Every once in a while you see articles about how to make a projector screen. Like this article about making a projector screen for less than $100. Now Engadget has another similar article about making yourself your own projector screen, and they include a shopping list, instructions, photos, the works.

How-To: Make a custom projector screen

One of the people that replied to the above article suggested building your own retractable screen, and he’s got some pictures and videos to boot! But his instructions aren’t as detailed. The cool thing is that it’s remote controlled!

Remote controlled projection screen

For those of you who have been waiting patiently for that “budget” 1080p front projector from Sony, the ball seems to now be rolling. According to our friends over at HDBeat, the projector will ship on October 20th for an estimated $6300 USD. It will be interesting to see what the street prices of this fantastic-looking projector will be. Having a 1080p front projector coupled with today’s High Definition optical formats and a nice 7.1 surround system would make a trip to the “real” movie theater a very rare occasion indeed.

More details and pictures at HDBeat

Dolby TrueHD is coming!

Personally I think that the format war between SACD and DVD-Audio will be won by Dolby TrueHD. There’s nothing stopping studios from putting out music albums on HD DVD or BD in TrueHD surround. (Actually, studios will probably wait for a winner, then release on that.) Since there is bound to be a clear winner between HD DVD and BD, unlike the SACD / DVD-Audio situation, there will be one clear choice. So anybody with a next-gen disc player will be able to listen to up to 7.1 channels of studio master quality sound. How do you beat that?

And you can listen to it today. Toshiba has issued a firmware fix for their HD DVD players that’ll allow those players to play back TrueHD soundtracks. High Def Digest takes a look at TrueHD and the four Warner titles that support it. It’s quite an interesting read.

One thing that puzzles me though is that they say that you can listen to the TrueHD surround track using the HDMI output. I don’t think that’s true. Only HDMI 1.3 supports Dolby TrueHD and I’m pretty sure that the Toshiba decks aren’t HDMI 1.3. But you can still use the analog outputs to enjoy the high resolution Dolby TrueHD soundtracks. (Unfortunately, TrueHD supports up to 7.1 audio, while the player only has 5.1 analog audio outputs.)

Enjoy!

Dolby TrueHD Reviewed

The Swiss are famous for their chocolate and their watches. And their banking and their impartiality and their mountains and their… you get the picture.

Are they about to get famous for inventing a new kind of display? The Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich invented a new technology that uses tiny artificial “muscles” that “generate different shades by expanding and contracting in response to electricity”. You can define the exact wavelength of the colour you want, which is really cool. Since you can specify the exact colour you want, you have an infinite colour palette - display any colour you want! Sounds like a good match for the new HDMI 1.3 standard.

Not only that, but this new technology can squick pixels a lot closer together. The best monitors can do 75 - 100 DPI. This new system can do 400 DPI.

Time to market? Just a decade. Doh!

Swiss scientists hope to muscle in on video display market

Mr. Putman took a look at DVDO’s VP30 video scaler, Optoma’s HD3000 video scaler, and OPPO’s DV-970H scaling DVD player.

I personally haven’t seen any of these things in action. Though I see the benefit of a scaler if it does a better or faster job than your TV can. It would have been nice to see the Anthem AVM50 or Statement D2 included in this comparison as well. Those are pre/pros that also do scaling.

Anyway, what about these three? What did Mr. Putman think? He liked the Optoma HD3000 and DVDO VP30, to state it simply. He says that either one “will do a fine job as part of a 720p-resolution home theater system, while the HD3000 is a better choice for a 1080p system”.

HDTVexpert — Product Review: Video Scalers

So you take home your brand-new $1000 Samsung BD player, and a couple months later you put in a dual-layer BD disc and it doesn’t work! How does that scenario grab you? If you’re a Samsung owner, I’d guess that you’d be pretty pissed.

There is some good news, however. Supposedly this problem can be fixed with a firmware update. But I have to wonder - do they know that for sure at this point? Is any of this official?

But wait! There’s more! Supposedly other players are being affected by this problem as well. With the PS3 going into production soon, this has to be ironed out ASAP.

Samsung BD-P1000 & 50GB Blu-ray incompatibility rumors continue

Peter Putman, the HDTVexpert, took a look at Mitsubishi’s HC3000 DLP projector. This projector has recently been reduced to $1,999. The lens is a standard 1.3:1 zoom lens. It does have an HDMI input, which is a good thing.

Mr. Putman measured 365 ANSI lumens with BrilliantColor off, and 416 ANSI lumens with it switched on. Peak brightness was “just shy” of 500 lumens. Contrast numbers were 653:1 ANSI and 1177:1 peak.

Enough of technical details, though. How does the picture look? Is this a good projector? Peter says: “The HC3000 may be a bit long in the tooth, but at $2K, it gives the LCD projectors a run for their money. With a quality DVD player and 480p and 7200p sources, you’ll love it. With clean 1080i conversion, you’ll like it even more.”

Mitsubishi HC3000 DLP Projector

Rodolfo La Maestra has been writing a very longwinded multipart article on HDMI. These articles have everything you want to know (and a lot you don’t) about HDMI.

His latest part gets into those “better” cables and the new cable type introduced in the 1.3 spec.

HDTV Magazine Articles: HDMI Part 8 - Cables for 1.3

Seems that companies are having big problems filling the orders for blue diodes to run their HD/Blu-ray players and recorders.

This shouldn’t be a problem for Sony and it’s PS3 because they are making their own, but it could be a problem for other companies. Especially HD-DVD ones. This could be why many companies have had to push back their introduction of players.

Blu-ray and HD-DVD to freeze competition until 2007 due to laser diode shortage

What’s there to know about HDMI 1.3? If there’s something you want to know about HDMI 1.3, it’s highly likely that this Audioholics article will have the info you need.

For example, they tackle these questions:

1. What specifically does HDMI 1.3 add to the 1.2a spec in terms of audio Video format support?
2. Can you tell us about the new color space standard that HDMI 1.3 supports?
3. What about new audio formats?
4. Are additional form factors available for HDMI 1.3?
5. Based on your conversations and interactions with manufacturers, when do you think we might start seeing HDMI 1.3-enabled display and AV processing devices (e.g. this year, next year)?
6. Will lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD be supported in up to 7.1 formats?
7. Did any cabling or tolerance parameters change for the specification?
8. What part did the new gaming consoles, Blu-ray, and HD DVD technologies play in structuring the new specification?
9. Are there mandatory and non-mandatory audio and/or video formats present in the latest format?
10. Does HDMI 1.3 specifically address any PC market issues?

I was particularly interested in #6, to which they answer: “According to the Dolby web site, Dolby TrueHD can support more than 8 audio channels. According to the DTS web site, DTS-HD offers 7.1 channel capability. Current specifications for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray limit the audio to eight channels.”

Hmmmmm. Interesting…

Audioholics HDMI 1.3 Q&A

Steven over at AboutProjectors.com pointed out to me that Epson is coming out with a new 720p LCD projector. It’s coming out in September and Steven says that “The PowerLite Cinema 400 has a few unusual characteristics for an LCD projector, considering its brightness of 1500 ANSI lumens and 5000:1 contrast ratio. With a brightness like that, it’s somewhat suitable for daytime viewing, which has always been one of the worst downsides to owning a projector. Though nothing revolutionary in itself, it’s nice to see LCD projectors gaining ground on DLP projectors in the home cinema.”

It has an MSRP of $1,599. I wonder how well it’ll do against the more expensive, but acclaimed Sanyo and Panasonic projectors.

New Epson PowerLite Cinema 400 Projector