Projectors for gaming?


JDUK

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Well i was gonna spend my summer break from uni lounging around stinking and dabbling in some GP coding. Then i saw the article on projectors in last months GamesTM(it was the only thing in loo at the time) and was suddenly inspired to move my lazy student arse and get a job so i could afford to play my games on a 10' screen :D.

Does any one here use a projector form gaming? how do you find it? how well does a PC desktop or gaming work with it? are the ~£1500 projectors any good I found a SONY VPL-HS2 for £1099 any one use on of them ?

Thanks
 
I am not sure how well projectors work for games. I have not heard of many people using them for that. I don't think the refresh rate is very good and the max resolution seems to be around 800x600. I would be interested to hear how this works as well. Just imagine Atari 2600 Combat on a 10 foot screen! :)
 
Yeh i was under the impression that somthing around 800x600 was top rez but i dont think thats that bad. with PC it would allow me to run games with FSAA on a reletivley cheap gfx card and its also higher than the standard TV rez so my console games would run fine.

I think.
 
you can get HDTV projectors (very very high res) buit they are extremely hard to find and cost HEAPS.

A good resolution would probably be 1024x768. Refresh rate would prbably be around 60hz. There are no problems with ghosting with projectors really.
 
I own a projector. it has 1024x758 resolution. I think my dreamcast, psone, and Atari 800. (although I have to shrink the screen for the atari) My Mac and PC look awesome on it too! The only disadvantages to projectors is you need the lights out, and the bulbs only last 2000 hours (and aint exactly cheap to replace).
 
you can get HDTV projectors (very very high res) buit they are extremely hard to find and cost HEAPS.

A good resolution would probably be 1024x768. Refresh rate would prbably be around 60hz. There are no problems with ghosting with projectors really.
I've read the Sanyo PLV-Z1 is exactly 1/4 of HDTV res and can compress an HDTV signal with minimum loss of quality?

@ abbibi: What projector do you use?
 
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Sanyo PLC-8800N. It's old, but good. It has 2, TWO, VGA ports! It is only 500 lumens (brightness), which is it's only weakness. I HIGHLY recommend buying a projector with at LEAST 1000 lumens.
 
Projectors ROCK for gaming, trust me. My father`s company has a projector which I borrow every now and then.

Smash Bros Melee or DOA2 on a projector kicks unbelievable amounts of ass.
 
My friend owns a projector and I have ordered the same one. It's the new Toshiba. It's 1600 lumens, and runs $1,200 new, which is really, really cheap in the world of projectors. It has VGA, Composite, AND S-Video inputs. Bulbs are about the same as other projectors (~$300). 1600 lumens is bright enough to play in a room with the lights still on, although the colors don't really come alive until the lights are off.

I have purchased 2 4 way switch boxes for mine, running the VCR, DVD player, and PS2 off of one box into the s-video port, and my n64, dreamcast, snes and Sega Genesis into the composite port. That still leaves the VGA port open, for any online gaming or surfing I need to do.

Once I get my gaming center/theater room all painted up, I'll post some pix online.
 
I have an lcd projector. I don't like those damn, dirty RGBs.

The nice thing about projectors is most of them have VGA input. And VGA is a universal format! Yayyyy! Add $100 for a PAL to VGA converter and shipping the projector, and you can take your time to find the [ spam ] from anywhere in the world! Yayyyy!
 
abbibi posted on Jul 1 2003 said:
I have an lcd projector. I don't like those damn, dirty RGBs.
If money's not an issue, RGB is the way to go. I worked in a custom audio/video shop for a while back in school, and they had some pretty slick projectors. The mid-range RGB units were brighter and had better color than ANY LCD projector. The ones with line-quadruplers would put a picture up on a 25' screen that was indistinguishable from 35mm film. Granted, they cost about $25,000 and required a skilled technician to spend 3 hours configuring and aligning it.
 
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heh, I want the projector my college uses its quite good and knowing my college quite cheap
 
I've seen site that you can convert a standard tv to a projector using some cardboard and stuff ( :-/ ) so if you're on a REALLY tight budget you could maybe try that. I duno if it inverts the screen though so it might not be much use for games...
 
Dozer posted on Jul 3 2003 said:
I've seen site that you can convert a standard tv to a projector using some cardboard and stuff ( :-/ ) so if you're on a REALLY tight budget you could maybe try that. I duno if it inverts the screen though so it might not be much use for games...
Yes, you often see people selling kits or even just instructions for doing this on ebay. It is, in fact, a scam. A normal television does not have the brightness to project it's image more than a foot or two, and you are not going to be able to focus a picture very well with a freznel lens and some cardboard. Yes, the picture would be inverted, but it will also be unwatchable.
 
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Actually, I did it with a TV before I bought my projector. And talk about dark! The brightest, most cancer-causing TV is only about 300 lumens. Which is WATCHABLE in a pitch-black room, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you don't care about resolution, I've seen projectors pretty cheap ($400) on ebay before.
 
JDUK posted on Jul 1 2003 said:
WOW! $1200 for a 1600 lumens is a great price any idea of the model number and max res so i can try and find it from a UK vendor ?
It's the Toshiba, TLP-S30. I bought mine from Best Buy. I don't have a screen yet, I'm just projecting mine on a wall, and it looks great. Resolution is 800x600, but if you feed in a higher resolution (1024x768, for example) it just resamples it down. It will accept HDTV signals, VGA, S-Video, and Composite inputs.

Here's me, and TRON, up against the wall.

tron.jpg
 
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