What's on the big screen tonight?

Many of the cruisers we see, especially on powerboats, have a flat screen TV for entertainment. On Spray we use something different in order to save precious space and for minimum power use.

 

It starts with this, made with a piece of shower curtain, two dowels, and some tape.

When its rolled up it stands in a corner near the lower helm and takes up very little space. When its unfurled and hung from the salon ceiling it looks like this:

It's our projection screen and it measures 55" diagonally. To project on it we use this :

This is a small projector (about 4" x 4" x 1") that uses an LED for illumination, so it only uses 15 Watts of power. It runs directly from Spray's 12 VDC and has an HDMI video input. We use this cable setup

to connect it to Sheila's iPhone. As long as she has a decent AT&T cellular connection she can stream Netflix content to the projector, and the entertainment begins :

We've been watching mostly old British police dramas (Inspector Morse and the like) and occasional movies (latest was Margin Call).

 

The system works pretty well, with only a couple of issues:

- These little LED projectors work well in a dark environment, but aren't really bright enough for day use. That's not a problem for us as we only use this in the evenings.

- If you've ever streamed video then you know it moves gobs of data, and unless you have an unlimited data plan you'll overrun your limit in no time. Fortunately Sheila has a grandfathered AT&T contract with 'unlimited' data. You can't get such plans anymore.

- ATT's 'unlimited' data plan has some limits. After we've used 5 Gigabytes (about 5 hours streaming) within a month they 'throttle' the data, meaning they slow the data rate (those bastards!). The Netflix system actually handles that OK. If you've ever noticed when streaming Netflix it takes maybe 10-20 seconds to start a stream. During that time Netflix and the iPhone app are checking the data rate that is available, and if its fast then Netflix will stream a sharp video, but if its slow they stream a somewhat fuzzier video that requires less bandwidth. The result for us is that at some point into the month we notice the picture is less sharp. Still watchable though.

 

So we can be anchored almost anywhere and enjoy big-screen video in the evening, without draining the battery much. In Spray's small salon the screen seems huge.

 

So who can suggest a good movie on Netflix Streaming?

 

Posted with Blogsy