Beamer and Dia-show question

[chaoliang]

I'm considering to buy a beamer to show my scaned photos. Any tips for me? I'm thinking about these questions:
1. Many of my photos have the vertical format. Are the LCD-projectors suitable for this?
2. Comparing the colours shown by a projector and a conentional monitor, how close can they be? Or should I expect big deficit there?
3. Recommandations of brands, programs and so on?

Thanks!

[az]

For anyone wondering what he's talking about, Dias are slides

Chao, I think a data/video projector's resolution is far too low for what you're trying to do. You won't even come near the sharpness you're used to from a slide projector, not even with a 10000+ EUR data projector. Also, highlights will likely be blown out and dark tones will become black.

I recommend you get the latest c't magazin, they have an article about using data/video projectors as slide projectors

AZ

[chaoliang]

Thanks for the correction, AZ!
That's a bad news.
I'll read the mag and see. Do you know other alternatives?

[az]

Read the article first, I just skimmed over it (five pages!), and it seems to be optimistic. Lots of tips also

AZ

[VJ]

DLP-projectors results in the highest contrast ratio, but they are more expensive...
(DLP is the technology by Texas Instruments, different manufacturers license it)

As Az stated, you won't reach the sharpness you can with analog projection.


Jörg

[chaoliang]

Then what about showing them on TVs with rather high resolution? Is there really no way to present the images on other devices with the similar IQ of a monitor?

[Wombat]

Nope. You have to realize that a monitor really has insane image quality compared to most other display methods.

[az]

Exactly. Still, read the article, there are a few interesting facts; resolution vs. size and viewing distance for instance - if you're far enough away (which is closer than you think) there's no discernable resolution difference between a good data projector and a slide projector.

AZ

[chaoliang]

I read the article and was at whole quite disapointed with the possible quality of beamers. They said the sharpness and details of these machines are clearly behind that of conventional projectors. And even these points were no problem, the machines would still be actually unusable for vertical format images. I didn't expect that the devlopment of this technology has been so slow.

Still my question: What about bringing the photos onto TV screens? Will the IQ be a bit better than beamers?

[az]

Resolution will actually be worse. Expect image quality at most like that of a good DVD. Colors might be better though. All other limitations of TVs still apply, of course: Flickering, small picture...

AZ