Video projectors

[Jorn]

I'm looking for a video projector; mostly for watching movies on DVD or blue-ray so 1080 is a must. Don't want to spent more than $1500, what is already on the high side for me. Anyone here have experience with a home move projector for a reasonable price?

[pawoSD]

Lol, you're about $1000 short of the cheapest projectors that meet the requirements you are talking about....

IMHO a decent "business projector" in the $500-800 range have VERY good image output and are much more worth it unless you're dripping in cash.

[tbomachines]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824219062

Problem solved! One of the (if not THE) best rated projector on the market--I was going to get one of these but a projector doesn't make sense in my situation. Keep in mind that with any projector you're looking at a lamp replacement every few years.

[Jorn]

Originally Posted by pawoSD

Lol, you're about $1000 short of the cheapest projectors that meet the requirements you are talking about....

IMHO a decent "business projector" in the $500-800 range have VERY good image output and are much more worth it unless you're dripping in cash.

Not dripping in cash and as a thrifty Dutch guy not willing to spent $2500 to watch movies, that's a lot of movie tickets.

[Jorn]

Originally Posted by tbomachines

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824219062

Problem solved! One of the (if not THE) best rated projector on the market--I was going to get one of these but a projector doesn't make sense in my situation. Keep in mind that with any projector you're looking at a lamp replacement every few years.

I was looking at the Optoma HD20, $900 that's a good deal. And the bulb is rated for 3000/4000 hours.

[pawoSD]

Hmm, those are pretty good projectors. Where they get you is when the lamp fails....be ready to spend $250-400 for one.

[LandYaghtLover]

I had an Infocus DLP (will never get LCD) and it was only $600 at the time. GREAT machine that did 720p. By todays standards, maybe not the best.

But here is the thing. Even the cheapest 1080p will meet what most home owners want. You are not flat up against the screen. Also most pros will get the projector focused dead on, then tweak it just a hair to soften the pixel edges to give a more cinematic feel. After all, who want to see the grid.

The biggest thing is the screen material. I build my screen and used silver coated stuff. (Hence the "silver screen" term). You want good gain for good results in brightness and color.

Also consider options like aspect ratios. Most will adjust on the fly. But some will work great at wide format then at 4:3 they crop too much. With my old cheap Infocus I had to zoom it a lot. Zoom back for 4:3 and then zoom in for wide. Pretty annoying.

[Jorn]

They are rated for 3000/4000 hours. I'm watching at the most 7 films a week at average 90 minutes long. So that would be a couple of years of viewing pleasure.

[LaughingGravy]

We went nuts this year and did go for the Optoma HD20 for Christmas.
We bought a separate motorized screen earlier this year for cheap, and it's a nice screen with 104" diagonal.

I only did this after lots of research.
The HD20 has no sound, so that is something to think about.
We use the home stereo setup for sound for anything going to the projector.

We have some rules in the house about using it in order to keep the lamp life longer, as the bulbs/lamps are indeed $250 each. Everything also can be shown on the 27" TV that we still keep due to parallel cabling, so checking the weather or anything else short term, just turn on the TV in the corner.

If we were going to do this, 1080p was a must.
Hooked into this we have:
-Mini Lenovo PC running Windows 7 (tiny thing!)
-XBOX 360 (really nice in 1080p,for a change)
-VHS VCR (running all analog items through this to the composite video cable into the HD20).
-Videodisc (CED) Go to CEDMAGIC.com to learn about this unique format.
-Tivo (analog, but with lifetime service, so I'm not spending anymore money)
-Laserdisc
-DVD
-Nintendo 64
-Turntable and our 400+ LPs are still part of the stereo system with the carousel CD player as well as the new Squeezebox internet radio (Excellent!) and the Rio Digital Audio Center (HSX-109, a rare item indeed)that has ALL of our CD collection stored on it.

The only downside of this is that any non-HD channels or content is in the analog resolution and is a little blurry in comparison once you're used to the HD.

Boy, you can really see the details of people with this HD on a large screen, some of it not so good.

I kept the Beta tapes and player, Reel to Reel and 8 Track players/and tapes in my home office. We had to draw the line somewhere.

Cassettes are played on a dedicated combo machine with another turntable.

[MTI]

Gee, no EL-Cassette, Mini Disc or SACD?

[LaughingGravy]

My Minidiscs are all portables.

No Elcassette, SACD or wire recorder.

Something about others in the house needing room to walk.

Each of the Laserdisc and CED collections has over 100 movies, with only 2 duplications between them and only a couple of films are duplicated on either VHS or DVD.
You gotta love country auctions from well off counties and towns nearby.

[pawoSD]

Its a lot easier to just digitize everything. We have a TV with our U-verse and a Computer connected. Equip the PC with a blue-ray drive and you can watch online, netflix, dvd, and blue-ray with no problem. Music, all digitized and available on the PC....

Its much simpler that way.

[LaughingGravy]

The PC was "free" due to multiple points accumulated on a credit card with an upcoming expiration date on using the points and there was nothing else they were offering that interested me.
I could get one crappy airline ticket, or a bunch of magazines to recycle and take up space, or I could have this little toy to add to the Christmas Entertainment center.
It really can't be expanded aside from another USB external drive, only has 2gig of memory, so is fine for lite stuff, since it has an Atom processor.

Maybe down the line, I'll digitize. Good thought.
I do enjoy the older formats with no ads or menus. Just pop in the movie and it plays.

[G-Benz]

My dad bought a Sanyo PLV-1080HD from Best Buy a couple of years ago. I went there with him and I believe he paid around $800.

He pretty much watched that thing every night for several hours, and the projector went through the bulb in less than a year!

Replacement bulb was about $300!

Undaunted, he still uses the heck out of that projector.

[BoomInTheTrunk]

Hey check out the Epson Home Cinema 8350 it has gotten good reviews this past year and is a great budget projector.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/epson_home_cinema_8350_projector_review.htm