Bill Explains the LCD
This one’s making it’s rounds in the Blogosphere, but it is highly accurate. Essentially the same for projector technology, with the exception of more heat dissipation properties and PJ’s that use 3LCD technology. At it’s basis though, you really get the physics involved.
Media Servers- Coolux Pandora’s Box
Yet another very capable media server, Pandora’s Box from Coolux.de offers a high performance link between projection and digital image compositing. Â It’s an extremely high quality server with a real-time powerful rendering engine that allows projections on any shape or surface. Â Key features include: 2x DVI/VGA with a max resolution of 2048 x 1536 PER OUTPUT (crazy!), stereo audio output, keystone correction, soft-edge blending (for super-wide display with projectors), multiple live inputs, 16 video layers + 32 graphic layers, true 3D rendering with X/Y/Z scaling, and slow motion. Â Video formats include Quicktime, AVI, MPEG2. Â Image formats include BMP, JPG, TGA, PNG. And it comes with an extensive library onboard.
Media Servers- Green Hippo
HD media playback can be a problem. Â For a long time, it was available only to the highest-end decks and even then, it was tape based and single layer. Â Not anymore. Â The advent of media servers in the last few years changed the playback landscape forever. Â In a nutshell, a media server is a very fast computer capable of playing back many layers of HD content in various forms. No longer do you need to worry about the content for your large projection projection or display project being played back reliably. They are most commonly a rackmount deal and controllable from a number of different sources, mainly lighting consoles sending DMX or other devices sending RS232 as a control protocol. Â Today we’ll look at the Hippotizer HD from Green Hippo.
Besides a great name, the Hippo HD is one of the most used media servers on the market today on everything from rock-and-roll to broadway to high-end award shows. (more…)
Tools And Terms Of The Trade
Part 2- Resolutions, Does Size Really Matter?
No, not from New Years…
There are many definitions of the word resolution but for projection purposes we use “the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed”. Projectors have what’s called a “native” resolution, that is, the resolution that the DMD chips inside the projector are capable of displaying. For a long time XGA (or 1024w x 768h) was the norm, but with the advent of HD that number has increased to the point where 1920×1080 (or 1080p) projectors are pretty common for even the smallest home theater setups. Most of the big-gun projectors we talk about on Projectionfreak are at least SXGA+ (1280×1024) or better.
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Tools And Terms Of The Trade
Part 1- Big Guns
Here at projectionfreak we cover large format projection a lot. Â Occasionally we’ll look at some of the smaller brethren technologies, so fans of the actual affordable stuff needn’t worry, but for the initial launch of the site we’ll focus on the big stuff. Â What exactly is large format projection? (more…)
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