Church Projection Advice

[bdwells2009]

Hey there,

I have been asked to assist in putting together info on a projection system for our sancuary. I have gotten one proposal/estimate from a supplier here in town and I would like more opinions and options.
We have a long narrow sanctuary (80ft from back wall to front baptistry wall) which is one of our biggest obstacles along with a back wall which is about 50% plate glass windows. There is ALOT of sunlight coming in during AM services. The projectors proposed on our current proposal are 6500 Lumens and are to be mounted approximately 50ft from the 150"diagonal screens.

My first question, based on the above info, is can anyone give me advice on why we should or should not investigate using professional LCD monitors instead of projectors and screens? Also if we did go with LCD monitors, how big would they have to be to fit our santuary?? ANY advice will be appreciated.

[[Admin] osborn4]

The basic rule of thumb is that the height of the screen (whether projection or LCD) should be 1/8 to 1/9 the distance to the furthest viewer. So 80/9 = 9' (roughly).

Assuming you're going with a 16:9 screen, that's about 16' wide. Apply the Pythagorean theorem, that's about a 18.3' (220") diagonal screen. I don't think you're going to do that with LCDs.

If you're going to do words only on the screen, you can get away with smaller. But if you are going to use videos or graphics, you're going to want the space.

[bdwells2009]

Thanks Osborn 4!!! I didnt think we would be able to get em large enough and if we did then we wouldnt want to pay for em!!

God Bless

[Esoteric]

What osborn said.

[[Admin] osborn4]

I don't know how wide your space is or what the front of your church looks like, but I'd be tempted to get one good sized screen in the middle. That's what we've done in our narrow deep (60') sanctuary.

[Brad Weber]

Originally Posted by osborn4

The basic rule of thumb is that the height of the screen (whether projection or LCD) should be 1/8 to 1/9 the distance to the furthest viewer. So 80/9 = 9' (roughly).

Back in the old days it was 1/8 for video, 1/6 for graphics content and standard text and 1/4 for critical content (CAD, etc.). Because they can often work around limiting themselves to bigger fonts, and thus larger characters on the screen, many churches seem to push that with an image height 1/10 the distance to the furthest viewer or even smaller being viable.

Even then, with an 80' deep room, assuming the screen is at the front and viewers all the way back, you're looking at probably wanting an 8' to 10' high image. The only way to do that with flat panels would be a tiled display of multiple panels. Some commercial flat panel displays have that capability integrated into the displays, but you'd probably be looking at a 3x3 or 4x4 array and thus nine to sixteen displays.

You mentioned 150" diagonal screens (multiple) being proposed. That equates to either 90"x120" images for 4:3 format projectors or 73.5"x130.75" images for 16:9 projectors. The 16:9 image might be a little small for the room. And with 6,500 lumens that calculates to be 87ftL and 97ftL respectively on the screens (maximum, probably a bit less in actuality), so you probably don't want to get too much brighter (although you could go higher brightness on the projector and turn down the brightness to start, then as the lamps degrade over time turn the brightness up to compensate). And it sounds like you might want to seriously consider if you can add drapes or blinds or somehow control the ambient light.