Do you guys use projectors as your main viewing screen at home? That is, do you forego big screen TVs for projectors? I’m so used to the concept of TV as furniture I think my tv room/living room would feel weird without one. Do you hook everything up to it? Blue Ray, console, digital cable, the works?
we use a projector in the basement on a 110 inch screen for hockey and the kids watch movies there. I find it too big a pain to go down there when there is a 52 inch LCD in the family room. All told, we probably use the lcd at a 5:1 ratio to the projector.
But XBox and Wii on the projector does rock.
Our reason for a projector is to be just that, Wallington – A way to have TV without having it become a piece of furniture. But in our home, space is at a real premium.
Interesting, this is exactly why I went with a projector, I didn’t want to design a room around an ugly black square. Not that there’s anything wrong with that since it’s so standard, but a proj gives you the option to decorate towards a fireplace or a window and let the media fall where it may.
H.
I have a 26" LCD in my man-cave, but in the rec room we only have the projector. We really like that when the thing is off, there’s no visible Big Black Square to focus on. It also lets us be in total control of when there’s video or not, since the kids can’t reach high enough to turn it on :-)
We have the Optoma HD200x (like the HD20 but with a shorter warranty) and I’ve been impressed with how bright is is compared to my old BenQ. It’s viewable in daylight with the curtains drawn. Not good by any stretch, but viewable. It’s an impressive price for full HD as well.
We have a very narrow living room, so to get a longer throw distance we cut a hole in the wall and put everything (xbox, media centre and projector) into another room. It’s pretty much the bee’s knees and the cat’s pyjamas for having an uncluttered living room and cutting down on the light pollution from the projector grill.
I now have in my living room the Epson 8350.
It is dreamy.
Also a bit large.
I am so close to pulling the trigger on this Epson 8350. It better be good Rimbo or I am coming for you.
Reviews seem quite positive, and it is a newly released model (unlike the optoma), presumably with the latest n’ greatest internals.
I’m really blown away by it. A friend of mine at work (head of IT) knows quite a bit about projectors and TVs because he’s procured several for the office, plus is the kind of insane person who sets up 4 TVs in his living room, all on different channels, watching them all at once with satellite hook-ups and what-have-you. A serious TV watcher, not like me. He gave me a lot of great advice, and even loaned me one of the work projectors (an EPSON Presenter) to try out and to adjust my expectations.
Well, nothing that thing did prepared me for the way this thing looks, how useful the lens shift would be, how quiet it is and even how bright it is, even in ECO mode.
The biggest downside is that it doesn’t like my Xbox 360’s HDMI output. It’s an older 360 (Jasper) that has HDMI 1.2, and for some reason the Epson (1.3a) doesn’t like it. I’ve got one of these Monoprice HDMI hub/audio splitter things coming today or Monday (for other reasons) and the aforementioned friend mentioned that these things can resolve those kinds of compatibility issues sometimes. So there’s that.
Apparently this isn’t a problem with the new 360s. Either way, if I have to choose between the Epson and the Xbox, I’ll replace the Xbox. I’m already at the “You can have my projector when you pry it from my cold, dead hands” stage and I’ve only had it for two days.
Granted, I was upgrading from a Samsung T220HD, so there is that.
Slickdeals just coughed up a good deal on the aforementioned Casio XJ-A235 “green slim” projector with the wifty 20,000-hour-lifetime “light engine.” Newegg now has it for $710 including free shipping, which is a lot better than the lowest prevailing Amazon prices of $840 without free shipping.
So I pulled the trigger, then realized Newegg’s sneaky fucking varies-by-product return policy was “no refunds” on this. So if we hate it, I might have a like-new, in-box XJ-A235 for sale :-\ I’m sure we’ll be fine with it though.
Thread was ninja’d by a real ninja!
Flagged the post as blatent spam (and I’m not going to best buy ninja.com ffs) but I will look that model up.