Most of the projector is built, I hope. I'm going to attpent to use a 17" panel. I chose the LG1750S. This was not on the compatable monitors list, but I had high hopes

Here is the lamb for the sacrifice, on my rather cluttered desk. (I performed the strip on that desk, just piled the parts on a shelf next to it.)

Stand removed, and getting the case open. This was the most nerve wracking part. The case is held together by clipping the front piece to the back. There are 3 slots along the bottom of the monitor that look like they'll help... And they sorta do. Be careful here, you're working awfully close to the LCD glass. There are 3 clips on each side, and 4 clips on the top and bottom.

Once the frame is separated, make sure to detatch the PCB with the buttons on it from the front frame. This is taped in place. Once this is done, the plastic case can be put aside.

8 screws hold on the back dust cover. The cover just slides off, exposing the power supply and control boards.

Power supply and control boards

Suprisingly, no screws hold down that board. Work your way around the perimeter, unclipping the board that holds the power supply and control boards. These can be left in place

Detatch the backlight power and the LCD control from the board, and remove the control and power supply boards along with the cover plate.

Now remove the cover over the PCB connected to the LCD panel itself.

9 more screws to remove.This should finally alloy you to remove the backlight assembly and the LCD panel from the metal frame. Again, it's also clipped, all the way around.

The backlight consists of 2 tube lights that run the width of hte screen, and a large chunk of what looks like acrylic, textured on one side. This brings thoguhts of the Light Fusion screen to mind but used for a backlight. Once this is removed from the assembly, the LCD can be safely removed.

And here you have it folks! One stripped 17" LCD, ready for installation in an appropriately prepped projector. It remains to be seen if my projector qualifies.

The Phoenix will project again! (If not with this panel, then I'll break down and buy a replacement 15" LCD/panel.

Supra,

Off to a good start, good luck with it.

Can you say "D'OH!"

Well, I've measured and measured again.

My enclosure area is 13.5" wide. The panel is 13 5/8" wide. I need to "find" 1/8" somewhere.

Oh well. That's what the dremel is for. The viewable area on the panel is still less than 13.5" so I ought to be able to pull this off after all.

Of course since I'm still going to be using the LL standard fresnels for the time being, I'm not going to be able to project the entire area of hte panel onto the screen. I'll hold out on that until such time as I can get started on a pro lens build. I could use the larger fresnels from 3dlens.com, of course, but since I don't really want to shorten the throw, I'll use Powerstrip, and reduce the screensize to XGA resolution in the middle of the LCD. This will actually result in a slightly smaller image than the 15" panel produced, which will effectively increase my throw.

I think you're on the right track, making lemonade out of the lemons, so to speak...

Thanks for the encouragement, OKFlyboy. It means a lot to me.

Okay. Progress. I've dremelled in 1/8" grooves into the sides. This actually makes it a bit wider than I need, but that will keep strain off of the panel, and allows for heat expansion, if necessary.

I cannot use the false floor anymore, the PCB on the edge connectors is too wide to allow for it. That's basically okay, though. This is still in "proof of conecpt" stage, so I'll worry about making things look really nice later.

So, the cooling circuit can stay relatively unchanged. This panel is only 1" taller than the 15" panel, so no problems with height clearances. Since I'm not using a sled made of 3/4" material for this lens setup, I actually gain some clearance for the cooling circuit.

I do need a new heat shield, though, since the previous version depended so heavily on the sled.

Okay... Thought just occured to me... Maybe I can leave the sled alone, but not fasten the LCD panel to it. This means that I only need to support the panel in front of the sled at the appropriate height, and leave all the rest of hte design alone. As long as the powerstripped display size is indeed smaller than the original 12 by 9 everything should just work, with a minimum of fabrication needed. This gives me a working projector!

Okay... I'm going to try it!

Okay... Here I was all prepared to go through the steps to convert your 15" projector into a 17" project, and it all comes down to this.

Cram the panel in there. Leave everything else alone.

I will admit that I don't have Powerstrip doing what I want it to, yet. If I set a 1024X768 resolution, the monitor just expands the display, which is NOT what I want.

Actaully, I can almost get what I want from NVKeystone, just by dragging hte corners of the display to the right positions. The trouble with that is that it's scaling the resolution back at the driver, before the monitor scales it back up.

lol




doh! I've never used powerstrip myself. But based on 2nd hand info I'm pretty sure it can do what you're wanting it to...

Okay. Powerstrip is making me cuckoo!

Does anyone know how to do what it is that I want it to do? That is, use just a portion of the monitor, so that I can use a section of the monitor 1024X768 in the middle of a 1280X1024 panel? This ideally will give me my 4:3 XGA projection size in the middle of the panel, which is all viewable through the current lenses.

I've been running the panel in native resolution and dealing with a large amount of "overscan" NVKeystone works great for movies, but isn't so great for the desktop. With the keystone, I can just make the screen the size of the projection, and it pretends to be a 1280X1024 screen.

Well, I still can't make powerstrip work.

