Can someone take at look at this?

[Drizzt]

http://www.lumenlab.com/

Seems interesting...

[Fluff]

Looks quality, doubt it will ever get girlfriend approval. Put maybe a small widescreen lcd from a portable dvd player in it would be interesting.

[Kurt]

Looks like a scam to me. They only sell the manual for 20$.

Besides, I don't see how you can transform a regular LCD panel into an amazing projector for 100$ and get away with it.

My take: they replace the LCD backlight with a 500W halogen lamp or sth. Sure you get a big picture (if it's possible), but you have no keystone correction and I doubt the controls of the LCD can properly adjust for a lamp they weren't designed for. Then you risk burning your LCD with too strong a lamp...etc. If they were true enthusiast, you'd get the manual for free. They don't give any info, just that it's fantastic and costs only 19.99$. Looks like a get rich quick thing to me...

[rylan]

LCDs monitors are photosensitive when subjected to very high brightness levels from a backlight source, and you would obviously need a high power lamp. This probably works, but I don't see how it could be very bright (at least nowhere close to a DLP projector) after being projected onto a screen. My guess is the center would be brighter with some falloff towards the edges/corners.

[spadnos]

Originally posted by rylan
LCDs monitors are photosensitive when subjected to very high brightness levels from a backlight source, and you would obviously need a high power lamp. This probably works, but I don't see how it could be very bright (at least nowhere close to a DLP projector) after being projected onto a screen. My guess is the center would be brighter with some falloff towards the edges/corners.

Wouldn't the brightness be mostly dependent on the light source? Of course, you'll lose half the light going through the polarizer, so an LCD is inherently dimmer than DLP, given the same light source. They do use a piece of tempered glass between the light and the LCD, to keep heat down.

I browsed through some of the forum threads, and looked at photos from other people who had built them. The ones on the home page are definitely the cream of the crop. Some of them were fairly washed out, as I would expect from an LCD projector.

Nonetheless, the quality vs. price ratio looks pretty good. One guy in Mexico has made 5 of them, using PS1 LCD monitors (a 5" 640x480 display from Sony). The total cost ends up being around $300-$700, depending on the parts used, and whether they're new or not.

This looks basically like an instruction / tip guide for building the equivalent of a portable LCD projector that a businessperson might carry for presentations.

- Steve

[az]

IF this were true, why don't they just build the damn projectors for cheap and sell them?

AZ

[spadnos]

Considering that you can get an LCD projector for around $750 (or DLP at $825), it's ok to save a little by building your own, but there wouldn't be any money in it to build and sell them.

- Steve

[Tjalfe]

I like that you don't have to pay $500 for a new bulb with only 2000 hours of life like you have to do with the professionally built ones