August 10, 2010 at 11:273D cinema at home
After watching all sorts of Avatars, Alice and other mysterious three-dimensionality, which began to pour on us recently, I wanted to get at home at least a small, but my own, personal 3D cinema. How exactly I acted in achieving this goal, what came of it, and what bumps I got along the way - I want to talk about this in this article.
To begin with, some warnings that are significant to me. Firstly, the article expresses my own IMHO, which may not coincide with yours; probably it’s even good, but fraught with holivars. Secondly, I consider it inappropriate to hide the names of manufacturers and companies whose goods and services I used to realize my dreams: it is worth considering brands and links not as product placement, but as a necessary component of my review, for “spherical projectors in a vacuum ”, Although politically correct, they do not allow us to fully describe the experience gained.
To begin with, we can distinguish the following groups of devices involved in the construction of a cinema:
It’s clear that I won’t discover America if I postulate the fact that in order to get a 3D picture, you must have two components: the image source itself (monitor, projector ...) and some filter that will allow you to separate this image into two - for each eye separately, which and creates the very effect of volume.
By the high-tech name "filter" I mean 3D glasses. Today (according to www.mir3d.ru/articles/15993 ) there are several types of such glasses with their advantages and disadvantages:
Anaglyph glasses.As a source of the image, as a rule, two frames of a stereo pair superimposed on each other; in one, red tones predominate, in the other - blue-green or blue; color filters in glasses block the corresponding part of the picture, so that each eye sees only what is "intended" only to him. These glasses are very cheap - you can even make them yourself. The main problem of anaglyphic glasses is the fact that talking about any color rendition is, to put it mildly, difficult - for obvious reasons. Moreover, if you sit in such glasses for a long time, due to visual inertia throughout the world around us, red and blue tones will prevail for a long time. The discomfort from viewing is very significant, headaches are also not uncommon.
Polarized glasses.As the name implies, these glasses use the property of polarized light to pass or not to pass through a specific filter, depending on the direction of polarization of the latter. Naturally, the glasses themselves are quite cheap at the same time, but they require that the original picture be polarized in a rather tricky way, which can be achieved either with special types of monitors, or with a combination of a special screen with high reflectivity and the ability to preserve the polarization of light, and a projector capable of delivering required polarized light.
Shutter glasses.Liquid crystal shutters are built into such glasses as “glasses”, which alternately cover the right and left eyes, while the projector or display with which they are synchronized, alternately shows frames for the right and left eyes. These glasses also have a built-in wireless receiver, which receives a signal from a transmitting device and thereby synchronizes the operation of shutters with changing frames on the screen. Unfortunately, such glasses are most expensive in production and operation, they require their own power sources (batteries), as well as picture sources capable of providing a sufficiently high frame rate (minimum 85 Hz, 120 Hz recommended) due to the fact that each eye sees only half of all displayed frames.
Naturally, this classification is incomplete, and I do not strive for academic accuracy. It’s just that exotic solutions, such as those based, for example, on the Pulfrich effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulfrich effect) can hardly be used today massively and provided with the necessary support from manufacturers.
To build my own home 3D cinema, I chose the last type of glasses - shutter glasses, which have little effect on image quality and present less requirements for the rest of the cinema components.
Unfortunately, almost the only “general purpose” shutter glasses are NVIDIA products, namely, the NVIDIA 3D Vision Kit (http://www.nvidia.ru/object/3d-vision-main-ru.html). Why am I sorry about that? Judge for yourself:
Nevertheless, for the lack of sane alternatives, I had to pay this considerable tribute to the California monster.
The cat is also unhappy.
The next step is to choose a projector. Why a projector, not a monitor or TV? Probably, for the same reasons as in large and adult movie theaters: despite the need to buy a screen and change lamps periodically, the projector is much cheaper than the TV (or their array) of the desired diagonal. To date, two projector imaging technologies are widely used:
DLP.In these projectors, the image is created microscopically by small mirrors, which are arranged in the form of a matrix on a semiconductor chip. Each such mirror represents one pixel in the projected image. These mirrors can be quickly positioned to reflect light either on the lens or on the radiator. A quick rotation of the mirrors varies the intensity of the light that passes through the lens, creating gradations of gray. The color is formed either by three such matrices, each of which is supplied with red, green and blue light, or by one matrix from which light enters a rotating disk divided into colored sectors. In this case, the red, green and blue components of the image are displayed alternately, but with a very high frequency and the viewer seems that a multi-colored picture is being projected on the screen.
