Home Theater Geeks 492 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I answer a question from Andy, who's having a problem with where to place his projector. So stay tuned.
00:13 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
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00:29 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Hey there, scott Wilkinson, here the Home Theater Geek. In this episode I answer a question from Andy Z, who writes I started building a theater room in the basement and I have a JMGON1 Ultra projector mounted on the ceiling. The problem is that there's an AC duct going across the room and the projector can only be placed in front of it or behind it. If I mount the projector in front of the duct, the maximum picture size is too small for my 92-inch silver ticket screen. But if I mount the projector behind the duct, the picture is about 100 inches. If the room was bigger I would have just gotten a 100-inch screen, but that won't fit. Do you have any suggestions on how to improve this scenario, any tricks on getting rid of the dim light showing on the perimeter of the screen at the shorter throw distance? Or maybe I should just mount the projector on the floor? I see there is a floor mount, but I'm kind of worried the projector would be prone to getting damaged. So I was thinking maybe some sort of end table at the correct distance between the seats, but I'm not sure if the angle would be too much and floor space is kind of limited. Well, it's a great question and very often putting together a home theater means making compromises or working around obstacles such as this AC duct, so let's see if I can help you.
02:08
So I wanted to start by showing everybody the JMGO N1 Ultra, which is a projector from a Chinese company. It's a three laser DLP projector and the specs look pretty good. We'll put a link to the product page in the show notes. It's a 4K DLP with RGB lasers, which is really quite good. Very often, laser projectors will have a blue laser and a yellow phosphor wheel that combines to make white, but in this case you actually have red, green and blue lasers, which we can see in graphic two. They have this special technology called MALC. That may be just marketing hype, whatever, but you got red, green and blue lasers. That's a good thing. 1900 lumens pretty bright that's a good thing. 1900 lumens pretty bright. 1600 to 1 contrast ratio that's probably an honest contrast ratio. Hdr 10 support 110% of BT 2020 color space color range, which is very, very good and only possible with lasers, which is very, very good and only possible with lasers. It has MEMC, which is another word for frame interpolation, which many people hate, but I'm sure you can turn it off.
03:32
3d projectors are really the only displays these days with 3D capabilities. Two HDMI inputs, one USB and one headphone jack, which is in the next graphic, and you can see here that, yeah, it's got USB, two HDMIs, one with eARC, so it's a smart TV. It has an Android TV built in so audio from those apps can come out of that HDMI 2 input and back to your sound system. Apps can come out of that HDMI to input and back to your sound system. Also has Wi-Fi six and Bluetooth five wireless capabilities. And here's something really interesting A Dynaudio audio system. Now, dynaudio is a very high end make. I can't imagine that it's as good as an outboard audio system or even a soundbar, but it's probably pretty good for an internal projector sound system, because Dyne Audio is really really good and it's portable. It comes with its own carrying case so you can take it around and go have movie night outdoors or at a friend's house, anything like that. It's quite small and it's mounted on a gimbal so it's very flexible in that way. You can see here it rotates around and can be aimed at 135 degrees one way or another, although I'm going to talk a little bit about that a little later.
05:16
Now one of the features on the website includes something called auto screen fitting. Size is too small at a throw distance in front of that AC duct. It should reduce the image size to 92 inches from behind the duct. Very common mistake there. Maybe the minimum size is too large in that case. Perhaps the duct is very wide. Now here's another problem with that. The throw ratio of the projector on the website is specified at 1.2 to 1, which means that it doesn't have any zoom, any optical zoom, on the lens. It says it does have digital zoom, so you can enlarge or reduce the picture to some degree, but apparently not optical zoom, which is unfortunate. Using digital zoom will reduce the resolution of the image and you don't want to do that if you don't have to, because in addition to having lower resolution, you might then have all sorts of scaling artifacts which are not pleasant. So I recommend that you don't use that if possible.
06:39
I'm guessing that the auto screen fit feature uses digital zoom. So the ideal placement is quite limited. With a 92-inch screen and a throw ratio of 1.2 to 1, the projector should be placed just a smidge over eight feet from the screen, which I have to presume is right in the middle of that AC duct, have to presume is right in the middle of that AC duct. Now, the floor stand that JMGO sells is actually quite nice. It has a small footprint and I think could work very well. We have a picture of it. I think the next graphic can show you what it looks like there. It is Small footprint, nice stand and ideally the floor stand will put the projector near the height of the center of the screen, because ideally you want the projector to be aimed perpendicular to the screen plane.
07:42
This model seems to have a lot of what's called keystone capability, so if it's shooting up from below or shooting down from above, there's processing that will keep the image perfectly rectangular, but that again causes reduction of resolution and potentially scaling artifacts. So you really don't want to do that if you don't have to. It's really kind of ugly. Now, your concern about potential damage sitting on that floor stand is very real, especially if you have kids or pets running around because they're going to knock into that thing. So putting it on an end table or some sort of table between two chairs, that's a good idea. I like that idea quite a bit. However, it's small enough that it's going to be easy to knock around, maybe not knock onto the floor, but you're going to misalign it. So once you aim it and align it with the screen, it's going to be very easy to get it off. That alignment Same is true of the floor stand that they sell. So I agree, ceiling mounting is the better way to do it, but I'm not sure there's a way to do that with that duct.
09:06
The one thing I thought of was something custom, and I don't know if you're a handy person or not. I'm not. I would hire somebody to do this, but you'd have to build a contraption that basically attaches to the ceiling in front of and behind the air conditioning duct and then comes together and then the projector mounts onto that in the middle. I can imagine that it would definitely be a custom job and probably not cheap, but it'd be the only way I can see to mount it on the ceiling. It'd be the only way I can see to mount it on the ceiling.
09:51
Now you also asked about if you put it ahead of the duct. Then you'll see small dim areas, illuminated areas on the screen, and that's true because the image is smaller than 92 inches and the way to solve that problem is to cut thin strips of black velvet and attach them to the screen Don't attach them to the actual screen material but to the frame and you can put those on the screen or at least covering those areas of the screen where that dimly illuminated area is around the edges of the actual picture, and that will solve that problem. So if you decide to mount the projector ahead of the duct and you have a smaller image than you want, you can just install these thin strips of black velvet around the screen. It'll be a little tricky because you have to really get them exactly the right width and align them carefully. I mean, that's going to be a whole project, but it will solve that problem. So there you go, good luck.
11:11
I've been looking into that projector a little bit lately and it's a nice one For a lower cost projector. It seems to be quite popular and well regarded and well regarded. So if you have a question for me, send it along to htg at twittv and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. And, as you know by now, all of Twit's shows are available on YouTube for free but with ads. If you want to go ad free, join the club. Go to twittv slash club twit and sign up to be able to get all of Twit's shows without ads. Until next time, geek out.
11:59 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
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