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Old 2nd October 2003, 23:35   #81  |  Link
Joe Fenton
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Quote:
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
I wonder if Doom9 will ever reveal his (or maybe her) age?

Maybe Doom9 isn't a person at all. Could be a supercomputer. A digital super spy!

How about a "League of Extraordinary (old) Farts"

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You forgot to put on your aluminum foil hat.

The moment they add protection to TVs, I'm making my own. I'm currently kicking around some ideas on how to make a projection TV at home on a reasonable budget. I can't see giving someone $12,000 to $25,000 for something with less than $50 in parts in it. If I bought LCD light modulators from Digi-Key I'd pay less than a $500 for a home-built projector.
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Old 3rd October 2003, 00:13   #82  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
I wonder if Doom9 will ever reveal his (or maybe her) age?
...
According to his posts, he currently studies. So, age is not secret.
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Old 3rd October 2003, 06:43   #83  |  Link
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...

Joe Fenton: how do you plan to do it for 50usd if you said the bulbs themselves cost 500usd??. If you can pull it off i think EVERYBODY would be interested. I know i would be. I tried once to turn my 27" into a 100" using mirrors and a piece of glass. Worked out ok but the light just suk'd. To me normal lighting is..err..like 1 light in 1 corner and another light in another corner. Total of like 150watts for both bulbs combined. My project failed. I wound up paying like 70usd for parts and never really using what i made. Actually at 45-50"'s it looked good under normal lighting, but anything over that looked really faded and with more than like ~150watts in the room it looked faded at 50". With all the lights out, well it looked really good at 50". Even with all the lights out it still looked faded at like the 55-60" inch mark...so i guess it would of worked at 50".

Do you REALLY have concrete ideas about this? Im wondering because in my venture of what i explained above i ran across some manufacturer somewhere on earth (been a few years) that offered lcd replacement bulbs for the type of lcds you find people using for powerpoint presentations for like 180usd. That was 1 bulb without anythign though.

If you can come up with some concrete ideas, i think i got the right person in mind i know here locally that would be willing to dish out the money to try it.

Reply back if you got something concrete or whatever. Maybe your missing a few key elements right now (or maybe not), but hopefully you find a solid median for price on how to build your own. Also mention the resolution your aiming for. 1024x768 really isnt high enough for the price and risk it might take to try such a project. Hopefully your thinking of a resolution higher than 1024x768.

Oh i would like to mention that i got a friend who has a lcd that does 1280x1024 on "borrow" from his current employer. Dude, that thing in his basement rules. It blows up to ~180"'s, he has no windows in his basement and he turns out the lights...o yeh :-). Ive only been to his house 1 or 2 times since he got it, but we played Soul Calibur just 2 nights ago with it, amazing...AWESOME!! Only thing i didnt like is that it was harder to play. I had to stretch my eyes farther across his wall to predict counters/attacks/defense etc...and it made the timing really hard. I always seemed to be slow on the touch because there was just so much area to cover on the wall before i could make up my mind on what to do. I think you know what i mean.

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Old 3rd October 2003, 13:44   #84  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally posted by ppera2
According to his posts, he currently studies. So, age is not secret.
I'm studying too and I'm 39

Back on topic:

@Joe Fenton,

If your stuff works, I'll buy it.
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Old 3rd October 2003, 14:27   #85  |  Link
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This 'age' questions and answers thing is'nt making me feel as bad as I imagined!

Maybe we should have a 'seniors' section and leave the 'young turks' to it. Me thinks the cut off age should be 30... You know like on Logan's Run!

Eeek, hang on. Everyone over 30 dies in Logan's Run. Best keep things as they are then!

Cheers
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Old 3rd October 2003, 23:35   #86  |  Link
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My TV plans are just that at the moment - plans. I'm still looking through the latest and greatest for the best homebrew solution. Candidates include: electrowetting, electroluminescence, and the more traditional LCD modulated projection.

As to getting parts at a low price, if you've ever worked in the electronics business, especially related to TVs, you know how the mark-up business works. If John Q. Public can buy a part from Digi-Key for $100, someone in the TV repair business can get it in lots of less than 10 for $10 to $20, and a manufacturer can get it in lots of a thousand for $1 to $2. It's the nature of the business. We'd stick a $1.35 horizontal osc amplifier transistor into the TV and charge the customer $6.75 for parts and $20 for labor. Five times markup on parts and $20 per hour labor, minimum of 1 hour. Believe me, replacing that transistor took maybe a minute. After working at that TV repairshop a summer, I vowed I'd never take a TV in myself. I get the parts from Mousser or Digi-Key and fix it myself. Once, I took two broken TVs and made one working TV from the pair. Do you REALLY believe that projection TV bulb REALLY costs $180?

I generally send a request for samples on business letterhead and get parts for free. Depending on what and how many, you can get a lot of stuff free that way.


