Philips Projectors

SouperComputer

Ive been toying with different projectors in the shop. Philips i have gone for based on the lamp life mainly (6000 HRS).

Has anyone played with one of these projectors? Apparently the picture quality degrades after 2000Hrs, but this was said to me by an epson dealer!

Any reccomendations?

robbie1876

On an LCD projector you shouldn't really notice any drop in quality until about the last 10% of the bulb life. Then the brightness of the picture will gradually start to fade and the image will seem to lose contrast and go greyish. The Epson dealer was spoofing you. However, lamp life is really determined by how much you use the projector and how bright you have it set to.

In reality 6000 hours of normal use will see you fit for 5 years or so. If it turns out that you only get 4 years out of it, I wouldn't be complaining!

Personally, I've had mixed experiences with entry level Philips cinema projectors. The older Monroe units were pretty awful I thought. Then they brought out the Garbo (terrible choice of name!) and I really liked it! Great picture and ran really quiet. The current model, Bogart (who thinks up these names?) seems pretty well specced, but I haven't seen it in the flesh yet.

Just remember that the key to getting a good picture from any projector is to feed it the right video signal using good video cables. Either use a scan converter to feed your video signals up a VGA cable to the projector or else send your video up some good quality RCA-RCA interconnects to the projector. You should be running your DVD in component video format at all points up to the projector. Sky, cable TV, playstation etc can be fed in composite or S-Video, but it's better again to run everything into a good scan converter before letting the signal anywhere near your projector. By doing this you are giving the projector every chance to run to its highest specifications, and at the end of the day you will be happier.

Keep us posted as to how you get on!

Good luck,

Robbie

SouperComputer

thanks robbie, that was very informative.

i personally thought the Garbo was a nice piece of kit, which is why we chose to sell it in the shop. We received the philips astaire pro whice seems to be the replacement for the garbo. altough the astaire has no USB port, which is a handy feature.

ill try the epson over christmas and see how I like it.

what is this scan converter that you speak of....jeeze they are expensive!

sci0x

If you are going for Philips i'd suggest their Astaire Deluxe (€1,699). Its an LCD projector with a contrast ratio of 600:1 and 1000 ANSI lumens brightness. The Crystal Clear technology built into the projector ensures a sharp picture, with six picture presets for moviews, games, cartoons, sports, Internet and nature viewing.

With optical and digital zoom, plus all the standard connection options it is perfect for home use. On top of that, the bulb lasts 6,000 hours, so you won't have to replace it too often.

Not sure what the scan converter is. Robbie? Can you shine some light on the subject..

robbie1876

Not sure what the scan converter is. Robbie? Can you shine some light on the subject..

Be Glad to.

There are two gadgets to consider here: Scan Converters and Line Doublers/Quadruplers. Both of them dramatically improve your picture quality on any projector or plasma display. They don't have any effect on standard CRT televisions, but some rear projection TVs can also benefit.

Basically what a scan converter does is take any incoming video signal and re-scales the resolution of the image to the resolution that the projector works best in. For example, that Philips Astaire Deluxe is a wVGA projector with a native resolution of 854 x 480. If you are watching a DVD (780x480) through the projector, the scan converter will do the maths and the image will appear to fill the screen and will always be sharp and not pixelated. In the same way, if you try to run a PC through the scan converter at 1024 x 1024, the converter will intelligently scale the image down to the native resolution of the projector. If you watch alot of different sources (TV, DVD, VCR, Sky, PC, Playstation) through your projector, a scan converter can make them all appear at their best.

A Line Doubler pretty much does exactly what is does on the tin. When you have a projector or plasma that can run in a native resolution of higher than 780 x 480 that your DVD player can deliver, the picture can look pixelated, particularly if you have a very large screen (10' or bigger). This is because the projector can project more lines then it is receiving from the source.

A line doubler basically 'fills in' the missing lines by intelligently analysing the line above and the line below and creating a line that is halfway between the two. So if there was a red pixel on one line and a green pixel on the line below, the doubler would create a yellow pixel in between.

The effect on picture quality is amazing, pictures look so much sharper and seem to move more fluidly. Units like that Iscan Pro I mentioned earlier will both scale and line double automatically and are dead easy to set up. In my opinion if you are shopping around for projectors or plasmas you should always budget for one of these units too.

Hope some of this helps, feel free to ask for more clarification!

Owenw

If you're running the projector from your PC and want the best possible picture quality (and have a deepish wallet) you might be interested in these .

Faroudja make the top end scalers/ line doublers which can cost anything up to $2000 or more. This card retails for about $900 and uses the same technology.
It's worth pointing out that this technology is currently on the cutting edge and is updated fairly quickly.
Worth a look to see what's possible!