WalVisions - Home Page

Welcome to
WalVisions

WalVisions was created to help with the many aspects of large screen video display installations, with the primary focus being on home theater front projection systems. There are more reasons than ever to have large displays in all applications, and one of the most exciting is the creation of a truly involving home theater environment. New, high performance technologies, lower costs, and amazing high definition source material have created an opportunity for a truly entertaining and satisfying large screen viewing experience. While the material here has not been updated and is thus now dated, we hope that is still useful and thus remains available as a reference.

Here at WalVisions we hope to be helpful in selecting which type of display is most appropriate for your application, in highlighting the differences in the available technologies, in determining where to make purchases and how to have installations performed, and in getting the top performance from your system. In most cases we hope the material is easy to read and follow, but there are a few areas that are a little deeper, and it's OK to simply leave these sections to those who may be somewhat more advanced. Please note that we are receptive to inquiries about the material presented here; if you are so inclined, please feel free to contact Walter with your specific questions.

The first posting here at WalVisions, and a key reason for the site development, is the Test Patterns section. We feel that nearly all entertainment systems should have connections for personal computer input, which makes the display available for viewing digital images from cameras, PC based video, streaming video, video games, computer art, etc., and also enables family/group viewing of Internet sources. In these systems where the Internet can be viewed on the display device, the WalVisions Test Patterns can be displayed simply as Internet pages, without any software installation. These patterns provide an opportunity to have some fun while learning, and to help in checking and adjusting the display for optimum performance. If the Internet is available at a store where displays are being evaluated, these test patterns can also be used to objectively compare the displays using "your own" source material!

The Home Theater section is a significant resource for information on understanding and creating an exceptional home entertainment system. We hope you will find that we have provided honest, unbiased information to help the consumer understand, find and install the best system for his needs and budget.

If looked at our WalVisions name, and guessed that we might have a Wall Visions section (under Home Theater) - you would be absolutely correct! Using your plain white wall as a screen has several benefits, as well as a few drawbacks. Here we discuss some of the issues to help you decide if this might be a solution for you.

The Display Performance section serves as a bridge between the Home Theater tutorial and the Test Patterns sections of this site. Here we will guide you through many of the basic steps in understanding and evaluating the performance of displays.

The Archives section is a short course in modern day projection history spanning the early 1970s to the late 1990s. Here we provide reproductions of video projection literature from Advent, Kloss Video and AmPro; this literature represents the companies and the products that author had some part in creating. We invite the reader to take a few moments to step back in time to experience some of the options that faced the then home theater enthusiast.

The Walter's Visions section of WalVisions has been created to present a number of Walter's views on a wide array of topics. The world (not to mention the Cosmos!) is a diverse and spectacular place, one that is underappreciated by an alarming number of people as they are engulfed in their day to day existence. We hope to be able to help put everyday living and a variety of events in their proper perspectives, and possibly add to the order in what may appear to be a disordered world.