Building Cheap 100 Inch TVs 364
Nastar writes "If you visit eBay and such places there are guys selling 'kits' so that you can easily build your own 100 inch projection screen. There are websites such as 100InchTV selling the instructions for around $10 a pop. They say "this is the only product of this kind on the web" and "it is now possible to convert any type of television or computer monitor into a 100 inch video system that's truly amazing!". I don't like the idea of these people selling this information, especially when you can get it free from the good people at BSTV BSTV. Ihaven't built mine yet, but the reports of quality differ from so-so to fantastic! I suppose it depends on perfecting the technique involved. "
WOW! (Score:5, Funny)
I can get a diploma, make $20,000 in just 2 weeks, and now I can have a 100 inch tv for little cost at all!
I'm gonna start reading my hotmail bulk-mail folder more often!
Top Secret Big Screen Simulator (Score:5, Funny)
1. Close eyes
2. Place forehead against monitor
3. Open Eyes
Voila! Experience the field of view, the giant pixels, the intense headaches without even having to alter your current setup.
Re:WOW! (Score:2, Funny)
Hmm...
Re:WOW! (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like you have more work to do
what does this mean? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:what does this mean? (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine the consumer response. .
But it's. .
Re:what does this mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what does this mean? (Score:2, Funny)
So much for trying to be McGuyver *shrug*
Re:what does this mean? (Score:2, Funny)
The output of the average flyback is in the 10-25kV range. The capacitance of the tube (the metallised coatings and the glass of the tube form a poor and lossy cap) is in the order of a couple of nanofarads, so you're talking a few hundred millijoules of energy at best (worst?).
I've had a shock at around 2-3 Joules from a 0.06uF cap bank charged to about 7kV, which is a couple of Joules or so (can't be bothered to calculate it), across the chest. It hurt like hell and made me throw the bank across the room, and I was very jittery afterwards, but it's not enough to cause fibrillation. You need double figures for that.
Nevertheless, screwing around with HV can bite you hard, and once you start playing with the big stuff you want to keep one hand behind the back! And the output of my 2kW Tesla coil, I'd never consider a "safe hit"
Re:what does this mean? (Score:2)
I always thought that it wasn't the voltage that would kill you, it was the amperage... Isn't voltage just the amount of 'push', where amperage is the amount of 'fry'?
IIRC, static electricity is very high voltage, but near nil amperage, so no harm.
100-inch TV's (Score:2, Troll)
The biggest TV I've ever had was 12-inches and he said he'd never seen one bigger. Great tits as well.
Stewpid (Score:4, Insightful)
This is as stupid as blowing up a 150x150 pixel image to 1600x1200 in photoshop and expecting a good result.
You'll end up with a dark, low contrast, blurry mess, but go for it.
Re:Stewpid (Score:2, Informative)
Standard TV has 480 interlaced lines at best. There's a reason people don't make NTSC TVs larger than about 60".
If you truly want to go for 100" of quality, get an HD projector with a nice silk screen.
After a few weeks with my 65" HDTV I think I'd puke if I watched TV on a 100" STV.
Re:Stewpid (Score:5, Informative)
There's no way in hell you could put one on this kind of thing though. The electronics can't handle the increased scan rate that would be required.
It's not an issue of resolution - you're going to get the same resolution no matter what - it's an issue of quality. The real projection manufacturers work to control things like bloom, distortion, convergence, etc. on this scale. The requirements for a 32" TV are far less. And the vast majority of consumer TVs do a piss poor job even at their designed size. You have colors that don't even vaguely approximate reality because sets with more red sell better on a showroom floor. The contrast and brightness (aka white balance) are way off the scale because of the same reason.
And brightness on these suckers is gonna suck. CRT projectors have low brightness anyway, and they're designed to be projected up to large sizes. Digital projectors (LCD, DLP, DILA) have 2-5x the brightness of a CRT and are still made for darkened rooms.
Will some people be happy with it? Sure. Same people that download 100MB VCD's of some 2 hour movie and think it looks and sounds great, or listens to lowest quality MP3's (or hell, FM radio) and thinks they've never heard anything better.
The only thing that makes me hope that the average consumer can indeed choose VASTLY improved quality over price is the success of DVD.
Link to plans (Score:2, Informative)
Nastar gets even (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it worked.
Sounds Doubtful (IMHO) (Score:2, Interesting)
Doubtful but kinda fun (Score:2, Interesting)
Quality good for only... (Score:2, Informative)
As you can see from the image [b0x.com] at BSTV, actual footage comes out as you would expect, only so-so. It makes sense that this would only work well for animations, as those usually have large areas of solid colors, and would appear less pixelated when blown up as such.
Monitor (Score:2)
Re:Monitor (Score:2)
No, but debian supports a 200x200 gajillion resolution.
--
Evan "Dances with SuSE" E.
100InchTV (Score:5, Funny)
Matt
Re:100InchTV (Score:3, Troll)
Maybe (s)he could do your inch to foot conversions for you?
