Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dan Kreider]

Hi all,

We recently installed a great new projection system.  It's about 50 feet, give or take.  The thing is that we'd like to install a monitor of some kind so the people on the platform can see a copy of what's being projected.  Stage monitors are out, unfortunately, because it's a concrete floor and the conduits are full.

The projector is mounted on an outcropping on the face of the balcony.  I would like to mount an LCD monitor beside it on the balcony.  What size screen would anyone recommend?  Does it need to be hi-def?  I wouldn't think so...  I dunno, this isn't my area of expertise.  Probably goes without saying, but we would really like to LIMIT cost as much as possible.  Nothing fancy, just enough for the presenter to see what's on the screen.  Distance from pulpit to monitor would be...  maybe 40 feet?  That's a guess.

Ideas for screen size, format, etc?

Thanks!!
Dan

[Brad Weber]

Unless you can use very large fonts or are concerned only with seeing a general idea of what is being shown rather than actually reading anything, you are probably looking at wanting a minimum 4' to 5' high image.  Almost any flat panel is going to be 16:9 format, I don't even know if anyone makes 4:3 large format flat panel displays anymore, so that is about a 100" to 120" diagonal image.  Panasonic offers a 103" diagonal plasma with a list price of $69,995, NEC has an 83" diagonal LCD with a list price of $59,999.

Guessing that this may be more than you want to spend, go into a Best Buy or WalMart or Brandsmart USA and try to look at some of the displays from 40' or so away (maybe a little more as the display is likely to be mounted up higher as well).  You may find that you feel a 57" to 65" display works for your use, but you may also find that they look smaller than expected from 40' away.

In many cases, it might be more cost and result effective to look at a second projector, provided there is a way to mount it.

[Karl P(eterson)]

While it would certainly be more cost effective to use a small projector and screen, if flat panel was that big of a deal I believe you could use professional panasonic plasmas in multiples to build a small video wall of either 2x2 or 3x3 for far cheaper than even one of these other plasmas. I understand its probably not the right solution for this environment, but it would be a possibility.

Using the TY-42TM6G input modules would make this simple.

Karl P

Edit: I of course would be remiss if I were to fail to mention that plasmas need to be burned in properly before use. 100hrs with color strobes please.

[Dan Kreider]

Good grief.  That's a litte beyond what I was thinking.

So....  I guess 40 inches diagonal is too small.  Hmm.  Bummer.

[Brad Weber]

Good idea!  You could do tiled matrix 'walls' of several manufacturer's LCD or plasma displays for less.  A number of pro 'public display' LCD and plasma displays have integrated tiling functionality and a 2x2 'wall' of 40" or 50" displays would be the right size, if you can work with the display borders.

[Brad Weber]

It is easy to forget that due to the 16:9 format a 40" display image is less than 20" high.  The unknown in any of this is what is being displayed, which can have a great impact on it.  It really isn't the display size itself but rather the character size, so it can come be a matter of whether you can fit the desired text in large enough characters on the screen.  If you can have a limited amount of text of sufficient size then you can use a smaller screen but if you want more text it takes a bigger screen.

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Dan Kreider wrote on Thu, 02 April 2009 18:13

we'd like to install a monitor of some kind so the people on the platform can see a copy of what's being projected.  Stage monitors are out, unfortunately, because it's a concrete floor and the conduits are full. Ideas for screen size, format, etc?

I think you should look at this as a matter of ratios. We use a projected image for this purpose and frankly its a bit small for some of the people on the platform.

It's about 100 feet from the lectern to the screen, and the image on the screen is about 8 feet tall. I'd like it to be 10' high, but that would allow the heads of the taller people in the back row of seats in the balcony cast shadows on the image.

As they say, do the math!

BTW, this is easily the best quality image in the room, overshadowing the main screen by a country mile. Its a 1500 lumen boardroom Canon LCD, hung from the ceiling and projected onto a tan colored painted cinder block wall.  In short, we pretty much used what we had. It worked so well we never changed anything after we hung the projector.

Turns out that this is naturally the place in the sanctuary with minimal ambient light and spill from the  1950s room lighting. The slightly darkened background actually enhances the appearance of the image because there's plenty of light from the projector at this image size, but the slight darkening minimizes the effect of the light that does spill onto the wall.

[Scott Gregson]

Hi
For what it is worth, and I am not an expert, but we hung a 50" plasma about 40 feet away from our stage and evryone can read it fine, yes the words are small, but we only run two lines of words at any time with large font size.  I have also seen the same thing in a couple of the larger churches near me, around 2000 they both have 50" plasma's abot 40 feet away. I have spoken to them about this and they say that 98% of everyone one on stage can read them.
So it is definitly a cheaper option. Also one of them only hjas words on screen, no background image or video, this helps.

[ProSoundWeb Community]