LCDThese projectors use technology similar to that used in the manufacture of LCD monitors.
As mentioned above, shutter glasses strictly regulate the refresh rate of the picture - 120 Hz. LCD projectors are currently not able to qualitatively (that is, without artifacts) update the picture 120 times per second, so, of course, my choice fell on DLP projectors. I give the criteria according to which I chose a specific model for myself:
Resolution of the matrix.The indicator is obviously very important: who doesn’t want to brag about the fact that he supposedly has FullHD? However, before I get interested in the prices of top-end projectors, I want to throw the following into consideration. The angular resolution of the human eye (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unarmed_Eye) is 1-2 ', so it’s better to calculate in advance whether you will distinguish two adjacent pixels at the selected resolution and the estimated distance from the screen. And second: are you sure you will watch FullHD very often? The topic of choosing a resolution, in fact, is quite controversial, and I am inclined to believe that the presence of HD symbols on the projector is most of all one of the relatively honest ways of taking money from the population, rather than a real guarantee of obtaining high-quality pictures. Interesting material on this topic here:www.avidium.ru/2009/04/30/pikselejj-malo-ne-byvaet-razreshenie.html
Brightness. A lot has been said about this parameter, and it does not cause any special contradictions, so I can safely recommend you here, for example, this source: www.hifinews.ru/advices/details/29.htm . It is worth considering that the shutter glasses absorb a lot of light: both due to the fact that their lenses are opaque on their own, and due to the fact that each lens is closed when viewing 50% of the entire time. Thus, I recommend doubling the required brightness given in the article so as not to experience disappointment subsequently.
Color forming method.How many DLP matrices should be on the projector - one or three and, accordingly, why? It is clear that if two varieties of one technology are presented on the market and the second is significantly more expensive, then the first is characterized by some disadvantages. They really are: projectors with a single matrix, ceteris paribus, produce slightly lower brightness, in addition, since their color is formed sequentially due to the rotation of the painted disk, with a fairly quick eye movement on the screen, you can see the so-called “rainbow”. Someone she can drive crazy, someone does not notice her at all. It is worth noting that the latest models of projectors are quite successfully struggling with this problem by increasing the speed of rotation of the disk and introducing additional color sectors on it, so you have to work hard to find this rainbow.
Interfaces As strange as it sounds in 2010, some projector models do not support DVI and HDMI. And this is rather sad, since driving decent resolution pictures with a refresh rate of 120 Hz using an analog VGA is not a good idea, especially considering that the signal source and the projector can generally be located at a considerable (3-5 meters) distance from each other .
Focal length.Not that this setting is vital, but choosing a projector with a focal length that is not suitable for the room conditions can make you use all your ingenuity and creativity. Therefore, be sure to pay before buying at what distance from the screen the projector should be located in order to produce an image of the desired diagonal. Also take into account that the device is “shorter focus”, the less willingly it forgives miscalculations during installation, significantly distorting the geometry of the picture at the slightest deviation from ideal position.
Is it worth ittake the projector from an NVIDIA certified list? I will say this: if you found a suitable projector in this list at a suitable price - take it. If there is a more interesting option, which for one reason or another did not get on the list, buy it, but note that you will have to be content with a not-so-greedy old version of graphics drivers.
If you are interested in my personal choice, then I purchased BenQ MP776 ST (http://www.ixbt.com/dvd/benq-mp776-st.shtml), which I don’t even regret at all (yes, with permission “only "1024x768). A large projector has a large lens.
The next step is screen selection. In this regard, I can recommend a fairly good article zoom.cnews.ru/publication/item/1648 , however, in addition to this I also want to share my own considerations (do not forget that this is only an opinion, it is possible that the screens are hand-woven by the virgins of Tibet in the new moon made of unicorn wool provides simply phenomenal picture quality and is able to show movies without a projector at all).
Type of coverage. DLP-projectors give out quite a contrasting, and at the same time, bright picture, therefore inexpensive diffuse-reflective screens are very well combined with them, there is little point in overpaying for gray or mirror canvases.
Aspect ratio.Common sense dictates that, ceteris paribus, the cost of the screen should correlate with its area. But in this case, the meaning is defeated: square screens are cheaper than their counterparts with an aspect ratio of 4: 3, which, in turn, are cheaper than the “cinema” 16: 9. Maybe someone does not allow pride to take a square screen?
