can my tv be a projector

[jdogg]

I got this thing from maxtheater.com that will make your TV a
projector.
does this thing realy work? Opinions

[EchoWars]

No...your standard TV set does not have the light output to project onto much of anything except the inside of the CRT.

[vmike]

No...your standard TV set does not have the light output to project onto much of anything except the inside of the CRT.

Actually, that's not quite true. There were several early projectors marketed in the 70's that were nothing more than a CRT, a front surface mirror and 5" projection lense. Sony, Muntz and Advent come immediatly to mind. I have built my own as well, matter of fact just gave the lense set away a week ago. The very first successful experiments were with a B&W monitor and the mirror/lense from an overhead projector, in the second version I used a pair of flat fresnel lenses like those used in overhead projectors spaced about a foot apart. I cut circles from the fresnel and put them at each end of a black painted piece of 8" schedule 20 PVC pipe, made a snout from wood paneling about as long as the diagonal of the CRT I was using, tapering from the screen size to just larger than the 8" pipe. This allowed for focus adjustment. I reversed the scan of the tv at the yoke and turned the kine bias up a little. The first one I built was based on a 60's vintage 15" round tube conrac RGB monitor I had, that was the reason for the round lense. When the conrac CRT finally gave up I made a new snout and transfered the works to a 13" sony trinitron, much better picture.

It can be done and cheaply. This type of projector needs a darkened room and a projection screen designed for video projection helps a great deal. I picked up a couple spherical 6' projection screens from commercial projectors that had minor scratches, these were a tremendous improvement.

All of these are watchable just not as bright as what we have these days.

mike