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The best thing you can get for your Hometheater! |
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Front
Projectors: You also have to deal with a second component to complete the system: The Screen. In a typical installation, the projector goes on the floor stand or is mounted on the ceiling, while the screen attaches right to your wall, or rolls down from the ceiling. Almost all projectors used in the home come in two types: cathode-ray tube ( CRT ) and liquid-crystal display ( LCD ). Both have big pros and cons. CRT Projectors have 3 lenses, one each for the Red, Green, Blue information that converges on the screen. They tend to produce better, brighter pictures. However, they must be professionally installed, and they need professional readjustment every 6 months to 2 years. They also cost considerably more than their LCD brethren, with decent projectors starting at around $10,000 (US.) LCD Projectors, on the other hand, start at less than $5,000 and can be set up by anyone in about 5 minutes plus the time it takes to hand the screen; many are portable. |
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Line Doubleers: Although few people who spend $10,000 plus on a high-scan-rate front-projection video monitor will be in a free-spending mood when they get the bill, they are making a few mistake if they don't cough up a few grand more for a line-doubler. A line-doubler doubles the apparent vertical resolution of the conventional NTSC video you get on tapes or your DVD. The result is much more film like picture. A well-installed, line-doubler will give you such a dramatic improvement over conventional video that many people are willing to pay $15,000 for a line doubler, though good unit are available for as little as $3,500 Whatever you buy, make sure your projector is compatible: To use a line doubler, you need a projector capable of at least a 31.5-kilohertz maximum horizontal scan rate. To use a line quadrupler, you need at least a 63-kHz scan rate. And, no, you can't hook these things up to your conventional (direct-view) TV set! |
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Projection
Screen: The basic specification of screens is gain, or the amount of reflectivity. A plain, white matte surface has gain of about 1.0, which works, but doesn't give a bright-enough picture for most people's tastes. For high-end projection TV, most installers recommend a screen with a gain of 1.3 to 1.5, which is enough to give you a good, bright image, but not so much that it can screw up the picture. With dimmer projectors (like many LCD models), or in areas where there's a lot of ambient light, most installers will go with a screen rated between 2.0 and 3.0. The downsides of high-gain screens are that they sometime cause hotspotting, where the center of the picture is much brighter than the corners, and many use a pearlescent material that has a distracting sheen. You can get a screen to suit any picture size you have in mind, and you can also get them in different aspect ratios, so that they'll at least partially obscure the back bars at the top and bottom of letterboxed pictures. Today's fanciest screens use motorized masks to accommodate different aspect ratios. You can get screens that mount permanently to the wall or on a stand, screens that roll down from the ceiling (either automatically or manually), and rear-projection screens that let you hide the projector entirely (and get the picture that's less affected by ambient light). And you can even get screen that are perforated so you can hide speakers behind them; most of there carry THX certification. |
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