I did muck about with the lenses, and managed to get a full panel shot. The corners are very dim, but I got one good shot off. (It's better with the LL lenses, which are more accurate.)

But here it is!

The section of the screen that has the cyan haired girl is the portion that I want to become the whole screen. That section is reasonably easy to light evenly, as it's smaller than the original 15" panel.

Seeing as you are trying NVkeystone,I guess it can be assumed you are using an Nvidia card

The Nvidia drivers have an option to do what you want.
Use the following steps:

Right click on the desktop, select the "Nvidia Display' option in the box. If you are using multiple monitors, a list will appear, click on the monitor you wish to adjust.

That should bring up the main Nvidia driver box with a list on the left. On the list, select "Nview Display Settings" option. The Main box will change on the right. Near The bottom right there will be a button marked "Device Settings". Click on that and a small box will appear on the right, click on the line marked "Device Adjustments".

A box will appear with four options:

1. Display adapter Scaling
2. Centered Output
3. Monitor Scaling
4. Fixed aspect Ratio scaling

To get the result you want, select the "Centered Output option" you will see a small display at the bottom of the box showing the actions of each option as an example.

I have 5 LCD monitors, 2 are Tatungs, 1 is a proview, 1 is a BenQ and 1 Sony.
Of all my 5, only the Sony will not respond properly to the timing changes. Yours may or may not work, but you might get lucky

If all goes well, you should get a nice centered 1024 x 768 display in the middle of your screen with a border of unused pixels. (btw, Disable powerstrip as Nvidia has a version of it built in it's drivers so its not needed)

Al

Excellent and thank you! This is indeed what I need.

The screenie was taken with the LL lenses out, and a fresnel from an OHP slid in behind the LCD. (The OHP in question is an old one, but the fresnels are 13.5" by 11" -- perfect size, but not perfect FL.

I'm really looking forward to Pro lenses, but this is certainly "good enough" for the time being.

Oh well. No dice. I bet it's because it's Analogue input. No DVI on this monitor.

I can use the keystone software to downscale the 1280X1024. That works well enough for now. Doesn't work for gaming, but it works great for movies and TV, and the scaling seems to work out well. Still higher res than the 15" panel, and less screendoor.

Supra,

I've got something if you want to give it a go using Powerstrip. I've done this successfully on my 19" Samsung 191T, which also has a native resolution of 1280x1024. This is based on a link from Simjedi who posted instructions for running "a resolution within a resolution" in order to obtain a 16:9 screen. I've put the instructions here in a simple step-by-step approach in case others may be interested...

1) First start with your LCD in it's native resolution as selected through your video driver.
2) Go to Configure in Display Profiles
3) Select Advanced timing options tab
4) Select Custom Resolutions tab
5) In the lower right, select "Lock total Geometery" check box (this will "grey out" the timings section")
6) At the top right, simply dial in the resolution. In my case I set this to 1024x768.
7) Select "Add New Resolution" at the bottom of the page.

... At this point you should get a message dialog stating that the new resolution has been accepted and would you like to try it... hopefully it works.

good luck.

cheers,
gs

edit: hardware is an ATI 9550 video card using the VGA connector.

Is that DVI input? My monitor is analog input only.

I don't recall seeing a control like that when I was looking. I've uninstalled powerstrip at the moment, since it didn't seem to be getting me anywhere. The NVKeystone software actually does a pretty decent job though.

I really do appreciate the responses and help here guys!

Hey SG, Glad to see you back up and running. Could you tell a difference in the projection with the new panel. I am assuming of course it has better specs than you 15".

Damned straight it has.

Only slightly better contrast, no real noticable difference there, but even only looking at a 15" diagonal portion of the image, the resolution is improved. Less screen door, I have to really concentrate to see it at all from 8' away, and then it's only visible in large white areas. The panel is faster, too, though 12ms isn't enough improvement to be a huge difference. 16ms was fast enough. This just adds a bit of "headroom" for faster frame rates. Camera pans do look a bit crisper, but then the whole image does.

On the whole, while I was certainly satisfied with the 15" XGA panel, this 17" panel takes what that did really well, and just adds the one more thing. I haven't even found to look at a commercial projector which will do the 1280X1024, or even the slightly limited 1120X896 that I'm using as a 5:4 viewable area at 15" diagonal. WinDVD does a magnificent job of scaling the images to this size, the detail visible is amazing.

I did put in a set of OHP fresnels to look at the whole 17" panel, but the FL was off, and it wasn't possible to get good light to the corners. Besides, I needed to give the fresnels back before the school missed them too much. The resolution was astounding, and in 2.35:1 resolution, the dim corners weren't even noticable. At the same projection size of 107" (shorter throw) the screendoor seemed to be just plain gone. Also the increased clarity of the unsplit fresnel design became more obvious. I think I will definitely try for unsplit fresnels for a pro lens build... Well, I'll try both ways, I still find the IQ with split fresnels perfectly satisfying.

Brilliant.

I'm now running in an 1120X840 resolution, as a subset of the native resolution of the panel. To say "awesome" somehow seems inadequate. Even though this is really a modest increase from the native 1024X768 15" panel resolution, it seems much better.

