Projector

On Friday, January 27, 2012 6:44:53 PM UTC-7, BeeJ wrote:

The "brightness" figure for a projector is given in lumens, but that's a me= asure of the light energy leaving the lens; it's one factor in determining the pe= rceived brightness of the image, the others being the screen size, the scre= en "gain," and the ambient light level in the viewing room. Without knowing= those, the only advice someone could give you would be to get the projecto= r with the biggest output spec in lumens that you could afford, but there's= a significant chance that you'd wind up buying excessive brightness at the= expense of other features.

Not much choice here, really. You're going to want 1920 x 1080 pixels, and= that's pretty much all you'd find anyway. Lower resolution projectors won= 't do Blu-ray discs justice, at least not on a larger screen.

Absolutely. First - how far will the projector be located from the screen?= You need to make sure the optics of the projector (the projection lens sy= stem) are capable of producing the desired image size at that distance. Al= so, unless the projector can be mounted such that it is facing the screen "= squarely" (i.e., a line from the projector lens to the screen is perpendicu= lar to both), you will wind up with a distorted image (look up "keystone di= stortion" for an example). Some projectors can correct for this, if such c= orrection is needed.

You should also look into the basic imaging technology used by the projecto= r. Lots of projectors today use Texas Instrument's "Digital Light Processi= ng" (DLP) technology, in which the image is formed on a chip carrying liter= ally a couple of million tiny little square mirrors. But this technology do= esn't inherently provide a color image, so to get full color images you eit= her need to show the red, green, and blue images on a single chip in rapid = succession (called "field-sequential color") or use three of these imaging = chips, one for each color. The three-chip types are obviously going to be = more expensive, but provide the best image and avoid a problem that's inher= ent in the single-chip designs known as "color breakup" or the "rainbow eff= ect." Some people are very sensitive to this effect, in which you will per= ceive colored fringes around moving objects within the image, or if you mov= e your head rapidly such that the image moves across your field of vision. = If you're not overly sensitive to the problem (I'm not, personally), singl= e-chip projectors will be fine choices; if you are, you may need to look fo= r a three-chip design or use some other imaging technology. LCDs are the o= ther major imaging device common found in consumer projection. They typica= lly don't provide the high contrast of the DLP imagers, and have an overall= different "look" to the image. Shop and compare.)

Finally, you'll need to consider other features that may be of concern to y= ou. Top of that list is likely what inputs you need: HDMI is the de-facto = standard digital interface for HDTV today, but you may also need the projec= tor to be able to handle the older analog TV connections standards (composi= te or component video, typically using "RCA" jacks, or "S-Video" which is t= ypically on a DIN connector) or to accept video from personal computers (wh= ich may provide HDMI, but which might also use VGA, DVI, or DisplayPort out= puts; of those, only DVI is directly compatible with HDMI).

Bob M.

Thanks for all of that. The one missing piece in my limited knowledge bank was the one vs three chip DLP. So that is where I will begin my search.

Anyone suggest brands or models? A place for me to start informed looking!

Thanks

The link below is to a well respected audio/video forum.