CRT is no good IMO

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#41
mikejz84 said:



I belive that the Novabeam has a fix convergence/focus.
Click to expand...

Hi mikejz84, your right for sure. The unit I had was...uh... " misshandled" by the previous owner (he toted it around to high school dances) and beat it up prety good. I had a copy of the Nova Beam manual and followed the instructions to the letter, still no good.
It's probably totalled by now, the fellow I gave it to took it home "hanging out the back of his trunk" with it's weight bearing on the main board in the base of the unit. Now all that works is the "blue" gun.

The JBL I'm told was a piece of **** from the day it was built, I've been told this by several members on the AVS site as well as the local guys that repair CRT PJ's. Oh well at least the JBL had 3 lens packs on the front that I cannibalized for lens elements 😉

zardoz...wastes allmost nothing :devily: (except maybe time LOL)
 
#42
Picture quality

I'm posting this because of the CRT knowledgeable people here. I'm wondering if this screenshot (at 85" diagonal) compares to a CRT setup? The screen is crap-waiting on my new one to arrive. Any feedback is appreciated.

NEC1545
ELMO sd305
9a62 component video-VGA adapter
 

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#45
proto5

Excellant pic! Can you give some advice to getting a decent shot with a digital camera? I have a kickin Fuji 602zoom that I'm still trying to learn how to use.

zardoz...thinks ANY big screen is better than none at all 😉
 
#49
I have the new Potter, but haven't had time to watch it yet...Sat night for sure!

Proto, you asked for thoughts on your screen shot from CRT people. Doesn't look to bad, I have seen that pixelization on the skin when looking at DLP, is that the way skin is recreated on your screen? Or is that something the camera produced?
I'd be interested in seeing fleshtones from a couple other people. Due to being a redhead, the orange push in his freshtone is probably correct. (Hopefully I'll know tomorrow night) Some freshtones push orange, some pink, others olive, if your looking critically...then the question is, "does this unit project all the different skintones, without pushing orange on most of them. A good orange push test is the movie "the Patriot", the scene where the battle is across the field from their house, early mourning the redcoats come from the corn fields toward the house, and the sun is beaming off their red coats, if you see orange in those coats, then it is pushing orange, it should be shades of red from shadowed under the sleeves, to red, to bright red...but no orange. OR the Toy Story 2 intro...as the letters assemble in space, the word TOY should be more red than orange. Projectors with orange push will show TOY as a pure orange. (or very close to it)

If I can, I'll get someone to post a screen shot so you can see what you think.
 
#50
I'll try to link a couple pictures. I notice these shot have some pixelization also, so it's gotta be these digital cameras...CRT never has that look.

http://www.videophile.info/Screen/5thElement/Images/150-5045_IMG.JPG


http://www.videophile.info/Screen/5thElement/Images/151-5110_IMG.JPG This one is kinda cool, note how you can see through the cornea into the shadings of the pupil, and the eye lashes...would you say just as sharp as digital?

http://www.videophile.info/Screen/Braveheart/Images/149-4948_CRW.JPG

http://www.videophile.info/Screen/Gladiator/Images/174-7414_IMG.JPG

http://www.videophile.info/Screen/Gladiator/Images/173-7392_IMG.JPG

All of these shots come from a guys site by the name of Bjoern Roy. He uses the NEC XG110LC...check out the rest of his site while your over there...his constant height screen is outstanding
 
#51
jpeg artifacts

Any pixelization or splotchiness seems to be from jpeg compression to shrink the file to fit here.. I think I have the saturation too high- I never calibrated the picture yet, it was just a quick shot to show the results of the fresnel sandwich.
 
#52
i wouldnt complain about proto5's pic its great the colour might be abit too much but thats my eyes and definatley every digi cam puts artifacts on the pic if its in jpeg format, no matter how good the cam is, if its in jpeg its compresed wich means artifacts, and also if u shrink the image that will give u artifacts too, anyway great work proto5 i wouldnt complain about that setup

Trev😉
 
#54
"not even close"

A couple of thoughts on this interesting thread:

1. Someone posted a digital picture above to demonstrate PQ of a projector.. I've never understood the sense in this, because the cameras themselves can bias the final output. Now we have to begin asking "what kind of camera are you using" in oder to really understand what we are looking at.

2. Adding a problem to the list that comes along w/ LCD&DLP, other than rainbows, screendoor, etc, there is also (to my eyes) a 'scanline effect' which you can see if you sit close enough to LCD. I've been able to overcome this for my eyes at our seating distance by compressing w/ an anamorphic lense.

3. On burn-in, one thing to consider is that you could connect an HTPC to a CRT, send a full panel image and then re-compress it with a panamorph lense. Also, another idea: Couldn't one setup their CRT to automatically "blank" the top and bottom depending on the aspect ratio of the source? It's been awhile.. but doesn't blanking prevent burn-in?

4. I think two CRT owners posted a quote above something to the effect of LCD vs. CRT = "not even close". Yet I think one of the same people posted "some of us aren't satisfied with 97%". I'm confused... To me, if LCD is indeed = 97% of CRT, that's pretty darn close. It's obviously "close enough" to create a huge base of HT enthusiasts who are completely satisfied with LCD or DLP.

