I was looking for some ideas for one of my little projects, and I ran across this screen mask controller that [Danny] was working on a while back. The roller drops a mask down, and an optical encoder lets the controller know the position of the mask. The final version is supposed to support ethernet, but I couldn’t find any updates on the project.
This is ridiculos! Who needs this stuff? A screen mask controller? WTF? i have a 21 inch monitor with 3000:1 contrast and that is all i need. i want to concentrate on the movie not on the screen!
Posted at 9:09 pm on Aug 13th, 2007 by nom1
hi
Posted at 12:02 am on Aug 14th, 2007 by rajasekhar
“i have a 21 inch monitor with 3000:1 contrast and that is all i need. i want to concentrate on the movie not on the screen!”
21 inch?? lol.
I don’t think you understand the implications of this, and you’re screen is about 100 inches too small to be a viable candidate for a system like this.
for an insanely professional theater install, with a screen of that size, (110-130 inch or so like i run) and a room that seats probably 8-10 people, (my theater seats 7 due to size limitations) you can mask the entire outer edge of the wall with plush velvet if you want to go crazy, BUT the one that you cant change is the aspect ratio of different films.
when its that large on a wall, the top and bottom black bars generated by the scaler in the dvd player or vlc or mplayerclassic are very distracting.
this guy has basically built an electric adjustable version of something that many people would want for their theater rooms.
im sure its been done before, but his method is pretty cool. shame some movies are not transferred properly to digital and are actually in between those figured he has listed there.
which is what “rolan yang” was talking about simply hooking it up to a switch and doing the adjustment on the fly.
either way, very cool hack.
Posted at 12:22 am on Aug 14th, 2007 by doublethink
I think a sensor that would detect the edge of the displayed movie would be more useful.
Posted at 5:01 am on Aug 14th, 2007 by snel afvallen
Far easier to put Ir sensors at specific points, press a button, go to aspect X, Y or Z. way simpler and easy to control from real theater gear like crestron. Ethernet control? eeew, how droll.
Posted at 10:15 am on Aug 14th, 2007 by stinky
Far out, shades of the 70’s light “organs”, but better, I like it. I’m guessing we would have to see it live to get the full effect as why the fans are used. A stage between L/R meters. A strobe on a hippy chick boogie’n on the stage, you have a party. BTW; what’s the Racket shape things in the background.
Posted at 3:21 pm on Aug 17th, 2007 by static
ewww it looks like a bunch of worms!
Posted at 6:05 pm on Aug 17th, 2007 by nathan belomy
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Nice project. It would be simpler if you just placed a piece of thin white tape on the reverse side edge of the masking cloth at the several locations (corresponding to the ratios) then used the photo emitter/sensor detect when to stop. I have a motorized masking on my screen and wanted the mask to stop right against the edge of the film. Unfortunately, many movies when projected onto the screen, don’t conform to the standard ratios so I ultimately went with a simple analog switch which controls up and down.
Posted at 7:17 pm on Aug 13th, 2007 by Rolan Yang