"Only 430 ANSI I guess I really do need that 2k light"

...or LCD with higher transparency...

guess i will have to fire a 2k zenon and have the 1.6k ansi PJ

Arazona,

I have enjoyed your plog and feel that you can give me some good advise.

I am thinking of using the same light setup as Wireman used from www.1000bulbs.com for my WUXGA 15.4 projector

400 watt metal halide part #mh/04002p

400 watt metal halide multi tap ballast part #bs/mh0400mt

mogul base hid socket part #sock/243200

Would like your thoughts on this, and or suggestions for something else maybe a 65k bulb setup that dos'nt cost $200.00

also what are your thoughts on the ceramic bulbs?

Mystic

I got in the new video card from new egg it is a NIVIDA 6200a chipset. It works fine so far but I have not played with any of the settings. The only large defects I have seen is some deinterlacing lines on fast moving white objects. But I don't know how perfect the rip were were watching.

The movie was Buzz lightyear the movie. They added noise to the video to make it look old for some reason so it does not look that great. The laptop just looked like crap playing it and the 6200A looked fine.

Right now I'm using Power DVD 7 and I don't really know if it uses all of the NIVIDA hardware.

The new girl in town.

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The whole team.

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I have been leaving the lights on so I can grill at the same time the movie is on. 7pm it was 78deg outside tonight. Nice.

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Now this is what I'm talking about. Enjoying the outdoors in shorts, bbq grill going, family, friends, the warmth of the night and your homemade projector on a big screen. The only things that are cool are the brews and a nice flick. It would be twice better for me if it were by the beach! Dam I miss the tropics!

Were in a hot spell right now, it does get cold some times, but never for long.

The buzz movie is a good one for kids under 6 or so. Working on Adult night.

I have been leaving the PJ outside as long as it does not look like rain and the fresnels and LCD have picked up a lot of dirt already. I still really need to put an intake bug screen in place, every night some bug lands on the fresnels and the kids chase the “giant” bug on the screen.

heh, I know what you mean by the nice warm weather. My Hometown Weather As you can see by that, it is nice here this week. Odd, seeing as it was 10-20 deg colder last few weeks.

Edit: Had to change those numbers. heh, had 20-30. But that was a bit off.

OKies, SJ. Open the shop, and install the cams.

Sorry, SJ. Couldn't resist.

Later!

"Honey...you ain't gonna believe what the neighbor has projected on the back of his house now....."

Well I cut off the extra 6" of wood on the stand so it would not stick up so much I used the jigsaw and I just lowered the PJ down and covered it all seamed fine until tonight when I went to play the movie cars I saw this.

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I pulled the cover and the polarizer has a bubble in it and what looks like some on dropped a cigarette on, it is has puffed up and cracked. I don't see a crack in the glass but a stripe from the edge to that you see on the screen.

The other LCD I had with the crack you could see the crack fine and the polerizer was fine.

I think the glass did not crack but the seal on the edge of the glass broke and let out some of the liquied and it ate the polarize.

So I can just put a little JB weld on it and all will be fine??? It's OK to lie to me I need it right now.

EDIT

The sun burned the LCD all the way through. Don't leave your PJ faceing the window.

of course.. jb weld will fix anything. I used it as a dental veneer when I broke a tooth.

eh, only downside to that is the taste..

and I hear that jbweld has polarizing properties so that will fix that problem too....

Me too. When things get too loud around the house, I switch the JBWeld for the toothpaste in the kids bathroom. AHHHH piece and quiet.

Why not just use a good old clothes iron. . . should flatten that bubble right out

Either that or find the jerk that keeps putting out their cigarettes on your monitor. . .

Well I could not just leave that black spot on the LCD with out looking closer so I pulled the LCD out and took a closer look.

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It still looks like some acid dripped on the LCD.

I needed to find out if the LCD was cracked so I cut out the bad section of the polarizer and the glass is fine.

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I removed the glue and replaced the polarizer with some spare I had around this is when I notices that the polarizer on the other side was slightly damaged too! I still have no real idea what could have done that to the LCD.

I patched in a piece of polarizer as good as I could but you know your going to be able to see it.

