I'd like to start off by thanking everybody on the Lumenlab forums. I would not be enjoying hi-def movies in my living room on a 90 inch screen without you. I don't want to name names, 'cause I know that I would miss someone important (I know that sounds like an Oscar acceptance speech, but it's true).

For the new dreamers out there who just got bit by the bug, I have only one bit of advice... READ THESE FORUMS! Today I have an awesome projector that was a piece of cake to set up and start enjoying once it was built, all because I spent months reading the Lumenlab forums before I even bought my first part. I have so few posts here because almost every time that I had a question, I searched for the answer rather than just asking on the beginners forum. By looking it up and reading through several posts in the process, I ended up learning 10 times more than if someone had just handed me a simple answer.

Alright, let's get on with the show. You should have figured out by now that I'm quite long winded. I'll try to keep things brief, but don't hold your breath.

Folks, I present to you "The Other Woman":







She is my first ever PJ, and by far the most complex thing that I've ever constructed all by my onesies. Here's a quick rundown of her features:

LCD - X2Gen MW15A 15.4" 1280x800
Lamp - 250W OSRAM Powerstar HQI-TS 250W/D daylight
Ballast - S50 250W High Pressure Sodium coil and core ballast
Lenses - LL Std Triplet, LL pro 220mm fres, 3D Lens 330mm .2mm pitch fres
Cooling - 1 120mm 12V fan
Box - 1/2 inch mdf

If you're trying to find my plog, stop now. There isn't one. It took me way too long to built this darn thing without taking the time to document my progress along the way. I'm doing this write up mostly so that I can give something back to a forum that has given me so much.

I'm going to go into more detail on each part of the PJ in separate posts, mostly to make it easier for ya'll to comment and ask questions.

And don't worry, there will be plenty of pics and screenies.

Here are some screenies for you:

Here's a shot with the flash, that's my 4' by 8' screen.


The corner focus needs some work, but dang I was impressed when I first saw this.


And the obligatory 5th Element shots...




This is my favorite RGB color test image.

Some more screenies of my favorite test images:

I picked the X2gen MW15A 'cause it's cheap, it's widescreen, it's able to do 720p, it has no anti-glare, and it can be used with the standard triplet.

The vast majority of my expected PJ use will be for widescreen DVD movies and hi-def TV. This panel has a 16x10 aspect ratio which is close enough to 16x9 for me. I plan to get soon a Neoya X2VGA video transcoder so that I can run the signal from my DVD player and cable box straight to the PJ. This will stretch the image by 11% vertically, but I'm okay with that. I may one day go with a HTPC, but right now that is an unnecessary expense.

Stripping the LCD was a piece of cake. I honestly had no clue what I was doing, and it was easy. There are a few plogs out there that detail the process, so I won't bother. It does have an FFC issue, but that is easily fixed with a 20 x .5mm extension. Digikey.com has one, as does DIYbeamer.com. Digikey was out of stock, so I went with DIYbeamer. Even though they are in Austria, my extension arrived in about a week, and total price shipped was only like 3 or 4 dollars more than what it would have been from Digikey. I do want to note that the FFC on the X2Gen is paper thin. I had to shove some paper in behind it to keep it from falling out of the coupler on the extension. Plus I had to really shave down the extension cable to make it thin enough to fit into the FFC port on the LCD.

Anyway, as a computer monitor this LCD is a piece of crap. There is only one backlight, and it's way underpowered. As a display for a PJ, it's a dream. It's easy to work with, there's no AG to strip, and it is super transmissive at 8.9%.

I love my lamp. Really. It rocks.

It's the 250W OSRAM Powerstar HQI-TS 250W/D daylight.



I actually picked and ordered a Sylvania 250W HQI that ArizonaVideo recommended once upon a time, but Atlanta Light Bulbs substituted this OSRAM lamp that's just as good, and maybe even better. I went this route because I just didn't want to consume or cool 400 watts of power. I nearly went with one of those great 150W ceramics, but when I saw that there was a 250W lamp with great color rendering, I knew that was for me. It's brighter than the 150W lamps, and way easier to cool than the 400W lamps.

Some stats:
ILCOS name: MD-250/51/1A-H 100/S-Fc2-25/163/P
Luminous flux (lm): 20000
System luminous efficacy (lm/W): 80
Colour rendering group: 1A
Maximum colour temperature Tf (K): 5100
Diameter d (mm): 25
Length l max. (mm): 163
Lamp current (A): 3
IRC: 93

The color really is amazing. My color levels on my LCD are: Red 75%; Green 65%; Blue 75%. I may push the green down a bit more, but I'm real happy.

