Outdoor Movies - Trends in Playback - iSeries Outdoor Movies Package

At home, how do you watch a movie?  Do you use your iPad, AppleTV, Netflix, laptop... is portable media obsolete or almost obsolete? Does this affect the Outdoor Movie business.  I believe that it does. The studios hate discs because encryption is easy to break so the content is so easily pirated. I believe content will live on a device ie iTunes but eventually moves onto the cloud ie iTunes match.

Turning this "belief" into something actionable required us to rethink how we look at our outdoor movie packages, so we devised the iSeries Outdoor Movie Package,  which offers a Mac based playback platform with BluRay and storage/cloud based capabilities. The goal was to offer something for today and tomorrow.

What do you think?

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

Storage and maintenance of your outdoor movie projector

Our last post dealt with storing your inflatable screen for the winter.  If you have an outdoor movie package  purchased from us at Outdoor Movies or elsewhere, you will want to take a good look at your projector and store it carefully.  First and most importantly, locate the air intake and look for the air filter.  During outdoor use, the projector's filter protects the internal components from dirt and dust.  If the filter is dirty, it restricts airflow.  Restricted airflow causes decreased bulb life, overheating and reduced performance. So remove the filter. Most are made from foam rubber and easily cleaned with water and then dried.  Some need to be replaced.  Either way, this is an important preventative maintenance step.    Additionally, dust that is apparent to the eye should be removed using a clean dry cloth.

Lens cleaning - if you have a lens cleaning kit that includes: lens paper, a camel hair brush and lens cleaning solution, terrific. If not, one can be obtained from a reputable camera store (or from us).  Use solutions sparingly using with light pressure and a circular motion to remove dust and fingerprints.  If you have lost the lens cap, now is a great time to replace it, as well.

Remove the batteries from the remote control, and check to make sure you have your necessary cables and adapters.

That should do it! Your outdoor movie package's projector should be ready to store.

Keep warm,
Bob Deutsch
Outdoor Movies
www.outdoor-movies.com