Well I was recently inspired by this thread here.

So I decided to buy an Ask projector myself and mod it for the 10.6" Mst kit.

I bought this projector Ebay Link

It comes with a 575 watt Osram Hmi lamp, a 10" 1024x768 Lcd, and a bunch of stuff.
Here's some pics. :

I bought the 10.6" Mst kit from johnzo1995.

For those who don't know, this is a 720p native 1080p capable Lcd. It has Hdmi, Vga, Component, and Composite inputs and is HDCP enabled. And it has an excellent picture.

So I started modding. I had to take out the 10" Lcd and modify the frame for the 10.6" . That required cutting it wider and masking off the top and bottom unused portions. This is how it turned out.




Then I had to take out the old controller board and install the new one.







Then I had to redo the Osd board in the top half of the projector to accommodate the new one. I also had to rewire the fan to work with the attic thermostat so it would continue running until it cooled down.

The finished front half with the new Lcd and Controller installed.




And now some screen shots.

These first are to show the color.

The image is 120" diagonal with the projector 150" from the screen.

And some shots from King Kong.

Overall I am quite happy with it.

There are a few visible fresnel lines, and a slight color uniformity problem on dark scenes only.
I think I might have a little pressure on the Lcd from the metal holding it down.
And my precon is broke in half but will be replaced next week.


It was a lot of work trying to rewire everything to get it working right and reworking the Lcd frame was interesting. But it was well worth it. It is throwing a surprisingly awesome bright picture., comparable to a commercial. And the bulbs are 1000 hour bulbs that can be replaced for less than $50.

Any questions feel free to ask.

Total costs:
Projector -- $100
10.6" Kit -- $280
Precon -- $15
Attic Thermostat -- $18
----------------------------
Total -- $413

I stripped the 2 mirror layers off the back , but I didn't touch the front layer. Don't really see a need to right now. It's plenty bright with good contrast and colors.

Also I just calculated lumen output.

Keep in mind this is with a broken precon and a 1000 hour rated bulb with over 1000 hours.

Total lumens = 362

Wow, I had no idea my 970 could go 10.6 in the future.

Will there be a 1080p 10.6 in the future? Because then I'm breaking this puppy down

Very cool- thanks

Victor

pisser.
did i read that you relpaced the precon? Its so interesting that projector! The light engine in the 575w Dukane OHP's uses a short, chubby"fatboy" type precon. for 12", opposed to 10"


Another way it differs from the 575w Dukane OHP's, is in the lamp assembly. The Ask is "open-air", with no lightbox, like the dukane OHPs have.

That fan, is it much larger then a normal PCAC drive-bay fan?

I'm just blown by the contrast on this panel. I thought it would be like less than 300:1 but it's just looks so rich.

With all the inputs you'll ever need, a small frame factor, resolutions up the wazoo and with images like this how can you go wrong with it?

That's it, I have to buckle down and sell a thumb or two....

BTW jonjandran, nice job on remodeling the Ask and at 362 lumes?.....geez

Looks pretty good to me. Can we see any pics during daytime or with lights on?

Amazingly this 10.6" with the Mst controller does an AWESOME job downconverting 1080p. It looks "almost" as good as my 15.4" , just slightly less "sharp" but only a true perfectionist would notice.



The precon is coming in the mail. I'm using the broken one for now, that's why I think the lumen #'s are a tad low and why I have a slight dark spot on the projection.

The fan is about 8"x3" or so. it pushes a lot of air and isn't really that loud.



Will do, but the theater room has no windows and when I turn the lights on it is 6-40 watt flourescents. But I'll do a few pics later this week.

HEY ! You stole my idea ! I was watching that auction too, but didn't end up bidding... My idea was to remove the light engine and fresnels to determine if these parts could be sourced for a more "traditional" DIY build. Any hope of you taking this apart to measure reflector/precon/fresnels ??

Nice job BTW. I like the way you modified the existing housing and everything to fit the 10.6" panel. I wonder what type of lux we'd get out of the 150W lamp... i'm guessing probably only about 25% of the 575W'er now...

gs

That's awesome. Is this the first completed 10.6 PJ?

Nice job jonjandran!

jonjandran,

Can you post info on how you got the fan to work on its own. Also, do you have the original remote for this?

Victor

No I don't have the original remote. Also my old controller only had 3 26pin D-Sub connectors as inputs. I bought a 26 pin D-Sub connector and wired it to a 15 pin Vga connector but never could get proper graphics displayed.