--
Re:100InchTV (Score:4, Funny)
The method of measurement is tied to *what* you're measuring. When you measure a television, you measure diagonally. When you measure a person, typically the relevant measure is height.
When you measure a transvestite, you measure length. 8 feet? Ouch.
Re:100InchTV (Score:2, Funny)
esspecially if you build a beowulf cluster of them
(sorry)
Re:100InchTV (Score:4, Funny)
Re:100InchTV (Score:2, Interesting)
Dear Moderators,
I hate you all.
Oh wait I'm a moderator too.
Re:100InchTV (Score:4, Funny)
> That would have been funny, except 100 inches is over 8 feet
> 100 inches is not the height, but the diagonal measurement.
So you would be measuring from the tip of his left high heel shoes to the rightmost part of his fashionable hat?
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Experience building these. (Score:5, Informative)
I would think it would be very blurred, very hard to see (they don't give off THAT much light), and the colours would wash out.
I'd be curious to hear of anyone's actual experiences in building one of these.
I built a setup like this as a kid using a fresnel lens and a bed sheet. I even rigged a translation stage for the lens for precise focusing.
Problems were as follows, in order of severity:
Because nothing really acts like an ideal lens, the image focused on to a curved surface. I was using a flat sheet as my screen. This meant that either the center was in focus, or a ring around it was in focus, but not both.
You can reduce this by using a longer focal length, an aperture, or both, but this is trickier and loses light.
I was using one lens. This turned the image upside-down. This meant I had to turn the TV upside-down to get a usable picture. This made the TV image turn funny colours. I have no idea if this happens to most TVs or not. A well-made TV *shouldn't* have this problem - it _should_ only be gravity-sensitive if some of the focusing coils are loose inside it. The electron beam certainly doesn't care about gravity. YMMV.
You can get around this by using two lenses instead of one, or by turning the image upside-down with two mirrors before projecting it. This adds complexity and takes up space.
An alternate solution - that I used the first year I did this - is to put the TV flat on the floor and project on to a sheet on the cieling.
You get some colour spreading, but not that much. The main problem is that the image will be at least a little blurry no matter what you do. Especially if your lens is like mine and is scratched up from handling.
Projecting through a sheet degrades resolution, because the sheet scatters light within itself. You can either look at the image from the back (either getting a mirror-image or needing a mirror to flip the image), or use a very thin sheet and view it from the front.
I solved this by hosting my video parties in the basement and covering the windows. YMMV. Real projection TVs have CRTs designed to operate more brightly than normal TV screens.
These aren't insurmountable problems; just very annoying ones to solve.
Re:Experience building these. (Score:4, Interesting)
No - but it does care about the angle of the earth's magnetic field
Back when I worked for a company in the computer monitors biz I learned that monitors for the northern hemisphere are alligned in Japan all facing in the same direction, those for the southern hemisphere are aligned in special cages (virtually facing the same way I guess) - we learned this the hard way after selling some monitors down south and having some really pissed customers
The real reason the color distorts... (Score:2)
Re:Experience building these. (Score:2)
Why don't you just turn the lens around?
yes, that was a joke.
How much distortion do you get using a second lens?
Re:Experience building these. (Score:2)
I never did get around to doing this. I had a glass lens from an old slide projector, but grew tired of the project.
The way I'd do it would be to use the Fresnel lens to focus the tv picture down to a very _small_ image, and use a second lens to blow that up on to the screen (image size much smaller than the lens's focal length means a closer approximation to an ideal lens). OTOH, I'd still have curved-surface distortion focusing down the TV image.
If you try it, please let me know how well it works
Re:Reason for lack of brightness (Score:5, Interesting)
A CRT projector of the 3 tube variety uses this setup for several reasons related to brightness. Number one on the list is no slot mask! Each tube is one color. You are not blocking 80% of the electron beam to the phosphor with a matrix shadow mask inside the CRT.
Number 2 on the list is F stop. A large CRT giving off light with a lens far away gets very little light to and thru the lens. Most (about 80% or more) of the light hits the inside of the box instead of the lens. A projector set uses a small set of CRT's so the lens is very close to the CRT getting most of the light thru the lens. The smaller CRT's can easly have flat faces taking care of the focal plane problem also.
Raw Power.. The small CRT's in a projection set are not limited in beam current as there is no shadow mask to worry about overheating. The face of the CRT is gel or liquid coupled to the lense to reduce interelement reflections and aid in cooling. They can put out brightnesses on the face of the CRT's that can be painful to look at unlike a conventional tube.
The last item is when the distance to a projection surface doubles, the brightness goes down with the square of the distance. Doubling the distance to double the size decreases the brightness 4 fold. This is true for both a real projector and the home made variety, but the home made doesn't have the brightness to sacrifice on the larger immage.
