Projectors...

[Charc]

Okay this is loosely related to lighting, but it does have to do with light. I am talking about a projector for my theater. Who here is honestly surprised that the school cut it out of the renovation budget, only to 3 years later realize they need one? Well the head of school has finally given the go-ahead for us to get a mounted projector. I'm praying they wont' half ass this too but not running the cable, or not running the cable to the stage, so we can't use it with powerpoints. Unfortunately this is running through the Technology Dept., not Theatre Dept, so I have to work closely with the computer teacher on this one. He encouraged me today to write a note to the head of school outlining what we need. As I have no real knowledge about projectors, and mounting them, I hoped some of you could shed some light on this situation. I don't want the administration to mess something else up, so I wanna make sure we get the right projector in the right place.

My questions include:
-What is the appropriate number of lumens? I think we are looking at 75ish foot throw.
-What is the significance of contrast ratio, and what should I look for? I'm afraid it would get washed out during the day, as the company who installed our curtains messed up, and light pours through the windows.
-Is resolution going to be a factor at this distance?
-What types of features are on various projectors, what should I look for? What differs on a projector the designers assume will be deadhung for presenting applications?
-What type of airflow do these need, if any?
-Will long runs of video cable degrade in signal quality?
-What is the best place to hang? Up on the ceiling keystoned to high hell, straight on from a back of house pipe?
-Where are these commercially available?
-What is the ballpark price?
-What is the lamp life in hours going to be around?

Thanks guys (and gals), I had a hard time finding this detailed information on my own.

[DarSax]

75 feet? That is one hell of a throw. I know you can get an image out of a 2,000 lumen projector from that distance, but it's very dim.

[Charc]

Originally Posted by DarSax

75 feet? That is one hell of a throw. I know you can get an image out of a 2,000 lumen projector from that distance, but it's very dim.

Ya know, I am not very good with estimates. It's possibly i am up to 30 feet over the mark.

Edit:
I was thinking of mounting the projector in either of these red circles:

[gafftaper]

What are the dimensions of your screen?

[Charc]

Originally Posted by gafftaper

What are the dimensions of your screen?

Oh man, oh man! Busting out the questions I have no answer to! I'm under-prepared today guys. It is exactly the width of the proscenium, and the height of the catwalks to the stage. It fills in that entire space. I think that translated into 30 feet wide, and around 30 feet tall (if not taller).

Edit:
Edited photo with about the area of the screen added in.

[drawstuf99]

Without knowing too much a/b your space I'd suggest mounting it on the ceiling where one of your circles is simply because it's closer.

We've got a projector mounted in a similar way at our school at a/b a 30 foot distance and it works quite well; however, I dont have any idea as to what type of projector it is.

[stantonsound]

I would recommend getting the brightest projector available. It looks like you are able to access that area from a catwalk (maybe?). I am sure that your school has a few projectors. Take one up there and try it. If it is a 2,000 lumes or cheaper, you will probably not be able to see the image very clearly. This will demonstrate to your teachers that you really need a bright projector. It appears as if the screen is approximately square and is at least 25' by 25'. I would say to try and get a 5,000 or so lumen projector. Anything less will look cheap and dim.

The lamp life really depends on the type of lamp you buy and the usage.

Take a look at projectorcentral.com. It is a great website. It has interactive graphs that show you how bright it is going to be at different distances and screen sizes. Take a look at the 3M x90w projector.


ps. "gonna" is not a word!

[JSFox]

I would strongly suggest talking to a local AV house and get recommendations from 1, 2, or 3 of them.

Besides the size you also need to know the gain of your screen, screen color, as well as the type of refraction (eg, is is glass bead, matt, etc.) as these will have a huge impact on what kind of image you get from different projectors.

If you have alot of ambient light from poor shading of windows you may need to consider rear projection instead of front as no projector can cut through alot of ambient with inexpensive screen material (or even the most expensive).

What are all of your uses? Do you need a projector with good black levels or is dark grey good enough?

What resolution do you need and what types of inputs and how many of each? Do you need a seperate switcher?

How critical is up-time? EG, do you need a dual lamp system so that you won't loose image during a presentation?

You may want to consider a smaller screen. I have a 62' throw to an 18' x 18' screen with a Sanyo XF41 projector and it cannot deal with much ambient light. And, while this screen works well for watching movies it is extremely big and distracting for most other uses (this is a 740 seat theatre with a 42' proscenieum). Many times we'll only use the upper 2/3's or upper half of the projection image area and only lower the screen enough for that portion. We have 2 16' wide x 9' high rear projection screens on a downstage flyline that we do rear projection to using fairly inexpensive projectors and this is often the preferred option.

Good luck,

[Charc]

Originally Posted by stantonsound

I would recommend getting the brightest projector available. It looks like you are able to access that area from a catwalk (maybe?). I am sure that your school has a few projectors. Take one up there and try it. If it is a 2,000 lumes or cheaper, you will probably not be able to see the image very clearly. This will demonstrate to your teachers that you really need a bright projector. It appears as if the screen is approximately square and is at least 25' by 25'. I would say to try and get a 5,000 or so lumen projector. Anything less will look cheap and dim.
The lamp life really depends on the type of lamp you buy and the usage.
Take a look at projectorcentral.com. It is a great website. It has interactive graphs that show you how bright it is going to be at different distances and screen sizes. Take a look at the 3M x90w projector.
ps. "gonna" is not a word!

Thanks for that advice, I am going to check out projectorcentral.com right now.

P.S.
Offending "not words" have been edited. Though, I do have to say a word in my defense, my spell checker doesn't flag it, and American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company includes "gonna".

[SHARYNF]

Don't worry about the word police ;-) http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/gonna.html


Couple of things, projectors typically can work in different sizes, typical standard tv is 4:3 format, widescreen tv is 16:9 in pc/vga mode you can typically get a square format.

In general you want to have the projector as close to the screen as you can get it and still project the size of the image you want, as the fall off in lumens over distance is a factor. You are looking at a pretty big screen, typically the size of a small movie theater, but much higher. Depending on what you want to project if it is video you are not going to use the height you have.

If the room is totally dark, I would say from experience with a Sharp Notevision 2000 lumen projector you CAN get a workable image, but you will see a degradation in the intensity of the colors. A lot also depends on the technology of the projector, DLP tends to look brighter. The problem is the lumens ratings of the projectors are really all over the lot.

In the same movie theater I also used a JVC DLA RS1 which is rated for 600 lumens and the image looked better. Part of the issue is the format of the image, how the up converting is done etc. and that the native resolution was 1920x1080 but has a very high contrast ration of 15,000 to 1 which dramatically improves the image

http://pro.jvc.com/pro/pr/2006/relea...1_release.html

Going forward, the wide screen format is the future, and HI Def is also here to stay, so if you are purchasing a unit, I would look to the newer units.

Also keep in mind that the gain of the screen is a factor, but higher gain reduces the viewing angle, but in your situation based on the size of the screen it may not be a factor

In the older days, people would use a Christie for this size of screen
http://www.christiedigital.com/chris...px?region=AMEN

Sharyn