Slashdot Mirror

A tablet PC plus a projector and Office One Note (or some of the other math focused notebook software) is waaaay better than a blackboard.

First, you have limitless history. A student has a question about a lecture last week? Boom - You got it.

Colors, resizing, searching through handwritten notes as if they were typed? Adding pictures? Printing documents to One Note (such as lab write ups) and then marking on them to illuminate the finer points?

Plus - and to me this is HUGE - you can face your students while writing!

And if you have a wireless projector you can walk around! and still write on the board! Being were you need to be, a while writing where your students can see!!!

Yeah, if you have a projector that is bright enough, it will easily drown out ambient light. Like you say it has a good deal to do with perception. Kind of like entering a building from a bright sunny outside, or entering darkness from a lit room. Also projectors have come quite a ways these last few years. I sure would have had the same skepticism like the GP if I didn't witness the difference firsthand.

Will this look any better than a movie broadcast in 1080i and played back on an HDTV with 3:2 pulldown detection? I was under the impression that the pull-up done to convert 24fps film into interlaced video is completely reversible, and so 1080 progressive quality is already available through 1080i broadcasts.

It will be nice to have discs of HD content eventually, but I don't see what is so impressive that makes this worthy of coverage.

As for the projector, I don't want to build this thing myself, I'm willing to spend the bucks. So I'll likely go for the Panasonic PT-AE700U, which I've seen reviewed here.

So that leaves me wondering what sort of PC or hi-def receiver to buy to power this thing, so that I can use cable, satellite, game console, DVD, PVR and the PC.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

i won't buy anything like that. i doubt you will see anything new with drm for tv outside of the next 10 years.

It's already here. It's called High-Definition Content Protection (HDCP, intro here, and definition here). This system provides serious crypto, unlike CSS. It also has provisions for devices to exchange lists of compromised keys, so they can "blacklist" any key which the crackers break.

I've already seen one retailer listing HDCP as a feature on a big-screen TV.

Projector People

Ritz Audio Visual

Visual Apex

You can also go to Pricegrabber to do competetive price lookups.

I finally got my boss to order one yesterday. He bought a Sony HS-10 from RitzAV. By the time I jump (January), it will be between the Sony HS-10/HS-20 and the Panny LT300/LT500. My choice will depend on projector model availability, price, and my mood.

You may want to spend some time trudging through comments at AVS Forum to get some feedback on various projectors and dealers. And search the specific forums using the keyword "shootout" if you'd like some good comparative reviews.

Crap, screwed up that URL. Here's the correct one:

InFocus X1

The bulb lasts 3000 hours, or 4 hours everyday for 2 years. 4 hours may not seem like much, but remember some days you might be too busy to watch 4 hours of tv. A new bulb is ~$250 currently, but the price may be cheaper in 2 years.

Some people complain about needing a very dark room to see a projector. Remember that the closer the screen is to the projector the brighter the picture will be, so if brightness is a problem just move the projector closer to the screen. Might have to deal with "only" 55", but the ability to simply move the projector back a few feet and double the screen size is a nice capability. Here's a Lumen Guide that should help you decide how bright your projector should be, but according to the guide 1100 lumens should be enough for 72" with "windows open during daylight hours, lights that cannot be dimmed like in an open office settings".

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a 72" TV for less than $1000 anywhere else.

You can actually find reasonable projectors for much less (both LCD and DLP), although granted, minimum standards for acceptably "reasonable" are highly subjective. I think AVS Forum has already been mentioned in this thread, and there's also Projector Central and Home Theater People, which is related to Projector People.

Although many flame wars seem to occur over this topic, I think the general concensus is that if you can deal with a heavy, furniture-sized piece of equipment in the middle of your living room, then old CRT projectors give you the best picture quality bang for the buck. However, most people find the convenience of modern, small LCD/DLP projectors too hard to pass up.

There's more of an even split between the LCD vs. DLP camps. There's a pretty good article comparing the two technologies at Projector Central (although they don't seem to mention the "rainbow" effect that some people find too noticable and annoying in DLP's - search in the AVS Forums for discussions on that).

Anyways, in terms of reasonable projectors under $5k there's at least the following (with ~street prices):

• NEC VT45 $2000 LCD SVGA
• Epson Powerlite 50c $2000 LCD SVGA
• InFocus LP340 $2500 DLP SVGA
• NEC LT150 $2500 DLP XGA
• NEC VT540 $3000 LCD XGA

So even if SVGA is under your "acceptable" threshold you can still do pretty well under $5k (see Projector Central again for a discussion of how much better XGA is than SVGA).