Evening folks, I’m looking for a little help setting up a surprise for my son. My work was throwing out an Epson EB-U42 projector, said there was a "big bang" one day and it hadn't been used since. I figured the bulb had just blown, said it could probably be repaired and they told me to take it as it was being binned, they bought a new one at the time. Anyhoo instead of dropping £200 on an official bulb just to find out the projector was completely goosed, I ordered two cheap replacements from AliExpress for £30. After spending a lifetime cleaning out the exploded glass from the old bulb, I popped the new one in and it works perfectly! I know these cheap bulbs won't be as bright or last as long, but it’s still a massive step up from the Visspl V30 he’s currently using. I tested it while he was at his Gran's, and the image is so much sharper (the old one couldn't even focus on all four corners). He’s going away for a week soon, so I’m redoing his room with a new bed and units, painting it etc, and moving his consoles up from the living room (he's getting older now and starting to spend more time in his room). I’d love to get this projector permanently set up as part of the surprise, maybe with a small soundbar and some extras as well. Since I’ve never owned a real projector before, looking online has been a bit of a minefield of conflicting information and alot of folk on reddit arguing about it. Soooooo I'm hoping some of you with more experience can help me out with a few questions: 1. Mounting & Placement Right now, the projector is sitting on a high shelf inside his built-in wardrobe. I don't really want to ceiling mount it. It shoots a nearly 100-inch image onto the opposite wall, but because it's sitting so high up, I have to angle it down quite a bit (currently propped up with Lego). I'm thinking of buying a basic mount to attach to the shelf so I can angle it properly, but it’s going to be a steep downward angle (maybe 40 degrees). Will this cause major issues with image quality ? Kind of like the below (I know natural artist eh) With something like this, but upside down, so its screwed to the shelf As it currently sits like this with its lego stand. Even at that angle which is pretty low you can see its well off the opposite wall 2. Wall vs. Cheap Screen He has a large white wall. The room gets pretty bright during the day (we live at the top of a hill). I’m installing a new blackout blind, but there will likely still be some light bleed. I don't want to spend a fortune, so thinking my obvious options are: Repaint the wall pure white to cover scuffs, fill the dents and holes etc Paint it a greyish tone (I've seen this suggested for contrast on reddit a good few times to improve light visibility through the day). Buy specific "projector wall paint" (though at £50 a tub, I'm hesitant as reviews are hit and miss, says its light rejecting). Buy a cheap screen from Amazon for around £30 and pin it to the wall. (I know proper ALR screens are amazing, but they are way out of budget). But wondering if the cheap light rejections ones are any good, i know you loose quality at angles, but this things taking up his whole room more or less. 3. The Light Border & Resolution When I use the corner correction/keystone to square up the image, it leaves a noticeable border of overcast light on the wall outside the active picture when i correct it to be straight. Is there any way to improve this? Also, when I plugged in a 1080p Firestick (after a factory reset), the horizontal calibration was way off. Is this border happening because the projector is WUXGA (1200p) and the Firestick is 1080p, or is it just because my physical placement/angling isn't quite right yet? 4. Colour Calibration Is there an easy, beginner-friendly way to calibrate the colour? I’ve seen videos where people just tweak contrast, sharpness, and colour temp by eye, and others where people use calibration devices. I'm open to any simple tips to get it looking great for gaming and watching stuff on. Looking forward to the advice
I used to do this stuff for a living, so here's the run down to your answers. 1. Mounting and placement: I'm not sure why the projector needs to be at such a steep angle. I'd be surprised if, when you mount it to the top of the shelf, that the angle was more than 10-15 degrees, if that. The key thing is that the projector is as straight on to the wall as you can get it. I'd still advise ceiling mounting if you could, it'll be so much better. 2. Screen vs. paint - the problem with the screen you posted is that it's guaranteed to come folded in a box rather than rolled in a tube. The creases will be a total bugger to get out. Go for paint. Have a search on the interwebs for paint recipes. I seem to remember there was a specific shade of slightly off-white paint from Johnstones, mixed with silver acrylic paint that works better than any cheap crap you can get from Amazon. Paint 2-3 coats, sanding lightly between each. Top tip: set the screen up first, get all the keystoning done, than mask the edges of the picture - then paint the wall. That way, you know the screen is precisely where it needs to be. Top tip 2: Get some blackboard paint and paint a black border. This will help to minimise the edges of the keystones from showing. Even better, you can buy self-adhesive black velvet. These will absorb even more light than the paint. 3. The problem you're seeing there is that you have an LCD projector that isn't very good at displaying blacks that well. The keystone feature basically paints black around the edges of the LCD, but because it's not very good at displaying blacks, you can still see it. Painting black borders will help. 4. Pro tip: If you can, see if there's an advanced menu, or en engineer's menu that allows you to tweak R, G and B values directly. Print off a sheet with pure red, green and blue squares - matt photo paper with an inkjet will give better results - and get as close as you can with the projector. If not, I'd drop the brightness and contrast down quite a bit - remember, this is a work model that's been built and setup to work in a bright room, you won't need it to be anywhere near as bright in your son's room. Let me know if you have any more questions.
That is an amazing reply, I’ll do some digging on the paint and get a bracket bought tonight and some trunking, was more for running power leads than anything tbh but your right I should probably just do it right in the first place. Love the velvet ideas that’s a shout, will look more cinematic as well with that, thanks if, if I think of anything else I’ll pop it in here