Because it is a lower wattage lamp, I went with a white screen. As a result the image is pretty easily washed out in anything but complete darkness. I was able to enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean in the middle of the afternoon, but I had to hang a couple of thick blankets over the windows and sliding glass door. Until I built the PJ, I thought our ultra cheap vertical blinds did a good job of blocking out light. Now I realize that they don't block crap. You can bet that I'll be looking for some hotel surplus curtains very soon.

You lamp geeks out there may have noticed that I'm not using the "correct" ballast for my lamp. There's a good reason for this. Wait... no. My bad. There is not a good reason for this.

As I mentioned above, ArizonaVideo made a single post recommending some 250W Sylvania HQI lamp and mating it with an S50 ballast. So I researched the hell out of that lamp, and fell in love with it. I kinda forgot to research the ballast.

When She Who Must Be Obeyed released the funds for me to build this new toy, I bought parts willy nilly before she changed her mind. It was only after I had already purchased the lamp and the S50 ballasted that I realized that I had the "wrong" ballast. All I know about the "correct" ballast is that it's more expensive than the S50.

All I know about the S50 ballast is that it is designed to be used with high pressure sodium lamps, it's about as heavy as an 1978 Buick, and it drives my lamp beautifully. It works, and as far as ballasts go it was cheap. I'm happy.

So, ArizonaVideo, if you're reading this, I'd kinda like to know why I bought the ballast I did.

One thing I like about the 15.4 inch widescreen LCD is the fact that I can use the LL standard triplet. The pro triplet would certainly give me brighter corners, but I like keeping things inexpensive when I can. Besides, when playing games and watching movies, I don't pay attention to the corners. To focus the triplet I used a PVC shower drain from Home Depot. I had to wrap about an 1/8 inch of masking tape around the triplet to give it a snug fit into the drain.

Now, with the fresnels I could not use the LL standard ones. They are not big enough to cover the whole LCD. Many people recommend going to 3Dlens for fresnels for 15.4 inch LCDs. They have both 220mm and 330mm lenses that are big enough, and they have both .5mm pitch and .2mm pitch hi-def ones. Lumen Lab says that .5mm pitch is optimal for our applications. After a little research, I learned that some people have compared the different lenses and they say that the .5mm pitch is better for your collumnating lens (between the lamp and the LCD) 'cause it lets more light through than the .2mm. These people also think that the .2mm is a bit better as a field fresnel, especially if you have an LCD with smaller pixels.

So I took a leap of faith and went with the LL pro 220mm fresnel (I tried to buy from LL whenever I could, without their forum I'd never even have a PJ) and the 3Dlens .2mm pitch 330mm fresnel. I'm very happy with my choices. The LL fresnel is much thicker than the 3Dlens one, and with my vertical design that means it will resist bowing better.

My PJ is maxing out on keystoning, so the top of the field fresnel is right up against the LCD. I can see the circles from the fresnel in the top third of the screen, but because the grooves are so fine it's barely noticeable, and only so when viewing solid colors. My wife can't even see the circles after I've tried to point them out.

Both fresnels were way too big for my needs. I cut them down to size by scoring them about 50 times with an $0.87 utility knife from Wal*Mart, then snapping off the waste piece. Very easy.

My reflector is the LL one, and the mirror on top is a 5"x7" front surface mirror I bought on Ebay. The mirror is, sadly, too small. A small part of the top of the image misses the mirror, and ends up on the ceiling. I should have gone with at least 6"x7" if not 7"x7".

Since my 250W lamp is generating a little over half the heat of the typical 400W lamp, I was never too worried about cooling. Still, like most of you, I would like to keep my PJ both cool and quiet. I don't know why anyone uses 80mm fans. If you look at the stats, 80mm fans have about half the cfm as a 120mm fan with the same dBA. Since the dBA scale is not linear, this is a monster huge difference.

I went with a single 120mm fan. It's an Antec fan with a 3 speed switch. I got it with hopes that I might be able to slow down the fan and run ultra quiet. I can run it on medium and keep the LCD below 90° F. Medium speed makes about 2/3 as much noise as high. Low speed is whisper quiet, but I don't have the guts to run it that slow. Maybe one day.

