I have just bought the guide and am excited to get stared with my project. I was wondering , since I need to convert NTSC to the VGA for use with my TV and since I hope to get alot of mileage out of my projector, If I could use a monitor that is already compatable with HDTV and NTSC. I found a 15" HDTV ready LCD/TV I would consider using. Anyone know if this will work? http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Zenith_L15V36
Thanks, John

Here is another. Anyone know about this? http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/ref=b...asin=B0002LDKAO

Well, neither of those are really HDTV ready. They provide a 4:3 resolution of 1024x768.

To display 720p (or 1080i) properly you need 1280x720 and to display 1080p (not that anyone broadcasts it yet), you'd need a vertical resolution of 1080 with a matching horizontal res to get you a 16:9 widescreen image.

A 1024x768 is only really enough to fully render DVD material. Not HD. It will display a HD signal, but so will any old crap TV if you first scale the image down to fit (i.e lose quality).

The second and possibly the largest factor in the DIY projector is the contrast ratio. One of the above mentioned 350:1. It's too low. Good 17" panels can do 800:1 and you WILL notice the difference in the final image.

Generally speaking it's better to buy and lcd monitor (no tuner etc) and add an external tuner. If for any reason you're panel dies you're only up for the cost of a new monitor. If you lose a built in job with tuner and multiple inputs it will cost more to replace.

For me the current best price/performance option would be a 17" 1280x1024 panel locked to a widescreen resolution of 1280x720. Though you could still use it at 1280x1024 (4:3) for gaming etc... Just that HDTV and DVD are widescreen sources and I don't use mine for anything else.

Cheers,
Arkay.

If your looking to purchase against future obsoletion better get one with a DVI-HDCP connection. Unless you have this when broadcasters start throwing up the content protection flag coming up on July 5th 2005 your monitor will not be able to display any image thru the DVI and all signals coming from the component outputs will be downrezed to 480p. :angry:


peace

Huh? More info on this decrypting of HD please!

Digital Content Protection

Some say the downrez won't happen for component output, but it is built into almost every HDTV box and if Hollywood has it's way, and it's most likely they will, this will happen.

This is why nearly all new model HDTV displays have this built in.


peace

:angry: grrr

Good reading here


peace

great reply, but what do you mean by "locked to a wide screen"?

Now, don't all LCD screen become fuzzy and blurry when they are not at there native resolution? For example, if I get a 1280x1024 capable 17" LCD, I will be able to play games on that resolution but when watching HDTV movies at 1028x768 then it will get fuzzy since that is not the native resoultion. isn't that true for all LCDs?

Also, what external component do you have that makes your LCD HDTV ready??? and does that make it a TV Tuner???

thanx arkay!!

Mojo85, you can do like many here have done and use the ViewSonic NextVision N6 video processor.

Read this thread for more: Video scalers, TV boxes, composite/VGA converters


peace

Locking the resolution to 1280x720 can only be done if you use a PC to drive the lcd.

It involves using a piece of software called powerstrip that can tell the PC to use a screen mode of 1280x720 within the 1280x1024 capability of the monitor.

In essence it uses the exact same screen timings but only displays the 720 lines of vertical resolution within the available 1024. The monitor thinks it's getting a 1280x1024 75hz signal where windows thinks it's sending a 1280x720 75 hz signal.
In doing it this way the silly monitor "Auto Tune" function won't go and try to adjust to the new resolution thereby screwing up the image. It just thinks it's displaying the same 1280x1024 image it always has.

So, you're now not using the remaining 304 lines of the panel, so you'd have 152 lines of your panel above and below the image unused, even the windows desktop uses this resolution. So you're really buying a 17" 4:3 1280x1024 panel to use as a 17" 16:9 1280x720 panel. The stupid thing is that you can have a good (4:3) 17" for $500. Yet a 17" (16:9) will set you back $700, $200 more for 304 lines less resolution!

The only real reason you'd want to do this is so you can mount a permanent Widescreen (16:9) screen on the wall and not worry about having to move the projector forward/back between 4:3 and 16:9 images to get it to fit properly. 4:3 will scale down (vertically and horizontally) to fit a vertical height of 720 instead of 1024 so it still fits within the screen area.

The need for this is probably negated a bit by the new zooming varifocal lens but I still wouldn't want to get up to adjust the PJ everytime the source changed from 4:3 to 16:9.

I use a PC for DVD, HDTV (with a tuner card), mp3, divx, ps2 passthrough, the lot. The majority of things I display are 16:9 and I found that when I had things in full 4:3 the image was just too big to watch, whereas a scaled down 4:3 image on the 16:9 screen is still nice. I think it works good cause widescreen is bigger than 4:3 which is the way it should be in my mind. 4:3 is a smaller more TV like experience where 16:9 is big and cinema like

The main thing is, with either displaying 1280x1024 or 1280x720 is that it's still in a native pixel perfect resolution (timing) for your monitor so you get no scaling or squishing on HD sources and the clarity remains.

You can just as easily use it in 1280x1024 mode all the time and be happy that when you're watching a 16:9 image it will only use 1280x720 anyway, with letterboxing top and bottom. The only thing here is that you can't easily frame the image.
i.e. All that black at top and bottom will be grey on a large 4:3 screen because that's what lcd's low contrast ratios do, this has the affect of decreasing your perceived contrast levels and I find it annoying.
If you go the 1280x720 res on a permanent screen you can mask the top and bottom with real black hence adding to the overall image quality.

If you get a chance check out the difference between a widescreen movie on a huge 4:3 screen or white wall vs a movie that is perfectly framed to the edges of the screen (i.e No black bars, just the screens black edge). The difference is huge to me.

Anyway. Hope that explains some of it

Cheers,
Arkay.

super reply, explained everything very well....=D

u bring up an excellent point about the wide screen 17" LCD's, its so true!!..

quick question about this, then: if this is what you did with your monitor, did you mask the monitor in side the PJ to keep the light from even showing thru that part of the lcd, thereby not allowing ANY light to show outside your new 1280x768 display, and allowing for a true widescreen screen on the wall with the proper black border on the screen?
thanks for the help

Brain - what would this do for the frensels cuting/lighting?
would anything need to be changed, or would there just be part of the lenses that weren't used? - ie no biggie