This is to chronicle my project of building a 15" PJ with a iiyama Prolite H380 15" monitor, a Haas built box (hopefully I can still get one when I actually have the money), Lumen Labs lens kit and the ballast and whatnot from a 400 watt Metal Halide parking lot light that I scavenged after it was blown down by hurricane Ivan last year. Money is tight. I only have about $200 of play money every month so it may take a few months to complete this project.

The iiyama Prolite H380 of course isn't the best monitor I could use to build this PJ, but it was free, so I will use it for now. Here are the specs.

Diagonal 15.0“ (38 cm)
Display area h x w 228 x 304 mm
Response time 16 msec
Contrast ratio 400:1 typical
Brightness 250 cd / m² typical
Display colors 16.2 Mio.
Pixel pitch h x v 0.297 x 0.297 mm
Horizontal sync 24 – 60 KHz
Vertical sync 56 - 75 Hz
Bandwith 80 MHz
Native resolution 1024 x 768 (0.8 megapixels)
Input connector DVI-D, D-Sub mini 15 pin
Syncronisation Separate, Composite, Sync on Green
Plug & play VESA DDC 1/2B™
Speaker 2 x 2 W Stereo optional
Interface On-Screen-Display in 6 languages (D, GB, F, I,
ESP, JP) and 6 button control panel (power,
auto-setup, brightness, contrast, menu, input)
User controls Brightness, contrast, colour temperature
(3 Preset, 1 User), sRGB, horiz. / vert. position,
clock, phase, sharpness, gamma correction, signal
input, economy mode, OSD position, OSD timer, OSD
lock, reset, Auto – Setup, reset
Power usage Max. 30 W in normal use, Max. 5 W in suspend mode
Power management VESA DPMS, ENERGY STAR®






As far as I can tell there are no FFC issues with this monitor.

I will be using this PJ as the display for my HTPC. I have many DVDs and DVDrips to watch as well as a DVB-S card in my computer that allows me to watch ALL Dish Network channels. Saar Softwares MyTheatre will be the software I use to control my HTPC. It allows DVB-S, C, & T, supports DVR functions (pause, rewind, record etc.) as well as file and DVD playback and is extremely configurable and stable (on my machine anyway).

I've been wanting to do this for over a year, but my girlfriend had issues with the idea. Now that she's not my girlfriend anymore, I'm gonna do it.

I'm headed to the HTPC route using a DVB-S card also, but must warn you
to not mention the Sat provider, it could be perceived as Sat hacking (which I KNOW yiu would never do) and this forum doesn't condone that activity.

Now do I understand that you are going to rip all your DVD's to the hard drive?
Won't that take up alot of space? I've read about Mytheatre for Sat but not for playing back DVD's, will it read the DVD info from the hard drive?

How fast of a machine do you think is needed to run mytheatre well?

MyTheatre will playback DVDs from the DVD drive, it does not support playing DVDs from the hard drive. MT has FULL support for DVD playback including menus. MT will play any video that will play in Windows Media Player. It has three modes, Live/record, File, and DVD.

I've been looking at MytheTv, runs in linux and looks SWEET!



here are some info sites:
http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/
http://www.dvbnetwork.com/ <---- has a linux section on it
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-view_articles.php
http://www.hoochvdr.info/

I would love to use MythTH, but it is a PITA to do what I do with it. I am hoping that MediaPortal matures in the future as it has a great interface, but it does not support my card very well among other things.

I have been playing with media portal for quite a while and I must say it is definitely maturing. Even as a simple front end, it is quite nice. Its especially interesting with the Hauppage remote unit... Get a better card that goes with this one and it works very well.

BTW, what SAT card are you running? He may have a new version in the works for it.

fastscirocco - There is software out there that mimics a CD/DVD Drive on your hardrive through windows. This would allow you to watch it on your computer through the program of your choice. The problem is that each movie will take from 4 to 9 Gb on you HD to store. A better solution would be to convert the movie to a mpeg (or something similar) and then play the mpeg file using something like the freeware software here - http://dogbitesbowl.50megs.com/MLoad.htm. (Just remember to only convert movies you own .

I have read guides to get MythTv working with DVB-S cards if that is what you
are refering to. Is it really that hard to work with?

Yeah, I don't know exactly how hard it is, but from what I've read it takes a good bit of work to get it going. I'm gonna try though. It does look good.

BTW, I'm using an inexpensive Twinhan VP 1020A. It has served me well for over a year now.

As an alternative to MythTV, you might want to look at GB-PVR. Its a really slick frontend that under constant development. Its very fast and even makes good front end if you dont have a TVTuner. I prefer this one to media portal hands down.

I looked into GB-PVR, but it does not support certain plugins that I am not allowed to talk about here, and the author has no plans to add that functionality. I'll be sticking with MyTheatre for now. I mean I did pay $40 for it and it works well. It has all the functionality I need when combined with Girder. It just lacks a clean spiffy pretty UI.

I finally purchased my lens kit from Brain. It's on it's way. I have no camera right now, but I may be able to get one before I start contruction. Haas isn't producing anymore boxes, so I'll be building it from scratch (trying to anyway). If I can't do it there is a cabinet maker in town that said they could.

OK, so I know it's been a while since I posted. My PJ is complete. I went the basic route and am quite happy with the results. I do have some observations from my experience though.

1. I started with the pivot point for my gravity keystone adjustment near the top of the front Fresnel. In this configuration I had some uneven focus issues. The center of the screen was in sharp focus, the top was slightly out of focus, and the bottom was very out of focus. I decided to change the pivot point to the center of the Fresnel and now my picture is only very slightly out of focus at the top and bottom.

I tried adjusting the Fresnel parallel to the LCD and using the NVKeystone software that came with my NVidia video card, but that caused sometimes sluggish behavior of the screen due to the nature of the software.

2. I have settled on 205mm for the lamp to rear Fresnel distance. I get the brightest picture from this.

3. I am afraid to attempt AG removal of the LCD because I am a puss and do not want to risk damaging my LCD.

I had a lot of help from my friend Kevin while building this PJ. He wants to build his own now. We decided to make a tray for the LCD/Rear Fresnel/Lexan, because I would at some time in the future like to upgrade the LCD to the WUXGA panel that Minoten is offering, though I don't know if it will still be available by the time I can afford it.

Final dimensions of my screen is 79", and I am very pleased with it.