Home projectors
 

Shit, starting a new topic in here feels like shouting in a goddamn church! What i'm hoping one of you guys can tell me is if home projectors have got to a point that it's possible to replace ya living room tv with one. Got a big ass wall that would fit a nice size projection screen of around 3m by 1.8m. Reviews are one thing, but mostly they're just overblown advertising, hoping you guys have had recent experience with them and can let me know. Cheers!

You're talking about quite a large projection surface area (130" 16:10). Without knowing anything about your room or natural light situation, I'd put in something no less than 6,000 ANSI Lumens.

The cost of a projector is impacted three ways by Resolution * Brightness * Light source (Laser vs Lamp)

A traditional lamp light source (ie not laser) will effectively lose about 30% of its brightness in the first 100 hours of use. Laser will not lose brightness (and is instant on / off), but their cooling fans are typically much more noisier than Lamp projectors.

Projection is different to flat panel displays as image quality is much more dependent on the room and natural light. A projected image will look washed out if direct sunlight is entering the room.

You need to manage the Lux level of light hitting the projection surface area. Easiest way is to turn your room into a dark cinema. If you can manage that, you can purchase a less bright projector and achieve a great image.

Consider contrast ratio: A white pixel needs to be at least 20-30x brighter than a black pixel. If the wall is lit up by ambient light, it will be difficult to achieve the needed contrast ratio. You want your blacks to be black (not grey), and your whites to be white.

Personally, I have a Mitsubishi HC4000 (1300 ANSI lumens) at home. And the room needs to be pretty much pitch black.

Consider audio out to your sound system: Projectors typically only have 1 HDMI / DisplayPort input, and no audio loop out. So if you have multiple sources (game console, set top box, media PC) it is wise to first run these into an AV receiver to switch sources and split audio out to your speakers. Flat panel displays will have multiple inputs, and SPDIF / Toslink audio out making input switching very easy.



http://www.av-info.eu/
This website is a great resource that references SMPTE (cinema standards) & InfoComm (Commercial AV standards)

That's awesome info thanks Nich, appreciate it greatly! Got some reading to do, but it seems TV may still be the answer from what you've just said. I can't really do a blackout room unfortunately (not without turning the living room into a dungeon LOL!) Just broke out the tape measure and I was close, but off by about 400mm, so about 2.4m across. Am thinking something like an 80" wall mount might be the better bet, and probably about the same price break for a projector that would do the job, but just wouldn't see the quality during summer evenings. Thanks again :)

You're welcome.

yeah, short answer is just get a flat panel. Next question is what content is it showing? 1080p vs 4k? Gaming vs cinema?

Non-scaled, OLED or QLED will give you a chance at the best possible image quality (black blacks, white whites). However, from what I've seen, 4k OLED screens look shit if the source content is a lower resolution (1080p). This problem looks even more shit the larger the image size (see pixel pitch). Also, you can't get 80" screens at anything lower than 4k. Make sure your content will be at least 4k.

OLED response time (0.1ms) shits on QLED response time (2-8ms). So if you're gaming you want OLED.

Sony or LG OLED are pretty much leading the industry.

Jonas with the info bomb!

*bows* It's my specialty to explain how one can, or why one cannot achieve certain AV outcomes.

Ooooh now you're makin me nervous :) most of my content is 1920x1080, si will have to look at replacing with 4k content. Average distance to the screen is about 4m as much as 5, was considering putting a sliding mount on the ceiling which would allow me to bring it off the wall and into the living room space by about an extra 1.2m.

Decisions decisions!

Don't let me tell you what you want, but you want the latest tech.