Introduction

Thank you for purchasing the Planar A480-PL lens system – the world’s leading model anamorphic lens system designed to dramatically enhance today’s high performance 16:9 projectors when showing the true widescreen aspect ratio of most major motion pictures.

The A480-PL lens system includes the UH480 Lens and ATH1 automated transport to provide the optimum performance when viewing all wide screen content. The ATH1 transport can be mounted to your ceiling, to an improvised ceiling structure, or to the pre-engineered AKPro Attachment Kit. However, due to the very simple Plug-and-Play procedure they offer, use of these kits will be the focus of this installation guide.

UH480 BASIC PROJECTION PARAMETERS

Throw Distance (distance from projector lens to screen)

This distance should be between 12 and 25 feet (3.6M and 7.6M) with the standard UH480 lens with an ideal range of 14.5 to 17.5 feet (4.4M to 5.3M) for the highest pixel level clarity, especially for computer graphics applications at 1080 resolution. If your projection system involves a significantly higher throw distance then we recommend purchasing an optional correction element (see www.panamorph.com) if you need graphic level performance.

Throw Ratio (ratio of throw distance to 16:9 native image width)

This ratio primarily impacts image distortion. To minimize the amount that the image edges bow inward a throw ratio of at least 1.6 is recommended.

If larger distortion is acceptable, the large aperture of the UH480 will generally work with a throw ratio as low as 1.3 as long as the beam passes through the lens unobstructed. Due to the large distortion and also the increased non-uniformity of image brightness (hot spotting) at very low throw ratios you may wish to consider a curved screen in such cases to help compensate for these artifacts.

Image/Lens Shift

Horizontal lens/image shift other than fine adjustment is not recommended due to keystoning that can be introduced by the UH480. Vertical lens shift does not impact the use of the UH480. However, note that with vertical lens shift the UH480 should be tilted to face the approximate center of the screen to make any residual pincushion distortion symmetric at the top and bottom of the image.

A NOTE ON YOUR SCREEN FORMAT

The A480-PL system works very well with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen. However, if you are considering a new screen we actually recommend an aspect ratio of 2.40:1 for the best all around fit. The 2.35:1 aspect ratio is somewhat of a film industry designation for many aspect ratios around 2.35:1 and may include many titles up to 2.40:1 and occasionally higher. Consequently, by following these installation instructions we will help you optimize your constant height imaging performance for all three primary aspect ratios of 16:9, 1.85:1 and the general range of 2.35:1-2.40:1.

Page 2