The fan is a standard 120v fan but it has 2 ground connections and 2 common connections. One had power all the time, so as soon as the projector started the fan started. The second was on a 2 minute delay circuit so after the projector turned off the fan would run for 2 minutes.

Now I thought the 2 minute delay circuit was built into the controller board. So i left the fan wired to the side where it started on projector start up, then i wired the other side to an attic thermostat so it would stay on after the projector turned off until it was cool. The problem was that the attic thermostat is not sensitive enough. so after the projector turns off the attic thermostat never turns the fan back on because the projector cools down before the sensor in the attic thermostat can kick the fans back on.

I was going to just leave the attic thermostat hooked up by itself but the darned thing is just not sensitive enough. It won't turn on quick enough set at 78 degrees before the Lcd starts developing a black spot. And at 76 degrees it stays on all the time.

Now as I'm sitting at work I'm beginning to thin the delay circuit might be the small circuit board next to the ballast board. So I will try to see if I can't get the delay circuit back up and running the end of this week.

Well here is the rough estimates :


The pre-con is roughly 140mm away from the fresnel and it is 80mm diameter. The fresnels are roughly 37mm from the Lcd. The Lcd is about 10" diagonal. The precon looks to be about 13-14mm thick. Lamp arc to precon distance is about 14mm.

Dazzla helped me to figure out that the Pre-Con is roughly a 80mm diameter, 135mm fl precon. The fresnels are glued together but from the distances they should be a 200mm and a 300mm.

Wow, awesome output. Would you say the pictures look sharper and more colorful in real life? If so this is a true beauty.

How does this compare to the 15.4" 1080p pj you had? In terms of quality

Yes it is sharper and more colorful. I'll try to get some more colorful pics up later this week.

In terms of quality the 10.6" is brighter and more uniform than the 15.4". The colors and contrast are also better. The resolution is not quite as good. It looks a bit more "blurry" than the 15.4" but just a little. You would have to be a videophile to notice. And the 15.4" had a little less screendoor.

jonjandran,

You mentioned brightness earlier. How does the brightness of the Ask compare to your old 15.4 on the same movies?

I know that this projector is bright enough that in my theater with 4 60w lights on I'm still getting a more than viewable picture.

Victor

This projector is 360 lumens and my 15.4" was 245 lumens , so about 30% brighter. That's enough of a difference to make everything look better. And this projector has better vignetting which makes the picture better looking overall. But I still want to adjust the triplet and get this puppy up to 170" and see what it looks like.

If my new Pre-con comes in this week I will install it and my new Osram 575watt Hmi lamp and give everyone the 9 point Ansi #'s and the new Lumen reading

I can tell you right now at 165" it was at max focus on the original 10". I used it outside on my 16:9 screen with a widescreen movie.

I could tell at that size the image was slightly soft, much like people used to do on their commercials to minimize sde by unfocusing the image ever so slightly.

If you do a sliding apparatus to move the triplet you'll almost certainly acheive a sharp focus with this pj.

Very curious that everything we've all wanted to do (or hoped to do) with the evo (upgraded lcd panels, brighter lighting system, hdcp, etc.) is achievable now with this pj...

Victor

PS I'll fire it up on my outside theater and get some screenies this week...

Wait, is this the first successful 10.6 pj?! Huge props again,, which would you recommend for a first pj, 15.4 or 10.6?

How much distance do you think it needs to slide to go from 120" to 170" diagonal. I am at 120" diagonal now and that is as big as I can get it and stay focused. Do you think about 1"-2" of slide will be enough ?

Yes I think this is just about the perfect case/light box/ ballast configuration for this Lcd. It even has the built in voltage converter that outputs 12v and 6v for the controller board/fans/etc.

Recommend hmmmm?

The 10.6" will allow for a lot smaller of a box, and you could use a smaller lamp, and you can use the standard triplet/fresnels. It will have excellent HD resolution. With a Pre-con it will have great brightness and uniformity.

The 15.4" will have "True" hd resolution of 1080p. It will have less screendoor. So you can have a pretty large projection. But the box will be large and you need the Pro Lens/Triplet. So it will be more expensive.

It's a toss-up. Let's throw them in a ring and let them fight it out to decide a winner.

Could it be?

A 10.6" 1080p in our future?!?

dam, that was a good idea, turned out very well, and excellent price to boot.

Nice!

I've been fighting with this same question. I really like the 1080p resoltuion, but the 10.6 form factor is really nice. It's funny, but after being with 1080 for so long, 720p looks HUGE in comparison... I purchased a 10.6" as well and will decide for myself. The 10.6 w/ pro lens is going to give me the placement I really want (I think) for my room... time will tell...

