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[Matt Davis]

My church is in the very early stages of planning a complete stage redesign, and at the center of this is a new projection system. We will definitely be going to an expert installer once we get closer to starting, but I’m trying to get an idea, and I’m not very experienced in this field.  Our budget for purchasing a projector and lens would preferably be around $5k-$7k, but could be more with some convincing.

We’re thinking of building a massive 2:39:1 screen with material from Carl’s Place. The estimated screen size will be around 101” x 241” (261” diagonal) The projector will need to be 16’ or closer to the screen due to placement of the FoH speakers.  Most of the congregation will be from 30’-60’ from the screen, and the seating maxes out at about 450 people.

I’m assuming we’ll need at least 5000+ lumens due to ambient light, but we’re gonna do as much as we can to remove a lot of it during the redesign. 
I’m also not sure about whether we absolutely need to go WUXGA, or if WXGA will be fine. It will be primarily used for text and graphics, or motion backgrounds. Recorded video is rare, and typically only used for special announcements or events.
We also prefer to go with a laser projector to add longevity and cut down on maintenance.

So far I’ve been looking at some Sony projectors like the VPL-FWZ60, VPL-FWZ65, and VPL-FHZ60 and using a lens like the Fixed VPLL-3007 to achieve that size with a shorter throw.

Attached is a photo of the room for reference.

Again, I’m really not experienced with projection, so feel free to tear anything I said apart.
All suggestions and advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

My church is in the very early stages of planning a complete stage redesign, and at the center of this is a new projection system. We will definitely be going to an expert installer once we get closer to starting, but I’m trying to get an idea, and I’m not very experienced in this field.  Our budget for purchasing a projector and lens would preferably be around $5k-$7k, but could be more with some convincing.

We’re thinking of building a massive 2:39:1 screen with material from Carl’s Place. The estimated screen size will be around 101” x 241” (261” diagonal) The projector will need to be 16’ or closer to the screen due to placement of the FoH speakers.  Most of the congregation will be from 30’-60’ from the screen, and the seating maxes out at about 450 people.

I’m assuming we’ll need at least 5000+ lumens due to ambient light, but we’re gonna do as much as we can to remove a lot of it during the redesign. 
I’m also not sure about whether we absolutely need to go WUXGA, or if WXGA will be fine. It will be primarily used for text and graphics, or motion backgrounds. Recorded video is rare, and typically only used for special announcements or events.
We also prefer to go with a laser projector to add longevity and cut down on maintenance.

So far I’ve been looking at some Sony projectors like the VPL-FWZ60, VPL-FWZ65, and VPL-FHZ60 and using a lens like the Fixed VPLL-3007 to achieve that size with a shorter throw.

Attached is a photo of the room for reference.

Again, I’m really not experienced with projection, so feel free to tear anything I said apart.
All suggestions and advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Your desired projection area is about 170 sq ft.  A general rule of thumb is 50 lumens per sq ft, which comes up at about 8500 lumens.

Keep in mind that your desired projection shape is non-standard - 20’ wide by 8.5’ tall.  This gives you two coverage options - either two projectors blended in the middle, or one projector cropped to fit the screen, meaning you’re going to throw a lot of light (and pixels) away above and/or below your desired projection area.  The height of a typical 16:9 20’ screen would be about 11’ tall, so you’re throwing away about 25% of your light and your vertical pixels.  To get back to the 50 lumens per sq ft taking into account the wasted output above and below your screen shape, you would need an 11,000 lumen projector for normal brightness.

The other factor is resolution.  Stretching a 1920x1080 projector to this dimension gives you about 800 pixels of vertical resolution - 1920x800.  1920 pixels divided by 20’ gives you 8 pixels per inch.  You will have to decide if that’s sharp enough for your purpose.

If at all possible, I would explore two smaller projectors edge blended.  This will help with your shorter throw, but optical quality will matter.

I would get a real projection expert in sooner rather than later.  I think your $7,000 budget is probably significantly low for what you really need.

[Matt Davis]

Your desired projection area is about 170 sq ft.  A general rule of thumb is 50 lumens per sq ft, which comes up at about 8500 lumens.

Keep in mind that your desired projection shape is non-standard - 20’ wide by 8.5’ tall.  This gives you two coverage options - either two projectors blended in the middle, or one projector cropped to fit the screen, meaning you’re going to throw a lot of light (and pixels) away above and/or below your desired projection area.  The height of a typical 16:9 20’ screen would be about 11’ tall, so you’re throwing away about 25% of your light and your vertical pixels.  To get back to the 50 lumens per sq ft taking into account the wasted output above and below your screen shape, you would need an 11,000 lumen projector for normal brightness.

The other factor is resolution.  Stretching a 1920x1080 projector to this dimension gives you about 800 pixels of vertical resolution - 1920x800.  1920 pixels divided by 20’ gives you 8 pixels per inch.  You will have to decide if that’s sharp enough for your purpose.

If at all possible, I would explore two smaller projectors edge blended.  This will help with your shorter throw, but optical quality will matter.

I would get a real projection expert in sooner rather than later.  I think your $7,000 budget is probably significantly low for what you really need.

Okay, that makes sense. The people that are in charge of the redesign are apparently really set on having an extra wide screen. My initial thought was edge blending, but I know someone who said his church achieved the same thing with one projector at about $9k.

Realistically, how large of a picture could you get in 2:39:1 and still have it be bright enough with around a $7k budget?
If we do go with a multi projector setup, is this doable with something more affordable, like the Sony VPL-PHZ10?

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

Okay, that makes sense. The people that are in charge of the redesign are apparently really set on having an extra wide screen. My initial thought was edge blending, but I know someone who said his church achieved the same thing with one projector at about $9k.

Realistically, how large of a picture could you get in 2:39:1 and still have it be bright enough with around a $7k budget?
If we do go with a multi projector setup, is this doable with something more affordable, like the Sony VPL-PHZ10?

Disclaimer - I am not a projector expert and I have never personally done edge blending.  The following is napkin math to help you think.  Beyond that, hopefully someone else can help more.

With a 2 projector blend covering a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, each projector needs to cover at least 1.2:1 aspect ratio, and wider than that will be the blend.  A 16:10 format projector (1920x1200) rather than a 16:9 format projector (1920x1080) gives you a ratio of 1.6:1, meaning that about 30% of each projector image will overlap. This gives you an effective resolution of about 2688x1200, rather than the 1920x800 you would get with a single cropped projector.  That is noticeably sharper (in theory) - 3.2 megapixels vs 1.5 megapixels. 

Edge blending lives or dies based on lens distortion and image uniformity - brightness and color.  Laser projectors help with this since they have much less brightness and color drift as the light sources age compared to lamp-based projectors, but optics still matter.  A lens with significant barrel or pincushion distortion will make it difficult to blend seamlessly, as the blended pixels will be projected in a different place.  I believe software can help with this to some degree, but quality optics will produce a significantly better result. Optimal projector mounting will be important as well so you're not fighting keystoning.

Your example 5000 lumen projectors would be about 7,000 lumens combined in this way, which might be bright enough depending on your expectations and how much ambient light you are competing with.  It would certainly be better from a brightness standpoint than a 5000 lumen projector cropped producing about 3750 lumens into that screen shape.  I can't say if the optics are good enough or if there would be other challenges.

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