With all these factors working for a 3 tube projector and against a single tube, the diffrence in projected brightness is typicaly more than 200X brighter. Translation.. a room with a couple candles in it will typicaly wash out the image on the home made projectors.
Scam? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and nevermind the fact that with today's technology and a greater emphasis than ever on DVD and digital picture we're willing to throw away $10 at whatever snake oil peddler comes along. "Just project it on your bed sheets!"
For shame this made it as a Slashdot topic.
Schnapple
http://members.tripod.com/schnapple99/ [tripod.com]
OT: Viola? (Score:5, Funny)
Or perhaps you mean "voila!"
Re:Scam? (Score:2)
I haven't ever turned a TV upside down, but I have turned computer monitors upside down. Try it yourself and you'll see that the colors distort (and that the distortion can be corrected with the degauss button, if available).
I've always been curious about the cause of this (hint, hint, Slashdot readers); I assume it's related to the effect of the earth's magnatic field on the stream of electrons painting the scren.
Since I've never seen a TV with a degauss button, and since I presume a TV would suffer discoloration just like a monitor, this would seem to be another reason not to bother with this kludgy setup.
Re:Scam? (Score:2)
Different monitors act in different ways, as I learned from turning monitors sideways for playing games with MAME. Some have little distortion, some have a ton of it.
I'm not sure about weather or not magnification/low resolution would be a problem. I've noticed that sending a real player file that's encoded at around 2 megs/minute to my older 25" set noticeably reduces the artifacts that are viewable, and smoothes out the image (at least with anime, maybe I should try a "real" movie someday), but divx/avi still have noticeable artifacts occasionally, due to (I'm assuming) real media compressing large areas of the same color better. The lower resolution of the TV also helps some games, especially emulated consoles, the game looks more "real", while on the computer screen, the high resolution actually hurts some emulated console games. Now if the lens is exact, then there will be pixilization problems, however, if there is a certain amount of imperfection (blurryness), I'm guessing a lot of games would be playable, and vids would be okay.
Just my $.02
Re:Scam? (Score:2, Interesting)
Having said that, were anyone to do this and be 100% satisfied with it (or hell, 80%) then I'd love to hear about it.
Schnapple [tripod.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Legality (Score:5, Funny)
You will be undoubtedly sued under the DMCA...blah blah blah yipetty yay
Re:Legality (Score:2)
But seriously, I wonder if there is a legal defense here, or at least a convincing argument against treating intermediate formats as copies instead of simply a means to an end.
IANAL, IANA physicist... that said...
What the hell am I talking about?
Basically, you are creating an intermediate "copy" of the television program or movie via the Freznel lens. It's a copy because of the properties defining how light travels through the lens.*
If you could demonstrate this to the Courts, your Congresscritters, etc., then perhaps you could convince them that an intermediate format of a copyrighted work stored in RAM does not count as a copy of a work and therefore is not subject to copyright restrictions or regulation. Not that you couldn't be sued for using the intermediate format to make thousands of copies of the work and selling them for $5 a pop... it would just a priori prevent Congress from regulating it directly.
* I am not a physicist, but IIRC from high school physics, copies of the original photons are generated from the lens.
Cheers,
-l
Public performance illegal even without DMCA (Score:2)
by adding a magnifying glass or projector to the screen, you are depriving the copyright owners by reproducing the image on an unlicensed object, such as a wall
Not as far-fetched as it may seem as first. By modifying your television to have a larger display size, you potentially convert it into a tool for public performance, and even without the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and foreign counterparts, the copyright laws of the United States and most other jurisdictions reserve the right of public performance to the copyright holder.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Funny)
Of course it is. It violates the Don't Mix Chocolate Act (DMCA). Circumventing Hershey's valuable intellectual property by creating your own confectionary devices deprives them of precious money. Hershey engineers spent many years creating their blends and you want to do it yourself?! What kind of commie pinko are you?
Re:Legality (Score:2)
You don't really own the candy, but have only purchased a license to ingest it; and you are prohibited from intermingling it with other products.
Re:Legality (Score:2)
Old plans... (Score:2, Interesting)
Alternative link to Google Cache of similar page (Score:2, Informative)
I have one but never tried it.. (Score:2, Funny)
you know what 640x480 on a 21" monitor looks like? (Score:4, Interesting)
But does it work? (Score:2)
Still, it would be cool for gaming. Can you imagine playing Quake III with this? And it would be more suited to gaming than an LCD projector, because the refresh rate is going to be whatever your monitor uses, rather than the dismal LCD refresh rate. All in all, a pretty cool idea.
Karma Whore, where are you? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:1pInHo8PDFk:
more links (Score:2, Informative)
If that doesn't survive, get it from the google cache.
ARP
Going blind! (Score:2)
I sell a similar product (Score:3, Funny)
Darn....guess it's back to "Lose weight now, Ask me how!!"
Anyone sending money to this guy is a foole.
Re:I sell a similar product (Score:2)
Did this years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
The only real downside was that you could really only see it well if the lights were turned down (or off).
