CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

bbfarmht · Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:03 pm Post subject:

scir16v · Joined: 02 Jan 2009 Posts: 113 Location: St. Louis

I got started young. My dad got a heathkit projector(similar to the zenith pro 851) in the early 80's. It took him about 2 weeks to get it together and hung. Ever since then I've always watched tv or movies on 8'.

Jim Shonk · Joined: 18 Mar 2006 Posts: 149 Location: Zanesville Ohio

I am not shore when the CRT bug bit hard, but my first bank loan was for a Marantz stereo, I had to order the dolby noise reduction chip separate. This was like 1978 or so, I started to buy Hi fidelity magazine and stereophile , soon There were a few unaffordable surround sound systems out there, and PBS had a simulcast with the dobbie brothers (video on tv, sound on the radio) That was it right there, within weeks I had a tv with stereo out hooked to my receiver, A few years later I had a Techniques surround sound receiver and cerwin vega speakers hooked to a rear projection big screen.
By now a few early CRT projectors were being reviewed in Hi Fidelity magazine, way way out of my price range, I even drove 2 hours about 3 or 4 times a year, to a high end audiophile store, to stare at the Ampro they had on display,
By now I was doing sound for rock bands all over central Ohio and while loading in for a big gig the head line band rolls this case in and pops the lid off to expose this huge shiny Barco, They shot Video with it behind the band and it was awesome!! After talking to their Sound Guy he tells me they rented it local. Yep, you guessed it. I went and rented that toy for a weekend. All I had to hook to it was a VCR s-video, and I couldn’t get it set up right, But I think that’s when I swore I would own one. Years later I bout a VPH 1272, Then a Barco 808, Marquee 8500 and now a G70, I don’t think any of them were ever set up perfect, I had the 8500 real close, with all the help from here and the other site, They are such addicting toy’s aren’t they? I mean, I could never imagine not having a 120 inch screen to watch, DAMIT!

stefuel · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:32 am Post subject:

I think it was 1994 for me. I saw a AmPro 3600 driven by a Faroudja VP 400 showing Top Gun in a dealers show room.
Dude, I think I filled the cup Laughing

messerfloh · Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 18 Location: Bavaria, Germany

For me it was about 1988, in the flat of a mate who also collected HiFi equipment as others collect stamps...
He had just bought a ITT CineVision (Schmidt Optics) and threw in TRON. Shocked

From that day I knew - I MUST have one.
And only 15 years after that I got my first CRT (a 1040) - for free!
Recently I´m pretty happy with my 1272 @ 576p.
And it won´t be my last one!
BTW do you know this strange view in the eyes of your friends when they see their first CRT PJ?
love that.

csamos · Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 59 Location: Austin, TX

My first CRT/HT experience was at my friend Paul's house. He converted a very small bedroom into a little media room with a 7" CRT (don't remember which one, but he got it from Curt) and an ~70" screen and a couch. I loved it so much that when I bought my house in 2003, I knew I wanted to create my own movie theater. Paul introduced me to Curt, and I bought my 8500 from him, which I still have and love (other than my blue tube which needs to be replaced). In fact, I love my theater today even more than when I first built it. We try to have movie nights at least once a week, and I am up there just watching TV on a near daily basis.

I have 3 display devices in my house, and they're all CRT:

- Marquee 8500 in the theater
- Pioneer Elite PRO-730HD in the living room (outstanding picture quality)
- Philips 30" 16:9 HDTV in the bedroom (picked up at their online outlet store for about $250 a few years ago and it looks amazing)

-Carl
http://www.samos.org/Theater/

Zebu Fellenz · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 2567

Carl,

That is a very impressive looking room. Smile

csamos · Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 59 Location: Austin, TX

**kal** · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 6:29 pm Post subject:

I've been into audio since in the early 80's when I heard my first "high end" sound system and got hooked. I've known about CRT's since HT was first mentioned in any audio magazines and back then CRT was the only thing available.

Worked like a dog back around grade 11 and spent every penny on a reasonably good stereo system (Magnepan speakers and Harman Kardon electronics - back when H/K actually made some reasonably good mid-fi stuff). CD player, speakers, tape deck, and an integrated amp. Spent a small fortune (for me) and most of my disposable income back then went to CDs. (I got into music just as CDs first started to get popular - around 1984 IIRC).

I remember buying that tape deck for over $700. Walked in with the exact right amount of money I needed. I was broke after that. (Good thing I was only 16). Smile

For years I drooled over the A/V magazines... looking at the stuff I couldn't afford.

