Video projection for gigs

[whitelightlampy]

I have been looking for a while at getting a projector for my small rig which consits of 250w scanners, and 150w mini macs and soon to be, 500w pars (4 or 8 havent yet decided)

 

Browsing the brands on google have turned up lots and lots, but I dont quite know which one is best as I have no knoledge of DLP or LCD? Video or data? Lumens? Throw ratio...

 

Im trying to find one in a £500 - £1000 budget. I plan to be putting live camera, visuals and logos and video though it. I'm not to sure about whether its rear screen projection or..the opposite to that..that would be best too.

 

Any advice would be much appriciated

[David Lee]

DLP and LCD are ways of reproducing the image. Most projectors use DLP technology now but LCD is cheaper. It seems to be the view that DLP is better for rendering video.

 

More importantly, you want to switch from various sources - camera (what type- broadcast quality or domestic composite?) - visuals and logos (PC generated?). For this you could either use a scalable switcher or vision mixer. If you use the latter you would have to scale the PC output to the camera output. Most cheap vision mixers will take composite in. Either way you would have to factor these into your budget. Alternatively you could switch on the projector but it may well look messy or at best be a straight cut.

 

Lumens are a measure of brightness of the projector. Also look at contrast ratios and ability to balance colours.

 

Don't forget that a screen may not be cheap.

 

My preference would be rear project so you dont throw the beam across the performers on stage and it keeps everything compact. Chose a good quality rear projection surface.

 

Also make sure your lens is correct - if rear projecting with a small throw to the screen you need a (;)) short throw lens and vice versa for a long throw to screen. If you think that this will change on different gigs then you need to be able to swap lenses. If you go for the ubiquitous Sanyos you would have no problem hiring in lenses from AV companies.

 

Hope this helps and gives you a bit of food for thought.

[gnomatron]

Remember to put aside budget for a screen - a good screen may outlast a projector, and is well worth the money as it makes a big difference to the image quality and brightness.

 

How big a screen do you want, and how far away are you going to rig the projector? Front projection screens are cheaper, and remove the annoying aspect of needing a large space behind the screen to project from, but rear projection looks neater.

 

I'm not sure about LCD being cheaper, some of the cheapest projectors on the market are DLP. DLP has the major problem that some people experience a strange "rainbow effect" if they see moving images out of the corners of their eyes; it's to do with the way the image is made. However, it's only a minority of people, and not a massive issue if it's a nightclub environment.

 

I got a Benq projector for 450 quid recently; it's 2000 lumens and holds up OK (but not brilliantly) against the sort of fixtures you're using. The hanging bracket was another 50 quid, and I use a home made screen.

[soundo26]

One thing to bear in mind if you are gigging projectors is that they don't like haze & smoke which gets sucked into the cooling vents (despite the filters) and settles on the panels & optics inside severely reducing the output. On most projectors these are quite difficult to clean!