Comments on: Home cinema

By: TJ

TJ — Sun, 30 May 2004 00:29:17 +0000

Hehe- we did that at university. I had keys to the giant lecture hall with integrated a/v. We’d play atari games at 40’. It’s too big for the more complicated (playstation) games, though… takes too long to shift your attention over the screen!

By: djohnson

djohnson — Sat, 29 May 2004 05:08:02 +0000

I think the cost for a replacement bulb is about $200-$250 dollars. I use the projector for watching dvds, it seldom gets used for more than 2hrs every other night. LCD rptvs (rear projector televisons) have become increasingly popular due to their slim profiles. They also use bulbs that max out at about $2500 hours.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Sat, 29 May 2004 01:56:44 +0000

This trend has led to a fairly large increase in the theft of LCD projectors from university classrooms as well. I’m going to cement in them in the walls next.

By: obeah

obeah — Sat, 29 May 2004 00:29:08 +0000

At my old job, we used to watch the X-Files in the conference room with this setup.

By: Shai

Shai — Fri, 28 May 2004 21:37:05 +0000

my cheap 50 dollar apex does pal to ntsc. i did have to do a bios trick to make the player regionless, so a little research is in order before a purchase

By: dop

dop — Fri, 28 May 2004 20:21:05 +0000

Finally! My large, white, barren walls pay off! Go me for being too lazy to hang anything on them!

By: dop

dop — Fri, 28 May 2004 20:20:18 +0000

Finally! My large, white, barren walls pay off! Go me for being too lazy to hang anything on them!

By: matt b

matt b — Fri, 28 May 2004 20:12:04 +0000

john b: I would presume that Harry already has a VCR, so all that needs to be done is play the DVD on to the TV using a region-free DVD player and record off the TV using a regular VCR. harry: If your computer has a TV output option then recording the DVD from your computer to the VCR would go as follows. Connect the output from your computer as the incoming signal for your VCR; then play your DVD fullscreen and have the VCR record it. This is slow (as you have to watch the entire movie to copy it), but I’m not sure of any other way.

By: trish

trish — Fri, 28 May 2004 19:19:40 +0000

the only problem with doing this for video games is the motion sickness, there is a point at which the picture is just too big!

By: william

william — Fri, 28 May 2004 18:16:37 +0000

I have a friend who does this with an old-fashioned overhead projector. She has one of those panels that go over the top of the overhead projector. Damn electrical engineers! Always so far ahead!

By: anand sarwate

anand sarwate — Fri, 28 May 2004 17:29:15 +0000

A slight modification—if you’re a grad student, try to “borrow” the projector from your department over the weekend to “practice your presentation.” That way you don’t have to buy one, keeping your stipend free for beer and chips.

By: john b

john b — Fri, 28 May 2004 16:32:44 +0000

There’s an added problem in the copying-DVD-to-video stakes, which is that the inventors of DVDs decided the evil region coding system wasn’t enough to prevent widespread Jolly Rogering. They also run the analogue signal (before the DVD is mastered) through a converter that doesn’t (significantly) affect the output you see but confuses VCRs. So if you try and record a DVD straight to VCR, all you get is (visual) noise. [thinks] although I don’t know anyone who’s ever tried it… maybe it’s just the content industry’s propaganda…

By: Steve Carr

Steve Carr — Fri, 28 May 2004 16:26:02 +0000

Harry, you should probably just buy a region-free DVD player with a built-in PAL-to-NTSC converter, which will let you watch PAL DVDs with no extra effort. There’s a bunch here: http://www.dvdoverseas.com/store/index.html?catalog86_0.html. Some of them are a little pricy, but the cheapest one is only $110. (I have a JVC, and it works well.)

By: Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak — Fri, 28 May 2004 15:38:40 +0000

We did this every week for “film night” way back when I was a graduate student. Welcome to the 1990s! (We also used to hang a couple of sewn-together sheets on a complex system of ropes above the pond in the middle of the quad, set-up the data projector in someone’s room, and have outdoor cinema in the summer. Happy days.)

By: harry

harry — Fri, 28 May 2004 15:38:02 +0000

Is this the place to ask a question? Is there a way that I can easily convert a PAL Region 1 or 0 DVD to NSTC video by playing it on my computer through PowerDVD and recording it on an NSTC VCR? Would doing so be legal if I could? (I would do it for family use only, and would be recording DVDs that I own, so that my kids could watch them on a TV rather than on my computer). Somebody here might know.