Outdoor Movies 3D Package?

It is with interest that we have seen a seller of outdoor movie screens announce plans to offer  a 3D outdoor movie system. Their press release and website are understandably short of details. We will be interested to see which technology they have chosen.

As a leading pioneer in Outdoor 3D, and with our experience screening a 3D movie to 5,000 viewers using the RealD system on our projectors, we know what the challenges are!  Pioneering technologies comes at a price.

The basics of 3D are simple, there is a movie for the right eye and a movie for the left, so you actually show two movies. A 3D projector and polarizing filter alternates the image very quickly. The glasses make sure each eye only sees the movie it is supposed to see.  The challenge for outdoor display is that showing two movies at once (3D) requires enough light to show the two movies. So the projector must be 50-100% brighter for an equivalent brightness to a 2D display. So there is no real "cheap" 3D.

Stay tuned, there will be more news on this topic! We welcome your comments and feedback.

Your projector selection - cheap 1080p projectors?

If you are looking at purchasing an outdoor movie screen (hopefully from us), you often need a projector. The biggest question that we get these days is, "do I need 1080p." or instead of a question, it is, "I want 1080p." And here is the quandry, in the low lumen market (2500-4000 lumens), Sanyo and Christie do not offer product that is 1080p native. Our customers' are often tempted by good specs and low prices on brands such as Optoma. Our strong opinion is that these projectors offer an lousy picture (losing in shootouts with lower resolution projectors), and worse reliability. You will note that while many users have a good experience, the rate of failure is not acceptable for commercial use. While not representative, here is a link to a number of reviews on Amazon in which buyers had issues.  Some have great headlines:

• Lamp Failure after 38 hrs of usage
• Problems right out of the box
• Don't buy unless you read this
• Very Disappointed
• Don't buy any Optoma projectors
• Buy this projector if you don't like to watch the Super Bowl
• Made to make money. Unacceptable. Expect more.

Our advice, is not to rush into the least expensive consumer grade 1080p projector and use it commercially or at a Park & Rec. There are high quality brands if you are willing to spend a little more. Or if you can be happy with 720p until more product is available, you will have a much more reliable outdoor movie system or package.

Bob Deutsch
Outdoor Movies