The bad spot in now smaller but you can see the other side has a burn on it too. So to fix the problem I would have to replace both polarizers.

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I mainly watch 16/9 movies so it is just at the edge. Many movies are wider then a standard 16/9 and then you will see the bad spot so I may just shift the image down to get it out of the way.


It could have been worse

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My best guess as to the damage was a bug caught on fire and then flew from the back of the PJ to the front and landed on the LCD? ..... OK I have no idea

Bizarre . I think maybe it seems more likely that those TFT's got too hot and aren't firing fully anymore. At least I wouldn't think heat of that intensity could conduct all the way through and not damage the electronics first. Does the second blotch only appear with the new section of polarizer in place? That should mean the electronics are what is damaged as it seems safe to say a polarizer wouldn't gain polarization properties with heat.

It almost looks like you had an electrical arc there. A spark off your panel to the frame. Static buildup on your panel of that force would be insanely unlikely in my opinion but... Maybe?

Mark

I wonder if you somehow got a drop of liquid on it ... a raindrop or bug gunk or whatever ... and it acted like a lense concentrating the light just enough to heat both polarizers but passed through the more permissive glass? If it was focused IR, it would be more likely to take out the polarizer material and leave the glass alone.

looks like someone held a magnifying glass, like burning ants, but burning the LCD instead.... very strange... I like the flaming moth idea, but I would think it would have left a much less "uniform" kind of circle in the center... time to switch to a primarily widescreen aspect ratio

gs

GS wins the prize for being the closest. I did leave the PJ out side for a few days. I have done this before too but this time I had raised the canopy that is mounted to the bench that we sit on.

This let the sun shine on the PJ with the triplet focused on the LCD. The sun burned a hole in the LCD!

This should be a worning to any one that has there PJ facing a sunny window too. The triplet should be set out of focus or a lens cap should be made.

At least I know

I'm a little sad about the LCD. I like the look of the LG allot and if I ever get a larger screen I was planning on zooming the image about 10% and stretching it slightly but now all that will put the image on the bad spot.

I'm still thinking about a higher rez LCD too. Maybe later.

Ah yes... this explains it... the circle I kind of understood, but that thin path I didn't figure out until now... it's simply the rotation of the earth... started in one spot then traced a path to the edge of the LCD as the earth rotated... kinda neat... too bad it was your LCD and not simply the wood enclosure with a scar...

... i'm sure this happened for a reason... maybe time for WUXGA ??

At least it did not cach on fire and burn down the house! It might be hard to explane to the wife after we rebuild the house that we need a new PJ for the patio.

I think maybe the sun got jealous.

hey azv i have a crack on my lcd and you said somthing about leakage is that possible or were you just guessing . My lcd still works fine with the crack.
azv
''I think the glass did not crack but the seal on the edge of the glass broke and let out some of the liquied and it ate the polarize.''

No crack just a burn. I thought about the sun but it did not sink in untill I looked at the mark closely. The LCD is perfect I have the whole thing mounted in 1/4' foam I knew it would be geting bounced around so I took extra care.

If you take your triplet and focus it on the ground and the sun you will understand.

The heat from the lamp made the crack in my old LCD spread all the way across I wached it happen. You couls drill a small hole right infront of the crack to catch it. A 1/32 carbide drill bit and a dremel drill might work.

. I have always tried to be careful where my lenses are pointing (Even the ones just lying around), but it always seemed over cautious. Incredible to see something like this actually happen. Pretty scary actually.

Mark

Where did you find the buhl 18 inch triplet? Did it focus the entire 17 inch lcd corner to corner?

Where do i find these 450mm x 128mm triplets ?

Kinda ironic isn't it AV. Here you are trying to capture and harness the sun's brightness in your pj and still the sun just peeked through the opening of your 128mm triplet and told you who's boss.

It's really cold now ,almost 32deg tonight. So I can't wach any movies for a little while. Does that count as a update?

I found a lens cap from the Buhl PL that I scraped but it's a little cold to be playing with it right now.

So after all of this research which light set up would you say your most pleased with so far AZ?

With your 1200W heater (bulb) 32deg should be pretty comfortable

wow, 32? but no, thats not really an update, but a picture of you in your igloo with snowshoes would be .....

