102 inches diagonally would be 8 and a half feet. Either those models are unusually tall, or the screen is more like 75 inches.
Still, mmmm… 102-inch porn…
Since it’s currently the only 102-Inch PDP it’s obviously the worlds largest and the worlds smallest 102 inch PDP at the same time. Interesting but not really a selling point.
102 inches diagonally means that the sides are… well crap. What’s the aspect ratio of this tv?
Must…buy…
It looks to be 16:9, which would bring us at 88.9007 for the “16” side and 50.0066 for the “9” side, or roughly 7 and a half feet long and 4 and a sixth feet tall. Regardless, wow, that is both awesome and sad.
Honest question: Why is making such a large screen harder than a smaller one? Why is it more than simply a case of more pixels?
Eh, it’s good, but it can’t beat Frank’s 200 inch TV. 
:smack: Frank’s 2000 Inch TV, that is.
I dunno. A really good, bright data projector can put up a picture much larger than 102" diagonal for probably a tenth of what that monster is going to retail at. I realize that plasmas have really gorgeous bright pictures, but at that size it’s at a ridiculous price premium.
During the baseball offseason Turner Field in Atlanta is getting a makeover. The coup de grace is going to be an 80’ high by 70’ wide definition screen mounted high above center field. The price tag for the HDTV bohemoth is $12 million.
Kinda makes you want to start that living room addition, eh?
Oops, that should be “high definition” screen.
It wasn’t high-definition, but as a friend of mine said when I asked him how big his projection-tv screen was, “Ten feet. After a certain point, you stop using inches.”
That’s one big mutha.
Back in the days when I worked for a company making plasma displays (1984 to 1997), we had the world’s largest - a mere 1.5 meters measured diagonally. And that was a 50% increase over our previous 1.0 meter world record display. Those were both monochrome models. We also made 21" and 30" diagonal full-color models.
Because a larger display will require bigger equipment and fixtures to manufacture it. And there’s a whole host of material handing problems that are introduced with scale. That very first 1.5 meter display we made snapped in half under it’s own weight. We had to increase the glass thickness to so that we could lift it from the edges without busting in half.
“Now I can watch ‘The Simpsons’ from thirty blocks away!”
Not just thicker glass to support its own weight and larger production equipment to build them with, but huge sheets of perfect glass.
My 40" direct-view CRT TV has a built-in line doubler to eliminate scan lines. This thing must have what, a line octupler?
My home theater has a 100" screen. The projector cost $1600. The screen I built myself for $50. Cheaper than a 50" rear projection TV. I built a custom room in my house with full soundproofing, acoustic treatments in the room, two levels of seating, a stage, etc. The entire thing was about $5,000. So basically, I got an entire theater including the room and furniture for less than the cost of a 65" plasma screen.
Anyone can do it. It does take a bit of work, and you need to have total light control in the room with any front projector, but if you can manage that, it’s the only way to go. I’ve seen home screens as big as 140".
My next upgrade after the room is completely finished will be to replace the projector with an HDTV compatible one. Those are still around $3,000, but they’re coming down in price and going up in features quite quickly.
My theater looks better, has a better picture, and sounds WAY better than the local multiplex. Everything in it is calibrated to THX standards.
Here’s my web site if anyone is interested in how it was built: My Home Theater. I have yet to update it with the final construction photos, finished room photos, and DVD screenshots. That’ll be coming in the next few days.
That’s pretty interesting. I’ve always wanted to build a home theatre myself, but I figured due to the arrangement of my home it would be too much of a hassle. I live in a pretty large late 19th century Southern plantationesque house. My uncle who owned it before me really redid the interiors so it feels like living in a modern home, but the floor plan is pretty consistent with the original and 19th century homes weren’t really designed with home theatres in mind. However I see you’ve overcome a fairly troublesome floor plan with your construction so I may look into doing something like this myself.
The important things you need: 1) A room at least 10’ wide, and at least 13’ deep, and 2) total light control. If you can do those two things, you can build a theater with a front projector.
Even if you don’t have the size, you can do some cool stuff. I’ve seen a really cool theater that is in almost a closet - the room is something like 7 x 10. The guy decorated it to look like an escape pod from a spaceship, with the ‘viewscreen’ being his projector screen. He has two recliners side by side, and the screen takes up the entire width of the front wall. It looks cool, it was cheap to build, and you could build something like it in almost any house.
I once worked for a few months at an electronics store and got major shit from the owner for selling a nice old man a HUGE projection screen tv.
Why?
The owner knew the elderly gentleman and knew the old guy had a very, very small studio apartment.
Well, we delivered that tv (old guy wouldn’t take his money back) and, well, I understood why. It literally took up 1/4th of his entire apartment. (But the old guy was totally into porn, so I think I know why he wanted this television…)
Imagine having that huge tv in your living room…and sitting five feet away.
That is one big screen…and though I realize come SuperBowl, these things are pretty easy to sell…still, I can hear somebody’s wife now…“we have to rip out the picture window to bring in WHAT!!!”