My new toy! An LCD video projector!

In My Humble Opinion
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I was horsing around at Goodwill this afternoon and right ahead of me were three teenage buys oohing and ahhing over this large Sharp LCD video projector sitting on the shelf. I went by nonchalantly, but still within hearing distance and heard one say.

“This is the bomb! I hope it’s here when we come back this evening.”

“No… it won’t be!” I thought to myself and moved in swiftly to calim my prize after they moved on. I scooped up this large beast and read Sharp XV-100. Here’s a model that sold on ebay. It was loaded with inputs and lot so features and was $ 40.

Now normally I don’t want to spend much on electronics at Goodwill since I really can test them adequately there, and this could be a $ 40 waste of money, but I took a chance and I’m glad I did. I’m watching the “Return of the King” DVD projected 8 feet wide on my bedroom wall and it looks damn good! Sharp and bright!

I’m loving me this projector.

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Hope you have a towel handy.

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For the record, astro, I hate you and I am extremely jealous. :slight_smile:

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Good god, man–we want details!

Give a better description of the picture. How does it compare to a modern rear-projection TV with a 60-inch screen? How bright? How sharp? Contrasty?

Would your average viewer–not some obsessive Monkish videophile–find the image satisfactory?

Obviously the image can’t compete with plasma, but would it draws boos and hisses if showed to family and friends.

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Wait, so I can connect my dvd player to any LCD projector and have movie night in my bedroom with the kids? Very cool - I did not know that!

I budgeted for a new LCD projector for the office because our spare one’s getting old and is quite cumbersome. Once I get the new one, I’m free to dispose of the old one in any manner I see fit, including taking it home.

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I have little faith in your ability to dispose of it properly. Please send to me and I promise you’ll never seen its likes again. :wink:

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It’s actually surprisingly good. I haven’t tested the S video input yet but the 2 switchable analog inputs work great with the DVD or Playstation video output. It was both sharp and contrasty. I thought the picture would be blurry at the huge wall sized pictures but it looks like a movie screen. I think the key is brightness. It looked fantastic last night in a dark room but in place with a lot of light penetration the picture might not stand up. I don’t know if that is true of all projectors.

One of the surprising things is how BIG this thing is. Its 8 inches wide and about 2 feet long and weighs at least 25-30 lbs or so. It looks like a death ray machine. I’m a big guy so I could care less about hoisting it, but I never realized they came this big as most of the modern video projectors are much more compact. The nice thing is that the controls (hidden under top panel) are straightforward and essentially mimic a TV’s / color / sharpness / tint / brightness / picture controls.

It’s odd how technology moving on changes things - This thing was once 3000. - 4000. back in the day.

It’s old tech, but it’s neat old tech.

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We have a few new ones around the office, and damn if I ain’t tempted to make one ‘disappear’. Bastard!

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$40. Wow.

If you want a proper screen, The Projector People have good deals. Also you might want to find out what lamp it uses, in case you need to scoop up one or two if they’re rare. The Projector People ought to have that info, or Projector Central.

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Front projectors are the newest thing in home theater. Quite frankly, they kick the ass of rear projection and even plasma TVs. And they’re cheap (relatively), small, and don’t need setup and calibration like RPTVs do.

I just finished building a home theater in my house. I bought an $1800 NEC LT-150 projector, built a screen for $70, built a proscenium like a real theater, a riser at the back of the room for a second row of seats, and it’s fantastic. The entire thing, including the cost of building the room, was less than the cost of a plasma TV.

Here’s my web site, detailing the construction of the theater: My home theater. On the left-hand menu bar, you’ll find a link to a page that I put together showing you how to build your own movie screen for $70 that will be as good as a commercial screen from Draper or Stewart that could cost $1000.

I don’t have a good set of ‘finished’ images yet, but here’s one I took while I was putting up the surround speakers: theater front

A quick primer on projectors: There are two main categories of front projector - DLP and LCD. For the same money, the LCD projectors generally have higher resolution and better color fidelity, but the DLP projectors have more contrast, blacker blacks, and you can’t see the pixels as well as with LCD, because the gap between pixels on an LCD projector is illuminated, and on DLP it’s black.

If you want to buy new, you can get a decent HDTV-ready projector for a little over $1000. Of course, you can get the super-quality high res projectors for upwards of $10K if you want, but the $1000 projectors will give you an astonishingly good picture.

The main drawback with front projection is that you need absolute light control. Because the picture reflects off a screen, any light in the room will also reflect off the screen, washing out the image. So forget front projection if the room is your family room and it’s open to the kitchen and has big windows. But if you’ve got a room you can close off, with blackout blinds on the windows, front projection is the only way to go. My setup offers a better picture than my local cineplex, and the sound quality is WAY better (I have acoustic treatments in the room and soundproofing). It’s a fun home project to build a room, and you can start with a simple home-made screen and keep adding on over time if the bug bites you.

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Oh, and here’s the best site around for projector reviews and information: www.projectorcentral.com