Re:Did this years ago (Score:2)
The alternative, of installing the tube upside down is not possible in most systems, as the tube & the casing are not symetrical.
re: 100" TVs (Score:2)
Here's what the site itself says:
"For entertainment purposes only. This is a FUN site. We make no claim that anyone will be completely satisfied with our product"
The problem (Score:2)
All those pixels (Score:5, Funny)
This would be great. Right now, I can barely see my pixels. If I could blow them up really huge, I might take the time to get to know each one. Soothe them when they're red, give 'em a hug and a smile when they're blue. Sometimes, just drop by to talk.
You forgot ... (Score:5, Funny)
Forget lenses, what about scanning LED projectors? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been wondering for years, and have wondered aloud here before but gotten no response, about the possibility for building a scanning projection TV out of LEDs and mirrors.
Basically, rather than projecting an entire image at once, like an LCD projector does (and, thus, limiting your resolution to how big your LCD or DLP array is), this would take the output of red, green, and blue LEDs and bounce them off a mirror vibrating in two directions (horizontally and vertically) to provide a raster scan. With today's high brightness LEDs (ever notice how blindingly bright the new LED traffic lights are?), I'd think this could, with the right focusing system, give you a quality image on a decent screen.
All that remains is to decode the video signal for processing by the projector. In a simple mode, you might even be able to simply take the HSYNC and VSYNC signals and, essentially, use them to mark the edges of your scanning motion, then simply vibrate the mirror back and forth within that time frame. (this is hard to describe, but hopefully it'll make sense to some of you).
For something like this, the most expensive bit would be the lens at the front. You'd have a bunch of $2 LEDs (running cool and quiet, too, unlike the bulbs in DLP/LCD projectors), a simple electro-magnetic mirror mount (speaker coil for a prototype, maybe?), and maybe $50 worth of electronics.
Any EEs out there who think this makes sense? Or should I just keep waiting for HDTV projectors to come down to a kilobuck?
TI does that (Score:2)
...empirical data says no (Score:4, Informative)
Consider a hypothetical tv show which displayed a solid, bright, red background. Your red LED would need to put out enough light to illuminate your screen bright red. Now, take your Photon microlight out of your pocket. (Surely all slashot readers have at least one of those by now. Ultra bright LED on a keychain.) Sit in a lit room and shine the microlight on a white surface, adjust the distance from the surface until your red (or white, or whatever color your microlight is) spot is about as bright as you would like the TV to be. Compute the area of the spot on the white surface. Mine is four square inches with a white microlight in a dim room. Maybe calibrate your idea of brightness by looking at your TV up close and then comparing to your illuminated spot.
Using the `no free lunch' rule of physics, you need to admit that a single LED is only going to provide enough light to adequatly illuminate 4 square inches. Hence, a 100" tv (4800sq in) is going to take 1200 LEDs. The way bright LEDs are something like $3 each in huge quantity, thats $3600 before you add optics, mechnical oscillators, and electronics.
Re:...empirical data says no (Score:2)
(me, neither, but I gave up after I noticed I only did computer-related homework for two semesters.
Using the `no free lunch' rule of physics
Heh. You probably don't believe in perpetual motion, either. Heathen.
you need to admit that a single LED is only going to provide enough light to adequatly illuminate 4 square inches.
Good point, and I agree heartily. However, I'm not suggesting you use a single LED to illuminate an entire image -- you SCAN the image, and rely on human image retention in the eyeball to make it look like a solid image. That'd be one key question -- whether you can scan fast enough to do this. You might even need to double-scan images (twice per visual field) or somesuch.
Also, you could (and probably would) use a 3x3, 6x6, or 9x9 array of LEDs per "pixel" to get the brightness up a bit, too...
Re:...empirical data says no (Score:2)
steady LED.
Re:...empirical data says no (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do TVs work then, you ask? Well, the phosphors on your TV are individually much much brighter than an LED shined on a surface from some distance away. Also, the phosphors continue to glow for some time after the electron beam has already passed.
Re:...empirical data says no (Score:2, Informative)
The problem is the eye has an integration time of about 1/30th of a second, but the pixel is only illuminated for 0.11 microseconds. This is equivalent to integrating the same illumination level for the 0.11 micro second time. But when you are just shining the LED on the wall you are integrating to the full 1/30th of a second. The let's assume the illumination level is 1. So the integral for the Photon on the wall is 1 integrated for 1/30 of a sec or
Your TV solves this problem by having a phosphorous surface on the back of the screen. A powerful electron beam excites the phosphorous and then moves on. The phosphorous holds the image while the electron beam is elsewhere.
Re:...empirical data says no (Score:2)
That's for a single-color TV, yes? You'd need RGB LEDs, to be able to cover the necessary brightness across the spectrum. Provided your other math is right, we're talking $10,800 at this point, no?
Re:...empirical data says no (Score:2)
You could do this with wimpy little keychain lights and some fancy optics, but the picture would be Real Dim (tm).
