one right now because the one I had didn't seem to make a difference. With the reflector that you have now how much of a difference did it make it your brightness do you have any before and after pics not that I would ask anyone to take apart their pj just for a comparisson pic but if you do have a before and after of maybe the intro screen to finding nemo or the intro to 5th element could you post it please.

I think I will try some different cables just too see what happenswith the xbox.
It's really not that big of a deal I am mainly going to be watching movies with it anyway and movies look great.

To answer tyour reflector question.
I think the most important thing when dealing with brightness is to have everything lined up perfectly. When building this thing I had center marks on everything I could put a center mark onto. Then I took a laser level and made sure everything lined up. At the begining of my plog One of the pictures is without the reflector but for the life of me I can't remember which one. I was taking so many pictures that night I lost track of which ones were which and they all looked pretty darn good so i could not tell which ones were without the reflector. It's either the frodo Lord of the rings picture or The Lilou Fifth Element pictures. Either way I was getting good results even without the reflector and that's with the projector between 13 -14 feet back.

Wireman did you do AG ramoval on your LCD? If so do you have any pics. I have the same lcd and I want to do it.

thanks Ian

His monitor is idientical to mine (though not same brand) you can see my detailed instructions on AG removal. follow link to my Plog in my sig

Nope i did not remove the AG.
I am kind of glad I did not because it is already bright enough for me and I think that lighter scenes might get sort of washed out looking if it got much brighter.

AG removal doesn't really make the image any brighter - it DOES make the colors a heck of a lot more vivid. It actually INCREASES the contrast ratio leading to less washed out scenes. It's one mod that I would bet no one would ever regret doing..

Unless it ruins their LCD - DOH!!!!

edit: Enjoy your pj for a while. When the honeymoon period is over, if you want to make an improvement - strip that a/g!

Well any time you remove ANYTHING from the projector it will increase brightness. Take out the heat shield and you will get a 10% increase in brightness. Remove the AG and you are removing another layer which is blocking light. How much just depends on the AG.

I have a friend coming over early next week with a x-box 360. How do you guys think that will look? I am thinking it should look pretty good compaired to the original x-box. The friend of mine is planning on building a projector as well and will mainly be using it for his x-box and X-box 360 do guys have any suggestions or tips. He is building the same projector as mine with all the same parts.

My son wanted to watch the incredibles so I thought I would take a picture.
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I think someone is camera shy .

I really like your projector though. Awesome pics complemented by a very professional projector structure. The inside looks really easy to navigate, I like that

I hooked up a friends xbox 360 to the projector and it looks pretty good. Here are some pictures.
I had a little bit of a problem getting the 360 to work with the LCD. I had to hook up the 360 to my plasma tv and set the resolution to what the LCD wanted then I took it back to the projector and it worked. The first time I hooked it up to the projector it was saying that the signal was out of range and only being hooked up to the LCD I could not reset the Resolution to what I needed.

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Did you use the measurements from the diagram on your first post to get the results shown, or did you have to make some minor tweaks?

Yep I used those measurments exactly and I have not had to do any tweaking.

I did mess around with the placement of things just to see what would happen but I always came back to the same placement as when I started. For me those original measurments are great.

Just make sure your lenses, Lcd and bulb are aligned correctly if they are not lined up correctly you will have major focus and brightness issues.