The old expensive Barco or Christie projectors, how do they perform today?

[Winbert Hutahaean]

Before LCD projectors become a norm in home theatre scene we knew around 1990s there were 3 lenses Barco or Christie video projectors. Their prices were so enormous, I believe it would be ranging between $30,000 - $150,000. It was almost impossible an individual to have these type of projectors at home. Now we can have a $800 - $2000 video projector and they were already sufficient for majority laymen eyes.

In this forum we have seen Graham Ritchie 's the 1930s Ernemann old projector runs and the projection quality is not different with the first time it came out from the box almost 90 years ago. This is due to the fact analogue system giving the result with a principle "what you see is what you get".

I am curios to know what would be the performance of those expensive Barco and Christies compared with today's cheapy video projectors? Are they still good?

Supposed someone invested them in his/her home theatre, how long they could enjoy their investment before it was passed by these more affordable LCD projector?

Anyone know?

[Brian Fretwell]

I imagine these could have been three high power CRT projectors and have no idea how well they would age. I suspect, though as well as any 30+ year old CRT TV.

[Melvin England]

I remember seeing one at the time on display in our local Comet store (remember them?) and thinking that if that was going to be the quality of large screen video projection in the future, then Super 8 has NOTHING to worry about !











( Ho Hum !!! )

[Maurice Leakey]

I have only ever seen two three lenses CRT projectors working.

The Watershed Cinema in Bristol.
On a cruise ship, the P&O Victoria.

In each case the picture was not very bright and had colour fringing.

Obviously, rather expensive for home purchase.

CRT - HomeTheaterReview

[Brian Fretwell]

Maurice, you have reminded me that they used to have an SD one in what is now NFT 3 on Southbank and when they did an HD demonstration they had to have two projectors running at the same time to get good screen brightness. That show how long ago it was.

[Maurice Leakey]

Yes Brian, my two experiences must have been some twenty years ago.
In each installation the large box like projector was situated in the centre of the front row of the auditorium. They had to be in this position to fit the size of the existing cinema screen.

[Xander van der Merwe]

Digital projectors have improved exponentially since around 2004 when I purchased my first Panasonic AE100 LCD projector, while the pricing has declined all the way, resulting in amazing value for money today.

I currently have an Epson TW9400 (aka Pro Cinema 6050UB in the US) that is a native 1920x1080 with clever pixel manipulation that makes it a 4K projector (see https://www.projectorcentral.com/Eps...ema_6050UB.htm) with outstanding contrast, brightness, frame interpolation, HDR support, motorised lens shift, zoom and focus with the ability to save all those settings in a number of quick recall memory positions - and all of this supporting pictures 4m (12ft) wide. And all of this for a relative affordable price compared to the old projectors mentioned above.

If you watch 4K film on Bluray or from streaming, the picture is astounding. Old films now released on 4K like My Fair Lady is breath taking on these new projectors.

The old CRT 3 gun Barco projectors mentioned above (likely the Christie too) will be too dim, will not allow a large anough picture, needs professional setup to have the tubes aligned, and to keep them aligned, will not have a sharp enough picture and will almost definitely not have modern HDMI connectivity, meaning you cannot feed it a high resolution source. So I don’t think they can stack up today.

Slightly off topic, but I enjoy film grain, perhaps Tarantino does too - hence filming most (if not all?) of his movies on 35mm and 70mm, and a good modern digital projector with a good source where they have not artificially removed all the film grain to my eyes look as good, if not better, than a 35mm projection.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

Most of those 3 tube CRT video projectors, even the very expensive ones, were only standard definition. Since consumer sources at the time, VHS, LaserDisc, and eventually DVD, did not reach the max of what NTSC and PAL were capable of, people who could afford it would buy line doublers to artificially increase the resolution up to what a given projector was capable of.