Laser? (Score:2)
Alternately, instead of a pixel-mapped display, you could use this scheme for a vector display (anybody remember those?). Trickier to drive, but potentially a lot easier to get enough brightness.
Re:Laser? (Score:5, Funny)
God forbid the cat get in the way. Poof!
Re:Laser? (Score:2)
http://www.mitsi.com/Projects/alp.htm
I heard a story (I have no idea how true it is) that a bunch of engineers for a TV mfg. company built a giant laser projection TV to demonstrate at the company picnic one year. Supposedly it worked great at first, but after watching it for a few minutes it would give people headaches. They didn't know why, so they never made one again.
Re:Forget lenses, what about scanning LED projecto (Score:2, Insightful)
A TV scans across (the horizontal refresh rate) the picture tube at 15.7 KHz. The mirror would have to match this rate to reproduce a picture from a convention broadcast facility, so it would have to vibrate across the chosen field of view 15,700 times per second. I don't know the physics involved behind making a mirror move that fast, but it sure would sound awful, since its vibration would cause compression waves in the air at a very high pitch.
The TV scans from the top of the screen to the bottom (the vertical trace and retrace) 60 times per second. The mirror would therefore also have to deflect up and down 60 times a second. In my opinion, that makes the mirror movement pretty complicated.
Don't despair, all is not lost! I remember seeing an early head mounted display that used a column of pixels and a mirror that vibrated left and right 60 times per second. I think that a pretty good image could be created by making a row of 640 clusters of LEDs (each cluster being 3 LEDs - a red, green and blue) and scanning the mirror up and down 30 times per second (Only 30 instead of 60 because you can paint both the odd and even frames at the same time). There would be some electronics involved, since the horizontal picture image must be captured and store in the LEDs. This also has the advantage of providing way more light than 3 LEDs, so you'd have a brighter image.
Good luck
Well, damn. (Score:2)
Seriously, I'm glad I finally got a good rundown on some of the issues here, especially the feasibility of image retention for such a fast scan (doesn't work) and the problem of precision hardware. Someone else mentioned lasers, but even the little laser pointers scare the bejeesus out of me, and I certainly wouldn't advocate making a TV out of 'em.
*sigh*
Now, about that array of microscopic thermocouples to use as an air conditioner / power source....
d.
(anyone ever think it might be useful to have a "crazy ideas" website to discuss, well, crazy ideas?)
Scanning is easy, synch is picky, power is hard. (Score:2)
An easier way to do this is to use two spinning mirrors to do your scanning. The problem with this is that you'd need to buffer and re-send the image data, because your "blanking intervals" will be much larger than your display time under this scheme. If you don't mind hacking CRTC settings and are using a computer instead of a TV, you might be able to get your video card to drive its monitor port with this kind of signal instead (had a lot of fun making video cards do things they were never intended to a couple of years back).
You'll also need to have the spinning mirrors fairly far from your projection screen or wall to avoid distortion (you're scanning at constant angular frequency, not constant linear speed on the wall). This makes sych problems worse (blanking interval is that much larger, because you're using that much narrower a wedge of the circle the beam is scanned through).
Electronics to synch the mirror rotation to the synch pulses is easy to build. Use a classical control system with extra damping. $2 worth of electronics to clean up the input signals and $1 worth of electronics to control the speed of the mirror-spinning motors.
Now, the big problem (as others have pointed out) is that you must deliver enough power to your LEDs to brightly illuminate a large patch of wall (or screen, if you prefer). This means shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for a high-power krypton laser (so you get R/G/B from one laser), some decent optics (gratings to separate out the colours, mirrors, etc), and "three accousto-optic modulators" (devices that modulate a signal on to a laser beam). This will probably be cheaper than your laser, but that's only because the laser is bloody expensive.
Still a very fun project; just not a cheap one
Re:Forget lenses, what about scanning LED projecto (Score:2)
What's so wrong with selling information ? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this any different than (say) O'Reilly selling books on Perl/Oracle/Linux, when people can get all that information for free on the web as well ? Someone has gone to the trouble of packaging the information, and sending it to people who may not even have web access, or may want printed instructions, so I say all the more power to them.
Re:What's so wrong with selling information ? (Score:2)
--Ben
Frensel Lense eh? (Score:2)
Laser vs Raster Television Images? (Score:2)
Sad But True (Score:5, Funny)
On a similar note... last year, I wanted a bigger TV set, but didn't have the money. So I just moved my couch closer to the TV... yes, I know it's sad. But it has nearly the same effect as getting a bigger set. :)
What about LCD? (Score:2, Interesting)
Take one OHP (Overhead Projector), and one LCD screen. Remove all packaging on the LCD screen until you can see through it. Place the LCD screen on the OHP and hold down with some masking tape. Turn on OHP and LCD (make sure it's connected to something!).