My cooling circuit starts with a square black foam filter on top of my PJ. I picked this up at a pet store in the aquarium pump section. I wanted something black, washable, and of course cheap. The fan is mounted directly under the filter so that the PJ has positive pressure, pushing out dust rather that sucking in dust. About 1.5 inches below the filter is a square of 1/8" thick masonite to block any light from exiting out through the fan and filter. It works perfectly, no light leaks out at all.

Packaging for the filter and fan:


Top of the PJ:




There is a 1/2 inch gap on the left side of the LCD, and a similar gap on the right side of the columnating fresnel. The cool air goes down the first gap and washes between the LCD and the columnating fresnel to the second gap where it drops down into the lamp chamber. From there the now hot air goes through a removable tunnel that houses the ballast, and then out through a grill in the door.

There is no heat shield between the lamp and the columnating fresnel. I built a slot to hold one, but put off buying one unless I find I need it, and I don't. :-)

In my not so humble (and pretty inexperienced) opinion, the value of a heat shield is overrated. The LCDs get hot for 2 reasons; hot air from the lamp and the light from the lamp. Our LCDs reflect or absorb over 90% of the light that hits them when they're white, and over 99% when they're black. All of the light that's absorbed is turned into heat. Not just the infra red light, all of the light that is absorbed is turned into heat, period. The only way to deal with this heat is to keep cool air flowing over the LCD. This also is a very effective way to deal with the hot air from the lamp.

You will also note that the flow of air is downward from top to bottom. Many people say this is bad in a vertical PJ 'cause everybody knows that hot air rises. My design proves that the power of the fan can be stronger than the boyant force of the hot air.

At steady state, the temp of the LCD stays around 88°, the lamp chamber stays at 125°, and the exhaust air stays around 112°.

One of these days I'll play a dark movie, like Batman, and see how the LCD temp is. If it's good, I just may try the low speed on the fan.

1,where are these original pictures?

And the obligatory 5th Element shots...




2, why have no condenser?

I'm glad it all worked out.

I always try to set at least one color at 100% and lower the others. This gives the max brightness. I would set the red at 100 or 95 and lower the G and B until the grey scale is correct.

With a 93 CRI the bulb looks great and the girls do to.

I would add a small piece of flashing behind the reflector. Just to be sure.

You can always add a condenser lens later by just moving the lamp up about an inch.

Congratulations on your PJ, it looks great, awsome results too! Keep up the good work, I'm also interested in knowing where can I get those 5th element images.

Buy or rent the DVD.

Honestly, I think maybe Lumenlab should have a random monthly drawing for a free HD 5th Element DVD.

Nice work yensid. Ummm . . . personally I'm most interested in RGB test images.

These are still images from the movie "The 5th Element". For some reason, it is a tradition to use images from these two scenes when posting screenies on the Lumenlab forums.



Give it time. This PJ was complex enough as it is. I will add a condenser eventually. This is my first PJ, I just want to get comfortable with this setup before I add more bells and whistles.

Thanks for the tips AV.

With this lamp, why did you recommend the S50 ballast over the M80 ballast that the manufacturer recommends?

The M50 should be one of the lower cost ballast around. They are in millions of streetlights and such.

Both the S50 lamp and the HQI 250 are 100V at 3A so the S50 ballast will be fairly close.

You could always add one of these.

http://cgi.ebay.com/OPN470-Capacitor-4uF-3...emZ320138049173

I have no this "The 5th Element" DVD can you give me some picture of this movie, you can take picture by software, like WinDVD.

Dnont forget the condenser. you can get double brightness if you add it

Hey Gang. It's been over a year since I last checked out these forums. I've been busy enjoying DVDs and HDTV on my awesome PJ.

I just wanted to mention that a year ago January I got one of the X2VGA video transcoders made by Neoya. It's awesome, awesome, awesome! I'm no videophile, but I love the picture that I get through it. I have both my HD Cable box and my DVD player hooked up to it using component cables. The DVD player must be in progressive scan mode to work though.

The only complaint that I have is that when watching TV in 720p, I have to have my LCD image shifted over all the way to the right (using the LCD controls). Then when I watch DVDs in 480p, I have to shift the LCD image all the way to the left. Kinda annoying, but no real trouble at all.

For more info on the X2VGA, and to purchase one, check out www.X2VGA.com.