Thanks for the info in the earlier post... much appreciated... i've been looking at different solutions for a light engine on this panel, and you seem to have the best (I guess the ASK people knew what they were doing after all... ) Now to figure out what i'm going to do...

Thanks again for the info....

gs

You say the 10.6 has better color and contrast, do you think it is the lamp or the panel? The HMI has better color and a shorter arc which may help both contrast and color.

I don't see why the 10.6 Samsung would look much different than a 15.4" Samsung?

Darn there are so many wariables aren't there.

Could be the lamp , could be the Lcd, could also be the controller has better color adjustments (I know that they adjust the solor/contrast/brightness a lot different than the G2A did). I really don't have any way of knowing I guess.

But I did use 6 different 400watt lamps with the 15.4" and they all lokked about the same. I mean I had to adjust each lamp a little to get out some green/red/etc but the panel had about the same color/contrast. It's not like with a different lamp all of a sudden the colors just jumped out a brighter and more colorful. But with the 10.6" in this case that is exactly the way it looks. Excellent colors and contrst. They jump out at you.

I think it's the whole combination. Your projection is nearly 50% brighter [(360-245)/245 * 100 = 47%] Along with a short arc lamp (~5-7mm) may be some of the cause at least ? Were any of the 6 lamps you tried short arc ?

I look forward to getting my 10.6" now, especially with what you say about it.

Thanks again.
gs

Kind of off topic, but I am still in the market for a controller, would that controller with the HDCP enabled HDMI drive the Sharp WUXGA panel? I have been out of the loop for a while, is there any controller that will do HDCP and drive the WUXGA panels?

Freakin' brilliant jonjandran. Freakin' brilliant.

Guess we won't know until someone tries this-lamping with a 10.6 in a 'standard'-DIY.
In meantime, I foresee a sudden doubling of interest/price in Ask-PJ's on EBay...!

[And Congrats on a fine and 'trend-setting' mod...!]

Right now there is only one ASK pj on ebay right now- and there's no way I'm paying that price. Its almost 400x more than what I paid for mine :-)

Looking at this picture:


I could see some spacers or longer screws to hold the lens in place and see how much more trave you need to achieve your goal

Victor

Could anyone who has one of these take a picture, exactly from the side, zoomed in all the way but still with the whole projector in view, to see exactly how it is set up for keystoning?

PS the zooming is so that the effect of viewing it from a point is reduced, ie. looking at it more like it would be in a design drawing.

Well I have to remove the triplet from the projector case which involves taking the triplet apart and I've never taken one apart. So I guess it's time to learn.



I'll try to later today

Best I could do to get the side with most everything showing and still keep it as a "side" view.

sawweeet.

Exactly what I meant.

Do you find this a good way to raise the picture? Does the whole picture stay in focus?

Yes it works just about perfectly. There is a slight drop in lumens at the top of the screen but that might be my cracked precon.

By the way can anyone see why it cracked Those pegs that hold the precon are crimped so tight the precon won't move. And it looks like the only way to remove/replace it is to bend the pegs with needle nose pliers. Yea thats safe around glass.

Here's some Chicken Little Blu-Ray running on a PS3 through Hdmi at 1080p.

What are the diagonal lines form?
The fresnels?

pics resizing?

Probably because the camera and the screen both operate using red/green/blue stripes of pixels, and both are focused well. It happened in some of my screenshots too, its not the projection.

Yea it's not in the projection but I can't figure out what to set the camera at to get rid of them.

I did a little better with these pics.

Wow!! I am really loving these images. If could just find a place for this beast in my theater I'd be all over this "upgrade"

victor

Also I took out my Lcd again today to remove the extra front polarizer and guess what ?

There isn't one. That's right, only one front polar and one rear polar. Not two on the front.. I have the 10.6" Samsung Lcd from the latest batch from Johnzo1995.

Has anyone else found this to be true on their 10.6" ?

omg, just when I thought the last images at 720p were great.

Not sure if rebuilding a commercial is within the requirements due for Hall of Famer's but your 10.6 certainly deserves some recognition, jonjandran.

Thanks !!!

I installed the new 575 watt lamp and tested the lumens again.......

And the results are.............

445 LUMENS !!!!!!

I'm still waiting for my new Precon, it should be here tomorrow

I'm trying to get this camera figured out. Automatic night mode just doesn't work right. Shutter speed is way to fast and the images are about 25% darker than in real life. I'll fool with the iso/fstop/ options tomorrow.

I want you guys to see what I'm seeing