RE: Slightly OT: home cinema

["Keith Doxey" <ukha.diyha@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Tim,

>From experience I am very sceptical about quoted "Life".

Reading the small print often defines "Life" to be until the
output has
deminished to 50% of its original output. With things like LCD projectors,
running the lamp beyond its quoted life can cause the lamp to explode which
can destroy the LCD tablet. During this time, there is a gradual decline in
output, but with lamps I believe that there is quite a drop within the
first
few hours after which the aging slows until .....POP. We had one explode
but
luckily it only chipped the lens.

Many of our LCD projectors have a quoted lamp life of upto 2000 hrs.
In under 200 hours we have replaced lamps because they were fluctuating in
brightness. when the new bulb was fitted it was MUCH brighter than the old
one.

Our Plasma screens were showing signs of burn in within 4 months. They
scroll a powerpoint presentation and one screen is always the same. That is
now visible in the background.

We just replaced a BARCO CRT projector that had done 20,000 hours. It had
lived a hard life where most of its display was PC display with a full
white
background (the most demanding display you can have as the guns are working
flat out all the time.) It was still watchable but noticeabley dim. There
is
a Warm up cycle where the whole face of the tubes are illuminated rather
than just the area used during display. The display area was noticably Grey
compared to the area around the border.

What worries me about Plasma is that when used in conditions of high
ambient
light you have to drive them harder. Also this whole widescreen thing is a
fiasco with the movie companies trying to keep one step ahead. Many films
produced now are not 16:9 but wider. This means zooming in to fill the
display and missing the extremities of the film (which was meant to be the
selling point for W/S, or having black bars top and bottom just like a 16:9
movie on a conventional TV!

A self confessed Cinefile like yourself will no doubt wish to watch at the
correct aspect ratio. This means that for many films, an 8 grand screen
will
have upto 2000 quids worth of blank plasma. This will result in uneven
aging
of the phosphor over time and any true 16:9 material viewed a few years
down
the line would appear to have a darker band down the centre. It will be
interesting to find out if you notice this on your screen after time.

Keith




-----Original Message-----
From: Timothy Morris [mailto:timothy.morris@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 07 April 2001 17:00
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Slightly OT: home cinema

I do take Keith's point regarding tube life. The specs suggest a life of
10,000 hours BEFORE fading. It will be interesting to see if it does suffer
from fade. If it does I will be the first to whine. I also take his point
about watching films in the dark, but as I spend more time watching Sky
digital than DVDs, a dual purpose display device is more useful to me.