I am in the middle of a basement renovation at the moment. The good news is my wife will let me run whatever cables I want now as long as they're hidden. Saturday was spent wiring surround sound and next up is a vga cable for teh projector I plan on building as soon as this mess is all cleaned up.

On to the question. I have a good sized cubby hole beneath my porch that I am going to put my projector in (its really quite clean) so it will be totally hidden. I also already have a 15" screen that I have stripped. (was going to go ohp, but now decided to go all teh way) I also have a 76" 16:9 pull down screen I wooted for somethign like $20-30 a few months ago. My projector will be about 9 ft from teh screen.

Now my question. Since my monitor is 4:3 and my screen is 16:9, I'm a little confused. Would I be better off having some blank on each side of teh screen and having the vertical portion of my projection fit entirely, or should I have the top and bottom cut of so when I watch 16:9 movies its as big as possible? But that would suck for things like xbox and such. Is there any way to accomplish both? (would powerstrip help me here?)

I have seen all the calculators people have posted here, but it seems like I'm limited to a focal length of 320mm for the triplet lens?? Any pointers in this area. As I stand now with a 15" screen and a 9' throw, my image is too big for my screen. Can I adjust the distance of the fresnel or triplet or somethign to adjust screen size?

Finally if anyone has any pointers on selecting 25' vga cables and wall plates I would appreciate it. I'd rather not drop $200 on them if at all possible and still get good results.

hrm thats a good question.

I think you should watch 16x9 movies as big as possible so the black bars top and bottom will be off the screen and live with xbox being half off the screen on top and bottom

is there any way to accomplis both, or should I just get a 4:3 screen to match my panel?

I don't know of a way to do both.. ideally I guess you'd want 16:9 content to fill the whole screen and 4:3 content to be smaller and displayed with black bars on the sides. This would be possible for 16:9 and 4:3 content from a PC since you could use powerstrip and display the 4:3 on a smaller area of the monitor.. but you will need to use lower resolution as well. For 4:3 signals external to the PC, such as XBOX, I don't know of any way to shrink the image. One way would be design in enough adjustment of the triplet so you could move the PJ close enough to the screen for watching 4:3.. might be a pain and veer from your desire to keep it tucked away, but its a solution nonetheless

thanks tameone. I'll probably sacrifice some screen real estate and keep teh black bars on the side. Even if a 16:9 is a bit smaller it'll stil be nicer than the crappy old panasonci 30" I'm currently using.

I bought the same screen. It was nice for a pull down screen. Too bad miscalculated my throw distance. I'm currently using blackout cloth stretched over a wood frame for about a total of 100" diagonally. Maybe you should look for the same? I did not notice a big difference in contrast/brightness when going from the woot screen to the BOC.

Just remember to make the frame a 6 or so inches large than your projected image. I made mine too small and now I can't add on black velvet borders.

Why not? Just take some thin wood. black velvet it and angle bracket it to your frame...

For I am of a short stature of 5'4" and the screen is 7' tall on the wall!

I was planning on just hotglueing the velvet on the screen, but then I had to go and move my projector back, for furniture placement. Maybe I'm just being lazy.

I think I'm gonna replace it with some Optima Greywolf II screen eventually anyhow.

Dude, One word....Ladder...

( dining room chair, two milk crates, extra strength girlfriend...)

I'd lean towards Extra Strength Girlfriend. At his height, she's probably the man.