LCD Screens

[BLawson]

Is anyone using LCD screens in place of projectors? If so what size and brand has worked well for your house or worship. We are in an octagon shaped building. I am looking at using the new Sharp 80" LCD TV's to replace my current projectors. Also, what type of switcher/scaler might you be using to send a signal for your DVD player of IMAG to these tv's

[Brad Weber]

Originally Posted by BLawson

Is anyone using LCD screens in place of projectors? If so what size and brand has worked well for your house or worship. We are in an octagon shaped building. I am looking at using the new Sharp 80" LCD TV's to replace my current projectors. Also, what type of switcher/scaler might you be using to send a signal for your DVD player of IMAG to these tv's

Just keep in mind that the display area of the Sharp 80" diagonal, 16:9 format LCD display is only 39-15/64" high, so you might want to consider how that compares to the size of your current projected images.

Also, the warranty I found for the Sharp 80" display expressly excludes coverage of "Any products used for rental or commercial purposes." and a church would usually be considered a commercial application so with that product you may have no warranty. I don't know if Sharp offers a commercial version or modifies the warranty terms if you purchase their products through an authorized commercial dealer.

[[Director] Joseph B]

We just went with 60" LCD panels in our new facility - won't get a chance to use them until the 12th when we move the first service there.
I wanted 70" - I think 60" might be a bit small but we'll see.

[tdangelo]

For New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's State of the City addresses they use a 65" plasma directly upstage of the mayor creating an animated background (wall paper) behind him on the typical bust camera shot. The mayor is not a large man and the 65" just covers from his waist to his head.

Whether used upstage or on the procenium a 80" LCD is fairly small compared to typical projection sizes for I-mag, ProPresenter, etc. I agree with Brad about considering that before buying. With that said, if your room is small enough and/or you are going to keep your text font sizes large ... go for it.

This will give you an idea of what a 65" looks like:

CMN Player - Mayor Bloomberg Delivers 2012 State of the City...

[Esoteric]

Yeah, I have done LCD screens in two churches. Both of them were in store fronts with less than 100 people and the furthest seat from the screen was maybe 20' if that.

[Brad Weber]

It may or may not be applicable here but I find that those considering replacing a projected image with a flat panel often overlook that this may also represent a change from a 4:3 format image to a widescreen 16:9 image.

The image height typically defines the potential character size and viewing distances, thus it is usually desired to maintain the same image height when changing to different display technologies or formats. The height of a 16:9 format image is roughly 82% of the height of the same diagonal size 4:3 image and to maintain the same image height a 16:9 image needs to have a diagonal dimension about 1.22 times that of a 4:3 image.

Thus in terms of character size and viewing distances, the 80" diagonal 16:9 Sharp display noted would be roughly equivalent to a 65" diagonal 4:3 image. And if you had a 100" diagonal 4:3 projected image you would need about a 122" diagonal 16:9 image to maintain the same image height and thus the same character height and viewing distance.

[dmot]

Originally Posted by Brad Weber

It may or may not be applicable here but I find that those considering replacing a projected image with a flat panel often overlook that this may also represent a change from a 4:3 format image to a widescreen 16:9 image.

The image height typically defines the potential character size and viewing distances, thus it is usually desired to maintain the same image height when changing to different display technologies or formats. The height of a 16:9 format image is roughly 82% of the height of the same diagonal size 4:3 image and to maintain the same image height a 16:9 image needs to have a diagonal dimension about 1.22 times that of a 4:3 image.

Thus in terms of character size and viewing distances, the 80" diagonal 16:9 Sharp display noted would be roughly equivalent to a 65" diagonal 4:3 image. And if you had a 100" diagonal 4:3 projected image you would need about a 122" diagonal 16:9 image to maintain the same image height and thus the same character height and viewing distance.

However, it also depends on how you project text because you can potentially have longer lines with 16:9. If it were my situation, and this was the determining factor, I would set my current equipment up for 16:9 and see how it works before I made a decision. Right now, using 4:3 I like to have 4 lines of lyrics per slide. The question then becomes can I get the same amount of texts on 2 or 3 lines on 16:9, since I would need to take out 1 or 2 lines to keep my character height the same. It is not as simple as just counting number of words or characters either, because your lines need to fit the meter of the song.

[Brad Weber]

Originally Posted by dmot

However, it also depends on how you project text because you can potentially have longer lines with 16:9.

The legibility of text tends to be related to the character height. With a widescreen format you may indeed potentially have more characters per line, thus being able to have fewer lines and maintaining the same character height within a smaller image height. But that may not apply to content already created or obtained from/provided by others.

At least in my experience, if someone currently has a 4:3 image then they often have existing 4:3 content that may have to be considered, which can become a factor if changing to a widescreen format display or projector. If they can essentially start from scratch and create all new content to take advantage of the change to a widescreen format then that does allow for other possibilities.