Now if only you had a translucent garage door .... big ole warm toasty rear projection.

What does 32° have to do with watching movies ?... it's not snowing is it ?! (j/k )

I still love the color of the Philips MHI 1200 watt lamp but the OSRAM HTI is just as good. I just started a plog with some more normal lamps in extreme mods.

It's a little hard to even consider any of the low performance lamps after using the HMI types of lamps. The only lamps that come close are the HQI or CMI types, you should narrow down the lamps to ones with a 90 CRI or higher.

If I could find a shorter arc HQI 400 watt with a 6500K to 8000K color temp that would be nice. Some people my not think so but having a lamp in the 600 watt range with a arc around 30mm so a short FL condenser could be used would give the best life/power combo.

The short 14mm arc lamps are either a little short on power like the CMI or short on life like my MHI lamps. By going to a longer arc we wast more power but gain more life.

I still like the OSRAM HQI 1000 watt lamp bare arc tube lamp like the 2000 watt I have but everyone is still thinking the 150 watts lamp and a 5% LCD is going to be the hot setup.

One thing that has not been looked at to closely is using a real PJ lamp front a high wattage PJ. All that stuff is made in China now, so some one can get them cheep like YWH.

The real PJ lamps look like an overdriven HQI lamp almost. I see no problem with a 3000 hour bulb life if the replacement is less than $50.00

Ebay had a huge condenser lens set for not to bad of a prce so I put in a bid. One of the other LL guys was waching it too and let me have it Thanks again.

It was a two lens set of regular or maybe tempered green glass D=8" and the FL id about 8" it is almost 2 1/2 thick. Its a whopper.

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It may go with the 2000 watt lamp If I ever get to it.


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The lens on the right is a 6"x9"

Can you project on to snow? sound like a good cheep screen to me

hmmm... ... not a bad idea....

Neat find... would you mind listing the center thickness and edge thickness... just wondering what it calculates in Dazzz's precondenser spreadsheet using a 220 fresnel.

thanks.

The lens is 203mm x 54mm thick total with an edge of 4mm.

The second one is 203mm x 54mm with an edge thickness of 2mm

The one with the 4mm edge might be 2mm thicker than the other but I dont have an easy way to find that out.

Some day I might try to run this 2000 watt HQI lamp that I have. It looks like this.


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I have three of them and I started a thread on them. They are OSRAM HQI 2000 w/d

I have run this one for about 5 hours and I thought it has broken in but it is still blue. It looks green in the pictures but it looks blue in real life and mostly white in the room.

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The test setup was a 18" fl buhl triplet, 600mm fresnel, 220mm rear fresnel , heat sheild, lamp , reflector.

The screen is about 1.8M

The lamp did not look that great it still had a lot of blue push and I did not adjust the LCD to fix it.

The LUX

122 156 180
131 180 87
109 113 73


Ther is a lot of streay light this time, atound 10 LUX


I didn't spend a lot of time geting the light even because I plan on adding a condenser lens at some point.

With the blue push from the lamp, I might run the lamp for a few more hours and at a higher power level.

I would like to add the reflector is now almost black and adds no lux to the screen it just blocks the light from burning me.

The girl


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My fresnels are really warped. It like some kid put a 1000 watt lamp on them.

The LUX is a little less than what I got with the 1200 watt MHI lamp and condenser lens. The main advantage of this lamp is the long life of 6000 hours. I don't really need that but that what I got.

I'm glad it's cold out because this thing heats the whole room.

I'd like to be a smart ass and point out that the image is backwards

I kept cleaning my glasses but it didn't help. Now I know why! Thanks.

I flipped the panel because I cut the hole for the cooling fan on the wrong side and the controller was in the way. This is just a test panel it has a bad FFC on one side so some of the screen is missing too but it is an 18" so it is still almost the size of a 17". I don't plan on fixing it right now.

No more testing on the 2k HQI tonight, It was warm today almost 80deg so it was movie time.

We played Polar Express. I didn't really like this one too much the first time but I knew it was made to look good on a larger screen and the kids liked it a lot more on the big screen. It was a lot more fun with big sound and a big screen. I served hot chocolate at the same time they did in the movie.


