I saw a post on Craigslist devoted to a Data Projector for $100, with no details. I asked the poster about it, but got no feedback, and then the post disappeared. I was disappointed. Then it appeared again. I figured there was probably something wrong with it, as that was the reason it was so cheap, and the reason it was being listed again. I asked for more detail, and this time I got a response. It was a Proxima 9200.

I headed over to take a look at it, and the image was awful, with severe ghosting, but I had googled the projector and knew others had similar problems, and that there was a probable fix available by taking it apart. Thus I took the plunge.

After shuffling computers around to try to get a system far enough across the side of the room to reach the projector (the projector has to be a certain distance from the wall). I got it on my bookshelf and I fired it up.

The image looked awful. In fact, it was worse than when I saw it during the demo.

This was not promising.

Thus, reading the forums, I learned about adjusting the LCD panels, and so I immediately took the cover off to follow the online instructions.

I dug through my tools to find my Allen key set, I was ready to get to work in adjusting this projector.

I put the projector back on my bookshelf, and started it up with the lid off. It looked quite interesting with the top off (despite the smell of old cigarette smoke leaking from the case) the LCD screens inside it each glowing a different color.

I identified that it was the red LCD that was out of alignment. Reading the online forums carefully, I read up on manually adjusting the LCD screens. I loosened the screws required, but nothing on the red LCD seemed to move. Strangely, many of the online projector forums were not functioning while I tried to do this, and I was trying to rely on the Google cache of the forums to make my modifications. You can see below part of the DVD menu from the movie Hot Fuzz:

I noticed that the ghosting was also present in the menu:

I then blocked the red LCD output with a piece of paper to see if the image on the screen was modified by the lack of red. It was not. That was not good news, it indicated a software problem. I then blocked the blue LCD as well, and with only the green LCD projecting I still got a double image.

Not good. Not good at all.

I was frustrated by this, as I figured I had just wasted $100 on a non-usable projector. Knowing better than to try to tinker with it while miffed, I tightened the screws I had loosened and replaced the cover.

I decided to Google more with varied searches. It turns out that others with this exact same projector, many others that I first thought had ghosting issues. Perhaps I had bought a lemon, and they were all due to become defective after time.

Then I stumbled across a thread talking about the ghosting and the hidden “Service Menu” on this projector.

To get to the service menu, you hold down the “Menu” and “Normal” buttons, this brings up a hidden menu. The sections you want to pay attention to are sections 11,12 and 13 in the menu system. There is a hex value you can set, and fortunately, the counter overflows, so you can adjust it in either direction. I made some quick adjustments to the red setting, and suddenly the picture was clear!

The “Scenes” image from the Hot Fuzz movie menu suddenly looked better:

I then decided to sit down and watch Hot Fuzz on my new $100 projector. And to boot, the lamp life according to the projector (Obtained by holding down the “up” key for over 20 seconds) looks to be over 200 hours remaining.

I did learn that it is incredibly hard to take a picture of a digital projector image, even with the new Sony A200 that Dawn got for my birthday. This picture does not do it justice as it is washed out:

Large image of Hot Fuzz on Proxima

I of course had to try TF2:

You will notice the picture is too large to even properly fit on my wall. After charging batteries for the remote, I mastered the zoom feature and was able to fix this, and discovered much to my amusement that the remote even comes with a built in laser pointer. Useless for my purposes, but still really cool. This thing is going to make a great TV when I build my Mythbuntu Home Theatre PC in the coming months.