Rig of the Day: My HDTV is bigger than yours

[quote]It always used to amuse me when people forced their new widescreens TVs into 16:9 mode even when watching standard 4:3 broadcasts "because it's a widescreen TV!", somehow blind to the cars with oval wheels and the strangely fat people on screen.[/quote]

Actually, my wife likes to watch it that way so she can say, "Oh my goodness. Look at how much weight Jennifer Aniston's put on!" :-)

My setup (sorry, no pics yet) is a 4:3 Epson projector running at 1024x768, 120 inches, driven by a PPC Mac Mini with Media Central. (Also our TiVo via an S-Video cable.) It's an older projector (710c) and is a bit light for daytime use (usable, but not for movies with lots of dark scenes) but it looks fine at night. The wall area it's projected onto is almost square so there's no reason to go widescreen--it's already as wide as can be, and then we gain height with 4:3 content.

@ Mr Lizard
No sensible video player (iTunes, Front Row, VLC etc...) will distort a 4:3 image just to fill a 16:9 display - you'll just get vertical black stripes to either side.
It always used to amuse me when people forced their new widescreens TVs into 16:9 mode even when watching standard 4:3 broadcasts "because it's a widescreen TV!", somehow blind to the cars with oval wheels and the strangely fat people on screen.

That's mine!

I haven't tried any of the 640x480 itunes videos on the screen yet, but when videos are below standard definition quality it does seem to come through.

The projector in the photo is a Infocus Screenplay 5000 connected to an imac in an office about 50 feet away via DVI. Screen is the Dalite Permwall Cinematte 91". Infrared controls are done through a hardwired Xantech IR repeater system (note the very small dot above the screen - thats the IR sensor).

And that dock... I have magnification turned all the way up and the dock scaled all the way down ;)

You should maybe spend som more money on those sofas as well?

I was also a bit miffed over the 640x480 resolution.

It's "near DVD" quality, which is fair enough, but it's still an almost square (e.g. 4:3) shape.

We can't buy TV shows off the iTunes Store here in the UK yet, but if they became available tommorow, would I buy the whole series of Lost?

Probably not. On my comparitively small 28" widescreen LCD, that's going to look awful, streched out to fill the wider viewing area.

On a DVD the content is encoded in 16:9, for a wide display.

I'm suprised, given all of their own displays are now wide, that Apple didn't change the resolution accordingly.

HD-ready projector you mean?

I would assume the owner hardly uses the dock...

Um, wow, that dock is small, how can yu even tell what icon's are what that far across the room?

Yea, 640x480...I don't know, doesn't seem all that great.

But who knows, maybe if no one told me and I had no DVD content next to it to compare I might not notice.

Great rig though!