A 1024X768 window seems to do wierd things when switching in and out of games, probably because it's a standard resolution setting. I'll have to do a bit of fiddling with that, so that I can get the whole picture in my games again.

I tip my hat to you, GS!

I agree, Powerstrip is really awesome... when it finally works they way you want it to anyway... i've lost many a night sleep thinking about this program... frustrating at times...

Ah yes, forgot you were a gamer... I believe you are correct, in that games are mostly designed to run in standard timings (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc...) I found that regardless of the powerstrip settings, whatever resolution is set within the game itself will override and send the monitor into those settings. If you haven't already, go through the procedure above again (step 1 is always important to do before going thru to add new timings), and this time add the 1024x768 resolution (instead of the the 1120x840 you use for your desktop). Once this resolution is added and working ok, then you can change back to your 1120x840 desktop setting within powerstrip using the resolution slider bar located in display profiles. Now, hopefully, when you run a game that requires 1024x768 it will run in the 1024x768 profile established withing powerstrip... it will be slightly smaller than the 1120x840 or your desktop, but the entire screen will remain visible.... again, this type of setup works with my samsung 191T, but i've never tried it on my 520D (PJ LCD)... something new to try tonight...




that is flattering coming from you, but alas, I must humbly acknowledge that SimJedi is the true grandmaster behind this tidbit of information, and I, mearly a messenger.

Seeing you convert to a 17" has inspired me... i've been looking around for a 17" LCD for a while now, but was looking for a 1000 or 1500 contrast ratio, but based on the "apparent success" of the "elkenized" LCD panels, I think I may choose a less expensive 17" panel...

hey gadget so what doyou think of running a 17"?

^^

Gadget i would look at the daewoo mentioned in project gallery by a guy. He says it will auto black bar 720p which means you can use a transcoder and not use the viewsucky n6. Thats assuming you use your projecter for HDTV or the like.

Cheers!

Soooooo.......
When are we going to see some screenshots......hmmmmmm?

I didn't think anyone cared. The original intent of this PLOG was to detail the conversion of a 15" projector to a 17"... Then it turned out to be as simple as dropping in a new panel and getting Powerstrip going, which kinda took the wind from my sails...

I did have some adjustment problems, creating inordinately dim corners, but I tweaked it last night, so I guess I could come up with some screenies. I do have the one that I did with the OHP fresnels, but I suppose that I could get some with the standard fresnels in 1120X840 resolution.

Hey Supra, How about some comparison pics. Take some pics of the same shots that you took with your 15" lcd. Maybe that way we could see if there was a noticible difference between the 15 and 17.

Brian

Details Man! We need Pics! We need insight! We need to see that everyone else is as crazy as we are!

C'mon Supra! Show us the Money!

I'm showin' you the money, man!

Standard Fifth Element Lilu shot

Interesting. The actual camera pic shows detail in the area to the left, but the cropped pic does not.

Lilu jumping off the building...

Pod racing...

In the lower left you can see some slight chromatic abberation from the field fresnel. There's a slight rainbow moire pattern apparent from time to time.

Darth Maul

"I know Kung Fu" -- Note the lack of green push in this shot as opposed to the one that I took using my 15" panel.

Flying Morpheous -- Again, less green than before. I believe any residual green is due to the colour pallete of the film editing.

excellent image quality, do you have any pictures of inside your box?

Wow. I just put this comparison in a different post...

"Flying Morpheous" from my 15" panel. Picture is taken with a white balance compensation, and increased brightness and gamma. The increase in brightness comes at a cost of overall contrast. (I later turned the brightness back down in order to increase contrast again.)




And now the same with the 17" panel. In this case, all settings in both the DVD player software as well as the panel are set to default. Note the increased contrast and detail in the picture. Both were taken with the same camera, mounted on a tripod with the self-timer, so as to get the steadiest shot possible. This picture shows darker, but again, the original file fromt he camera shows more detail in the darker areas. I think Irfanview is shortcutting when it recompresses the .jpg image.

Oh, and one more thing...

Note in the 15" panel shot that there's some lines in the pic. This was caused because the camera isn't perfectly aligned to the pic, but it's close. The pic does that with the screendoor. That problem doesn't happen with the 17" It's not much higher resolution, but the screendoor on the 17" monitor is less noticable overall.

Cool.

And a "current" shot, 17" with Pro lenses

Looks a bit too bright and slightly washed out (in the area of sun shining through the windows). Are you using the same settings as the other two images. It could just be my eyes Looks great. Looking forward to my lenses.

It's brighter than before, in part due to the new lenses, and in part due to a drop in screen size. It's not washed out at all. When I left the camera settings the same as before, it was really washed out in the pictures. This is with some adjustment to the camera settings, but I don't think quite enough. I also can't mount the camera in the same location, (Top of the projector) because the projector is much further away, now.

There's still too much work to do on the projector at this point, It was a hurried build, and is not quite what I wanted to ideally come up with. Camera settings will have to wait...