Any comments as to why this won't work? I work out costs at around £400ukp new (£300 for LCD screen, £100 for projector).
Re:What about LCD? (Score:2)
Also, there were several popular graphing calculators that came in a 'regular' version and a 'clear' version for use on an overhead projector.
Found another free one (Score:4, Informative)
What this is, how it works, and doesn't... (Score:5, Informative)
The picture display tubes used in typical big screen TV's are in reality nothing more than liquid cooled versions of the tube used in a typical TV. These tubes are liquid cooled (on the front - it is a passive cooling - think of using water as a heat sink, with no pump) because they are driven to insane brightness levels (way brighter than maximum brightness on a normal TV set), to get the picture as clear as possible in the final result. Furthermore, most big screen systems use three tubes, one red, one blue, and one green (they are black and white tubes with filters - not unlike stage gels), each aimed and focused separately to get the highest resolution picture possible (this seperate aiming, etc is one reason why you should have your big-screen adjusted after moving it - even if it is across the room). HDTV sets merely use ultra high-res SVGA tube systems to get the resolution needed.
After that step, it is simple optics - most of the time no more than one or two largish glass lenses (with anti-chomatic aberation built in) and a mirror or two to flip and reverse the image - sometimes the image is projected inverted and reversed and bounced off of one mirror to get the final image. The idea is to get the projection as near parallel with the screen as possible. Where that isn't possible (due to the size of the cabinet), special lenses are added (or it is done electronically) to "keystone" the image in the proper direction so that it comes out "square" in the end.
That is all - amazing, isn't it, that one would pay almost 2000 bucks for a few TV sets, some wood , and some optics? Well, you do get a better quality system, and the optics are top notch, too - plus, the TV sets are anything but normal...
What these 100 inch plans and systems try to do is do all of that on the cheap - a light tight box is built around the TV set, a fresnel lens is added (it is a cheap lens), and you turn the TV set upside down and add a mirror to reverse the image. Typically, you might also crank the brightness up to get a slightly better image for the larger 100 inch displays.
What does this get you? Actually, if you do everything perfectly (and watch out turning that set upside down - sometime the magnetic field of the earth screws things up, and you need to degauss the set to recover in the upside down mode), have it all aligned, use a good fresnel lens, a good lighttight, square, painted black inside box with a nice mirror, and you use a larger set (15-19"), and a good projection surface (not a sheet - not enough reflection - ideally, you want a silver beaded projection screen, for maximum gain - but since it would be stupid to spend $150 on a screen for a $10 big screen, there are alternatives, more on that later) - you can get a reasonable image. You will have to turn out the lights, and let your eyes adjust - but you will get a watchable image. It isn't a scam. The edges will tend to be fuzzy, though, because a fresnel lens isn't a perfect lens, and has focus issues at the edges. Put a black border around your projection surface to mask these off, and things don't look too bad. Also, don't try to go for a 100" display - try a 40" display first, and adject until you are happy with pixel size and clarity. It is possible to make it look damn good, good enough for most entertainment uses.
Now, want to know how to make a better projection TV system (though this time, it will cost a bit - more than $10, but less than $500)?
LCD projection systems are really systems designed to rip the gullible off. At least with CRT projection, the manufacturers have an out with the special CRTs and optics they use. LCD projectors, though, are the simplest of them all (note, DLP projectors are not LCD projectors, so I can forgive their cost) - it is crazy that they sell these ultra expensive projectors that are nothing more that glorified slide projectors...
That's right! Slide projectors! The optics and light system are the same (nearly equal) as to what is in an "old-time" slide projector - the slide now is an LCD panel! This panel is typically rather small for it's resolution - but this doesn't excuse the cost, because LCD production quality is supposed to go up as the size goes down, and the price is supposed to go down as well, right? Well, it hasn't - at least I don't know where I can get a $150.00 800x600 LCD projector yet, which typically uses a smaller LCD display (less than 2" diagonal). Anyhow - all one has to do to build their own LCD projector is to get an LCD about the size of a slide, and drop it in place of the slide in a slide projector (which can be bought cheap off of Ebay). This kind of projector system was first described by Robin Cook in his book "The Virtual Reality Homebrewer's Handbook". One thing he recommended was to use a fan to cool the LCD, because the projection lamp could overheat the LCD, causing it to shut down or burn out. What is used for the LCD? Why, an LCD TV, of course - you take one apart, remove the backlight (because the projection bulb will be your backlight), and put the screen in place of the slide in an old slide projector. You also need to re-route the electronics and cabling, but it can be done. Also, try to use a TV with a TFT display for clearest moving images. It is also possible to scale this up by using larger LCD displays (various electronics surplus dealers sell $99.00 4 inch LCD displays for use in in-car video systems), and a custom lens/projection system. A larger LCD will give a clearer image.