Not much is written about this, but some screens stink after installation . And exactly as it is written. The Projecta MW 200 I bought smelled so that the first impatient audience after watching had to be taken to the hospital. However, airing helps - for several days in a room with an open window - and the screen becomes much friendlier, and then completely stops making a stench.
Stinky. Favorites.
We dealt with the first paragraph of our review. The next question on the agenda: which speaker system to use for your own, dear, sweetheart home theater? Audiophiles, most likely, are already rubbing their hands in anticipation of a holy war for the choice of receivers, speaker cables, and other magical attributes invoked by the spirit of the Warm Tube Sound (http://lurkmore.ru/Warm_lamp_wind). I will limit myself to a few fairly general points and give you the opportunity to think through the rest.
My sympathies (and, accordingly, money) were given for Microlab H-500 (http://www.microlab.com/?r=systems51&st=full&id=90), as for the best balance of price and quality (yes , this is China, without an external receiver and digital input, and generally serious uncles do not do this).
After such an unexpectedly brief section on sound systems, we turn to the question of what should be the “brain” of our man-made cinema? Given the fact that several pages I previously selected malicious glasses from NVIDIA, the only alternative for playing content is the computer. He must:
It is clear that this is a rather fat configuration, if you use it exclusively as a player. However, it is possible to use it for other purposes: as a torrent-rocking machine or as the main working / gaming computer - the main thing is to have enough imagination and length of wires. In my case, for example, PC resources are used to organize a home network proxy server, an intermediate mail service, an HTTP server to organize access to personal home pages and debugging projects, a file server and a round-the-clock torrent client.
The next motley group of devices and devices that you need to talk about is auxiliary devices.
Uninterruptable power source. It would seem that the sphere of entertainment is not at all vital, so it is not clear why it is necessary to shell out another heavy and not always cheap box. The answer is quite simple and not entirely pleasant. The projection lamps are very noticeably heated and therefore require cooling, both during operation and for some time after turning off (30-90 seconds). Failure to comply with this condition (for example, a power outage while watching a movie) is fraught with earlier lamp wear, damage to the projector's electronics and other manifestations of the heavenly punishment. And I don’t even want to check on my own skin whether it is true or not.
Projectors do not consume very much - about 200-300 watts, so there is a temptation to take a UPS more budget. It is understandable why. However, a rather unpleasant trap can wait for us on this path: for some reason, manufacturers quietly glanced into the power supplies of some projectors with APFC, without even mentioning it in the documentation (support also does not know about this - it’s checked). As a result: the complete impossibility of inexpensive UPSs with stepwise approximation to pull out a load of adequate power. You have to take an uninterruptible power supply either with a good power margin (and even without guarantees of operability in conjunction), or with a pure sine wave at the output. I chose the APC SUA750i - although expensive, it’s verified.
But let's not talk about sad things. It’s better to think about how we can comfortably sit in armchairs, on sofas, get popcorn from microwave ovens and start our favorite movie ... By the way, how do we launch it; with players everything is simple, but what about the computer? In fact, there are a lot of solutions: these are wired / wireless keyboards and mice, and remote controls from the tuner, and software for controlling from the phone / communicator via Bluetooth.
I rather liked the rather exotic version that I want to talk about. The fact is that the options with different keyboards, consoles and other things did not suit me for the reason that I have combined a home theater and a sleeping place. And to sleep in an embrace with a keyboard, as well as to scrape yourself off the bed after watching, to take it to another place - is somehow not comme il faut. But if the remote control was mounted on a wall, it was convenient and gave full access to a PC ...
The solution was found quickly - a touch monitor. Buying one is wasteful. It is much more profitable to do it yourself by combining a conventional LCD monitor and touch panel. How to do this is very well described here in this material: www.3dnews.ru/display/hand-made-monitor. You can buy such a screen in the severe Chelyabinsk online store: www.touchbaza.ru . For a 15 '' panel they ask for a little more than $ 100, which is quite acceptable.
Touch panels are of several types, which are fairly well described on Wikipedia (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen). I chose a resistive screen as a fairly cheap (unlike capacitive and infrared) and convenient (unlike acoustic) solution. The inconvenience of acoustic panels lies in a rather thick layer of glass, which is almost impossible to fit in the monitor case, as well as in a very wooden control (remember how “convenient” it is to control, for example, a terminal for receiving cellular communications).
As for the monitor, when choosing it, you should take into account a couple of points that can significantly affect the usability:
It is preferable that the native resolution of the monitor be equal to the native resolution of the projector. This will allow without loss of quality to simultaneously display the image in cloning mode on both devices.