[Gary Sayers]

The first time I ever saw a working CRT projector was in the late 1970s in a nightclub in Sheffield. It was one of those 'front projection TV' devices, where the projector and screen were all part of one large construction. The screen was about 50 inches or so.

It was being used as a kind of video juke box and I recall it showed the Rolling stones playing 'it's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it' several times over (the video where they are all in sailor suits and lots of foam abounds). As I remember, the quality wasn't too bad, although being as it was in a nightclub, my judgement may have been impaired!

[Steve Klare]

I saw one of these being used to show a movie in an auditorium at a college about 15 years ago. It looked really awful! I griped it to the people I was with and they saw nothing wrong with it.

-so very likely that most people that had them at home thought they were just great!

Then again, a few years later I went to a Sons of the Desert meeting and they were projecting Way Out West from VHS about 8 feet diagonal. -made Shrek at the college that night look downright wonderful!

[Winbert Hutahaean]

I believe our eyes a bit by bit were trained by the technology. When I first time saw this CRT Projector at a discotheque my wow feeling was burst. I don't know what will be my feeling today if I see the same projector in action, say with a Bluray player is hooked up on it.

This is something I feel that thing never happened in analogue projector worlds except the enhancement of printing technology. Supposed there was a time tunnel machine and I brought today's print to 1930s world, it would just be presented as good as today's, right? This is due to the fact the main aspect of analog projector's technology never change. How wonderful is that!

[Osi Osgood]

Of course, there are projection TV's the size of video cassettes that have a lovely image quality these days. When I bought my Sharp vision TV, the image quality was pretty darned good, not 1080p mind you, but not bad for a poor fool who sold off his super 8 collection to move into laserdiscs. The funny thing is that I still have that TV, haven't used it in over 20 years, but still works great!

[Brian Fretwell]

Here's the first one I saw at the Ideal Home Exhibition seemingly fed from a U-matic video recorder, at least the screen and picture with card showing what it was.. It strangely looks like B&W in this picture, but I'm sure it showed colour.
I'm sure the earlier one I mentioned were nearer 30 years ago as I saw a couple of massive HD Christie DLP projectors at the Millennium Dome in 2000

[Lee McCaffrey]

Barco and Christie are manufacturer brands, they have made projectors using various technologies from 3-tube CRT mentioned in this thread through to more modern LCD and DLP. They make many of the digital DCP projectors in your local cinema or multiplex.

Believe it or not CRT projectors, much like many other technically 'obsolete' analogue technologies (he says on an 8mm forum) has a pretty devoted following. Much like laserdisc the equipment is no longer manufactured so it's a case of accumulating equipment for parts and repair to keep the tech going. There are quite a few out there still (they were the projector of choice for in-flight movies after cine film, plus they were popular in pubs and bars, they come up for sale on ebay regularly plus there are dedicated dealers who offer refurbs/repairs etc.

As with most things the CRT projectors have low-mid-high end models. The size of the tube dictated the max brightness and also the max resolution, the better models had higher scan rates and could display HD. You had extremely high contrast (ie black is black) with excellent colour saturation, no pixel grid and very low running noise. The biggest negatives were they were big and heavy, but mainly required a dedicated installation as they are essentially 3 projectors in one, shooting a red, green and blue image simultaneously which meant they had to be meticulously aligned to line up with eachother. If the projector or screen was moved even slightly, it would have to be realigned! And of course there was the dreaded 'screen burn' from overdriving the tubes.

I say all this as someone who always wanted to get one but didn't due to the dedication required to do it properly. Instead I got an older JVC projector which is probably the next best thing in the video world in terms of colour and contrast, everything looks good on it from HD through to Laserdisc and VHS

[Winbert Hutahaean]

I say all this as someone who always wanted to get one but didn't due to the dedication required to do it properly. Instead I got an older JVC projector which is probably the next best thing in the video world in terms of colour and contrast, everything looks good on it from HD through to Laserdisc and VHS

So did you say these old projectors (the high-end ones) still give good performance compared with today's projector?