This is how it all started , as a basic 15" Projector.

September 24, 2005

My parts list :

HP L1530 LCD Monitor
Slusher Box from slusher357
Light kit from LL (Ushio S400DD, Eballast, Base Mogul)
Lens Kit from LL (Fresnels and Triplett)
2 - 120m fans from Radio Shack
Lexan XL10 from Home Depot
400watt Light from Home Depot ( more on that later)

And lot's of wires, switches , screws, wood , etc from Radio Shack and Home Depot.


Well here's a pic of most of it :



And here's the box from slusher357



Heres some pics of the LCD before and after stripping :

September 24, 2005

Here's the inside of the box with some assembly done:







And here's a shot of the back of the box :



And here's a picture of what this baby can do :




Need to learn how to keep the camera stll so it will stay focused.

And then it all changed

October 7, 2005

Well I was trying to straighten up the LCD and Fresnels and I tightened a screw too far and cracked the LCD. :angry:

But that just made it that much easier to buy the Sharp 15.4" WUXGA Screen and a Controller Kit. Here's the thread describing the 15.4" Wuxga and where to buy it . 15.4" Wuxga Thread





I also ordered the larger fresnels from 3DLens and a reflector for my Venture light. So ina bout a month I should have a HD Projector.

Also I decided to finish one of my downstairs rooms. So now I have a 16'*22' Theater Room.

I'll post pics when I get the Drop Ceiling put in and the Theater Chairs installed.

Well here's a much needed update.

January 15, 2006

I have the 15.4" Wuxga installed. I'm just using the standard LL triplet and fresnels until the Pro Lens kit comes in. I'm projecting at 720p from a Samsung Dvd player. The screen is 2 pieces of Parkland Plastic side by side (hence the line down the middle). The size is around 120-130" diagonal.

I also upgraded to the Ushio PS T15 lamp.

Here's a few of the standard LL pics These were taken with a Sony Mavica (older one). With the standard Night setting. These haven't been enhanced or changed other than re-sizing.

January 15, 2006

January 20, 2006

Upgraded to the Pro Reflector . I really didn't notice a huge difference in brightness at first. But then I turned on the lights and WOW. The projector is actually Very watchable with 6- 40 watt flourescent lights on in the room.

Here's a before and after photo.





Hard to tell with that photo huh. Let me try a Johnny Depp photo.






*edit* added this pic with the Pro lens installed and fresnels adjusted. Projector is now at the rear of the room 20' away. Same projected diagonal size.

January 20, 2006

Oh and here's a Xbox 360 Perfect Dark pic for you.



And here's a Halo shot:

January 20, 2006

Here's a few pics of how I mounted my Pro Reflector.

January 21, 2006

Upgraded to the Pro Lens and Fresnels.

Here's a look at how I extended my Slusher box to fit the Pro lens:





And yes those are screws sticking out of the Pro Lens mounting holes. I didn't have the right size screws and I was tired of going to the store so I figured I'll replace them tomorrow.

January 23, 2006

Here's a few of the inside and outside.

Still have to re-do the wiring a bit.

January 30, 2006

Finally got a good screen.

It's a Da-Lite High Power 105"*144"

It is BEAUTIFUL !!! What a difference it makes. Much brighter and better colors and contrast. White is really white now.




My room is about 17' by 24' . With the projector all the way against he back wall it doesn't quite fill up the whole screen left to right (about 8" on each side) but it does fill it up top to bottom (8' 4" ceiling).

The corners might seem a little darker but it's REALLY hard to notice. I think with a screen this big the eye and head has to pan from the corner to the middle so our eyes compensate for the brightness difference.

Also there is no difference in brightness on different parts of the screen. And with the screen being almost as wide as the room there is no "viewing cone" that I can see. No matter where I sit or stand there is the same brightness everywhere. Even when sitting on the floor.

I think with the Pro Lens and the projector at the back of the room it really helps to eliminate "viewing cone" and keystone problems.

I highly recommend this screen to EVERYONE.

January 31, 2006

Here's a before and after pic. Movies are totally watchable with 6-40 watt flourescent lights on.

Some before and after with Lilu :

Before :


After:


Before:


After:


Pefect Dark Zero at 1080i ------ 175" Diagonal.

January 31, 2006

Well I made afew adjustments.

I moved the fresnels closer to the Lcd but further apart from each other. That helped to even out the light and eliminate some of the dark corners.

Then I cut off some of my focus box. It was 6" long , now it's 4" long. I wanted to make sure it wasn't blocking any light from the Pro Lens.

I then took the Lexan heat shield out.
Then I ran the projector for 7 hours while monitoring the heat. It stayed at around 105-110 degrees at the rear fresnel on the light side. On the Lcd side of the rear fresnel it stayed at 88 degrees. The rear fresnel never bowed or warped. And the Lcd stayed at 78-80 degrees.

