high def projection from a laptop

[jongaduet]

hey y'alls...

I got a Digital Projection Titan HD600 and a TV-One C2-5200 switcher/scaler and a Blu-Ray player.

I want to start projecting HD off of a laptop. Not discs, but files on a hard drive, and to be able to cue them up in a meaningful way.

SO...I'm guessing that I need a new laptop. Any recommendations here? Currently we use some old Acer for projecting Powerpoints and I'm guessing that it's not gonna spit out HD very well. I'll also need some software that lets me cue it up...

Anybody got any advice? I can go component or vga into the switcher/scaler.

Thanks alot

[sk8rsdad]

I recommend QLab and an iMac, or MacBook Pro if it has to be a laptop.

[TheDonkey]

Yeah, and it'd probably have to be one of the mid/high-end MacBooks the lower end can Play HD fairly well, but don't even bother trying to actually being able to run some form of cueing/switching software.

[Thefoxygranpa]

If possible...I would go for a desktop. You get more power for the money. Apple computers are more often found with projection so I've found...but I wouldn't rule out the idea of a PC either.

[waynehoskins]

I presume you're just talking about 16:9 computer resolution and computer frame rate stuff, not True HD (which is unattainable for most of us). Another option you might consider is the MythTV system. The only thing I've found that I don't like about it is the lack of an edit output -- edit/control is done on the program channel, so you've got a dirty program channel. If you have a switcher downstream, it might be a winner. And free at that. Can't beat free.

[icewolf08]

So everyone does realize that your average modern computer display is a much higher resolution than full 1080p HD right? Any new computer that is worth its salt (like a MacBook Pro) will come with a graphics card capable of spitting out HD resolutions all day long. now if you just walk into BestBuy and pick up some cheapo machine, that may be another story.

When you consider that you can stream HD video over IEEE 1934 (Firewire 400) you realize that it isn't really using up a ton of bandwidth compared to what some interfaces are capable of. HD just seems hard to work with because there isn't enough market saturation yet. We will get there.

[ruinexplorer]

When having a problem projecting "True HD", it is rarely the fault of the source, but more often the problem is that the projector is scaling your image to its native resolution. The 1080p that most people refer to as "True HD" is WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution on a computer which is 16:10 ratio. This is, like Alex said, quite attainable by most any modern graphics card.

The biggest problem that I foresee for you is dealing with the HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) when using your Blu-Ray player. If both the player and display media are not sharing information to know that you are not violating the copy protection, you will not be able to display your image. I didn't check the specs closely on the projector, but since your switcher is not passing HDMI or DVI, you will likely run into this problem. I even ran into this using a Denon DVD player with a non-copyright protected disk and trying to use the DVI output.

Now, if you want to get away from analog signal, you will need to look at utilizing the SDI input and output of your switcher. That's up to you if you want to go that route.

[museav]

Of course it also depends on what you mean by "HD", whether that is 720p, 1080i or 1080p and at what frame rate. As a good example, 720p/60 used by several broadcasters for HD broadcasts is 1280x720/60Hz, considerably less bandwidth than 1280x1024/60-70Hz that is standard for many desktop LCD displays.

Also consider that while the C2-5200 can handle input resolutions up to 2048x2048 and has composite video, S-Video, component video, RGBHV and SDI inputs, it does not have any DVI-D or HDMI inputs, so your computer or laptop will need to have a VGA type output or use the analog RGBHV signals of a DVI-I output.