Got a M209x dell dlp projector using mostly for movies and games. Wanted to know if putting a fan to help keep projector cool is a good idea? ive seen people do this, but is it ok?

Just bought Samsung DLP projector TV and receive TV signals by satellite (Showtime). Will my set receive broadcast signals OK?

We have a Toshiba DLP projector and after it’s on for awhile, the air in the room doesn’t feel right to me and I need to open a window. I’ve noticed this much more now that I’m pregnant. Is there any health risk to the air or do you know why the air seems to be less fresh?

we have it on an angle to the side and we want to center it on the screen thats on the wall. we’re not sure how to do that.

I was just at my favorite electronics repair shop dealing with a video camera and happened to see a broken digital light processor color wheel on his counter. I asked, "Whoa, how can this break like that?" The shop owner/head tech. said that it’s because of a power outage. I asked how a power outage can cause that and he said it’s because the fan on the display didn’t have a chance to cool the DLP disc down enough, so because the wheel is so hot and isn’t getting cooled down fast enough, it physically breaks!

Whow! Very oddly interesting!

But I forgot to ask Hossein if that happens every time, or only if the TV or other projector has been on for a good while. I guess it would only be if the display’s been on for a good while. Huh?

By the way, this, then, means that you must WAIT until the fan has had a chance to cool the display down before you even unplug it! (You can turn it off but then the fan will keep running for at least a little while.)

So what do you know? Have you heard of a DLP unit that survived a power outage, or even a stupidly early unplugging?

Will you please come back and see my responses to your answers? Thanks, if so.

Mike Christensen
Hossein gave me the broken DLP wheel assembly to play with, by the way (he offered without my asking, and that was nice). This one, or even an unbroken one, is rather interesting to look at! It’s very interesting to me that some displays need such a kind of device in order to work! My only displays, though, are tubes and liquid-crystal displays. (One day I might want a DLP, though.)
OH! Or does this breakage only happen if the power comes back ON too soon after the display’s fan was turned off early?
Oh, I just learned that only the older DLP TVs, etc. use color wheels. Newer ones use colored LEDs to reflect color from the tiny mirrors in the DMD chp. Well, that’s good so that people don’t have to worry about this problem if they buy newer units.

But my question still applies, because I’m still asking about the older sets.
Hi, Gp4rts,

Thanks for your answer! So are you saying that it’s just hit-or-miss about whether or not the color wheel gets damaged by a shattering lamp? But I’ve just read of times when the wheel shattered but the lamp didn’t. Have you heard of that, too? So are there times that when the machine’s been on and then the power outage happens that this shattering DOESN’T happen, even without a battery backup? But does it happen more often than not?

Maybe the manufacturers of wheel-based DLP systems should’ve included battery backups in all their machines so that the fan would run to cool the lamp regardless of what happened. Agreed? But once the new LED-based ones come down in price noticeably farther (I’m just going based on what you said), then those old wheel-based ones will be all but obsolete.

Blue LEDs were possible to be made for several years, now. Why didn’t they just use LEDs in the first place?
Whow, isn’t it weird–all this stuff about color wheels–to have mechanical parts in a TV or video projector (other than merely a fan)? Before DLP came out, I never thought I’d see the day when some TVs would once, again, be somewhat mechanical! I say "again" because WAYY back even before the days of Philo Farnsworth’s invention of the picture tube, there was such a thing as mechanical TV (before this new iteration), in which discs with a spiral of holes were used in front of lights (one at the transmission end and one at the receiving end, synchronised). So with this color wheel in DLP, it almost seems like a backstep in technology in some weird kind of way, doesn’t it?
Oh, yeah, the most mechanical thing that’s ever been in a TV since the tube got invented–up until now, I guess–has been those rotating tuners with the knobs. I grew up with those. Our first VCR even had a pair of those. Remember those?

One set of my grandparents even had one of those RCA knob-tuner TVs with a remote control! The control would send an audible spring-hammer-based click to the TV and a motor inside the TV would turn the knob for them! Probably the first model of remote-controlled TV out there! It was rather interesting!