It is also useful for the cloning mode so that the monitor can at least formally function at a screen refresh rate of 120 Hz, and not faint with the message “unsupported mode”.
Oddly enough, but the ancient “tag” CTX written off at work fully meets these requirements. Remote controller. That sounds proud!
In total, we get the following calculation for the entire system, with the exception of the PC, built according to my project, from the calculation of prices on 08/10/2010 according to the average Yandex.Market prices:
The amount, as we see, is quite immodest, but it is significantly lower than the amount that you will be asked for in specialized salons, where they promise to do "everything correctly." Another thing, do you need it?
This is how this economy looks in front: And so it is in the back: I agree that the speakers do not even hang by Feng Shui. Most of all, the diagram reminds this one: I hope that someday I will be able to get rid of the massive cabinet in the right side of the room, which will allow us to hang the speakers lower.
So, the work is done, the money is spent. A reasonable question arises: was the game worth the candle? I am inclined to answer “yes”, but first things first.
I, and I’m sure, you will most often watch the good old two-dimensional movie , and not the fact that with a surround sound track. Are there any advantages from the cinema in this case?
Definitely, there is! And they are in a large, beautiful and contrasting picture. Subjectively, color reproduction on a good DLP projector is much better than on a mid-range TN monitor. And the large size of the canvas enhances the feeling of realism of what is happening. Yes, and you can get a little more comfortable than in front of the monitor, stocking up with cola, pizza, popcorn and other small pleasures of life.
HD-Rip, without a doubt, looks sharper than DVD-Rip, however the latter are quite watchable, do not be afraid that all compression artifacts suddenly come out and begin to poison life.
What does the 3D mode indicated in the header bring to us ? Oddly enough - it works! The 3D effect is exactly the same as we are used to in movie theaters. The brightness of the picture, of course, drops slightly, but not so critical as to pay attention to it. Color reproduction remains normal, which is simply unattainable for anaglyph. If in general and briefly - together with a multi-channel audio track - a feeling of complete immersion.
The only unpleasant moment is the lack of normal, high-quality 3D content today. By the end of the year, however, many promise a solid influx, but this, IMHO, is only a rumor.
By the way, about the content. It comes in many 3D formats. Anaglyph is not suitable for our purposes, since there is only one picture and it is not possible to qualitatively divide it into 2 components. I didn’t really like interlacing - I recall the effect of a comb on TV tuners. The picture is ideal with a stereo pair, when both frames - for the left and right eye - are located next to each other (horizontally or vertically), and the player already chooses which one should be shown at a certain point in time.
In general, I do not regret the money and time spent.
Go ahead.
To begin with, some warnings that are significant to me. Firstly, the article expresses my own IMHO, which may not coincide with yours; probably it’s even good, but fraught with holivars. Secondly, I consider it inappropriate to hide the names of manufacturers and companies whose goods and services I used to realize my dreams: it is worth considering brands and links not as product placement, but as a necessary component of my review, for “spherical projectors in a vacuum ”, Although politically correct, they do not allow us to fully describe the experience gained.
To begin with, we can distinguish the following groups of devices involved in the construction of a cinema:
- “What to look at”
- "What to listen to"
- "What to lose"
- "Auxiliary"
It’s clear that I won’t discover America if I postulate the fact that in order to get a 3D picture, you must have two components: the image source itself (monitor, projector ...) and some filter that will allow you to separate this image into two - for each eye separately, which and creates the very effect of volume.
Glasses
By the high-tech name "filter" I mean 3D glasses. Today (according to www.mir3d.ru/articles/15993 ) there are several types of such glasses with their advantages and disadvantages:
Anaglyph glasses.As a source of the image, as a rule, two frames of a stereo pair superimposed on each other; in one, red tones predominate, in the other - blue-green or blue; color filters in glasses block the corresponding part of the picture, so that each eye sees only what is "intended" only to him. These glasses are very cheap - you can even make them yourself. The main problem of anaglyphic glasses is the fact that talking about any color rendition is, to put it mildly, difficult - for obvious reasons. Moreover, if you sit in such glasses for a long time, due to visual inertia throughout the world around us, red and blue tones will prevail for a long time. The discomfort from viewing is very significant, headaches are also not uncommon.
