In Reply to: More info... posted by Brian LaCroix on January 24, 2001 at 19:37:07:
>That seems like a long way back. I was thinking more along the 14-16' viewing distance, meaning an approximately 25' room to give my rear
channels some room to sing. Please let me know if this sounds reasonable.You want the front speakers and the screen in the same plane. If you need 3' behind your speakers (I would think that is a MINIMUM for Magnepans, 4 or 5 feet would not be out of the question) the screen should be 3' from the wall too. So that would put your viewing distance (which does seem reasonable, even a bit distant perhaps considering the speakers will sound better if you are closer than that)... Let's re-think... let's say you have 4 feet behind the speakers and screen and you are going to sit 12 feet back. That puts you 16 feet from the wall behind the speakers. I think you will be quite happy with the sound if you are sitting in the center of the room so let's say you ought to have a 32' room for this setup. If that turns out to be a bit large for the size house you are considering (it probably is) then shave some length off the rear of the room... keep your seating area 16 feet from the wall behind the speakers but have maybe only 12 feet behind the listeners... or maybe even 10'. Mount the side surrounds 1 or 2 feet behind the viewing area and put the rear center speakers (you need 2 of these 2 to 6 feet apart depending on how close they are to the listeners) farther back, even the full 10 or 12 feet. So your room dimensions should be around 26' to 28' deep and probably close to 20 feet wide. Higher ceilings are better than lower ceilings too. And the room should be left-right symmetrical... if there is a window on the left, there should be another on the right in the same location. If there is a sloped ceiling, the slope should be symmetrical in relationship to the viewers... you don't want a ceiling that is 8' on the left and 14' on the right. The wall behind the speakers should be symmetrical... anything that exists on the left half of that wall should have an identical object on the right half of the wall in the same relative position.
The problem with LCD, D-ILA (an improved type of LCD) and DLP projectors is that they are all loaded with artifacts. Especially at the price points you are considering. LCDs do not turn on and off as fast as CRT phosphors, this leads to color bleed in action sequences... you have to know what you are looking for but it is there. DLPs in your price range will have only 1 chip doing all 3 colors instead of 3 chips. This leads to significant motion artifacts also, but they are more severe and can be incredibly objectionable. The newer LCDs use an array of tiny magnifying lenses over each pixel to magnify each one so that on the projection screen, the bee-hive pixel pattern is about 50% to 60% less obvious compared to projectors which don't have the lens array.
Neither LCD or DLP projectors can make a black that is really black. You lose a lot of shadow detail, though the new D-ILA flavor of LCD is perhaps 50% better in this regard than previous LCD technology.
The single chip DLP projectors were originally designed for static computer text and presentation displays and high quality motion was not a consideration. Because of that, single-chip DLP projectors are pushed beyond their limits when projecting movies with considerable variation in image content from frame to frame. The mirrors on the chip can only tilt so fast and they have to put enough R, G, and B on the screen long enough for you to actually see an image. This generally results in mild to severe motion artifacts. Furthermore, DPLs in this price range suffer from, for lack of a better name, pixel shimmer... the pixels just do not seem as stable on the screen as with other projection technologies, they seem to "wink" almost subliminally, like stars at night rather than as stable points of light. This is most obvious in detail areas of images, and less obvious in areas of solid color or little detail.
Most LCD, D-ILA and DLP projectors, especially those in your price range, won't have enough resolution to use with a line quadrupler. You will need to very carefully select the projector and resolution enhancement device to work together... a bad choice here will screw everything up.
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Follow Ups
- Re: More info... - DougBlackburn 18:25:59 01/31/01 (0)