LCD projectors: buying advice

[Tannin]

What's the story with LCD/laptop projectors, team? What are the:

* Brands to prefer?
* Brands to avoid?
* Features that matter?
* Features that ain't worth a toss?

I'm about to buy one. So far, I have looked at the specs and prices of several likely-looking models from manufacturers that I generally respect and trust so far as other products go: Canon, Epson, Panasonic, two or three others.

• Cost: AU$2000 to $3000
• Size and weight: Not especially important
• Warranty: 3 years. Anything less ain't worth considering. (Yes, I know that they don't cover the globe. What can you do? Shrug.)
• Resolution. 1024 x 768 native is essential. Anything less isn't worth even thinking about. More might be nice, but we know that LCD screens (as opposed to projectors) look terrible at anything else except native res, and my current laptop is 1024 x 768.
• Brightness/contrast. Bigger is better, I know. I'll want to use it in some reasonably large rooms (say, big enough to hold 50 people), but I expect that dimming the lights won't be an issue, so I don't need one of those mega-bright daylight-in-the-boardroom things at megabucks.
• Anything else? Fast off is nice, but probably not all that important. Close focus could be useful for small rooms. What have I missed?

More about resolution. I'm likely to have the Thinkpad for maybe two years. (I only just bought it.) My father, who I am going halves in the projector with, doesn't have a laptop yet, but will probably get something rather like mine. (Well, actually, he'll get anything my sister and I tell him to - which amounts to much the same thing.) I know damn well that laptop resolutions will get higher. Dad will have his for five years or so, I guess, so we don't need to worry about his resolution too much. But which resolution will my next laptop most likely be? No idea. It's two years off: at this stage, I don't think we know where the technology is heading.

Even if we could guess what res laptops will be running in two years time, can we get a laptop projector that will do that res today? And if we can, it will probably cost twice as much as a new laptop, and that ain't on the agenda. So, all in all, I guess it's 1024 x 768, intended to last for 2 years, and I might need a new one after that.

 

[ddrueding]

A word about resolution: Your laptop is capable of changing to non-native resolutions, correct? If so, choosing a resolution that works best for your application might be more important than matching your laptop's res.

What do you plan on doing with the projector? Depending on your useage, different things matter.

Software Demo/Training: This is the use most particular about resolution, as it affects what the desktop looks like. 1024x768 is ideal IMHO.
Powerpoint: 1024x768 is fine, but most slides are vector-graphics based so it doesn't really matter.
Movies: 1024x768 or higher is preferable, but most won't notice the difference between anything higher and 800x600.

Brightnes: If you are confident that the room will be small or dark, anything over 2000 Lumens should work well.

I've had my eye on the Dell 4100MP for a while. Only a 2 year warranty, but you can extend it (hey, it's Dell). A native res of 1024x768 and 2200 Lumens. MSRP $2000USD ($2600AUD).

 

[Tannin]

Huh? Photographs of wildlife. What else is there that you can do with a laptop projector? (Well, I guess my father will use it for photographs of ancient buildings in Europe, landscapes, and assorted grandchildren. I do landscapes, trees and wildflowers too, not just things with fur, scales or feathers. But the birds are the big one.)

Dad will probably use it for family gatherings of maybe 4 to 10 people. I'll use it a little for that, but mainly for larger gatherings when I'm speaking at environmental functions and such like. (Err .. if we are going to be honest here, I don't think people mostly want to hear me speak — they wanna look at the pictures. Which is just fine by me. I love to look at the pictures too.)

Hmm ... you raise some interesting points, Dave. Thankyou for bringing them up.

Yes, it is possible to set my IBM for non-native resolutions, although I haven't figured out if it's possible to do that in true-dual-display mode or not.

It's got some crappy ATI video chip in it with native RAM. I hate it 'cause it's ATI and not as trouble-free as the Matrox G450s in my desktops, or the el-crapolla (believe it or not) Intel intgrated thingie in my old Toshibe Celeron 2000.

I've had the Thinkpad GPF on me (small-time application crashes, not actual BSODs) which the Toshiba never did, and which I won't tolerate in a desktop either unless it's running Windows 98 or similar. I'm practically certain it's the crudsville ATI video card or it's poxy drivers. It's particularly prone to happen after standby or hibernation. I really really wish IBM had spent the money on a Nvidia or Matrox video chipset. But I'm stuck with it. I just have to hope it doesn't flake out on me during a presentation.

(Tannin, are you going to get to the point anytime tonight, or can I go to bed and leave you rambling on about your irrational ATI fear and loathing until the morning?)

(Oh. Sorry.)

It might not be obvious to the casual eye, but pictures can look terrible at non-native resolutions. Fuzzy and dim: it's like everything is just a tad out of focus. Now good picture-viewing software (read PMView), aside from being fast and very flexible, can compensate for that to a certain extent, but only if you (a) prepare the shots in advance, which takes forever, or (b) set it to adjust on the fly, which makes things slow, even on a Pentium-M 1.7 with 768MB of DDR.