Polarized glasses.As the name implies, these glasses use the property of polarized light to pass or not to pass through a specific filter, depending on the direction of polarization of the latter. Naturally, the glasses themselves are quite cheap at the same time, but they require that the original picture be polarized in a rather tricky way, which can be achieved either with special types of monitors, or with a combination of a special screen with high reflectivity and the ability to preserve the polarization of light, and a projector capable of delivering required polarized light.
Shutter glasses.Liquid crystal shutters are built into such glasses as “glasses”, which alternately cover the right and left eyes, while the projector or display with which they are synchronized, alternately shows frames for the right and left eyes. These glasses also have a built-in wireless receiver, which receives a signal from a transmitting device and thereby synchronizes the operation of shutters with changing frames on the screen. Unfortunately, such glasses are most expensive in production and operation, they require their own power sources (batteries), as well as picture sources capable of providing a sufficiently high frame rate (minimum 85 Hz, 120 Hz recommended) due to the fact that each eye sees only half of all displayed frames.
Naturally, this classification is incomplete, and I do not strive for academic accuracy. It’s just that exotic solutions, such as those based, for example, on the Pulfrich effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulfrich effect) can hardly be used today massively and provided with the necessary support from manufacturers.
To build my own home 3D cinema, I chose the last type of glasses - shutter glasses, which have little effect on image quality and present less requirements for the rest of the cinema components.
Unfortunately, almost the only “general purpose” shutter glasses are NVIDIA products, namely, the NVIDIA 3D Vision Kit (http://www.nvidia.ru/object/3d-vision-main-ru.html). Why am I sorry about that? Judge for yourself:
- A solution consisting of one (!) Pair of glasses and a transmitter costs around $ 200, which, in my humble opinion, is at least seven times the cost. Moreover, an extra pair of glasses without a transmitter costs a little cheaper.
- In order to be able to feel all the charm of 3D (both games and films) with these glasses, NVIDIA obliges the user to have (surprise!) An NVIDIA video card of at least 8 GeForce series, despite the fact that the transmitter itself is connected not to the video card, but to USB port.
- Newer versions of drivers for glasses require mandatory certification of compatible monitors and projectors (a very poor list is listed here www.nvidia.ru/object/GeForce_3D_Vision_Requirements_ru.html ), which sometimes contradicts common sense and forces the user to install an old version, for example, this one: www.nvidia.ru/object/geforce_3D_vision_winvista_win7_CD_1.13_en.html .
Nevertheless, for the lack of sane alternatives, I had to pay this considerable tribute to the California monster.
The cat is also unhappy.
Projector
The next step is to choose a projector. Why a projector, not a monitor or TV? Probably, for the same reasons as in large and adult movie theaters: despite the need to buy a screen and change lamps periodically, the projector is much cheaper than the TV (or their array) of the desired diagonal. To date, two projector imaging technologies are widely used:
DLP.In these projectors, the image is created microscopically by small mirrors, which are arranged in the form of a matrix on a semiconductor chip. Each such mirror represents one pixel in the projected image. These mirrors can be quickly positioned to reflect light either on the lens or on the radiator. A quick rotation of the mirrors varies the intensity of the light that passes through the lens, creating gradations of gray. The color is formed either by three such matrices, each of which is supplied with red, green and blue light, or by one matrix from which light enters a rotating disk divided into colored sectors. In this case, the red, green and blue components of the image are displayed alternately, but with a very high frequency and the viewer seems that a multi-colored picture is being projected on the screen.
LCDThese projectors use technology similar to that used in the manufacture of LCD monitors.
As mentioned above, shutter glasses strictly regulate the refresh rate of the picture - 120 Hz. LCD projectors are currently not able to qualitatively (that is, without artifacts) update the picture 120 times per second, so, of course, my choice fell on DLP projectors. I give the criteria according to which I chose a specific model for myself:
Resolution of the matrix.The indicator is obviously very important: who doesn’t want to brag about the fact that he supposedly has FullHD? However, before I get interested in the prices of top-end projectors, I want to throw the following into consideration. The angular resolution of the human eye (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unarmed_Eye) is 1-2 ', so it’s better to calculate in advance whether you will distinguish two adjacent pixels at the selected resolution and the estimated distance from the screen. And second: are you sure you will watch FullHD very often? The topic of choosing a resolution, in fact, is quite controversial, and I am inclined to believe that the presence of HD symbols on the projector is most of all one of the relatively honest ways of taking money from the population, rather than a real guarantee of obtaining high-quality pictures. Interesting material on this topic here:www.avidium.ru/2009/04/30/pikselejj-malo-ne-byvaet-razreshenie.html
Brightness. A lot has been said about this parameter, and it does not cause any special contradictions, so I can safely recommend you here, for example, this source: www.hifinews.ru/advices/details/29.htm . It is worth considering that the shutter glasses absorb a lot of light: both due to the fact that their lenses are opaque on their own, and due to the fact that each lens is closed when viewing 50% of the entire time. Thus, I recommend doubling the required brightness given in the article so as not to experience disappointment subsequently.