I'm using the kids PC with the new NVIDIA 6200 video card and power DVD 7 well the sound no longer works in power DVD and it has become buggy. WinDVD still works and looks like crap compared to power DVD but I at least have sound. The sound with WinDVD is still not right but if you saw what my 3 year old does to his PC, it makes you wonder why it worked at all.

I have the parts for a HTPC I just need a PS and do some more wood working.

When WinDVD was not making decoding errors Polar Express is stunning to watch on a lager screen.

Hey look its Santa.


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And this guy

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Dusk shot.

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This is another dusk shot It is a bit over exposed and thus looking brighter that it really was but it was close. The windows desktop is way brighter than the movies right now.


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Like a deer in the headlights.

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I really think that the PJ looks better than any drive in theater that I can rember as far as contrast and color.

I don't know if the 2k will ever look this good.

Mary Christmass to everyone.

Same here. I actually have to turn down the brightness on the desktop and up it
just a smidgen on the overlay.

looks like a drive in for the kids, the backwards lady looks awsome. is that with the 2k bulb?

Yes the backwards lady is the 2k lamp. It is still green/blue right now and only 1/2 as bright as the 1200 watt lamp but there is no condenser yet and I have a monster 8" condenser lens. I need to dosome more burn in for the 2k lamp.

In the end the 2k should look like any of the other HQI lamps and therefor will not have quite as good red as the MHI 1200 watt Philips. I will gain some brightness and long life of the HQI but loose some contrast and color.

I like my contrast and color.

I spent some more time with the 2K lamp tonight trying to gat the color better so I bumped up the power to about 2500 watts and then reset the RGB on the LCD by reducing the blue and green by about 5%.

The picture is looking fairly good now and is a little brighter with about 200 LUX in the middlw of the screen.

The setup is just a 220mm rear fresnel and a heat sheild and a few fans. The reflector does not work it has long turned black from the heat.

The heat from this lamp is a little scarry but the heat sheild is made for a 2k lamp and all worked OK for now.

It's a pain trying to block out the stray light I dnt want to block the air flow and all I have is cardboard so I keep thinking the whole thing is just goint to burst into flames at any time.

The blank light pattern.

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And the girl looks about as good as my other 400 watt HQI lamp now.

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A hot lamp. The foil on the reflector stand is because it started to smoke!

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Is any one thinking of a high power PJ?

AV, Just read your entire thread and am very impressed with your results. I'm currently working on my own monster, but no-where near as big as yours! Well done

Thanks it has been fun the whole way. I did spend almost a year testing different lamps and reflectors and ballast before I settled in on the MHI 1200 lamp.

As time goes on, I have lots of brightness, but it is the color I like the best and that comes from the lamp. My triplet never is that sharp across the whole screen and my screen has wrinkles but that is not what you see, you see the colors and contrast.

I was looking at some new lamps.

I did see this 300 watt HTI lamp with a 3000 hour life made by OSRAM.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Osram-HTI-300W-DEL-85v...emZ290059383553

This lamp should look better than most all the lamps except maybe the ceramic and it has a 5.5mm arc so it will give great focus and work with a short FL condenser. Still less money than the price of a normal PJ lamp

And this one because of the 2000 hour life.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Philips-MSD-250-90v-25...emZ290056542125

And a power range that is becoming more common is the 700 watt lamps. This one has a 3000 hour life.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Philips-MSD-700-72v-70...emZ290057377299


I talked the wife into letting me put our test screen inside due to the sub 50 deg temps today. I bought two different kinds of material both are PVC slightly shiny reinforced with a texture on them. One is $8 a yard and the other is $2.50.

The cheaper stuff is used for gulf bags or something. It comes in 60" widths. I strung a 1 foot strip of the more expensive screen on the side of the screen to compare. I forgot to add BO cloth but I will.

The screen does let a small amount of light through.

I cut the screen to 60x96.

I do have to say with a small screen it is almost too bright. You can see fine in the room just from the reflected light.

We watched Cars tonight fun movie for the kids. My wife kept pointing all these little things out that you would never see if the screen was not so big.

Some pictures.

I love these guys, If I was 17 again with too much money.


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