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Home Theatre Projectors, Dell, InFocus and Sanyo
ssassen writes "Hardware Analysis is gearing up towards the holiday season with an indepth comparison of three popular home theatre projectors; the perfect gift for under the Christmas tree. They decipher the marketing mumbo-jumbo you'll be faced with and explain all that you need to know prior to buying a home theatre projector."
Many online and offline business rental companies will let you rent a projector. This is HIGHLY recommended. The $50-$100 more you'll spend will give you a big chance to see if the projector is for you.
Lumens, contrast ratio, and even resolution is NOT comparitive between brands. Some people see "rainbows" with DLP projectors. Some people see excess screen door with LCD projectors.
Before I bought my (CHEAP) Sanyo PLV-Z1 projector, I scoured the AVS Forums for information, and it was the best help I could find.
Now I have a 110" projector on my living room wall, the room feels twice as big (the TV took up so much space), and my projector looks great during the day, the night, and in HDTV (thanks Comcast for doing something right!).
dada
.. if you need a home theatre system to make a particular film worth watching, then it's not worth watching.
What are your bulb costs? I looked at doing this a year or so ago, but ended up with a rear projection TV - the bulb costs just seemed too high.
$100 will not buy you a decent home theater system so I'm not sure why the choices are mutually exclulsive.
.....
But even if they were equal, buying the HTS contributes far more to society than the food bank donation. Why? Because $100 to a HTS company will mean jobs for marketeers, salespeople, technicians, engineers, researchers, local power company, etc. Not to mention a lot of fun for you, your family and friends. Give people a reason to work and they will aspire to be more than they are today.
Give them a handout, well thanks for the bandaid, but what they really need is a job to help make ends meet. If only there were a way to create jobs
Have you ever considered the fact that some folks might blow wads of cash on a home theater system AND give wads of money to the local food bank/homeless shelter/what-have-you? It's not an either/or thing, ya know.
Frankly, it really pisses me off when people assume that anyone who spends more than $X (where X is usually an amount just slightly out of reach of the person doing the assuming) on something frivoulous is somehow depriving hungry children of food by doing so. Besides, if we all quit buying our home theater gear, or our computers, or whatever, there'd be a lot more homeless kids when all the factories producing those things had to shut down from lack of demand.
Dear Lord, I sound like a fucking Republican now, somebody kill me please.
Read the post. The X1 is a DLP projector. No LCDs involved. And for the price of your 36" CRT behemoth you'll be able to get diagonals measured in yards from a box the size of a few video cassettes, plus you'll be able to use it for PC gaming.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Giving CASH to poor people is like giving LIQUOR to an alcoholic.
You don't give DRUGS to people with DRUG PROBLEMS; you don't give MONEY to people with MONEY PROBLEMS. It's a shame LIBERALS don't know this.
Oh really?
If it's a high-pressure lamp, wouldn't the risk be exploding?
A filled vacuum?
Not so obvious to those of use who understand device gamuts.
Despite these errors, I found the comparison useful, but I'm still confused as to their methods. In one place, the author says:
But a few screens later:
Perhaps for some measurements they used defaults and some they adjusted to match the reference image, but that's far from clear.
Did you miss the part where he said 90" diagonal? You might as well say that he's foolish for spending any more than $99 because you have a mini TV that cost that much.
I'm not trying to make this a Size Matters thing any more than it needs to be. But compare like to like - a 60" rear projection TV runs more like $4500, and is a bastard to get up and down stairs. A few years ago when I bought my LCD projector, Fry's (a local chain in Silicon Valley) was selling a 70" projection-screen TV for $8000.
BTW folks, bear in mind that if you have a home theater and NetFlix, you'll save a TON on things like movie tickets, candy/popcorn, gas, etc. My wife and I have been to the movies three times this year. How much do you spend on going out to the movies every year? (It doesn't have to be a super deluxe home theater, either, no matter what the freaks who spend $30,000 on home theater setups would have you believe.)