I don't know how it would go trying to convert on the fly to a non-native resolution: might confuse it considerably!

Be that as it may, I haven't figured out how to set the Thinkpad to do 1024 x 768 internally and (e.g) 1280 x 1024 externally at a sensible refresh rate — i.e., not 60Hz. Not that that matters with a projector, of course, but it looks terrible on my 22 inch Mitsubishi CRT.

I shudder at the thought of my father trying to figure that stuff out! Though I guess I could write down the proper steps and he'd follow them faithfully unless something went wrong. (He's very good at following directions when he wants to be. And totally hopeless at it when he doesn't feel like it. I dare say that's where Tea gets it from.)

So what would be an ideal resolution for my application? 2272 x 1704 would be ideal for me, as that's the native res of my Coolpix 4500s. But then Dad has a different camera, and anytime now (read "when credit card stops looking melted") I'll be buying another one myself — probably a Canon EOS 20D. And possibly another digiscoping camera too. At that point I'll have two, possibly three different native resolutions to contend with, so the reality is that matching the native res of the photographs isn't practical. Nor, in the final analysis, is it desirable all the time. If you display at 2272 x 1704, you have no room for crops, and less leeway to play a few sharpening and mistake-correcting tricks with flawed shots. (And with birds, you might only have a flawed shot of a particular species. You just have to do the best you can with the shots you've got.

The upshot of all this is that resolutions in the range 1024 x 768 to 1280 x 1024 are very practical. When I make screensavers for myself and friends, I'm in the habit of converting to 1024 anyway, so it's quite convenient. 1024 is good enough to show to people without graininess. 800 x 600 isn't. It's just barely tolerable on a big screen. So that almost certainly means buying a 1024 x projector. I think.

Do projectors degrade at non-native resolutins the way that LCDs do? I guess they would have to: digital media, after all.

 

[Tannin]

PS. Dell is out. I won't buy from an IT company that refuses to sell things to my company and is nothing other than a competitor. Sure, IBM compete with me too, as do a zillion other firms, but they will also supply me with things I can make a dollar from. Dell, on the other hand, is just a parasite.

Anyway, why would I buy from Dell at retail when I can buy most other brands at wholesale?

But my intense dislike of Dell aside (they are dishonest bastards at the best of times), the general sort of thing you mention, Dave, looks pretty much like what I'm looking for. In fact, it's bound to be a re-badged something-or-other. If it looks good enough, I'll buy it from the original manufacturer.

 

[ddrueding]

Another manufacturer that I trust with a similar product is the InFocus LP640. It's actually $100 less.

 

[yeti]

I would also pay close attention to the noise level generated by the fan. This projector will probably be used in a living room, not in an office, and the users will be much more sensitive to noise than the average geek (no offense meant, your photos tell it all) in front of a souped up PC with Samsung drives.

 

[miksmi]

Projector calibration/color management

Tannin, since you're displaying photographs, would you be calibrating the projector? I see the GretagMacBeth Eye-One Beamer is USD $1,165.50, ouch! My photography club is considering buying a projector for photo competitions but calibration is an issue.

 

[Tannin]

Yeti: yes, a good point. Thankyou.

Mike: calibration? Hell no! I'll just have to live with whatever colour it produces. I have a friend who is a colour grader (or whatever the term is -
I forget already) and does contract work for film/TV companies. He is super fussy about colours. Me, I rarely notice unless it's a long way out, or unless I'm looking at two different screens at the same time.

 

[Tannin]

Time I updated this thread. Two items to add to it:

(a) It was the pox-ridden ATI graphics card that was making my laptop crash. A couple of months ago I did about the 4th bug-fix upgrade to the graphics driver software, and it hasn't happened since. The problems just disappeared. I mean this graphics chipset has been around for what ... 2 years? ... and it's taken ATI this long to finally get the drivers so that they don't crash applications. Me? use an ATI on the desktop? Of my own free will? Never!

(b) I bought an LCD projector. A Benq PB710, I think it was. http://www.benq.com.au/HomeShowProduct.asp?prodID=332 Not actually an LCD, a DLP unit, that uses the Texas Instruments DLP projection system. Probably a bit bigger and fancier than I need, but it seems to do the job just fine.

Why a Benq? Because I needed it in a hurry (a speaking engagement I had forgotten about and had to organise the projector for at short notice) and that was the only one that seemed remotely suitable any of my wholesalers had in stock.

Regrets? Nope. At least not so far. It works just fine. It cost about $3000, which was more than I wanted to spend, but WTF? It makes my pictures look great, and that's really all I can ask of it. Seems quiet enough, hasn't gone wrong yet, many more features than I'll ever use. Even my dad can operate it.