Projector Process...

[metalaaron]

haha, skull tattoo!

there are so many different styles. i have noticed over the few years i've played that you really can not learn or know everything about the instrument. there are so many different approaches to producing music with a guitar. it's an instrument without limitations. for example, i live in what you'd probably call bluegrass country (the hills of tennessee). i took some lessons for the first time 2.5 years ago by someone who is a known bluegrass celebrity around here. it was COMPLETELY different from ANYTHING i've ever done before. the lessons were so weird because he didn't show you ANY sheet music, or let you have any material to take home other than a cheap mono tape recording of the lesson. he started a bluegrass run and you had to try to keep up. he was pretty relentless if you didn't hit the right note. he laid out some ground rules and then he threw a complete curveball at me. he started singing bluegrass. i messed up as soon as he started singing because it was so unexpected, and just down right hilarious. so there i was, a fairly preppy guy sitting in a guitar shop that looked like a log cabin, pickin' out bluegrass songs with an ol' country man, and his dog staring from a nearby space heater. i stopped the lessons because his teaching style as well as bluegrass was not for me. i still listen to the tapes from time to time because they're so funny. it's fun to play some of the songs because they bring back some funny memories.

my pride and joy is my acoustic. you really made a great choice. whenever someone tells me they want to try guitar, i always tell them to start on an acoustic. acoustic sounds wonderful, and it is the best platform to begin on because it will build your strength and dexterity much faster than an electric. it also develops a better ear for the music, IMHO.

[smokey]

Not to take the discussion in an inadvertently on-topic direction but I would love to hear from Nicholas if he gets a chance to demo any of the projectors he listed. I hope to do FP as well someday but will have to live vicariously through others until I can amass sufficient funds.

-Smokey.

PS: I bought my first electric guitar about a year ago, and started taking lessons, but got interrupted when my daughter arrived 7 months (!) ago. Now I'm thinking of waiting until we can take lessons together.

[Nicholas Mosher]

Smokey, I plan to start looking for places to view different projectors sometime next month (after I get my second sub). Depending on how much overtime I get at my new job (I start tomorrow) and which projector I get I'll be purchasing a PJ in late June/Early July.

Thats the plan anyways. Then I'll pick up a screen a couple weeks after that, and some home theater seating towards the end of summer (to replace my old green couch ).

Guitar is going good. Now my fingertips don't hurt much, but the knuckles in my left hand index finger are ready to explode from squeezing the frets...

[Jonnyozero3]

Nicholas -

Too bad you aren't closer to Omaha. I just bought the Toshiba MT700 a few weeks ago. I demo'd a few (Sony HS51, Sharp ??2000, $$$ Yamaha) in a stores, and I am IMMENSELY satisfied with the Toshiba. The LCD's are a great choice, but I really wanted to get the best black levels possible, so I ponied up the extra $600. That means my sub is a month away now...as well as surrounds...very sad But anyhow, I'd demo it for you, but I guess screenshots will have to do.

Projector:
http://community.webshots.com/album/331614577HhULDO

Rest of Room setup:
http://community.webshots.com/album/109804667bgmVCV

I've said this a million times in reference to these photos - but the camera captured images absolutely do not do justice to the sharpness/contrast/brightness/color of the image. It's also only calibrated by eye since I have a crappy dvd player and didn't waste the effort. Just keep that in mind

[curtis]

I am so envious of you guys that have rooms that can pull off an FP setup.

[Jonnyozero3]

Curtis...for a modest fee you can use mine Just kidding. This setup was a long time in coming for me, and I'm not sure if I should have blown this much money on it...but seems worth it to me! It's one of those finally-a-regular-decent-paycheck-harry-homeowner-type things.

[Nicholas Mosher]

Jonny those blacks look great!

Unfortunately I had an unfortunate experience with DLP today...

I went to a couple stores (a big-box and a hifi shop) after work today. The local CC finally hooked up some DVD players to each TV and dimmed all the lights in the TV section so I could finally test out some of their display units. I brought AVIA and a few DVDs. You should have seen the sales guys when I started screwing around with the basic AVIA modes using the colored filters to get reasonably accurate colors that werent red saturated maximum brightness images...

Them: "Yes sir, this is what we call a high definition TV... um... what are you doing sir?"

I am happy to note that on the newer rear-projection DLP units with the uber-speed color-wheels I can see absolutely no rainbow effect. Black levels were spectacular.

Thats where the fun ended though. After about ~10min of viewing my eyes started hurting. I switched to watching an LCD or Plasma and the problem went away. I was also very dissapointed with the dithering. The lagging/smearing (compared to LCD based units) in some scenes had me raising an eyebrow. With some material it was borderline aggravating. Everytime it happened the picture lost its realism and ruined the experience.

Black levels and lack of screen door effect severity were superior on the DLP units I viewed (including an InFocus SP4805), but everything else seemed less than desirable to me.

I think I'm back to looking at LCD based projectors. The 4 or 5 DLP units I checked out were all at the bottom of my favorite list after auditioning today.

The best rear projection unit I saw was a 50" Hitachi Ultravision. Nice TV.