A Practical Guide to DIY LCD Projectors

Compu486 writes "Inventgeek.com has a new article entitled "A practical guide to DIY Home Projection". The guide covers the basic theory behind projection and provides a step by step guide for a "Practical" DIY LCD Projector. Although this topic has been covered before, the perspective they offer is refreshing."

Comments

Thats nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

In my day, we made our own movies using a light bulb and creative hand poses casting animal shaped shadows...

Re:Thats nothing

[Mr_Matt]

Heh...here's another joke, from TFA:

Now I will say this on the note of the fabric store types: Not Geeks! These are the types of people that never get out and experience the world.

Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot. Hey, you're black too!

Finally

[mfloy]

Now I can finally watch my reality TV shows on a bigger screen. This is truely a fantastic day.

I'd rather

[Evangelion]

Go with LumenLab's plan, if I was to do this at all.

And they have real pictures too, instead of faked images on thier site.

Not a good field for DIY

[Arthur B.]

I don't really get why one would want DIY here... Having a video-projector, say for home-cinema sake or gaming is mostly about quality of the picture. Apart from the sake of learning I'd rather buy one. Oh, and not a LCD one, at least a DSP. Although laser projection tech has been around for some time now, I'm really surprised that it's not used. Although sounds like a feasible DIY project.

Re:Not a good field for DIY

[kris_lang]

Yup, and blue lasers need quite a bit of cooling and you need a lot of power for them.

LaserPower (now defunct) used to make a laser projection display with microlasers. And there's a company that projects displays directly onto the retina (microvision) with microlaser and diode-laser sources. (i don't know that I'd want to point even a low power laser device INTO my eye...

and then there's the problem with the lack of persistence for viewing the images.

DIY Digital Projection

[LegendOfLink]

Nah, my idea is better. Re-wire a retina scanner to output a DVD stream, and then you've got the BIGGEST picture of them all.

Although I did see Matrix 3 in the IMAX, and it was a little scary to see Morpheus's face. I mean, the dude had like 2-foot pores!

Hmm?

[Sweetdelight]

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20041113/index.h tml + Video

Re:Argh! Enough already

[nitio]

well... you could connect your notebook that is on the crappy ugly shelf to the ugly loud useless rack and then project all your porn in your new projector.

Re:Perfect timing!

[Living WTF]

> that'll cut our costs by at least 400%

Your calculator was a DIY project too, wasn't it?

Paint your own screen

[Drog]

I've been reading up on this recently as I'm planning to build myself a home theatre in my basement this summer. Rather than buying or building a screen, I'm simply going to paint it onto my wall using a new type of paint called "Screen Goo" (I read a review of it here). Supposedly, it gives excellent results.

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.

Re:Paint your own screen

[The-Bus]

Well, you will probably want to invest in a good DVD player. The decoding between players can have a big difference on image quality. I am not a videophile, but in my experience it's not so much the quality during slow, colorful scenes, but during very rapid sequences where you might see issues with playback. The Home Theater Forum is always a great start (they have a very nice moderated DIY section), and I am looking into possibly getting an Oppo Digital DVD which has been extremely well rated. As a plus, places like HK Flix sell it with updated firmware (so you can switch regions easily on the fly), although I've seen it for $50 less on Froogle.

As far as receivers, I can give you my analysis and feedback as a regular consumer (I wouldn't even call myself a "prosumer") of home theatre electronics. You definitely would do well in investing in a good receiver with as many inputs as possible, and don't get them from Circuit City / Best Buy / Fry's as they are usually $100 more than what you can find online. In reality, you will probably not need more than 3 or 4 component inputs (DVD + HDTV + Console + Other). Depending on the # of inputs on your TV/projector, this should put you in the $300-$500 range for receivers. Look for wattage ratings and buy from a well-known company (say, Harman-Kardon, Denon, Onkyo, Sony, Yamaha).

Once everything is set up, get a calibration DVD like Digital Video Essentials or Avia to tweak your settings. It can make a noticeable difference.

You don't need Monster Cables. If you have a friend at a store who can get you the discount (retailer markup is at least 100%), then they're fine. But you don't need to spend $300 on cables. Spend that money on better equipment.

Just do your research. It's possible that over the next few months older models will be discontinued and be heavily discounted. That can always save you some cash.

