Image Placement?

[tonybrown32]

So.. lots of planning before I start building a space in the spring, which gives me time to pick up some supplies as I see them go on sale...

One question I have is that I have a space that will be 12' wide, 9'8" high...

I will be projecting in 4:3 ratio. I'm looking at a screen about 10 wide (to allow room for sidewall attachment), and about 9' tall to catch lofted wedge shots. That will make the image height only about 7.5 feet high, on a 9' tall screen.

In this situation, would you cast the image in the middle of the screen and leave some blank space above and below the image, or would you have the bottom of the image meet the flooring? Is one better than the other, and why? or just personal preference?

[wbond]

Personal preference. I like having the image start higher since you are naturally going to be looking there vs at the ground.

[tonybrown32]

Personal preference. I like having the image start higher since you are naturally going to be looking there vs at the ground.

I'm thinking the same so far.. my current makeshift setup has my screen material about 6" off the ground, I have some netting behind it to catch worm burners...

Do you have blank space evenly distributed above and below your image, or do you put all the blank space at the bottom with image starting at top of the screen?

[trhuke]

I try to center the image vertically on the screen so when I look at it it looks like I'm looking out over the course. Center of the image or horizon line at about eye height, (which isn't very high for me, shorty that I am...)

[wbond]

All of mine is at the bottom. I have like 4" or so.

[Bsk0827]

Have you decided on which projector to buy, yet?
Im trying to build sim myself and the screen is very similar to your size.

[tonybrown32]

Have you decided on which projector to buy, yet?
Im trying to build sim myself and the screen is very similar to your size.

Actually yes.. went with the Benq TH671ST. Price was a factor and I liked the zoom and vertical keystone adjustibility.. plus it was only $559 Refurbished through Benq.

[lilstan]

Hey T,

Super newbie here. I've done a lot of self education on projectors and I think I'm just staring to understand about 1% of it.... lol. I'm going to have a simular screen size 10 x 10 and I found a TH671ST for a pretty good price. I'm trying to make sure it's the right projector for my set up. The last thing I want to do, is buy something and have to spend more money to make it work. On the TH671, it says the native asect ratio is 16:9. Is it capible to projecting 4:3 or even 1:1?

Also and sorry if this is a little off topic, based on my understanding is the TH671 not capible to adjusting horzontally? The keystone and offset only list vertical......

[tonybrown32]

lilstan No worries...

So I put up my old screen to use for a bit while I work on the rest of my build, and will install my new screen at the end so I don't get it all dirty and whatnot..

For context, I have a 10ft wide by about 9ft (maybe a little less) tall frame area for my screen that I eventually plan to use a raw screen material from Par2Pro to fit as much screen in that space as possible. Will be roughly 10x9 when all set up.

I forgot the exact measurement, but my projector is mounted on the ceiling at the center of the screen directly over the ball at about 9.5 feet from the screen. I have a little room at that distance to zoom in or out to make it a little bigger or smaller one I put my new screen material up.

You are correct the Benq671 does NOT have any horizontal keystone adjustment, so it needs to be installed so that the center of the lens is lined up with the center of your screen as close as you can, to avoid any horizontal keystone effect.. you have a little wiggle room there in my opinion.. an inch or so either way won't make it look wonky really... but if you are wildly anal about it, you might notice.. I'm not. My screen moves around a bit every time I hit a ball.. it's largely un-noticed for me.. but I did my best to align as closely as I can.

I put the projector as close to the ceiling as possible and pointed it downwards, then adjusted the vertical keystone to make it look nice and straight on the sides. (you can see in the attached photo)

Aspect ratio. I use a dedicated iPad with HDMI cable to project. iPad only displays in 4:3 and the Benq does that just fine... you can change the aspect ratio to whatever you want, and I believe it may even do custom aspect ratios... I only use 4:3. Now... I did plug a chromecast into the projector while my Mevo+ was away being repaired, just so I could cast an image of Agusta #13 green to the screen from my Android phone and pretend like I was hitting balls into that green during Masters week... and was confused as to why it was stuck in the 16:9 aspect of my phone, and not filling up my screen like my iPad, and the aspect ratio adjustment was "greyed out" and not able to be changed.. took me a bit of googling, but learned that some of the "modes" on the Benq lock the aspect ratio... so in this case I didn't realize I had the Benq on "game" mode, and the aspect is locked to 16:9 in game mode... I switched to "custom" instead of game mode, and made the brightness and contrast settings what I wanted, and had ability in custom mode to switch to 4:3 just fine... so lesson learned there if you get the Benq and have the same thing happen.

So far liking the Benq. Plenty bright for me, and image looks fine on my crummy screen, hoping it will be even better on my new and brighter screen material, but I was coming from a very very dim old Sanyo business projector, so pretty much anything was an improvement for me.

[toolman605]

Thanks for posting. So I’ve got a slight bigger screen area - measures 112x112 and I’m waiting on my projector. Should be here Sunday and I was wondering about this exact question.
its funny I was worried about trying a Chromecast off the iPad like it would be crossing the beams or something like that.

[lilstan]

Thanks for the info, "projectors" is making this whole process not fun...... lol. You're right up were the last piece of info I needed to pull the trigger on the TH671. Thanks again!