For movies on my projector? I save as many of those bits as possible. I try to keep DVDs in full MPEG-2 resolution on my hard drive now that terabytes are becoming affordable. This also preserves all the menus, special features, and audio tracks.

If I really need to shrink a DVD (to fit a DVD-9 onto a cheap DVD-5 for example), then I don’t transcode with DVDShrink, I re-code with DVDRebuilder. One of my better software purchases was a license for DVDRebuilderPro. If you don’t vote with your wallet like Jeff encourages, then there’s a free version you can use. I’d also encourage you to visit Hank315’s tip jar, he wrote HC Encoder, the under-the-hood powerhouse responsible for the quality of DVDRebuilder’s output.

Once you start trying to be a pixel purist, you can set up FFDshow to do magnificent up-scaling.

As for the multi-core processor debate, I’m firmly planted in the “people don’t need more cores (yet)” camp. The whole concept reminds me too much of razor blades. But, I still own a quad-core because my HTPC’s primary activities are up-scaling and video editing.

Hey, did anyone else notice that this is Jeff’s 15th post according to the archive ID?

That’s my homemade 1080p projector. This is the second DIY projector I’ve built.

I destroyed the first projector in 2005 when I took it to Martin’s to watch his relative’s film Cypher, which had just been released. The first projector was a modified overhead – the kind your teacher put transparencies on. When I retired it, I decided to go overboard and buy all the parts to do a 1080p build from scratch. The parts promptly arrived and sat in their boxes for a couple years, until I got around to construction last summer.

The principle is pretty simple. A really bright light, a stripped down computer LCD, and some lenses.

I’ll be completing the as-built write-up in the coming weeks – DIY Projector