I'm not trying to re-stoke the fire here but I really do believe that this a very subjective area, and (as has been stated before) comes down to the eye of the beholder. I know another HT enthusiast down the road who has CRT, and to be honest I just can't stomach the PQ on his unit next to my LCD. (it has no punch I tell you!) I'm sure he feels the same way about LCD (it has no blacks!). It's all a matter of what you're willing to put up with because none of the forms seem perfect. I'd love to have the black levels but not enough to shoulder the rest of it. This is just an opinion and again, between my eyes and someone else's, there's often a large gap of what represents a good picture.

After reading the forums for almost two years now, and realizing that every set of eyes has a different set of variables, I do believe the liklihood is higher for any average person interested in setting up a HT to be more pleased with a CRT picture, but I also believe of those same folks maybe only a quarter would be willing to (or able to -- i.e. a wife) put up with the downfalls of owning one for a HT.

When I first looked into this notion of setting up a HT in the house, I thought CRT at first, because I had 9 years experience with BARCO units (converging, setup, etc). Then I remembered, "oh, shoot, I have a wife! and I have no dedicated HT room!" Anyways now, as I said before, I really like the bright punch of my LCD, and wouldn't go to CRT even if a dedicated room fell into my lap. I do see myself upgrading in the future though to a different LCD as resolutions get better.
 
#55
KennyG said:
I have the new Potter, but haven't had time to watch it yet...Sat night for sure!

Proto, you asked for thoughts on your screen shot from CRT people. Doesn't look to bad, I have seen that pixelization on the skin when looking at DLP, is that the way skin is recreated on your screen? Or is that something the camera produced?
Click to expand...

There is no pixelization caused by the 1545 because it has a lot more pixels than any DVD. DVD's are not only low res, they're compressed with MPEG 2. Then there's the camera, which probably compresses it more (compressing anything more than once is absolutely terrible). Even if it doesn't, it needs to be compressed to post it on this forum. After all that, I think it looks pretty good.

I just saw Phone Booth in the theatre. My LCD (I also have the 1545) has better color reproduction than whatever film stock that movie was shot on. Of course, that was the director's choice, but it's just food for thought.

Anyways, I'm still unconvinced that burn-in isn't something to worry about. If I were rich, I'd have a CRT for movies, and an LCD or DLP for everything else. But I'm not.
 
#57
Re: "not even close"

JudeBarnes said:
A couple of thoughts on this interesting thread:

1. Someone posted a digital picture above to demonstrate PQ of a projector.. I've never understood the sense in this, because the cameras themselves can bias the final output. Now we have to begin asking "what kind of camera are you using" in oder to really understand what we are looking at.

2. Adding a problem to the list that comes along w/ LCD&DLP, other than rainbows, screendoor, etc, there is also (to my eyes) a 'scanline effect' which you can see if you sit close enough to LCD. I've been able to overcome this for my eyes at our seating distance by compressing w/ an anamorphic lense.

3. On burn-in, one thing to consider is that you could connect an HTPC to a CRT, send a full panel image and then re-compress it with a panamorph lense. Also, another idea: Couldn't one setup their CRT to automatically "blank" the top and bottom depending on the aspect ratio of the source? It's been awhile.. but doesn't blanking prevent burn-in?

4. I think two CRT owners posted a quote above something to the effect of LCD vs. CRT = "not even close". Yet I think one of the same people posted "some of us aren't satisfied with 97%". I'm confused... To me, if LCD is indeed = 97% of CRT, that's pretty darn close. It's obviously "close enough" to create a huge base of HT enthusiasts who are completely satisfied with LCD or DLP.
Click to expand...


Great post. A few responses

1. A camera will not make the picture look any better than it is, it can only do harm. So if the picture looks good, then it looks just as good if not better in real life. Compression on the camera will not effect the color replication.

2. I don't see any scanline effect. Perhaps your talking about ghosting, which I do have. The reason is that the response time is high, and only VERY recently have LCDs come out with very low response times. The screen door is much less evident on a higher res LCD. XGA (most 15" DIY) is much better than SVGA (most real LCD projectors). The screen door can be blurred out by putting it slightly out of focus. This softens the image, but CRT isn't as sharp as LCD anyways, so I'm sure a blurred LCD is almost as sharp as a CRT.

3. I'm not worried about burn-in from the letterboxing. A CRT (unlike LCDs) can have the image resized to fit a 16:9 screen. For 3:4 TV, my satellite box lets me use grey pillar bars instead of black, which is supposed to help a lot. My concern is video games and logos.

4. My main point is that there are serious weaknesses on both sides. If I were rich, like I said, I'd have both. The way the technology is going LCD or DLP will remedy their weaknesses. CRT technology peaked a while ago, so once the standards that CRT has set is surpassed by the digital types, it will be obsolete.
 
#58
I think your main point summarizes the conversation perfectly.