Color forming method.How many DLP matrices should be on the projector - one or three and, accordingly, why? It is clear that if two varieties of one technology are presented on the market and the second is significantly more expensive, then the first is characterized by some disadvantages. They really are: projectors with a single matrix, ceteris paribus, produce slightly lower brightness, in addition, since their color is formed sequentially due to the rotation of the painted disk, with a fairly quick eye movement on the screen, you can see the so-called “rainbow”. Someone she can drive crazy, someone does not notice her at all. It is worth noting that the latest models of projectors are quite successfully struggling with this problem by increasing the speed of rotation of the disk and introducing additional color sectors on it, so you have to work hard to find this rainbow.
Interfaces As strange as it sounds in 2010, some projector models do not support DVI and HDMI. And this is rather sad, since driving decent resolution pictures with a refresh rate of 120 Hz using an analog VGA is not a good idea, especially considering that the signal source and the projector can generally be located at a considerable (3-5 meters) distance from each other .
Focal length.Not that this setting is vital, but choosing a projector with a focal length that is not suitable for the room conditions can make you use all your ingenuity and creativity. Therefore, be sure to pay before buying at what distance from the screen the projector should be located in order to produce an image of the desired diagonal. Also take into account that the device is “shorter focus”, the less willingly it forgives miscalculations during installation, significantly distorting the geometry of the picture at the slightest deviation from ideal position.
Is it worth ittake the projector from an NVIDIA certified list? I will say this: if you found a suitable projector in this list at a suitable price - take it. If there is a more interesting option, which for one reason or another did not get on the list, buy it, but note that you will have to be content with a not-so-greedy old version of graphics drivers.
If you are interested in my personal choice, then I purchased BenQ MP776 ST (http://www.ixbt.com/dvd/benq-mp776-st.shtml), which I don’t even regret at all (yes, with permission “only "1024x768). A large projector has a large lens.
Screen
The next step is screen selection. In this regard, I can recommend a fairly good article zoom.cnews.ru/publication/item/1648 , however, in addition to this I also want to share my own considerations (do not forget that this is only an opinion, it is possible that the screens are hand-woven by the virgins of Tibet in the new moon made of unicorn wool provides simply phenomenal picture quality and is able to show movies without a projector at all).
Type of coverage. DLP-projectors give out quite a contrasting, and at the same time, bright picture, therefore inexpensive diffuse-reflective screens are very well combined with them, there is little point in overpaying for gray or mirror canvases.
Aspect ratio.Common sense dictates that, ceteris paribus, the cost of the screen should correlate with its area. But in this case, the meaning is defeated: square screens are cheaper than their counterparts with an aspect ratio of 4: 3, which, in turn, are cheaper than the “cinema” 16: 9. Maybe someone does not allow pride to take a square screen?
Not much is written about this, but some screens stink after installation . And exactly as it is written. The Projecta MW 200 I bought smelled so that the first impatient audience after watching had to be taken to the hospital. However, airing helps - for several days in a room with an open window - and the screen becomes much friendlier, and then completely stops making a stench.
Stinky. Favorites.
Acoustics
We dealt with the first paragraph of our review. The next question on the agenda: which speaker system to use for your own, dear, sweetheart home theater? Audiophiles, most likely, are already rubbing their hands in anticipation of a holy war for the choice of receivers, speaker cables, and other magical attributes invoked by the spirit of the Warm Tube Sound (http://lurkmore.ru/Warm_lamp_wind). I will limit myself to a few fairly general points and give you the opportunity to think through the rest.
- The feeling of "volume" or the effect of presence inherent in the cinema, things are very interesting and pleasant. Therefore, I consider the recommendation for choosing a 5.1 system to be fully justified. Should I look at 7.1 speakers? I have not tried it, so I don’t know how much better it is than the six-channel version. Another question is how many tracks in 7.1 you can find.
- Much more important is how correctly this system will be installed. I will not increase the already quite considerable size of the article and I advise you to draw your attention to the following very competent material on this subject: www.ixbt.com/dvd/ht-room.shtml .
