CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 8:06 pm Post subject:

A bit unrelated, but similar to Zolzar's post.

Before Christmas, someone was trying to sell an ECP 3000 for $300 on CL locally. I laughed and thought nothing of it.

A couple of weeks later it was $100.

3 weeks ago the same damn set was at the recycler! Tubes looked clean, so I grabbed it. It's sitting in the snow in the driveway right now.. Very Happy

Will rob the tubes, then everything else goes back to the recycler.

416ray4538 · Joined: 14 Jul 2009 Posts: 517 Location: near Toronto Ont

Ampro 4600
With a lot of help from the good folks here, got it working pretty well until resistors started cracking on the neck boards. Then the red went a little weird. Replaced the red tube but couldn't get the the new one to light up. Gave the other 2 tubes to Curt and bought a 9500 from him. Slowly getting it set up. While fighting with the 4600 bought a Sony vpl80. The sound's the thing but gotta have a good picture too. Mostly play concert videos but some movies.

mr_ro_co · Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 1643 Location: Santa Fe NM

In 2002, after almost throwing down on a digital, I bought a BG808. Set up well but never professionally calibrated, it turned tricks with an SDI hacked Panny DVD player going to a Holo3DGraph acquisition card. Yes, it had halo and orange reds, but it was sharp as hell and had a noise/glitch/artifact free, huge dynamic range image that simply kicked ass. People refused to believe it was only DVD source. Put a lot of hours on that rig, then started feeling the pressure to do HD, so upgraded to 9" Marquees, which I am still using. I sometimes think I should have kept the Barco and run 1080i until it was toast then upgraded to a Barco Cine 9 / 909. The BG808 was a great set, extremely reliable, and WAY easier to set up and work on than the Marquee. The Barco has a very user friendly chassis that I dearly miss.

digitalayon · Joined: 02 Mar 2009 Posts: 921

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2802 Location: Budapest, Hungary

RaWsHaRk · Joined: 01 May 2009 Posts: 131 Location: Finland

Seleco 350. the most expensive crt that I wish I never bought..analogue drifting all the time and didnt really put many hours to it. still have it.
barco 800. so much better for 10% the money that I spent on the damn italian crap.
barco 801s. this one I still use, put over 2000 hours to it. paid 5 euros for it...
marquee 7500. on going project, havent watched single movie with it yet..
barco 1208/2. last complete crt that I will ever buy, more than likely. bought it last summer.

digitalayon · Joined: 02 Mar 2009 Posts: 921

digitalayon · Joined: 02 Mar 2009 Posts: 921

nettwerkjohn · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 1:32 am Post subject:

first projector was a sharp xv370p. in hindsight, the pic was total shite, and i was running the pic way too large. this was around 97, DVD just out, and i was buying up laserdiscs filthy cheap from big emmas...

got a first gen dvd player, everyone i showed the replacement killers to ended up buying a dvd player...

next projector was a barco data 800. it had new tubes, out of a museum or something... got it dialed in beautifully. had that till WAF killed it.

next was a philips something. total POS.

then an ECP 3XXX, THEN A 4100, THEN A 4500

Had the 4500 down for a tube swap, then managed to drop it whilst re-mounting it, insurance wasn't keen on replacing it with a cine7, they offered me the ruby, i took it. its been great.

mc86 · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2014 1:36 am Post subject:

ECP for me, too. I had one for about a year in late 90s/early 2000s only to get rid of it for a crappy sharpvision LCD. Several years later got the 4500+ that is running right now. It seemed like ECPs were the machine everyone said was perfect to start out with. Reliable, easy, etc. In my case, I'll be ending with them, too -- for those reasons, in part. Plus for practically free I've been hoarding up parts, even bought everything 4500-specific Curt would sell me last year. If you've got an ECP 4500, here is one person crazy enough to still want more parts. In another 10 5 3 2 1 years, I may be the last one running an ECP.

Of course, we all KNOW some of you sick freaks will be running your 9" glories and tweaking stacks and blends for another decade...Tom certainly has the tube collection to do so, at least! Wink

cordially
Matt

CasetheCorvetteman · Joined: 09 Nov 2008 Posts: 6326 Location: Australia

CasetheCorvetteman · Joined: 09 Nov 2008 Posts: 6326 Location: Australia

digitalayon · Joined: 02 Mar 2009 Posts: 921

CasetheCorvetteman · Joined: 09 Nov 2008 Posts: 6326 Location: Australia

They are awesome, can carry them easily with one person and set them up in under 5 minutes.

the big E · Joined: 20 Apr 2013 Posts: 1928 Location: speedwell Tn.

CasetheCorvetteman · Joined: 09 Nov 2008 Posts: 6326 Location: Australia

A Barco CineMAX isnt far off silent either, a Sony VPH1001 makes hardly a sound... An XG on the other hand sounds like a beast Laughing

BGSPCS · Joined: 23 Aug 2006 Posts: 115 Location: Pottstown, PA

My first CRT Projector was a Barco Graphics 400 in 2005 that I got off of Ebay for probably more than it was worth, but it had new R and G tubes. Funny story is the projector was shipped in a cardboard box with packing peanuts! I had taken the set apart to replace the video input connectors, and under the mainboard was a peanut from when it was shipped to me!

Later I got a Barco Cine 7 locally in 2008, it has 12,000 hours with original tubes but were in decent shape. I believe it came from a college.

Then last year i bought a Zenith 1200x from Curt with new tubes Smile

The Cine 7 sits on the floor in front of the 1200x waiting for a new purpose in life. The BG400 is long gone, I didn't have the heart to throw away the good tubes so I shipped them up to Curt.

AFryia · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2014 12:43 am Post subject:

One; a VPH-G70Q in 2003.

The working VPH-G70Q service chassis in 2006 doesn't count.

Jeremy112 · Joined: 28 Sep 2006 Posts: 2649 Location: Fond du Lac, WI

I'm almost embarrassed to post this, seeing as most of you started out with CRT PJs. My very first projector was... *sigh* ... a Proxima DP5800 800x600 LCD projector. In fact, was what I spent my first paycheck from my first job when I was 16 on. It was already 8 years old then (now 18 wow how time flies), cost $185, had about 100 hours left of the bulb, and nice little purple blue dust spots that got projected along with the image, but it was awesome just to have a screen as big as I wanted.

My first CRT PJ was an NEC 9PG that lasted a few weeks, after I became addicted to the picture quality of it, I went for an NEC XG1100, still have it, still going strong, but honestly I don't use it anymore since its just a tank in my theater.

I am now currently without any projector in my theater, debating on a Sony Qualia LCoS projector or a newer JVC LCoS projector as my favorite digital was an LCoS since it had the best picture I've seen from any digital projector (save for DLP of course).

All in all, I've had about 10 actual projectors of my own, not including ones I repair and resell. I still enjoy CRT just as much as before, but I do prefer the overall ease of using a digital projector, I just don't have time for my CRT as much as I used to.