So I guess my cooling is sufficient to run this projector without the heat shield.

And it made quite a bit of difference. I would say about 15% better brightness. And the colors seem better also. Don't know why but they do.

So that's all for now. More pics tomorrow maybe.

Febuary 2, 2006

Got the new meter in and did the Lux/Lumen test.

247 Lumens. This is with the 175" diagonal screen with the projector 22' from the screen.

I had it as high as 310 Lumens but it had slightly dim corners. Nowthe corners are very even and the entire screen is well lit.

And on daytime scenes it's a little bright. I need my new Lcd controller in so I can turn down the brightness a little.

Well my theater room is almost complete so I thought I'd share a pic or two.

I need 2 longer cables to my box and then I can run the cables in the ceiling and hide them. And I have to clean up my "spare parts" .

I put in 18 theater chairs that I got from a flea market for $100 . It took me and the family 3 hours to clean them , and then another 3 hours to cut paint and mount the bases for them. And then 1 hour to clean the paint of my boys.

Well here's the pics.

Febuary 9, 2006

I just purchased and received a NeuNeo HVD-2085 -- 1080p upconverting Dvd Player.

It is HDCP free and upconvertsto 1080p through component or HDMI !!!

With a 175" Diagonal image you tend to notice any lack of sharpness and jaggies on the edge of objects in the movie you are watching, and with my Samsung 850 at 1080i I did notice that. Especially on movies that were recorded in lower resolutions.

But with this Dvd player at 1080p .... WOW !!!!

There is no blurring or edge jaggies. Everything is amazingly sharp and well focused. It's really incredible.

I did not know for sure that the 15.4" Wuxga panel could do 1080p , but I'm sooooo glad I gave it a shot.
I'm enjoying this projector so much now I've almost lost the urge to tinker with it, well almost.

Some Star Wars Episode III ... at 1080P

Febuary 10, 2006

I wish I had a better camera, but I'm trying to capture the resolution and detail that I see at 1080p. The camera always makes it look less focused though.

Well here's some Gladiator.

March 2, 2006

Well my 5" 457 lens came in today.

I noticed that I wasn't capturing the whole lamp arc with the Pro triplett, and since the 457 is almost an inch wider I decided to try it.

I built a new focus box for it and slid it in and was quite happy with it.

The image before was about 6" shy of filling my whole 180" screen. Now it completely fills it edge to edge. Also the lux increased overall about 15% . And now my corners aren't as dim , and I can still get excellent corner to corner focus.

The lens was 5.5" outside diameter. 6" long and huge !!!

Here was the description given to me :

The 457mm triplets come from Opaque Projector. They are 5 inches in diameter and 157mm long.

Pics as compared to the Pro lens :

Perfect Dark Zero :



Fantastic 4 :





Into the Blue :

FOR THE LADIES :



FOR THE MEN :

June 27, 2006


Total build cost for this projector was :
15.4" Wuxga LCD - $250 --- Ebay
15.4" Controller - $375 --- Minoten
LL Light Kit - $180 --- LL
LL Pro lens kit - $260 ---- LL Have since switched to an 18"-$45
LL Pro Reflector $20 --- LL
Slusher Box - $110 --- Slusher
Fans - $40 --- Radio Shack
Misc parts - $100 --- Lowes

Total - $1335

Then if you want to add more:

Dalite Screen - $650 --- www.finalclick.com
1080p Dvd Player - $200 --- www.neodigits.com
Xbox 360 / Accssories - $650
Theater Room - $1800
Klipsch/Yamaha 5.1 Surround - $1800 --- Ebay
Xbox 360 HD-DVD - $199


Here's 2 pics from the Count Of Monte Christo:

November 16, 2006

I bought the Xbox 360 HD-DVD and hooked it up to the projector.

All I have is King Kong but here's some pics at true 1080p :









All I can say is I'm stunned. True 1080p looks so awesme. No blurring, no jaggies, and awesome clarity and detail.
Time to upgrade all my DVD's .

And here's a Gears of War at 1080p :

And there you go.

That's the story of my build.

It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed every minute of it.

very nice results....great build!!!

ammmmazzzing!, very impressive indeed! Very well done!

I shall be looking over your plog again I think lol.

Showing the 360 HD-DVD really shows off the HD power, and to think, it's that clear and much detail on a projected screen! whoah.

Thanks for the new pics jonjordan! I can see the detail of 1080p with the hd-dvd. I'm going to settle with a 15.4 like you now.

....speechless. Awesome dood!

