I have an NEC MultiSync 1030+ with a burned bulb. The replacement bulb is listed at 150w only claims to output 1100 ANSI lumens. I've found halogen bulbs that claim to do better at 75w. The only notable difference is the color temp, the halogens claim 3000k whereas the kits in the lumenlabs store are 6500k.

What are the odds that I can use the 150W power on a couple of smaller bulbs with a reflector to save this projector?

Or do I just have a good lense?

http://www.nec.se/upload/Specifikationer/spec_mt1030p_e.html

The 1100 lumens is what makes it to the screen most of the projectors here with a 400W MH that produce 33,000 - 39,000 lumens only get 200-300 to the screen.

Is the rest of the projector working? If so, I'd say save a few headaches and buy the proper replacement bulb.

If you're up to tearing it apart you might be able to adapt a 150W ceramic core Metal Halide but you'll need an electronic ballast (or coil ballast/ignitor/capacitor) and a suitable reflector. You'll also need to mod the circuitry to fool the projector into thinking it has the correct replacement bulb.

AHA! That's the piece that I've been missing from the equation. It seemed very odd that a $400 bulb was so dim. Thanks for the info. Looks like I have a good lense for a DIY projector.

Unfortunately not. Unless you can use the same size LCD as what is in the projector already, it's useless.

So does that mean that it would take a 2000 watt MH to acheve that? How do they do it?

I believe he was meaning that 1200 lumens is what the store-bought projectors can do. A store-bought projector gets away with less lumens because they reflect a lot less light off of a micro-mirror panel (as I understand it), so no light is lost on the way to your projection lens and ultimately the screen.

Making your own projector the way we do here is very inefficient, since DIY projectors are more of a blast-a-ton-of-light-through a ripped-apart-LCD, This is why DIY projectors start with 30,000+ lumens - He was saying that you basically can count on around 1% of your light making it to the screen. My gut says it might be more like 2%, but I might leave that to the mathematicians here! Anyway, I hope that might help clear it up for you. If it makes you feel better, an inefficient projector like these DIY models has a lot more longevity (10,000+ hours) than the usual bulbs from Home Depot, and use around the same wattage.

So around how many lumens would a 1500 watt mh lamp get me on the screen about & how much heat would you think it would generate?

Heat is a direct correlation to power. A lamps wattage can be taken as the amount of heat that it produces, since even the most efficient lamps produce very few watts of light energy.

Assuming that you can dissipate that heat and keep the same design, double the input light = double the output. It's keeping the design the same that most people have trouble with with higher wattage lamps.

Commercial projectors use other tricks to produce their high output results. Multiple LCDs are commonly used, so there's a separate LCD for red, green and blue. This allows them to proccess 3 times the light. DLPs don't use LCDs at all, but a colour wheel and mirrors, so there's no light lost to polarisation.

Also, commercual projectors make use of the square law, having a light source much closer to the image source than we can (because it's a smaller image source) which dramatically increases light intensity. They also have extremely efficient reflectors built into those horribly expensive lamps, which further increase what they're able to do.