Now, what will be the quality of such a system? All I can compare it to is a device I have, that works the same way, and is how I got my "Big Screen" experience cheap. I own a Fujix P401 LCD projector - cost me $250.00 a few years ago, and gives me an "OK" picture. I can comfortably display X on it if I use a 640x480 setting - some things are readable - but mostly I watch VCDs on it (using mtvp - anyone know of an equal Free replacement to mtvp?). Higher res images can be displayed, but they are fuzzy, at best. I would imagine a homebrew system to be comparable to this, possibly better.
Now, would it be possible to reproduce a three tube CRT system? Of course! You could build three of the 100" systems, but use black and white sets with colored pieces of plexiglas (or stage gels) in front of them. It would be a little bulky, though. I could imagine gutting some small (9" or smaller) portables to do this, and building a custom cabinet. Another possibility is to get (through various electronics surplus retailers on the net) surplus big-screen optics (which shouldn't cost more than $25.00/ea), and put them in front of the CRTs you are using. This would result in a more compact system (especially if you removed the casing of the TVs - be careful of the high-voltage inside, though - one hand in pocket when poking around inside those sets!!!).
Now, what to use for the projection screen - well, since you are doing this on the cheap, you can't very well buy a nice screen - they can be expensive. However, sometimes you can get a used silver projection screen fairly cheap (under $50.00 sometimes on Ebay, less at garage sales) - but make sure it is good quality. Most of these are tripod style, and don't have a ratchet mechanism to allow a "pull-down-from-ceiling" setup, that is much more enjoyable. To solve this, use what I used: A pure-white blackout shade. These can be found at Home Depot, and they can be had for ultra-cheap prices (less than $30.00 for the largest size). You can build mounts by using some bolts and a couple of bookshelf brackets, with careful setup, a pull down system is easy (I had mine together in an hour). These shades are smooth, have a high reflectivity, and are very inexpensive. Another alternative is high reflectivity white paint on a board. You can also use a white vinyl shower curtain, stretched tight. There are numerous options. Just look around and imagine.
Finally, I want to tell you what I used to display X under Linux on a TV (or projection system with composite input, like these homebrew projectors use). There is a device called the Averkey iMicro [aver.com] that is a true plug-and-play system. Pop it into your VGA port, load up X, and it will recognize the settings - no need to mess around with your XF86config settings (unless you need a certain res) - high-res, low-res - don't matter - it can recognise it. And it gives a great image, and it is cheap (around $100). I highly recommend this product.
OK - now you know the scoop. I hope this long, long comment will help someone. Realize that you won't get the be-all and end-all of projection images with these systems. However, I don't think they are a scam - in reality, they are selling the lens and some plans, and true, as good or better plans could be found on-line. But people are lazy, so I tend to think that they are selling a lens, some plans, and the cost of research - for $10.00 or less in many cases, that isn't a bad deal. I tend to wonder if I compiled all the info I had onto a CD, and sold that with a lens, if I could make some cash - but I am lazy, so if someone else wants to take a stab at it, go for it!!!
Have fun, my friends!
Image inversion, and solving edge fuziness... (Score:3, Informative)
It is possible to flip the wires around on the deflection coil in your TV or monitor. It is also possible to rotate the deflection coil assembly on some monitors/TVs. Here [geocities.com] is a webpage detailing flipping wires.
BE VERY CAREFUL IF YOU ARE WORKING ON THE INSIDE OF A TV OR MONITOR - THERE ARE LETHAL VOLTAGES PRESENT, EVEN IF THE TV OR MONITOR IS OFF!!! DISCHARGE THE PICTURE TUBE AND ALL CAPACITORS!!! EVEN THEN, BE ULTRA-EXTRA CAREFUL - YOU CAN KILL YOURSELF IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFUL!!! IF YOU HAVE _ANY_ DOUBTS, DON'T FUCK WITH IT!!! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!! (maybe I should add more exclamation points?)
I am amazed that the kid (at the link I gave) didn't kill himself.
Correcting Fuziness:
Two options - bend the screen horizontally (like the Torus screens in theaters), possibly vertically as well, to bring the edges in focus. Might be difficult to do. Option B (probably more difficult) would be to bend the fresnel lens slightly...
Solving edge fuziness - another issue? (Score:2)
Maybe the edges are blurry because most TVs and monitors have curved glass fronts (especially cheap TVs) - perhaps using a WEGA or some other flat tube might help things? I know that the actual image may be "flat" - but there is a lot of glass it still has to pass through, thus possibly distorting it when you magnify it?
Re:What this is, how it works, and doesn't... (Score:2)
Many of these LCD TVs can be had cheap now, in many cases under $100.00 - Fry's, RatShack, others sell them all the time. One thing you have to be careful of as you take them apart is getting the electronics and backlight separated from the LCD - many times they are glued or metal tabs are soldered, plus there is a VERY thin ribbon-style cable connecting the tuner/output board to the LCD , which is easy to break or tear, from what I have read. Plus, be careful of the high-voltage power supply for the backlight on the LCD - these are dangerous as well!