Superb build! Looks awesome with even light and EVERYTHING! Seriously it looks amazing. And the fact that you put that many seats into your home theater makes the whole thing that much better! I haven't even made my first projector, which is going to be a small form factor 8", but I definately know who I'm coming to for tips when I build my HD 15" Just awesome. Exactly what I would do if I had an extra room

Did you run that through the computer? like this article describes?

can you post some more pics of the 360 in hd . THe king kong ones are too zoomed in btw except for the 1. Anyway you could repost some better pics? It is looking good though. I ordered mine Oct 27th and it still hasnt arrived so your a lucky duck

I thought HD DVDs were only capable of outputting 720p max?

Taken from the HD-DVD Wiki:

"The HD DVD format supports a wide variety of resolutions, from low-resolution CIF and SDTV up to HDTV formats such as 720p, 1080i and 1080p.[7] All movie titles released so far have had the feature encoded in 1080p (although the only player currently available that supports 1080p is the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive), with supplements in 480i or 480p. Most titles are encoded with VC-1."

So the X-box 360 HD dose not have HDCP?

Mystic

I have no clue what you're talking about. The pics are NOT zoomed in. That's the whole screen with the camera setup at the proper distance so that it fills the whole pic.

The smaller pic was accidentaly setup for 640x480 on the camera and the rest were setup at 6 megapixels.

No it does not

Nope I have it connected with the official Microsoft VGA adapter into the Vga in on my Lcd Controller.

Excellent job on the pj. I am really considering building one. Following your design i think the quality is excellent, and i want a 1080 pj. If you could recommend one thing to cut down on cost of building the PJ its self or if you could do it differently.. what would it be?

Build your own enclosure. That would save $50-$75.

Don't go hrough 4 15.4" panels because of impatience.

Use a coil/core ballast instead of the Eballast. Will save you about $100 but the Eballast is much better.

And that's about it. But I wouldn't change much, I'm quite happy with the PJ.

Do you remember what model LCD you used for the final one? And how hard was it to align everything, was there enough room for adjustments?

I sed the Sharp LQ154M1LW12 for the final build.

And I made everything adjustable so that I could move it forwards and backwards to get the best projection.

Wondering what the distances are now in your modified pro box. I'm tweaking a 19inch widescreen PJ (no plog), and I'm generally happy with the brightness, but it could be brighter. it looks like your bulb is much closer to the fresnel and lcd than mine.

Great results not jealous or anything but 1080p is amazing... And to think it's just using the vga adapter direct to the lcd.

DM

Great result. Thanks for sharing your project. I have a lens of the same spec as you do (18", 5" inch in diameter, about the same big and bulky size). Could you please post some of your numbers for the pro setup:

1) The two Fresnel lenses's focal values
2) The distance between the lamp and the 1st fresnel
3) The distance between the 1st fresnel to the lcd
4) The distance between the lcd and the 2nd fresnel
5) (this depends on a setup, but for your case), the distance between the 2nd fresnel and the 18" (457 mm)

Thanks.

P.S. Although the pictures look fantastic, I wonder if you would push it further by scrapping the anti-glare and some of the back of the LCD (I forget what it was). I saw a blog about that with amazing increase in quality of the picture. If you do, please post progress, method and results.

Everything on this Lcd has been stripped. There is only polarizers left, nothing else.

As for the distances I had them posted somewhere, I'll see if I can dig them up.

Your projector has been an inspiration! So are you still running with no heat/UV shield? And do you have any sort of temp. sensors to shut off the lamp if it gets too hot?

I was running it with no heat shield and using an attic thermostat to control the fans, but no temp auto shutoff.

Are you still using the lenses from the opaque projector? I would like to try this idea and was just wondering what they came out of.

I was using the 18" Beseler and the LL Pro Fresnels.

Could I ask where you got the Beseler?

A member was selling one here in the Buy/Sell Forum.

Please share if you can. I know you've listed them before, but they're hard to find. I've got a similar setup: 15.4" WUXGA, Pro Fresnels (220/650), but using CDM150W lamp. I've also got the ProLens and the 18" Beseler. I'm leaning towards the Beseler. But I'm a little disappointed in the brightness (regardless of lens). So I'm wondering if the brightness can be improved with changing fresnel distances or makeup.

Regards

Well I know some are impressed with the 150watt lamps, but I like brightness better. And in order to achieve the 250-300 lumens I achieved you will need the Ushio PS 400 watt Lamp.

And the distances will be different for everybody so it's kind of pointless to post them. The lamp to Lcd will be around 210-220mm. The first fresnel will be around 10-20mm behind the Lcd. The second fresnel will be around 30-60mm behind the Lcd. And the triplet will be around 550-600mm from the Lcd.

All fresnels have slightly different focal lengths, the lamp position will be slightly different depending on your reflector , the triplet will be slightly different for everyone.

So the best thing is to make everything 1/2"-1" adjustable and then tweak, tweak, tweak.