"SirBenjamin" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:17:58 -0000, "Ron Lowe"
wrote:


MDF: £6.50
IceStorm Paint (1 liter ): £9.98

I already had the primer and rollers.

All in all, I'm very satisfied with the result. It's perfectly flat, no
image distortions. The colour is good, and the finish is good.

So what films do you intend to watch?

Mostly the kids stuff.

We've got all the current kids animated stuff, from Wallace + Grommit to The
Wild etc. and the older one also likes LOTR and Star Wars. These all
benefit from the Big Screen treatment. I've ben sitting in ther the last 2
nights, and it's been excellent.

I have to say, Standard Definition DVD , even over Component Video and
Progressive Scan ( which both the player and projector support ) looks
distinctly average at this screen size / viewing distance. Doesn't bother
the kids, but if you are a little critical, it will bother you.

Only to be expected, of course. And that's why High Definition becomes
important.

I've just 'obtained' a High-Def 'test' copy of Star Wars 3 .ts file at
1280i from bit-tormumble for comparison purposes, and will try to arrange
for a laptop with sufficient video capability to be in the cinema room to
compare HD / SD on the same movie. I've viewed the HD movie on the PC
monitor, and it looks promising.

Not yet took a laptop through to the cinema room for tests.
My Laptop is currently runnig Vista, so that throws another unknown into the
equation. I'm using VLC player to play back .ts HD files right now, and
I've not yet had time to try the VLC / Vista compatability. Could throw the
legacy WinXP HDD back in the laptop, but I'm trying to give it up.

Personally I would have just pinned and stretched a white blanket on
the wall...saves £16

Depends on your criteria.

Price was not my main issue.
In general, the reason I DIY is to get what I want, at the standard and
quality I want.
And this generally exceeds commercial offerings.
If it didn't, I'd buy the commercial offering.

I'm happy that I was able to exceed commercial products price-wise by a
substantial margin, whilst not conceding on quality.
I think a pinned blanket would not have reached my quality bar. But each to
his own. That's the whole DIY ethos.

--
Ron