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I bought all the parts a few months ago; finally had some free time to assemble it.

Parts List:
•Sharp LTN154U 15.4" LCD panel (1920x1200)
•Realtek LVDS controller card (VGA/Component/S-Video/RCA/Coax/TV tuner)
•18" fl Beseler triplet Lens (stripped from Vu Lyte opaque projector)
•Two Lumenlab "Pro" fresnel lenses (220mm fl condenser; 650mm fl collector)
•Lumenlab 400W T-15 Metal Halide lamp
•400W Electronic Metal Halide ballast from eBay
•spare scrap plywood.
•5 hours of assembly time.
•Balls.  You gotta have 'em when you get to the AR removal.  AG is a picnic compared to the AR.  You mess this up, you're LCD panel's toast (fortunately, it went smooth for me).

Some parts were new; some were used.  Total cost was around $350 USD.  I caught a couple of breaks.  I bought the LVDS controller from a Lumenlab forum member for like $65 or something (he bulk-orders custom-programmed engineering samples, since the commercial controllers can't drive anything higher than SXGA panels).  I got a really good deal on the triplet as well.  The LCD was around $90, iirc (used).  The MH lamp was $50 (which is like one-fifth the cost of a "typical" projector bulb).  The screen was free (one of those I know a guy who knows a guy, type of things), but really, even a painted white wall would work almost as good.

The Verdict:
I saved so much smurfing money on this thing, I'm still in disbelief.  Did I mention commercial 1080p projectors start at $3,500   And homebrew PJ's have an extra 120 rows of pixels.  The bulb life for hombrew PJ's is also quite a bit better at 20,000 hours.  The bulbs themselves are quite a bit cheaper as well.  In fact, my entire projector costs less than a replacement bulb for a normal HD projector.

The picture quality is outstanding.  Colors are great, image is sharp.  Gaming and watching movies at 1080p on the big-screen is simply indescribable.  So you're probably asking, where's the catch?  Well, there's a "big" one -- literally.  Homebrew projectors are roughly 5x larger than a normal LCD projector (but smaller than a typical CRT projector).  They're also not quite as bright.  A dark room is ideal, but it's still enjoyable with a moderate amount of ambient light (such as the light that slips through my venetian blinds).  To put the brightness into perspective, even a dark game like doom looks amazing.

There are other disadvantages specific to the controller card I chose to buy.  In other words, it is possible to buy a controller (namely the Genesis G2A which costs a few hundred) that won't have the anomalies I'm about to mention.  That said, my controller is not perfect.  First, it is not HDCP compliant, so it won't work with some blu-ray players, for example.  This isn't an issue for me, since I'm running an HTPC setup.  Second, I've heard that an XBOX 360 will recognize this controller as a 720p display, but that it works fine with it, otherwise (I don't have an XBOX, so I don't care).  Thirdly, 16:9 sources are stretched to the panel's native 16:10 aspect ratio. Again, this is a moot issue on my PC (and anyway, that's not a whole lot of stretching).  4:3 sources do scale properly, so standard-def TV, my Dreamcast, etc, all look normal.

I'll post pics once I wrap my enclosure in some woodgrain vinyl (which I'm actually having trouble getting a hold of).  In the meantime, you can look at some of the projects people have made over at the LumenLab forums. This dude's story was my my biggest inspiration.  After his whole trial-and-error experience, I knew exactly what I needed to buy to get the best picture for the money.

Last edited by Mr. T (2007-11-24 12:39 am)