I read a paper on a laser projector once. NASA has one for shuttle launches. They "paint" the image on the side of one of their buildings for the people to watch. They are hand made by a company and run $100,000 US each. I looked into it; I can get the different color lasers at a reasonable price for home brew, but the killer is the mirrors. Think about it - you need a mirror for the horizontal scanning that moves back and forth tens of thousands of times per second with precision. Too expensive for my budget. But this did give me an idea. Combine this with a traditional LCD projection. Get smaller LCD modulator panels. Instead of 640x480, which are pricey, get 64x64 or something similar which are cheap. Then get cheaper mirrors and scan the image from the LCD modulator. Since it is projecting 64 lines at once, the horizontal rate is much lower, so you really don't need the super fast high precision mirrors like with the laser. The larger the LCD panel, the slower the mirrors, so you have a trade-off. Balance LCD price against the mirrors.

As to what I'm shooting for - I want 2048x1024 with a 2:1 aspect ratio for that movie experience. It would also handle 1920x1080i HDTV with a minimum of clipping.
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Old 4th October 2003, 10:31   #87  |  Link
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Joe Fenton:

I must say that this idea with small LCD will not work - simple, because LCD is too slow for something like that. If want to scan 64x64 display for example, to get 640x640 you will need 100x bigger refresh rate on this small display, what is of course impossible with LCD.
I disagree about relations in prices for parts too. There is no so big difference as you say. Also, Idea to build TV from parts will result in bigger prices than complete TV - spare parts are always expensiver than prices for manufacturers. You can use some parts from your own collection, but most expensive parts like tube, hor. deflection trafo etc. will hardly be adequate for some new TV build.
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Old 4th October 2003, 19:44   #88  |  Link
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I am aware of the LCD response time issue. However, LCDs are getting better. You can get faster panels for a higher price. It still remains to be seen if this aspect will cause this avenue of exploration to be abandoned.

Yes, there IS such a big difference. I have experienced every position mentioned: as a non-commercial buyer paying full price, as a repairman paying wholesale, and as a manufacturer paying bulk OEM. It is EXACTLY like I put it. Sorry, but it's the way business works. It offends people the first time they learn about it, but it's been going on for more decades than you can count. Some parts won't have that large a variance, but many others are much worse than the example I gave. A company I worked for sold a special cable for $30 that cost us 10 cents to have made in Taiwan. Markup: 300x.

I agree completely with the last part, but you need to phrase it this way: if you build a current design set with new parts, you will pay more for it since spare parts are so expensive (see paragraph above). I am seeking to build something different, not something current. I can also utilize other avenues for parts: I can scrap broken electronics equipment bought at auctions and yard sales. This cuts the price for parts considerably. Like I said in my last message, I once made one working TV from two broken ones. The two broken TVs cost me a total of $5 at two different yard sales. I sold the working TV I put together for $100. I am not trying to go into the TV business, I am just trying to make my own home-brew TV. I might publish an article on how to make it yourself describing how I did it, but I won't be making sets for other people (other than maybe a family member or close friend).
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Old 6th February 2004, 22:44   #89  |  Link
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I appreciate the intricacies of this discussion. At the end of the day, though (or the beginning) I'm trying to figure out how to work the equipment and do one "simple" task--probably a very common one: convert my VHS (NTSC) tapes to DVD.

Do I correctly deduce from the early stages of this thread that capturing at 720x480 and then downsizing to 352x240 will give better results than simply capturing & authoring at 352x240? Or was it 340x240? Or was it 340x480? Help, Mr. Wizard, help! Help!

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Old 6th February 2004, 23:14   #90  |  Link
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If you have a mid-range DV camcorder with analog input you could use this to capture from VCR!

Some DV camcorders are even able to convert analog to digital 'on the fly' via firewire direct to your PC. So you don't need to record onto DV tape!

I personally use an ADS USB2.0 device which can create very high bitrate Mpeg2 files. Which is just the correct format for storing encodes on DVD.

That said, I am aware that NTSC capturing is not as straight forward as PAL capturing!

So, if you are going to store you encodes on DVD, keep the bitrate as high as you can. And keep the image pixel frame size at 720x480 - which is, after all the DVD standard anyway.

Cheers
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Old 7th February 2004, 03:02   #91  |  Link
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If you have a decent encoder (ProCoder is best for interlaced of the "big three" but also the slowest) I suggest filtering and re-enconding high bitrate captures to a final destination format for DVD. If you go for MPEG2 capture, the ADS device is hard to beat. Its encoder chip is the same used in many of the standalone DVD recorders. For VHS source, I capture at full res, filter, crop off the edges to get 704x480 then re-encode as 352x480. The built-in filters for the ADS are cute but not as powerful or effective as AviSynth filtering.

