GETTING STARTED: WHAT DO YOU NEED?

A Barco! :-)

REQUIREMENTS

A Working Brain
You'll need a brain. One that works. Don't rush off and buy a Barco without knowing what your getting into. Read this site. Join a forum such as avsforum.com (english) or htforum.nl (dutch) and make sure you understand the pros and cons of having a CRT projector in your home. A Barco will give you endless hours of fun if setup and operated correctly. However, if you are impatient and mess up, it will give you endless hours of headache and frustration :-/

The big Barco CRT projector makes little Britney cry

WAF: The "Wife Acceptance Factor"
Most people underestimate WAF. You will need SPACE. A Barco CRT projector is big. No, make that HUGE. If you and your significant other often have arguments about furniture, curtains and the general look and feel of a room or house, a Barco could be a BIG challenge for your relationship. Make sure you both understand the implications of having a 130lbs spaceship in your living room, basement or attic. ESPECIALLY if you wish to keep it on the floor. The optimum seating distance will be roughly the same as the distance between the projector and the screen. This means that in a floor-mounted setup, seating will have to be arranged at the sides or right behind the projector. If you were thinking of watching a romantic movie together, a whirring projector in between you and your SO will become quite annoying after a while :-( besides, a floor mounted projector is a dust magnet and you risk spilling drinks and other stuff into the projector.

I recommend ceiling-mounting a projector if possible. It makes getting rid of cabling easier, will keep dust out better and allows you to use the full floor space for seating. With a nice hushbox design, even the biggest ceiling mounted Barco can be nicely incorporated into the room design (although Britney seems to disagree :-) ).

Room length (measured from screen to opposite wall)
Unlike modern DLP and LCD projectors, CRT projectors do not have an optical zoom capability. The distance between a the projector and the screen fully depends on the screenwidth you intend to use. An incorrect physical setup (distance, height etc) will result in problems that most likely cannot be resolved through the tweaking of lens opticts or electronic settings. For any CRT projector setup, it is vital that we use as much of the phosphor surface of the tubes as possible. If you mount the projector too far away from the screen, only a small amount of the tube phosphor surface will be used, which decreases light output and image resolution. More importantly it will result in tube wear that is clearly visible when the projector is properly setup in a different location. If you mount the projector too close, the projected image will use too much of the sides of the lenses, which could results in focus problems or optical distortion. More importantly, in order to correct the projection distance error, you risk having to project and image raster that exceeds the size of the tube surface, causing the electron beam to heat the sides of the tubes that are not cooled by liquid. This could result in a cracked tube. If the projector was properly setup in the past, you will also notice visible tube wear on the sides of the image, often visible as a bordered discoloration of the projected image.

The fixed projection distance could pose to be a problem if your room is say twice as wide. Because this means the projector will need to be mounted in the center of the room, making it far more visible than if it was say, on one side of the room. If your room is the exact same width as the projection distance you will have a problem too, as the projection distance is measured from the lenses to the screen. You'll need at least another 100 cm more to fit the projector itself and be able to open the cover. Use the LENS program to calculate the correct distance of the projector. If it says the projection distance is 4 meters, the wall opposite to the screen will need to be at least 5 meters away to allow room for the projector. If you're thinking of buying a Barco 808 or other model, you'll need even more space as these projectors are even larger than the 800.

Barco Ceiling Mount

Ceiling Mount
If you choose to mount the Barco on the ceiling, you'll either need the original Ceiling Mount manufactured by Barco, or a clever combination of Rapidrail, Rapidstrut or similar mounting rail to safely fix your projector to the ceiling while still allowing some minor adjustments in the physicial setup of the projector. In the ceiling mounting section of this website you will find a detailed description about how I mounted my Barco, which was quite a challenge considereing the thin wooden panels that made up my ceiling.
Whatever system you choose, make sure its SAFE. If the purchase price of a replacement projector doesnt kill you, the impact of the Barco colliding with the top of your skull will.

Arnold says: lifting a Barco only 5 minutes a day will make you governor of California in no time!

Muscle power :)
If you wish to mount the Barco to the ceiling, you'll need at least one, but preferably two fairly strong friends to help you out. Many people can lift 130lbs but few people can lift it above their head for more than a few minutes :) Ofcourse a mechanical lifting device, or a number of pulleys is a good alternative, but I'd still recommend working with at least two people on this project to keep things as safe as possible. Barco's are very HEAVY f#ckers

ELECTRONICS REQUIREMENTS

AC Outlets
You'll need a clean AC power outlet to feed your Barco. Try to avoid using the same "group" that has your washer and dryer or refigerator on it. "Dirty" AC power feeds could result in a noisy image. Try to keep the power cable of the Barco away from the video cable to minimize RF interference.

VIDEO SOURCE REQUIREMENTS
The Barco Data 800 accepts a number of different video signals. SVHS and RGBHV are both supported. SVHS is interlaced and looks terrible. The difference between interlaced SVHS and progressive RGBHV is day and night. The RGBHV input will accept all video signals that are within the RGB bandwidth of the projector (The Graphics 800 supports slightly higher resolutions/refresh rates than the Data 800). In most cases, the Barco will only accept video signals on the RGBHV port (port 5) that have NEGATIVE horizontal and vertical sync.

You can feed the Barco with one of the following video sources:

VGA to RGBHV cable

Barco RCVDS Video switch