A good source for those larger LCD displays are:
http://www.eio.com/
and
http://www.EarthLCD.com/
Re:What this is, how it works, and doesn't... (Score:2)
Point: technically TV's have no pixels (Score:3, Informative)
I would imagine that the issues here would be with brightness more than grainyness. Large screen televisions are limited to the same basic resolution as small screen televisions are, the source data, a.k.a. the video signal, is sent at the same resolution to all TV's. Televisions have 525 vertical scan lines, but horizontal resolution is difficult to describe in terms of pixels as they are different for the chroma and luma components. The luma ( brightness, i.e. black and white ) horizontal resolution is 442, the chroma ( color ) horizontal resolution is 377. This was done for a number of reasons, including bandwidth limitations, backwards compatibility with black and white televisions, etc... If you take this overlap of color and black and white signal, then add the fact that the vertical scanlines are interlaced ( vert refresh is 60 Hz, i.e. 30 frames per second ), you will see that standard television is not at all similar to computer monitors. Televisions are very low definition devices ( thus the need for HDTV ) and that low definition means that a magnified image might benefit from the shortcomings of the human eye.
Please note that all my numbers were for NTSC, most PAL implementations run at 50Hz vertical refresh, 625 vertical scan lines ( chroma and luma horizontal resolutions vary amongst the PAL standards ). SECAM is 50Hz, 625 lines as well.
Also note that this is for standard TV, HDTV used MPEG-2 just like DVD video and thus is obviously a digital format.
Actually, they do... (Score:2)
Each dot is formed by a thin piece of material called the "electron gun shadow mask", which is basically a very fancy method of saying "a piece of thin metal with lots of precisely placed holes in it". This mask is swept on the back by the electron stream from the "electron gun" in the back (actually, three different "guns" are used, one for each color R, G and B). As the beam passes over the hole, it lights up a corresponding dot of red, green, or blue phospor, which glows in the proper color. This beam is varied in intensity, to change the color level of each dot, to give the wide variety of colors (interesting point - most TVs aren't balanced to pure white, but rather to the blue end of the spectrum, adding blue to a display makes it look brighter to our eyes, but purists have issues with it - also note the same is used in laundry detergent). These dots are very small, and close together, but they exist nonetheless. If this mask wasn't used, extreme smearing would result (now, your statement is correct prior to the mask, but not after it). One other thing, some picture tubes use a grid of vertical wires as a mask - not sure how it works, but I would imagine it is similar, but with less interfereing, and no holes to create pinhole camera electron beam distortion effects, there exists less blurring (ie, the beam doesn't stray from its phospor dot onto adjacent dots). I am sure there is a good FAQ on this out there.
If you want to "see" these dots, up close, take a magnafying glass and look at your monitor or TV, or, alternatively, get some beads of water on your TV, and you can see them (badly, of course).
Screw television. A 100 inch Freznel = Anarchy! (Score:3, Funny)
Here's what I think would be fun:
For about $100, you can buy a 48"x36" freznel lense. I want to mount it in a giant magnifying glass frame with a long handle, (kind of like one of those leaf scoopers used to clean the crud from the surface of suburban swimming pools.).
Then. . . Oh boy the damage you could cause!
We're talking about being able to set on fire, with a dowel and a sheet of plastic, the upholstery inside parked cars, punishing stupid owners who leave their automobile anti-theft devices blaring unattended. --Without even having to touch the vehicle! --Or you can set office buildings on fire by shining sunlight through the windows just by walking down the side walk with the magnifier over your shoulder. Any number of bizarre fire-crimes become feasible.
Yeah, yeah, I know you could get the same net effect with a can of gasoline and lighter, but this is FAR cooler! (What!? I'm just walking here with my sheet of plastic! I don't care about optics! Get your filthy law enforcing paws off me!) And if you somehow managed not to get caught, the authorities wouldn't know what the heck to make of it. --You might even be able to popularize the term, 'spontaneous office furniture combustion,' or something equally weird.
Of course, in this day and age of too many cameras and rampant terrorist paranoia, you'd probably have your eight foot magnifying glass and turban confiscated.
Bummer.
Fantastic Lad --What's a little pyromania among friends?
Howstuffworks: fresnel lens (Score:2, Interesting)
http://howstuffworks.lycos.com/question244.htm
The origin of the 100" plans? (Score:2)
I am not really sure if this is the earliest incarnation - somehow, I doubt it. But it has to be an early one (1992)...
Brightness is a big issue (Score:2)
The problem was brightness, it was basicly unviewable except in pitch black. You can up the brightenss by putting a tube transformer in the set but it reduces your picture tube life. (You can also up the brightness by getting a scotchlite screen, but they are serious bucks.)
Re:room and wall space (Score:5, Funny)
One with a wall that measure 100 inches diagonally. This is just an educated guess mind you.
Re:The Catch? (Score:2)
I think X-entertainment had articles on such scams intended towards kids. I'm glad they've moved up to scams for adults.