In 1988 I went off to University (College for you Americans) and didn't have room for the Maggie's (they need a lot of breathing room) so I ended up selling them and bought a pair of Paradigm 11seMKII's which were better suited for the beer drinking days of higher education (they played much louder than the Maggies):

Hi-fi VCR's were coming out more readily so the mags started to talk a bit more about home theater instead of just 2-channel stereo. Laser Disc was all the rage but it was just too expensive for me to even consider. (Discs would often cost in the $100-200 range). CRT projectors were the only game in town back then. But they were crazy expensive.

I convinced my housemates that we should split on renting a hifi VCR from one of those TV/Stereo rental places for a year (they still cost $800+) for about $20/month and we pooled our receivers/speakers but we still didn't have a way to decode Dolby Pro Logic surround so I built a crude decoder from scratch that had simply dolby decoding (sorry no pics). Spent a long time building that instead of doing my Electrical Engineering homework. (Funny, the profs wouldn't accept it as homework). Smile

We ran that for a year with speakers all over the room. It played LOUD. Not very accurate but we had fun cranking Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' and Led Zeppelin's 'The Song Remains the Same'. Fun times!

Out of University (1992-1993) I replaced the H/K 2-channel receiver with what I think was H/K's first multi-channel dolby pro logic receiver. Added a Paradigm center speaker and rears and ran a 32" TV for long time. No room for projection in our apartment and certainly no funds for a CRT projector though in my head I was trying to figure out how to pull together the $10K needed to buy a Sony D50 all the while dreaming of Vidikron Vision 1's. I seriously wanted to figure out how I'd afford a CRT projector once we bought a house. It was part of the plan. Wife thought I was crazy.

Around 1997/1998 still in the apartment and DVD was picking up steam so I decided to jump in with what was considered the first reasonably priced DVD player with picture quality close to the $2000 Sony models: The Panasonic A110. Only cost me $500 too. Wink

Wow. I was blown away again with how CLEAN the picture looked as compared to VHS, and the 5.1 channels of sound was fantastic. I replaced my H/K pro-logic receiver with what was considered again the first "high end" reasonably priced pre-pro: Mondial Designs Acurus ACT-3:

Along with A200 (3x200W) and A100 (2x100W) amps:

They may have been "reasonably priced" by high end standards but they cost me a lot of money (in my books)!

Then we moved into a house in 2000. In all the houses we looked at all I cared about was the basement and if it would work for an HT. I couldn't care less about the rest of the house. So we found one we both liked and I started to spend more time on AVS researching the ins and outs of CRT projectors to find out what I could afford, and came across a guy named "Curt Palme" who sold $20K projectors refurbed for 1/10th the cost. Hmm. Interesting. Continued to do research and settled on a Barco Graphics 800 for about $2400 back in late 2000 from Curt. (A Sony D50 was at least double the price at the time so I went with Barco). When the mammoth thing first arrrived I threw a picture up on the living room wall and couldn't believe how big it was. I was grinning from ear to ear and knew "I was home". Smile

About 6-8 months later of hard work (early 2001) I had the basement carpeted, painted, screen made, HTPC built, hsuhbox build, etc. I was in movie heaven:

Movie playback and scaling was done via HTPC:

In 2003 I was getting annoyed at not being able to fit too many people in the HT so I replaced the couch with new Jaymar seats and I build a riser:

In 2005 Curt needed a webmaster for a website he wanted to put together. It was supposed to be "10-12 pages of content tops". Payment was to be a refurbed CRT projector for building and running the site for 1 year. I had no excuses with the wife as tto upgrading CRT projectors so I figured getting one for "Free" would be ok (just my time).

So I ended up overdoing it a bit as I poured in every single bit of content related to CRT projectors I could find as well as writing a bunch of procedures and tips (600 pages now on the site plus a forum). Curt overdid his side of the bargain too: Was was supposed to be something like a Barco Data 808 turned into a brand new (never used) Zenith 1200 which is a Barco Cine 8 Onyx clone (8" LC with tinted c-elements and 120Mhz bandwidth). 150 hours on the tubes - it had never been installed or used other than the Barco burn-in testing they do. Really nice.

Build a new more streamlined hushbox for it too:

Old Barco 800 hushbox:

New Zenith 1200 hushbox:

See here for how I did it: http://www.curtpalme.com/Hushbox1.shtm

In 2006 I replaced the speakers with Paradigm Signature series speakers which (as my wife tells me) have to last me until I'm 6 feet under:

In 2007 I decomissioned the HTPC and bought a PS3 for Blu-ray playback and DVD scaling.

