Help Please!

[Banginplates]

Hello all I am the media director for a small church in Chicago,Il. We have roughly 200 people attend every week. My pastor wants me to set up a projection system. I know somewhat of projection systems but reading on here I see I am a amateur. I have a projector in mind from referral,but now the computer hookup and if I need a distribution amp because we need about 100ft run of cable?? What kind of screen to get??We have a small budget roughly $1600 for everything projector,screen,etc. Where do I start. I need to have this done by December 13th. I am under the gun 12 days to go. Please help with any info.

[DaveJ]

I would suggest using VGA cable because it provides the best picture quality. Does the projector need to be 100 feet away from the screen? At a small church I'm doing volunteer media, they have a white Sheet as a screen.

I have purchased VGA cable for about $1 / foot. Others here will offer ideas also.

[prochlea]

can we get a little more information? room size, lighting conditions, seating capacity, screen location, projector location...

Also - what projector do you have in mind? It may or may not work for the application. Just because it worked well for someone else doesn't mean it will work for you. There are alot of factors involved in choosing a projector.

[Banginplates]

Ok all our room is narrow I am not sure on size,no windows,flourescent lights which will be off. The projector can be relatively close to the screen just the computer will be in another room. The projector is a Optoma EP721 DLP Portable Projector from Circuit City or Best Buy. Projector will most likely be mounted from the ceiling with a projector mount.I guess I can say the room is 200x450 and it seats 200 people. I hope that helps out some.

[tedanderson]

For a ceiling mount, make sure that you have an outlet installed on the ceiling. If not, you will have to find a way to neatly route the extension cord to the nearest outlet.

As for distance, 100ft. of cabling is not enough to need a distribution amp unless you are splitting the signal.

As for the screen, a white or a light colored wall will do it. If you need something to go more towards the empty area in the room, a king sized bed sheet (cut down to a 4:3 ratio) surrounded by a wood frame made from 1x2 or 1x3 dimensional lumber will also be sufficient.

[Brad Weber]

Because of the budget, this gets into a touchy area. There are solutions based on accepted professional practice (and this is becoming more formalized, a standard for projected image contrast is in process by InfoComm with the intent of it being submitted to be an ANSI Standard) and then there are ideas that don't necessarily meet those accepted practice but may be acceptable in some situations. Some of the options will be compromises and tradeoffs, for example you could use a painted wall or sheet for the screen, but the these approaches will provide an unknown result and are likely to not make as good of use of the projector output, potentially requiring a brighter projector.

Can you confirm the 200'x450' dimensions? That would be a very large room. Typically the two most critical dimensions are how far it would be from the screen to the most distant viewer (which will affect the screen size required) and the ceiling height (which can constrain the practical screen size). Without knowing those dimensions, it is difficult to assess the image size that would be appropriate and the projector to support that image.

With the 200'x450' dimensions noted it would almost certainly be over 100' from another room to the projector location, especially once any vertical distances are also factored in. Also, what is the cabling path between the computer and projector? The physical path may be a factor in what cable if appropriate both in physically installing it and in any code ratings that may be required due to where the cable is run. You should also be aware that like many other things, "VGA cable" can vary dramatically in performance and price, less expensive cable will also likely have greater losses and 100' is quite a long run for generic VGA cable.

Also start thinking about things like how you get power to the projector, what the projector hangs from, whether you need to also address audio from the computer and so on as these aspects are sometimes overlooked. For example, the ceiling mount Optoma offer for the EP721 is apparently $183 and only intended to drop the projector up to 8", you can get extension sleeves at additional cost but are still limited to a less than 2' drop, which might not be enough in a large room.

You might want to verify that the native 800x600 resolution of the EP721 works for you, by today's standards that is a pretty low resolution for a large image. Don't be misled by a projector supporting higher resolutions as those higher resolutions may be accepted but they are then processed (or scaled) to fit the native resolution of the projector.

I also have to give the standard warning that you need to be very careful when you are mounting devices over people's heads and even installing a lightweight projector is best left to someone familiar with such installations.

[Ron]

I'd suggest you double check the room size also. 200x450 is not a big room, it's a HUGE room capable of seating much more than 200. We seat 300 in a room much smaller than that (approx 80x80). If you can't get the projector close to the screen then you're going to be looking at a long throw lens which = $$