- Quality cables are without a doubt important. Especially if the acoustics components are planned to be separated far from each other, and the acoustics themselves, for one reason or another, should be significantly removed from the sound source. Another thing is that it is absolutely not necessary to suffer fanaticism on this issue: if the length of the wires that go along with the audio system is sufficient, then in the general case it is hardly necessary to change them. If they are not enough, then you can limit yourself to proven inexpensive options, for example, from Luxmann.
- But what kind of acoustics to choose? The fact is that each of you has your own ideas about sound quality, cost and so on: someone needs an impeccable sound, someone scours through the forums in search of the perfect price / quality ratio, someone needs a more futuristic look and others. " ryushechki ”, and someone still loves the good old plastic Genius. And, accordingly, for each of you you can give different, sometimes conflicting advice. Therefore, I will refrain.
My sympathies (and, accordingly, money) were given for Microlab H-500 (http://www.microlab.com/?r=systems51&st=full&id=90), as for the best balance of price and quality (yes , this is China, without an external receiver and digital input, and generally serious uncles do not do this).
Player
After such an unexpectedly brief section on sound systems, we turn to the question of what should be the “brain” of our man-made cinema? Given the fact that several pages I previously selected malicious glasses from NVIDIA, the only alternative for playing content is the computer. He must:
- Be powerful enough to play dual-gravity HD content for the right and left eyes separately. The Core2 Duo processor does a great job of this, but the Atom platform is likely to fail.
- Possess an NVIDIA graphics card starting in Series 8. It is worth deciding whether you plan to play games with 3D Vision Kit support, because not all models of video cards can do this (like the GF9400, for example).
- Have a discrete sound card. In order not to write good things about the built-in codecs, this horror flying on the wings of the night can be suitable only for voicing an alarm clock and Skype, but not as a sound source for serious things such as a movie theater. In this role, such cards as Asus Xonar DS (http://www.german-ivanov.ru/Articles/Show/262), Terratec Aureon 7.1 (http://www.ixbt.com/proaudio/ terratec-aureon71.shtml), or, for lovers of toys and extra whistles, Creative X-Fi.
- Run on Windows Vista or Windows Seven again for compatibility with the 3D Vision Kit.
It is clear that this is a rather fat configuration, if you use it exclusively as a player. However, it is possible to use it for other purposes: as a torrent-rocking machine or as the main working / gaming computer - the main thing is to have enough imagination and length of wires. In my case, for example, PC resources are used to organize a home network proxy server, an intermediate mail service, an HTTP server to organize access to personal home pages and debugging projects, a file server and a round-the-clock torrent client.
Ups
The next motley group of devices and devices that you need to talk about is auxiliary devices.
Uninterruptable power source. It would seem that the sphere of entertainment is not at all vital, so it is not clear why it is necessary to shell out another heavy and not always cheap box. The answer is quite simple and not entirely pleasant. The projection lamps are very noticeably heated and therefore require cooling, both during operation and for some time after turning off (30-90 seconds). Failure to comply with this condition (for example, a power outage while watching a movie) is fraught with earlier lamp wear, damage to the projector's electronics and other manifestations of the heavenly punishment. And I don’t even want to check on my own skin whether it is true or not.
Projectors do not consume very much - about 200-300 watts, so there is a temptation to take a UPS more budget. It is understandable why. However, a rather unpleasant trap can wait for us on this path: for some reason, manufacturers quietly glanced into the power supplies of some projectors with APFC, without even mentioning it in the documentation (support also does not know about this - it’s checked). As a result: the complete impossibility of inexpensive UPSs with stepwise approximation to pull out a load of adequate power. You have to take an uninterruptible power supply either with a good power margin (and even without guarantees of operability in conjunction), or with a pure sine wave at the output. I chose the APC SUA750i - although expensive, it’s verified.
Remote controller
But let's not talk about sad things. It’s better to think about how we can comfortably sit in armchairs, on sofas, get popcorn from microwave ovens and start our favorite movie ... By the way, how do we launch it; with players everything is simple, but what about the computer? In fact, there are a lot of solutions: these are wired / wireless keyboards and mice, and remote controls from the tuner, and software for controlling from the phone / communicator via Bluetooth.
I rather liked the rather exotic version that I want to talk about. The fact is that the options with different keyboards, consoles and other things did not suit me for the reason that I have combined a home theater and a sleeping place. And to sleep in an embrace with a keyboard, as well as to scrape yourself off the bed after watching, to take it to another place - is somehow not comme il faut. But if the remote control was mounted on a wall, it was convenient and gave full access to a PC ...
