[rescue] Dual headed U10

[Don Y]

Dan Duncan wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Aug 2006, Bill Bradford wrote:
>> The last CRT left in the house here is a 19" TV that my wife uses in the
>> "office" to watch tennis matches.  I'm tempted to find a composite-video-to-
>> VGA box and replace it with on of the 18.1" Sun LCDs I have spare [0].
> 
> I still have my 35" CRT TV because it looks great.  I've looked at bigger screens
> but most of them either look like ass, cost too much (up front and/or down the road),
> or require lighting levels or viewing angles I don't like or can't provide.  A friend

Agreed.  I only use LCD's in my laptops.  I dislike the image
they present to me -- even when viewing in ideal conditions.
Friends drop off broken LCD's and I repair them and pass them
on to local charities, etc.  (apparently, many resell them for
$30-100 -- depending on size).

> got an HDTV rear projection a couple of years ago in the 55" range and proudly showed
> it to me but I opted to be polite.  I'm not
> up on the latest names for the competing technologies but there is definitely a
> VAST difference between them all and they've progressed in the last couple of years.

Projection screens have always had problems with light output.
Rear projections usually suffered from viewing angle, as well.

Ages ago, Kloss (?) made nice front projection systems.
But, in order to get large (e.g., 10 ft diagonal) images,
you still had to rely on dim ambient lighting and/or
"glass bead" projection screens.

> When I move (hopefully soon) I'll re-visit this for my new living room.  An overhead
> projector is my leading choice right now if the room will handle it.  A friend of mine
> had a living with a very narrow stretch of floor but about waist level the room widened
> considerably over a knee wall and stairwell and the far wall was far enough out and
> big enough for a perfect projection screen.  I want something like that or maybe

I've thought of using a screen based solution and letting the
screen serve double duty as a window shade!  (cuts down on ambient
light at the same time).

> I'll just wait for OLED.  I'm hoping OLED can finally reach my ideal of a nearly seamless

I think OLEDs will suffer from the same sorts of problems that
LCD's do -- burned out pixels.  :-(  Thankfully, the only
practical way to do this with a CRT is for the deflection amps
to fail  :-(

> modular screen where I can hang an NxN grid of modular panels on the wall and
> connect them a video unit that can make the picture fit it.  Say I can afford or
> fit 3x3 and then later I can upgrade to 4x4 and toggle between watching my movies
> in 4x4 or watching them in 3x3 with 7 other panels I can use for email, weather,
> or something or do 3x4 with a primary 3x3 and 3 other panels.  Talk about
> picture-in-picture from hell...

Pioneer (?) makes a modular projection system like this.
You cascade the boxes and tell them what sort of arrangement
(3x3, 4x4, etc.) you have and each box sorts out which portion
of the signal it needs to display.

Unfortunately, since they are physical boxes, there are (very
small!) borders on the edge of each.  So, it isn't completely
seemless (though they worked hard to make the borders VERY
small and unobtrusive)