Large projection with only small TV set - real or bad joke?
 

I've seen advertisement somewehere - it could even be in this site forum.. that a company is able to provide product capable to creat large display up to 100 in from an ordinary small TV set... All you need to do is buy some equipment from them and attach to your TV do some installation etc. then you got your super display... Unfortunately I forgot the name...

Is that truly a wonderful solution or a mere crap?

I did some googling a while back after seeing a similiar ad. The summary is "mere crap". The key search word is fresnel lens.

Although during the googling some intersting DIY projector projects showed up that were better, most were based on using a LCD panel from a common 15" computer LCD screen. Still the end products were large and no match for a Infocus X1 either in price or performance IMO.

not exactly sure what you're referring to...

but, i do know of one such item on ebay. afaik, it is a magnifying lens type of system (a screen w/ a circular pattern). you build a box that holds it and attaches to the tv.

i guess it works, but i wouldn't get it.

its great for novelty. its just the lens that big screens use to magnify the image, its a fesnel lens (pronounced frenel). i did it just for fun, and sure enough, it can do what it says, but 100" is a bit lofty, and you cant have an ounce of ambient light in the room. if you get a 9-13" tv, and put this on it and make a NICE enclosure (unlike the one they describe in the instruction), you can get a reasonable image at 40-50".

however, it flips the image, like most lenses, so subtitles will be backwards, AND, you will have to swap left and rigth speakers to match. or, you can run it through a mirror, but thats just one more way to lose light.

all in all, you arent going to make a "great" big screen with it.

Just found it again, it's maxtheater.com... it even boasts 175 inch! So it's still not a good replacement for, say DLP projector?

:lol:

Somebody actually has a website trying to sell that crap? It's not even a good replacement for a Kenner Give-A-Show Projector.

http://www.toyadz.com/toyadz/kenner/givashow113a.jpg

no.

How would this stack up to say a cheaper projector like the Infocus 4805?

It doesn't. This is novelty toy crap, not home theater type stuff. Maybe it's worth building one as a project/experiment, but nobody is going to want to use one of these for a home theater projector.

No tv tube can put out the brightness needed to produce even a reasonable image at that size. This is a gimmick.

wait, so you mean its not possible to emulate a projector that sells for a few thousand with only 2 hours of time and $5? i mean, that all sounds perfectly feasible to me...