The solution was found quickly - a touch monitor. Buying one is wasteful. It is much more profitable to do it yourself by combining a conventional LCD monitor and touch panel. How to do this is very well described here in this material: www.3dnews.ru/display/hand-made-monitor. You can buy such a screen in the severe Chelyabinsk online store: www.touchbaza.ru . For a 15 '' panel they ask for a little more than $ 100, which is quite acceptable.
Touch panels are of several types, which are fairly well described on Wikipedia (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen). I chose a resistive screen as a fairly cheap (unlike capacitive and infrared) and convenient (unlike acoustic) solution. The inconvenience of acoustic panels lies in a rather thick layer of glass, which is almost impossible to fit in the monitor case, as well as in a very wooden control (remember how “convenient” it is to control, for example, a terminal for receiving cellular communications).
As for the monitor, when choosing it, you should take into account a couple of points that can significantly affect the usability:
It is preferable that the native resolution of the monitor be equal to the native resolution of the projector. This will allow without loss of quality to simultaneously display the image in cloning mode on both devices.
It is also useful for the cloning mode so that the monitor can at least formally function at a screen refresh rate of 120 Hz, and not faint with the message “unsupported mode”.
Oddly enough, but the ancient “tag” CTX written off at work fully meets these requirements. Remote controller. That sounds proud!
In total, we get the following calculation for the entire system, with the exception of the PC, built according to my project, from the calculation of prices on 08/10/2010 according to the average Yandex.Market prices:
| Name | number | Price | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benq MP776 ST Projector | 1 | 40 000 rub. | 40 000 rub. |
| NVIDIA 3D Vision Kit Glasses | 2 | 6 000 rub. | 12 000 rub. |
| Projecta Screen | 1 | 4 500 rub. | 4 500 rub. |
| Acoustics Microlab H500 | 1 | 9 340 rub. | 9 340 rub. |
| UPS APC SUA750i | 1 | 9 500 rub. | 9 500 rub. |
| 15 '' touch panel | 1 | 2 500 rub. | 2 500 rub. |
| Total: | 77 840 rub. |
The amount, as we see, is quite immodest, but it is significantly lower than the amount that you will be asked for in specialized salons, where they promise to do "everything correctly." Another thing, do you need it?
This is how this economy looks in front: And so it is in the back: I agree that the speakers do not even hang by Feng Shui. Most of all, the diagram reminds this one: I hope that someday I will be able to get rid of the massive cabinet in the right side of the room, which will allow us to hang the speakers lower.
Personal feelings
So, the work is done, the money is spent. A reasonable question arises: was the game worth the candle? I am inclined to answer “yes”, but first things first.
I, and I’m sure, you will most often watch the good old two-dimensional movie , and not the fact that with a surround sound track. Are there any advantages from the cinema in this case?
Definitely, there is! And they are in a large, beautiful and contrasting picture. Subjectively, color reproduction on a good DLP projector is much better than on a mid-range TN monitor. And the large size of the canvas enhances the feeling of realism of what is happening. Yes, and you can get a little more comfortable than in front of the monitor, stocking up with cola, pizza, popcorn and other small pleasures of life.
HD-Rip, without a doubt, looks sharper than DVD-Rip, however the latter are quite watchable, do not be afraid that all compression artifacts suddenly come out and begin to poison life.
What does the 3D mode indicated in the header bring to us ? Oddly enough - it works! The 3D effect is exactly the same as we are used to in movie theaters. The brightness of the picture, of course, drops slightly, but not so critical as to pay attention to it. Color reproduction remains normal, which is simply unattainable for anaglyph. If in general and briefly - together with a multi-channel audio track - a feeling of complete immersion.
The only unpleasant moment is the lack of normal, high-quality 3D content today. By the end of the year, however, many promise a solid influx, but this, IMHO, is only a rumor.
By the way, about the content. It comes in many 3D formats. Anaglyph is not suitable for our purposes, since there is only one picture and it is not possible to qualitatively divide it into 2 components. I didn’t really like interlacing - I recall the effect of a comb on TV tuners. The picture is ideal with a stereo pair, when both frames - for the left and right eye - are located next to each other (horizontally or vertically), and the player already chooses which one should be shown at a certain point in time.
In general, I do not regret the money and time spent.
Go ahead.