Call me when

[amcdiarmid]

My wife will accept one in the living room.

Otherwise this is just another "Overhead projectors with LCD panels make big ugly projectors that you cannot use anywhere but a darkened room" story.

Hmmmm

[Phurd Phlegm]

I read one page--the one on "Theroy." I find it distracting when someone doesn't bother with even elementary proofreading. If the content is interesting enough, I can overlook it, but this didn't seem all that novel. Just so there'd be some discussion, I made a quick list of the first errors that sprang out at me in the "Theroy" page. Doesn't everyone know some pedantic jerk that will edit their stuff for them?

1. principals : principles
2. cheep : cheap
3. cellulous : celluloid?
4. threw : through
5. LCD's : LCDs
6. Simi-gloss : semi-gloss
7. portal : portable
8. Walmount : wall-mount
9. theroy : theory
10. togeather : together
11. its : it's
12. . : ?

    I anxiously await the first person to point out a spelling or usage error in my post--it's traditional.

Re:Hmmmm

[sharkey]

Simi-gloss : semi-gloss

Actually, Simi-gloss is a brand name. Each can comes with its own painter-monkey.

It's Not Worth It

[dafz1]

The author of the article keeps saying it's better to DIY than spend $5K on a commercial model. However, you can get a decent projector for $800(or less if you buy a refurb non-current model). Plus, the picture quality is a lot better(supports 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i), and is in an appealing form factor.

The other question is how noisy is the overhead projector? Remembering back to elementary school, those things were pretty loud.

DIY?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

How is this a "do it yourself" project? You bought an overhead projector. You bought the LCD display that was made to go on overhead projectors. You bought a screen.

The only DIY here was "Make a box with a window in it" and that's not really a "Do it yourself LCD projector" now is it?

DIY? Where?

[The Fun Guy]

All they did was take an LCD screen, designed to be used with overhead projectors, and put it onto an overhead projector. The only "DIY" was the case they built out of "partial board" and covered with black felt.

My department bought one of those transparent LCD screens in 1997, back when overhead projectors were still to be found in every lecture hall, laptops were $3000 and LCD projectors were $5000 and as big as a suitcase. The idea was to use this to go from the computer screen to the wall screen on the cheap. It was used every once in awhile, but if you weren't using a laptop, it was a pain to use, since you had to wheel in a cart with a desktop PC.

Once laptops got cheap enough so that they were commonplace, LCD projectors had gotten cheap enough that the department bought one and consigned the transparent LCD screen, with its terrible picture quality, to the back closet of the copier room. There, it collected dust, along with all of the other obsolete junk that no one wanted to use anymore, but had cost too much to just throw away.

The transparent LCD screen was an ugly kludge, a bridge technology to mate the old with the new. Let it die.

Proxima 944+? Unobtanium.

[larsoncc]

According to this link the Proxima Ovation 944+ is 8 grand new. Not that anyone would pay that, right? Well...

None are listed on eBay.

Finished auctions on eBay list at about 300. That's fine, but try to find one!

Kind of eliminates the ability to do this project, doesn't it?

I don't understand why all of these DIY projects have to use some amount of unobtainium. Why not price out some NEW parts, ones that are currently on the market? Leave it as an exercise for the reader to find used or discounted products.

Only then can you make a fair assessment of whether or not one of these projects is "do-able."

I would love to see some names / brands of recommended overhead projection panels - but unfortunately, THAT is left up to the reader. I thought making these recommendations was a key part of a DIY article. After all, look at Woodworking magazine or any other DIY magazine - they all list the parts, the specs of the parts, and typically, a price or two with each.

Done that...

[toddestan]

I got a free, working overhead projector from the curb on one fine trash day, and later I was given a fairly decent laptop with a screen that had a broken backlight and was not economically feasible to repair. I combined the two to create an LCD projector just as you describe. Pictures can be seen here: Click (please be kind to this server!).

Advantages:
*Cheap (I did it for $0.00)
*Easy
*Totally ghetto-fabulous.

Disadvantages:
*Really, really crappy quality (only really could be used for video, and only if you weren't picky about quality)
*Edges got cut off because the LCD was larger than the projector
*Pretty dim
*Noisy
*In my case, could only work with the laptop who's screen I tore apart

So in summary, if you have the parts laying around and have some time to kill - go for it. Otherwise don't even bother.