RE: Slightly OT: home cinema

["Phillip Harris" <phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx>]

> That's interesting Keith, I had a Sharp XVC20 and it suffered the same
> problem, getting dimmer through time. I now use a Toshiba MT1 and have
not
> noticed anything untoward yet after about five months and it get
really
> heavy use at times, additionally it is reasonably quite, certainly
much
> quieter than a Sony and three Sharps I have tried.

I was quite impressed with the MT1 - good choice. It's very common for
bulbs
in LCD projectors to wear quite rapidly. I have recently sourced a very low
hours Sony VP400QM for someone on this group (325 hours use) but have
forewarned him that by 1,000 to 1,100 hours he'll need to be looking at
replacing the bulb. (Sony claim up to 2,000 hours for the 400QM bulbs.)

> Plasma is dead!

No it's not ... sorry.

> Long live LCD. Watch this space and mark my words, within
> the next year or so LCD will take over the top end CRT and plasma
screen
> markets.

I doubt it very much. Plasma has a long way to go yet and will develop far
more over the next couple of years. LCD's have big enough problems of their
own. If anything I think you'll see a decline in the market share of LCD
for
projection as DLP picks up more. *IF* LCD takes off for domestic direct
view
displays then I really don't see how it'll be in the next year.

For projection then LCD has a very long way to go before it can ever be
considered a serious threat to CRT at any point in the market where the
primary concern is quality rather than brightness. I am pretty confident
that I could challenge you to find *ANY* LCD projector that comes anywhere
close to matching my CRT projector setup and know that you'll not get
anything as good from an LCD device. Sure, you'll get brighter but that's
all ... on a 6ft wide image I have *NO* visible line structure or
pixellation. I have just run off some digital camera screenshots (using a
tripod and no flash of course) as a test and they've come out superbly ...
I'd send you one but they're an 11.5Mb TIFF!

> By third quarter 2002 Sharp will have LCD with a 60 degree viewing
> angle on sale at roughly ?23-28 an inch, bye bye CRT, its been
> nice knowing you :o)

But at what cost? A 60 degree viewing angle is awful - I assume you mean
160
degrees!

> The factories are built, it's just the tooling for mass production
that
> needs sorted. Plasma is too unreliable for domestic use so far and way
too
> expensive for the general public to be remotely interested.

Ken, plasma displays have come down in price ... you can pick up a 42"
plasma screen for a little over £4k, current "large" screen LCD
displays are
nowhere near that size but are many times the cost. I believe that the
yeild
on plasma panels is also an order of magnitude greater than the yeild on
large LCD panels.

To be completely honest with you I think LCD is going to be squeezed into a
niche market more than being a widespread consumer item.

Phil