Next upgrade is to replace the pre-pro and amps with what I'm hoping is an Anthem D2V and P5, and go 'real' rackmount instead of the Home Depot shelfboard job I've done. I'm in no hurry with this (been putting it off for a good year and things may still change).

I have no plans on replacing the Zenith 1200 CRT projector any time soon. I looks phenominal compared to just about everything else I've seen other than a well set up 9" machine or stacked 9" machines. A lot of the digitals are getting close but even the higher end models have plus's and minus's.

Kal

Axatax · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 8:35 pm Post subject:

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

I like how the movie titles on the table were similar from dvd to blu ray

Apollo 13, Seven Samurai, and Goodfellas
to

2001, the lives of others(?), and goodfellas

Good stuff and KICK ARSE Setup!

Umm why havent you posted screenshots so you can officially "SUCK" ???

Confused

dturco · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 8:59 pm Post subject:

2001 A Space Odyssey is a Reference blu-ray. It is absolutely stunning picture quality on my Mitsubishi RPTV. only 1080i. But woo hoo Thumbs Up

Heywood Jablome · Joined: 12 Mar 2006 Posts: 1548

My story is similar to ecrabb, altho it was at a friends house. The big curved screen was what I spotted first ("DON'T TOUCH THAT!" Wink

)
My tweenage years had me on a bowling team (I was good!) and the alley had what I now believe to be an ECP.

CRT was largely forgotten until I went searching for a big-screen solution that would outperform LCD projectors with bigger screen sizes than plasma.
I was actually expecting commercially viable carbon nano-tube panels to be the big disruptive technology that would kill plasma and make big screens viable. Obviously, THAT never happened! The biggest one I've ever seen was a prototype at 13cm diagonal.

taxman · Joined: 25 Feb 2008 Posts: 30 Location: Finland

Wow, that's one huge post you got there Kal Smile

I liked the pool table in the first set of pics, where'd you hide it? Smile

First time I saw an CRT projector was when I was in elementary school. We visited an army base on our school trip (talk about *crappy* school trips). We were seated in a huge auditorium, and there, in the ceiling, what seemed like 10 meters up, was a *huge* projector. I couldn't make out the what PJ it was but it was a CRT. We were shown a propaganda video on it. The content about the grandness of being a cannon fodder foot soldier was crap but the picture was great, and BIG. I remember thinking, I will get one of those one day. And when I do, I will set it up properly (the picture was way, way too high up on the wall)... and I was about 10-12 years of age at this point Smile

**kal** · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 9:43 pm Post subject:

**kal** · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 9:45 pm Post subject:

stefuel · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:52 pm Post subject:

I'm laughing at you Kal. Your hush box looks like a prototype AmPro 4600. Now we all know your secret desires

ronholm · Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Posts: 12111

AFryia · Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 8:17 pm Post subject:

About 12 years ago I was sitting in a sports bar looking at a 1/2 dozen Barcos projecting on some large screens.

And I'm thinking that looks like chit (SD broadcast). But it still would be way too cool in my basement. Cool

So not soon after I'm checking out 1st gen DLP and LCD because I'm thinking 35$K CRTs are too rich for me.

I'm wandering through a high end HT store looking at plasma, dlp when I happen upon a Runco projecting the Travel Channel in HD. Now at that time HD was still very new. Right then and there I was hooked I was blown away by the film like appearance.

After some exhaustive internet searches I found the there was a thriving CRT used market. And the rest is history. Razz

fishlogan · Joined: 02 Jan 2008 Posts: 14

I remember i bought a second hand lcd sharp projector and thought it was he bees knees (around start of 2001). Even splurged and bought a quadscan scaler to feed it my dvds.
But the lcd starting getting burnt and dust marks. New panels were $1000 each so looked around. Read on some aus based ht forum that crt units produced better picture and second hand were quite cheap
was sceptical but found a second hand 1252q sony unit and took the plunge (i think feb 2002).

I got home at around 1 am in the morning after picking it up 3hours away and spent the next 45 min doing a rough set up
plugged up the quadscan at double tv (576p), put in shrek, and to this day still cant get over the quality of the picture it produced. Colors were so vibrant, black levels, contrast.......
Didnt get any sleep, rang up work and a called a sicky, and keeped awake till about 8pm the next day.

And even when mates or family would laugh at the size of the 1252q and comment how "at megamart they have projectors as small as a phone book" they would be quickly silenced when a started the unit up and were gobsmacked at the quality of the image.

Still have very fond memories of that 1252q. Since the have had a 1272q, g70q and now a 9500ultra. And even still have that lcd sharp, which is now the loaner..........