I've started on my very own projector, so here's the rundown.

BenQ 567s v2 Monitor
Alder 3/4" Plywood
Regular Ballast and all lenses, bulbs, norpro, etc from Lumenlab and Light Unlimited.







I'm hoping tomorrow I'll pick up the last of my things, tempered glass, DC transformer, air filter cloth & louvers.

More progress. Tried powering up the fans tonight and blew a fuse. Not sure what I was doing wrong, but once I eliminated the switch from the circuit I got things to work.

Good Job thus far, what is the drawing in the picture above? j/k

Glad to see the Drawings that "Rorshach" made for us Known as "Simple Projector Plans" that he put together from the guide diminsions comes in handy.

Joe

Yea they work real well. I rarely have to even refer to the guide itself. The guide is good at explaining why things work, but because its older its not as upto date about installing reflectors and such.

I believe the nest revision will have the drawing included in them, if not thats why they are in the customers forums

Wiring all complete, heres a shot of the bulb warming up. The wonderful green we're all accustomed to see in the pictures.



Outside of box with switches.



And heres the wiring.



I chose to just wire in a regular plugin so when I mount the LCD it will make my job easier with grounding and later in the future if need be I can restore the LCD to its previous state.

My question is how do people ground their boxes from the incoming power? Currently you can see a loop of green wire below my norpro, and right now I have the end taped to the outside of the 12VDC transformer. Do you guys just ground everything to the outside of the ballast by taping to it? Tomorrow I swing by and pick up my tempered glass and hope to get everything running. Will definitly post pictures as soon as I get things running smoothly.

All finished! Well, almost, I need to go back and add some pieces of trim around the LCD because some overscan is showing, otherwise its complete. Here's inside pics then rough demo pictures of it in action. This weekend when I return home I'll get high resolution pictures of it projecting to give a better demonstration. Also take note, it is projecting onto a green plaster wall, so colors are definitly off and theres objects in the way. The LCD never gets above 82F. I'm not sure what kind of temps people with arctic fans get, but for 2 120mm fans rated at only 21dba I'd consider the cooling very good without sacrifice to my ears.

All of the following pictures are taken of video clips that are HDTV.

Fantastic progress. Nice clean external look. I like the dual fan setup.

Here's another picture I took, projector on a different wall, and using a Canon Digital Rebel 6.3MP SLR camera. Tomorrow I'm going to get some of that blockout cloth and hang it down from my ceiling, so things should look real good from there.

Wow nice work, are your fresnels and lcd just hanging from the alu c rails? how and where are you taking a temp reading for your lcd?

Yes, all my fresnels and glass are just hanging by the alu c rails. The LCD has a 3/4" block of wood underneath it, so its not hanging on it, just resting there. I'm reading temps from in front of the LCD, between the LCD and field fresnel.

Jbauer-

Looks really nice.. can you tell me where you got the aluminum rails? I would like to do the same thing, but have not found them at Lowes or Home Depot. I might be looking for the wrong thing though. Thanks-

Hey, I just picked mine up at Home Depot. Just ask someone that works there where you can find them. I had a hard time finding them too, but I think all stores carry them. They come in 8' lengths.

I see these at my local ace hardware, (alu c rails) just ordered my monitor tonight, when I gather all the (guts) I will build my enclosure, many good ideas here, cant wait to get started hope mine turns out as nice as yours.

TESCORP

great job... where did you get your benq?

When you say "video clips from HDTV", are you using the Viewsonic N6 ?

I just got my BenQ from BenQ Shopper. When I first received my LCD, it looked like it had a stuck pixel, but days later it seemed like it went away, so go figure. Very happy with the monitor though. Downside ofcourse, is cost. $300, made the projector much more spendy and would have rather spent less on it.

When I say clips from HDTV, it means I just have my projector hooked up to my computer. I have a FusionII HDTV Tuner card, so I record all my favorite shows OTA (Over the air), so I just play them back when I want to watch them again. The N6 will definitly be added later down the road though, just once I get some bills paid. I have my xbox setup to output progressive scan with the HDTV pack, so its just a matter of time until I get the N6 and hook it all up together.

Nice work, and the results are promising!

I am building my box in a day or two. My Benq 567 will still take a couple of days, but I would like to complete the wood work prior to it. Since you have your projector thrown open, can you give me the dimensions of the LCD panel LxWxH so that I may build the frame accordingly?

Thanks.

