From portable to fixed... advice appreciated!

Hello Everyone,

I've been a lurker in these forums for a little while now and would appreciate any advice for our particular situation.

Our sanctuary holds about 250 and is basically a large square with the stage in one corner. It has a vaulted stucco ceiling with large wooden beams that are a major part of the architectural appeal. The building is 12 years old now, and was never wired/roughed in for a/v upgrades unfortunately.

We do not use video projection at every service, only occasionally whenever a Powerpoint or video needs to be shown. Granted, this is becoming more frequent, but it is not a major part yet.

We have a ~12' Dalite motorized screen mounted on the bulkhead over the platform with the controls in the sound booth at the back. Our projector - Sanyo XP18N (i think) - is not currently mounted though. We have to unpack it, set it on a board in the first few pews and run all the wires. I've been tasked with mounting it on the ceiling and this is the reason for my post.

First off, I've been given a total installed budget of $1500 CDN. Not much, I know... but I think I can rig up something. Any advice on more efficient/less expensive setups will be appreciated.

What I'm considering is this:

- Finding a strong but unobtrusive mount for the projector - it will need to hang at least 4-5' from the ceiling because it's vaulted. Recommendations here would be helpful.

- We would like inputs at the pulpit/platform, and at the sound booth. What I'm thinking is two runs of Cat5 between the sound booth and stage (~120') - call them channels A & B; and one run of Cat5 from the stage to the projector (~70') - call it channel C. They would be terminated with wallplate jacks. Equipment wise, I would get 2 pairs of XGA-on-Cat5 senders/recievers; a multi-input(Composite-Y/C-Component-XGA)/XGA-output scaler; a 2-port XGA switch.

This would allow the following scenario: A Notebook at the pulpit using a XGA-Cat5 sender plugged into stage channel A; An XGA-Cat5 receiver on sound booth channel A plugged into the XGA switch; A sound booth computer/notebook plugged into the XGA switch; the output of the switch plugged into the scaler; VCR/DVD/Etc in the sound booth plugged into the scaler; the output of the scaler into a XGA-Cat5 sender into sound booth channel B; a patch cable between stage channel B and C; a XGA-Cat5 receiver at the projector channel C.

The scaler could then be moved to the stage if control was needed there. BTW, the scaler doesn't need seamless switching, a blip is fine.

Any improvements on the design or product suggestions would be most appreciated. I need to get this done soon, and would like the opinions of some more experienced technicians.

[stevegoad]

how high is the ceiling, and how far up do you run the screen -

You want as straight a shot as possible to the screen (don't trust the keytone feature on the projector to make up the difference).

What is the lighting like up on your ceiling (one problem we had in Florida was that a spotlight was originally placed to beam right through the projector signal; deadly to the view).

a vaulted ceiling could work well with a single pipe mount (I don't know the exact term, but the mounting bracket is basically a shelf, with a pipe that screws in the top... maybe someone can explain it better.).. But the pipe and the mount can be painted to match the ceiling. It is a simple mount, and it is strong. (certainly strong enough to hold the 14 pounds of the projector).

Since the Sanyo is rated at 2,000 lumens (a figure that is usually slightly over estimated), your brightness is very subjective to room lights, distance from the screen and such... so without more information about that, I can't think of anything to add.

[1stAGSt.JamesMo]

Hey,
We used three of these mounts. I'm very pleased with them. I painted them satin white to match the ceiling and was able to run all the cables through the down-pipe to keep the install as clean as possible.

I'm not personaaly familiar with the VGA/Cat5 hardware. I have read both good and bad things here on the forum. You may want to do a search on this subject.

Terry

[[Director] Joseph B]

I'm not really sure but I think I 'd check about professional installation. $1,500 sounds like it might cover it.