Before getting my Barco Graphic 808S CRT projector I had been lusting after a projector for many many year. When digital projectors started getting much more popular many companies that had been using CRT projectors in their boardrooms decided to switch over to the smaller and easier to manage digital projectors. A very close friend of mine worked at a company that was in a similar situation and he tipped me off that they would be replacing their CRT projector with a digital unit. To make a long story short he put me in contact with the right people at his business and we were able to work out a deal. This was back in 2000 and I have been the proud owner of the Barco Graphics 808S since then. When I first went to go look at 808S I was very happy to see that it only had around 800 hours on it and the tube faces looked pristine, I really lucked out.

I have had the Barco 808S for almost seven years now and it has been practically trouble free, about four years ago I had to replace one of the boards but other than that it has been rock solid. I have put on about 5,000 hours on the tubes now and they still look great. With the lenses of you can see a bit of wear but the image doesn’t seem to be affected in the slightest.

I project a 110″ image onto a 16:9 Stewart StudioTek 130 screen, you can read about my screen on my screen page. I have my projector mounted on the ceiling (the mount was included with the purchase of the projector). The Barco 808S is fed by a DVDO iScan HD Video Scaler which upscales my DVD, laserdisc and standard definition TV signals.

The Barco Graphics 808S is probably my favorite piece of equipment in my home theater. It has been supremely reliable for me, puts out a stunning picture and setup and tweaking isn’t overly difficult. It is a big piece of equipment though but once it was mounted on my ceiling the size never bothered me (getting up there was a challenge though). Used CRT projectors are getting cheaper and cheaper and to me represent the best value in projectors.