Can you define what you mean by 'ghosting'. When I say 'scanline effect' I'm talking about a pattern of lines which can show up on certain shaded/colored objects which move at a certain pace vertically or semi-vertically. When they show up it appears that in between each line the information is missing, and they just show up as 'black'. Flesh tones are the worst, so if during a film, a character raises or lowers their hands at a certain pace, it can be seen (at least my eyes can).

As I understand it, all LCDs have this issue (whether "scanline effect" is the proper term or not I'm not sure). Many never notice it because they don't sit close enough, etc.

For my HT room I thought I was going to need to sit back further or make my image smaller in order to solve the problem (both did work). However, I found another solution which was to send the XGA LCD a full panel of information (even if the film were letterboxed) and re-squeeze the tall & skinny image with an anamorphic lense. This not only solved that problem for our seating distance but it solved a number of other issues as well.
 
#59
Re: "not even close"

JudeBarnes said:
A couple of thoughts on this interesting thread:

3. On burn-in, one thing to consider is that you could connect an HTPC to a CRT, send a full panel image and then re-compress it with a panamorph lense. Also, another idea: Couldn't one setup their CRT to automatically "blank" the top and bottom depending on the aspect ratio of the source? It's been awhile.. but doesn't blanking prevent burn-in?

4. I think two CRT owners posted a quote above something to the effect of LCD vs. CRT = "not even close". Yet I think one of the same people posted "some of us aren't satisfied with 97%". I'm confused... To me, if LCD is indeed = 97% of CRT, that's pretty darn close. It's obviously "close enough" to create a huge base of HT enthusiasts who are completely satisfied with LCD or DLP.
Click to expand...

Item 3 when using HTPC the best way to prevent burn-in is to simply leave a program like TheaterTek up and running, within 1 minute it goes into screen saver mode...but burn-in really isn't a problem for CRT...only for those who can't remember to use a screen saver, or put the pj in picture mute.

Item 4, I'm not sure who posted that LCD is within 97% of CRT because it's not there yet...the pictures posted in this thread, if looked at closely will help illustrate that. I noticed not one person mentioned a word about the screen shot links I posted, and there's good reason for that.
Someone mentioned that he couldn't stand the dim look of CRT compared to his bright look. The CRT he's looking at has one of three possiblities, either it's an older model (newer ones being able to output up to 1200 peak lumens 8", 1350 for the 9"ers) OR it's driving a screen that's to large (100" width or over?), or the contrast is set to low. With a properly sized screen, there is absolutely no reason CRT shouldn't be as bright as anything else...like I mentioned earlier, with 1.6 screen gain, 20 fL at 100ire. As we know most DVDs these days are actually going above the 100ire to 120 & 130 ire, so no telling what kind of light output that is. Many are from the old school of 9.5 to 10 fL of light at the screen is all a CRT should produce...well that's just not the way most of us see it anymore...about 12 fL @ 100ire measure at the screen is realistic and what many of us calibrate to now. Add screen gain to that, and you will squint when a brightly lit scene comes up on the screen.
Anyway, it was fun, and I'll go away now...my real point is this, it's not a good idea to speak poorly of technologies you haven't had first hand experience with, always better to speak from a point of knowledge.
I like what you guys are doing with LCD, and hope to own one when they reach a more mature state...keep up the good work!
 
#60
Here's the thing.

If your only video source is DVD, you can use an HTPC to setup the scan rates, as well as use an orbiter program (I know dscaler does that but not sure if you can do this with the desktop or w/ DVD player software).

If you've got an NTSC capture card (not much money), you can use dscaler for all your "legacy" devices such as a VCR, Nintendo, whatever. And again, you'll have an orbiter to help avoid burn in with this stuff.

That's all fine and dandy. But what the hell are you supposed to do for HDTV broadcasts? HDTV is 90% of the reason I would want a high-res projector (be it CRT or anyting else). 640x480, even DVDs, don't look great blown up on a big screen. HDTV pay per view movies, sporting events, HBO, as well as all the nighttime shows shot on 35mm that they broadcast in HD (like CSI for example).

So if you have an HD satellite reciever or even just a terrestrial only set top box, your HTPC is useless for that. No orbiter. No screensaver. No scan rate adjustments. No line-doubling or refresh rate adjustment. I have had 2 of the 3 HD sat recievers out there. I had the Hughs (component out only) and the Samsung (a piece of garbage that won't display pillarbox or ltrbx w/ RGB outputs). Obviously, these boxes don't offer any of the things you'd want from an HTPC. I'm getting the Zenith (same as the Sony), and it supposedly has reverse telecine. But I'm sure that's it.

With a digital projector, you don't need a screensaver or an orbiter. You don't need to find the sweet spot.

Again, I'm not talking about resolution or contrast ratio. There are other factors to consider and this is a big concern. If there were a reasonable way to get high-res DVI, component, or RBG inputs on a PC (that was compatible with dscaler), then that would change everything. But there isn't.

I find it annoying that there isn't because it's not a complicated type of device. Unlike a capture card which processes, compresses and stores video on the fly, this "device" would only need to display the source on the computer's video overlay. Basically, just an RBG to PCI converter.

Actually, if there was a way to do that, us DIYers could build a projecter using a laptop and a laptop display's insane resolution (the Dell Ultrasharp for example).
 
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