CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[WTS]

I for one will be sticking with CRT, like Curt says I don't want something that costs me 4G then have it breakdown in 2-3 years or have it degrade so bad that it's not worth using. In defense of digitals, one of my brothers bought a Dwin TV3 DLP the same time I bought my first crt( Ampro ) and his is still going strong, although it could use a new bulb and it still won't come close to my 1200x.

[Joust]

The Black Pearl
35000:1 contrast ratio @ 1000 lumens
hmm, I'd like to see that in action side by side with a CRT.
they are getting there.....

[WanMan]

Well, their marketing is getting them there, but is their technology? Also, this is not On/Off contrast, but dynamic. Can you live with the method of light modulation (iris)?

[Joust]

dunno, never seen that in action.
probably not...yet. but they are definitely making improvements.
either way, I will have to wait until the digital that we deem worthy ( :Shiver: :rue the day: ) is a couple years old and more affordable, before I give up my CRT.

[oliverg]

I also have a Sony XBR2 (the Aussie version). Its a 70" SXRD RP display.

http://ultimateavmag.com/rearprojectiontvs/407sonyr70xbr2/index3.html

I have to say, it really is very impressive. It has the sharpness of digital but is film-like as well. Furthermore, it is built like a tank. I have a 7 year warranty on it that came with it. Cost me $5700 AUD (about $4600 US) and for 'everyday' watching (like news etc) you don't have to burn out your CRT's tubes.

The black levels on this are very very close to CRT and the contrast ration of 5000:1 (10000:1 on iris minumum) is quite watchable.

I never thought I would get an RP, as they are just so bulky and had so many issues - but Sony got it right with this model. Its an improved version of the Qualia 007 (i think its 7) which was 30k when new.

I do agree with Curt completely - manufacturers 'sales cycles' are being reduced because technology is advancing so fast. In 10 years, you are likely to buy 3 units at 5k - rather than 1 unit at 10k - 5k more and less need to hold spares etc

Thing is, we're not going to change it.

[WanMan]

Its like the 2 for $2 Big Macs of yesterday. Why buy a $10K projector when next year you can buy two $5K projectors that are slightly better?

[Gary Murrell]

[perisoft]

Curt, the problem with your logic is that it prevents 'progress' (I hate using that word, it makes me feel like I'm an 1890s industrialist. I'm a 2010s industrialist, damnit!).

You say you don't want a 500gb hard drive for $300 that will die; you'd rather a 20gb that won't. But if you choose, you can buy five 20gb drives and RAID stripe them, and that'll be vastly more reliable than a single 20gb - even one built like a tank. And where does the processor to drive that RAID array come from? The insane price cuts. Where do the visitors to your web site come from? People searching using a search engine built on vast amounts of redundant, inexpensive hardware.

Sure, the game is changing - it's changing from boutique to mass produced, just as it has been for hundreds of years. The same arguments could have been made about cheap, crap automobiles coming off Ford's assembly lines. Model Ts were definitely horrible quality compared to the high end vehicles of the day - and they certainly were cheaper.

Would you rather be paying two hundred grand for a car with the reliability of a 1920s luxury car (ie, worse than the most horrible Yugo ever built) still?

Yes, the game changes. People go out of business.

But other people go into business. The motion platforms I build cost about $40000 for a version with a 1080p LCD projector in them. Pretty soon, the standard machines will have 1080p because the prices are dropping so fast - and we'll get to offer a better experience to our customers.

The lower resolution XGA 'flashlights' in our $35k models put up with 2g accelerations, 20hz vibrations, and run in the baking sun for days on end before being bumped around in trucks and on airplanes to all corners of the earth. We've sold forty machines and had three projectors fail in two years. Ten years ago those flashlights ran 8, 10, 12 thousand a pop. Were those the 'right' prices?

I'm not seeing this horrific unreliability, as much as I like CRTs, and the only thing that made my product - my entire business and livelihood, and that of my 10+ employees - possible, is the proliferation of dirt cheap digital projectors. They've done a damned fine job for me, and to be blunt, I'm very glad that wealthy home theater devotees aren't determining product direction for the projector market. If they were, I wouldn't have a job.

[perisoft]

Having thought about this some more, especially the reliability stuff - I'm wondering if super-high-end digitals actually have far WORSE reliability than low end models. In a way, it's counterintuitive - they're vastly more expensive, marketed to people who presumably don't tolerate bad service and crappy product - but they're also made with the most bleeding-edge possible bits to gain a competitive advantage, and are relatively low volume and always first run.

The budget digitals, though, are made in massive quantities, and are sold in similarly massive quantities to companies for corporate meeting rooms, schools, universities, etc - and there, a reputation for unreliability will get your customers quickly looking at quite a few alternatives. At the top, there are far fewer other places to go.

Maybe what needs to happen for digital to be viable in a high end HT is for somebody to permanently iris-mod some lower end digitals, and build a stack/blend to pump the brightness back up. I'm not sure whether irising is an effective way of increasing contrast in a general sense, as I obviously concentrate on CRTs for HT, and in my job black level is unimportant and brightness is everything, but it suddenly strikes me that there might be room for improvement if you go outside the box.

We got a huge box of stuff for credit toward a job we're doing now, and there are there BenQ DLP projectors in there... if it turns out they actually don't want that stuff back (big company... it's kind of funny, we expected to get one of our machines; instead we got three giant boxes of stuff including our machine AND an entire trade show booth setup) maybe I'll sneak them home and get out the screwdriver.

[james69]

i just bought one of these

now im starting to think i should have got a crt

but they are so big

i would like to see one

has anybody got both a digital projector and a crt? my screen is gray so would it work with a crt?

thanks

[kal]

[kal]

[james69]

thank you i will get a new screen

this forum is cool

[james69]

well im buying a 1292

it will be interesting to see what it looks like vs my black pearl!!!

i got a new screen too ... its 1.3 gain and looks much better than the old gray screen i used to have

thanks for the advice.. this forum is full of good information

[WanMan]

James, who will be calibrating the soucres-to-displays for this comparison? If it will be you, what measuring tool(s) will be employed? Also, what environment are these going to be setup and calibrated in?

[Brian Hampton]

I saw a pearl in a Best Buy today. If your local Best Buy has a Magnolia high fi section with home theaters they may have one.

Looks good. I'm glad I have my G70 but it's nice to know that if CRT FP becomes unpractical in some way that those are out there.

Of course,... The Sxrd RP's have been dis-continued... So,.. Who knows how long these ruby-esqe things will be around.

I could really see getting something like the Pearl in say 5 to 8 years.

p.s. I also saw a Sony 103x in the Disney store. Seems the malls with Disney stores still have some 103x's in service. I can imagine this one must have had 50,000 hours on it but looked fine. (I couldn't spot wear... maybe it was even.)

[WanMan]

My nearest BB does have a Magnolia unit inside, but the last time I checked they had an XGA (or maybe even S/VGA) sub-$1K DLP POS hanging on the ceiling trying to instill the masses into HT.

BTW, Sony is suppose to be releasing the VPL-VW40 in January for $2995 list. Its also 1080P. I think its going to be code named Raw Oyster.