I'm still not satisfied with my projected image brightness, projecting only at 7.5 feet.

The image is there and watchable, its bright enough to see but its just not the strong powerfull image you get out of a tv, bigscreen tv or movie theatre projector. In movies I don't mind so much but in games you need a nice powerfull image, you need sharp vision to see whats happening and react to it.

On your projector, is the image as bright as a bigscreen tv or movie theatre projector? Or is it kind of dimmed?

Now the reason I'm asking this is because I'm wondering if my ushio working to its full potential and if this is as good as it gets. If it is, then I'm going to see if i can find a 40k or 50k lumen bulb. I just need more brightness.

But its so wierd. The images in the project gallery just seem so much brighter then my image, and practicly all of them are bigger then 7.5 feet!

Thinking about trying a Venture bulb.

But please answer the question. Is your image a powefull bright image? Or is it just an image bright enough to see?

Me either! I'm currently ranting hardcore on the "Will we ever get to see a side-by-side..." thread on this forum about how dim my box is and how it makes the colors dull. Some folks are saying that it's a construction fault of my own but I am doubtful since I've tried realigning everything several times and it comes down to the same problem: colors lack punch and dark scene details are missing. I'd be hesitant to put another giant metal halide bulb in there. Those bulbs have arcs over 1" long and the fresnel lens can't take advantage of that very well, so a short-arc UHP bulb like commercial projectors use it what you really need. These are hundreds of dollars normally but a guy in China can ship bulbs with ballasts to the US for about $140. These bulbs have an arc length of around 4.7mm, which is about 10x less than the EYE bulb in my projector. Read here for more info:

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread....50&pagenumber=1

These will likely be the new rage in DIY projectors as soon as this guy gets all the ballast details worked out.

a guy in china?

With no reflector installed yet, my poorly constructed box is projecting a nice bright image.

My screen size right now is fairly small though. It's only around 70-80 inches. I'm hoping with a reflector it will increase.

Comparing it to what I've seen at Fry's electronics I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I don't think the commercial setups they have there are much better, and they run up to 1500 bucks.


I do envy that sony black screen though. I really hope that technology cathes on, and drives prices down. It should help our projectors immensly.

I don´t like taking a photo as reference since an excesive aperture exposition can burn a photo with a very dim projection image. This is very easy to do.

the only objetive measuremt is using a tool to meassure the light output; LUXMETER.

Anyway, I believe we hardly will have more than 300 lumens on our projectors.
If you are triyngo to get to 1000 lumens typical projector, you have really hard work.

Please buutsplice, it is the third time I ask it to you, I it posible for you to take a darked room photo of your projector? be genereous with the cameras exposition time.

I think that is a great point. Since our projectors are slightly lower inlumen output we are limited in size. At 70-80 inches diagonal (4:3 aspect ratio) the image is bright enough to watch with significant controlled ambient lights on. However, as you increase the size the image becomes dimmer. Just consider that a constraint for DIY builds.

My screen is 72 inches. I have a reflector (make a significant difference when installed properly) and the Venture bulb (also makes a significant difference) and can watch TV with four 60 watts light bulbs on in the room. I personally consider a 6 foot screen more than good enough for me. As a matter of fact, when you take into account the recommended screen size to viewing distance ratio, then 6 foot is just about exactly the right size for most living rooms.