Here's my latest pictures, taken using the Canon Digital Rebel, and the budget blackout cloth from Jo-Ann Fabric. This is about as good as I'll get the projector to be for awhile, so won't have much anything new to add. As always, these pictures are all from a HDTV source. Here goes...

Laura Ramsey from "The Days" (if you haven't seen the show, its on sundays at 10PM, on ABC, its a terrific show!)



King of Queens Stars



Everybody Loves Raymond Stars



I, Robot Trailer

Tobey from Spider-Man 2 Trailer



Catherine Bell from JAG



Skyline Shot from "The Days"

Man! Those are some great shots. Are the last few also in HDef as the earlier ones?

Sorry, hadn't read the previous page where you had said that all pics are HDEF.
Execllent work !

Nice work.

What is causing the dark strip along the bottom of every screen shot? Is it an artifact of the camera or is it really visible in the projected image?

My guess its the end of the blackout cloth.

Yep, dave called it. My blackout cloth is 54" wide, and I have the projector roughly 10 feet away, so 16x9 doesn't quite fit. (1.77 aspect ratio I believe, and I believe ALL HD material is the 16x9 aspect ratio). The movies that are 2.35:1 ofcourse fit better. I used a 40% off Jo-ann coupon to buy my blackout, so I got two pieces, I just don't have time to sew the two together quite yet, so I just use one piece for now.

Excellent Pics!

Thanks. The saturation is a little off in the pictures, and the camera makes the image look a little brighter than it really is, but the projector image is still pretty good. I just hope these screenshots help anybody thinking about building one who is into HD as much as I am.

Well, I'm definitely into HDTV, and as they say "there's no going back" ! <s> One question I have about your projector, you have a standard wall plug installed in your box. What exactly is that intended for ? Nice photos by the way.

Thats what my LCD monitor runs off of. Thats one thing I've been meaning to change, is to swap the wall plug for a extension cord female end instead. But lately I've been too busy using the projector to change anything!

If anybody needs any HDTV test clips I'm sure I could help supply them, just shoot me a PM. The clips are recorded as Transport Stream files, so *.ts, so you'll have to find the appropriate software to play *.ts files to view them.

what about some pics from "24" ?. lol.

Haha, I was going to, but then I thought HD stuff looked better anyways. I'll take some later tonight. Fyi though, the very first thing I projected was "24" season 2, ofcourse is only fitting, =)

If you are interested in a HD clip, just zap me a message now. I've uploaded a file to a fast HTTP site. Its a 34 MB rar file, and its 720p HDTV WMP9 clip from the intro to "The Days."

As per requested, some good 'ol '24.'







I liked this next picture with Kate and Jack, but the camera would not cooperate at all for me. I faught it for longer than I should have trying to make it take, and this is the best I could come up with.

Vote for Palmer!





Ok so this isn't in 24, but its elisha cuthbert, so it counts, ;-) (The image shows half her face VERY bright. The contrast in the image is nowhere near how the screen actually looks, so I'm not sure why the camera is overcompensating.)



You may notice in all the "24" pictures except the elisha one that there is vertical squiggly lines. I believe that due to the nature of interlace, (thats how the "24" DVDs are encoded), it creates artifacting shown in the images. In the end, interlace sucks. Besides HDTV 1080i, I hate anything interlaced. Just a mess dealing with it.

Nice pics man.

Btw, 24 was broadcasted in higher resolution too. Ahh... how I miss those PDTV releases, every wednesday, on bittorrent...

Joe2000chevy
Could you direct me to the 'Simple plan drawings' that 'Roschasch' did.
Are they more up-to-date than the guide?

Hey there,

Here's the Simple Plan Drawing post.

It gives you all the internal measures for a standard LL project, as designed in the plan.

I hope this helps.

Joe2000chevy:
Where can I find Rorshach's plans (updated from Brain's guide)?
I've been using the Forums search engine but it does not locate them.
After just buying the guide (newbie) I understand the theories now but I'd like something more...thanks

Thanks 'Neda' that helps alot!
BTW 'Rorshach' 'Spaceship Coffin on-a-leg-pod' looks interesting...

your images are great!

I've got a size questions:
you said that you placed the projector 10 feet away from the screen.
Playing a DVD movie, what's the final width of your projected image?

thanks!

The projector is a 1:1 ratio, so the image diagonal is 10 feet. According to the aspect ratio for width, its about 9 feet I believe, or around 110". Thats why you see people getting blackout cloth that wide.