MPEG2 capture is a far better option than NTSC DV if your destinatino format is MPEG2.

Oh, and btw, SeeMoreDigital is fairly knowledgable...for a Brit
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Old 7th February 2004, 13:09   #92  |  Link
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Iyyyyyyyyyy.... thank you!
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Old 7th February 2004, 16:21   #93  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
If you have a mid-range DV camcorder with analog input you could use this to capture from VCR!
I do have, and use it, and it works great. It can't handle macrovision, though, so for those kinds of source tapes I resort to the ATI AIW that I have access to. The current setup, hacked, seems to work on all but some of the luma gain fluctuations (bright-dim-bright). I'm thinking I might capture to AVI, try the avisynth scripts I've found out there (lordsmurf.com), and then convert to mpeg2. It's my first experience with avisynth, though, with a new learning curve. Haven't got to that yet. Any other (software) solutions to THAT problem would be very interesting, but perhpaps another thread. (I know there are various "hardware" solutions -- TBC's, "clarifiers," etc; I'm trying to keep the overhead down.
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Old 10th February 2004, 17:31   #94  |  Link
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@mike

lovely thread ... lots of interesting comments. Joe Fenton seems to know what's what.


Here is how I see it:

- VHS has a low resoltion ~ 320x480
- ATI has an ok resizer
- Avisynth and VDub have better resizers.
- 352x480 is a big enough frame for VHS

So, 1) cap at 704x480 (lanczos) resize to 352x480 may be the sharpest. 2) Cap at 352x480 may have less sharpness than the above, but hardly noticable on real source.

Lordsmurf will tell you to do #2. You should just run a test and see what works for you.
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Old 11th February 2004, 00:25   #95  |  Link
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FWIW..

I used to do #2 (not to be mistaken for you know what hehe)

But, I no longer go that route. I now always capture at 720x480, or
704x480 (704 depends on what I'm doing and the source as well, and
also the source device ie, vcr vs. dv cam vs. dvd etc etc)

In my experience, (IME) there are a number of factors that violate
the process to some degree. Be it the:

* Capture device (ie, analog cards or dv devices)
...and even their various versions/brands
* Drivers for cap card
* Device being captured (ie, vcr)
* Quality of the source material
* Software used (ie, filtering and/or frameserving)
* Encoder software (or hardware for that matter)
...some Encoders do a poorer job at resizing. So even if you have
...a prestine setup above, in the end, it could be your Encodere that
...kills your final output (or fools you into thinking that it's you
...cap card or vcr equip or wires or ground loop or whatever.. pfew!
* Cable/wires

But, as trevlac said, best that you test the various options (what
ever they may be) and then make up your mind which is best for your
given project.

But, do bare in mind that most capture cards and mobo almost always
result in Noise in the final captured .avi file. I'v upgraded my
mobo just this past weekend, and I still suffer Line Noise

But, as for my video endeavors, I find (based in my own persoanl
capturign experiences) that capturing at highest resolution and then
resizing down to your desired resolution is best. If anything, you
at least have a multitude of options for resizing your source, and
in some case (or most) you'll probably get better results (if done
correctly)

Because I have an advc-100, I by default, cap at max resolution (720)
and resize (if I'm in that project mode) if need be, down to 352.

In my experience thus far w/ VHS sources. Here is my preference.

If my source is fullscreen (as most VHS movies are) I will capture at
highest (in my case, 720) and resize down to 352 x 480. I find this
to be very good quality (per my eyes) for CVD encodes for my VHS projects.
I'm from NTSC, so the quality is not as good as PAL vhs sources (based
on my observation of samples that have past my way recently) But, since
the majority of us are NTSC, we to be in that NTSC mode of excellence,
and assume that it's w/in maximum quality. Well, it made sense to me
.
.
Now, if the VHS movie source is Widescreen, then I will NOT resize it
and go w/ the 720 x 480, and encode w/ 16:9 in mind. I'm am still
debuggin this process, as it's ben giving me various reasons for
having doubts in the Aspect Ratio department.. another topic for discussion.
.
.
Just breifly, Aspect Ratio (imo) is very important to a final output
quality. But, as I said, this is not the thread for this discussion,
I don't think

So, to recap, in my experience..

* If VHS source is Fullscreen, then what I would do is cap at 720 and
...resize (use what's best technique you have at your arson) to 352.
* If VHS source is Widescreen, then what I would do is cap at 720 and
...and leave at 720, but perfect the AR properly and encode to 16:9 as
...your final output, and author to DVD.

Many ways to do all these fun (and sometimes) confusing processes/methods
of obtaining maximum final MPEG authoring projects.

-vhelp

-vhelp
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Old 12th February 2004, 22:56   #96  |  Link
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You should look into 411Helper and Reinterpolte411. NTSC DV and MPEG2 use different color allocation methods. You'll have better results with these filters.
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